Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Mitt Romney offered starkly different opinions of Thursday’s news that a federal grand jury indicted former President Donald Trump for his handling of sensitive materials at his Florida home. Romney soberly noted Trump “brought these charges upon himself,” while Lee insinuated the entire process is similar to politically motivated prosecutions in Central and South American countries.
The former president is “entitled to the presumption of innocence,” Romney said in a statement Friday morning, while the federal government has the “burden of proving its charges beyond a reasonable doubt and securing a unanimous verdict by a South Florida jury.”
“By all appearances, the Justice Department and special counsel have exercised due care, affording Mr. Trump the time and opportunity to avoid charges that would not generally have been afforded to others.
“Mr. Trump brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents but by refusing to return them when given numerous opportunities to do so simply.
“These allegations are serious and if proven, would be consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest, such as withholding defensive weapons from Ukraine for political reasons and failing to defend the Capitol from violent attack and insurrection,” Romney wrote.
Coming to Trump’s defense again, Lee — a former assistant U.S. attorney — compared the Biden administration to a banana republic.
On Thursday night, Lee also retweeted a post comparing the indictment of Trump to the rise of strongman leaders in South and Central America, like Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega.
And later that evening, he further insinuated the indictment of Trump was corrupt from the start, tweeting, “Remember: Biden personally green-lighted the raid on Trump’s home,” referring to the 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
Trump repeatedly attempted to invoke executive privilege to shield documents from investigators, including the congressional inquiry into Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted insurrection and subsequent attack on the U.S. Capito, The Washington Post reported. President Joe Biden waived Trump’s claim, which authorized the release of records, according to Politico.
Lee also played footsie with a conspiracy theory that the Biden administration leaked news of Trump’s pending indictment to the press, ignoring that Trump was the first to break the news on his Truth Social platform.
After the indictment against Trump was unsealed, Lee issued a statement through his official Senate Twitter account, again comparing the Biden administration to authoritarian regimes.
Rep. Chris Stewart, who is a member of the House committee investigating the alleged “weaponization” of the federal government, tweeted Friday afternoon that the charges against Trump were “equally unprecedented and unconscionable.”
“There are clearly two standards of justice in our nation: One for people named Biden or Clinton and one for everyone else,” Stewart said.
The rest of Utah’s congressional delegation, Gov. Spencer Cox and Utah legislative leaders remained silent.
This story is breaking and may be updated.
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