Former Vice President Mike Pence joined most Republicans Thursday in casting doubt on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's motives in the indictment of Donald Trump.
The former president was indicted on more than 30 counts, CNN reports. His first court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday.
“I think the unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage, and it appears to millions of Americans be nothing more than a political prosecution that's driven by a prosecutor who literally ran for office on a pledge to indict the former president,” Pence told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in a primetime interview scheduled before Trump’s indictment was known publicly.
“Prosecutors make discretionary decisions about what they bring all the time. Federal prosecutors passed on this, the Manhattan DA initially delayed it, passed on it, but when you have an attorney general in New York and a Manhattan DA that targeted, one particular American in their campaigns, I think that offends the notion of the overwhelming majority of the American people who believe in fairness, who believe in equal treatment before the law, and this appears to be just one more example, Wolf, of the kind of two-tiered justice system that the American people have had enough.”
Pence is considering a presidential run himself and said during travels around the country Trump’s legal troubles don’t appear to be on the radar of ordinary Americans.
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“The media's obsession about these investigations into Donald Trump I think is being lost on the American people,” Pence said.
Pence spoke critically of the former president over incendiary remarks on social media, including a statement that "death and destruction" would likely follow charges being brought against him.
“There's no excuse for that kind of rhetoric on either side of this debate,” Pence said.
Pence declined to say whether a person who is indicted should run for president, but acknowledged that presidents shouldn’t be immune from prosecution.
“No one is above the law, including former presidents, let me be clear on that point, and the American people know this,” Pence said.
“But in this case, a controversy over campaign finance, I can't speak to the merits of this case at all, but I can speak to the issue emanating out of a question over campaign finance should never have risen to the level to bring an unprecedented and historic prosecution” of the former president.
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