The reaction to former President Donald Trump’s 34-count indictment broke along party lines, as expected.

“The prosecution and … arraignment appear to be little more than a way for this DA, who campaigned on prosecuting the former president, to advance his own career,” MassGOP Chairwoman Amy Carnevale said.

The 45th president left the Criminal Courts Building in Manhattan Tuesday and departed for his home in Florida, not long after Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy told a New York judge the president had falsified records regarding his business dealings in the lead up to the 2016 campaign in such a way that misdemeanor charges should be elevated to felonies.

The falsifications, prosecutors allege, are rooted in hush-money payments made to people with whom Trump allegedly had extramarital sexual encounters and paid for silence in the days leading up to his first election and which amount to high-level crimes in New York.

In a press conference following Trump’s unprecedented arrest, arraignment and bondless release, District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the former commander-in-chief engaged in “a scheme to buy and suppress negative information to help Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the 2016 election.”

U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, the House Minority Whip, said Bragg’s decision to indict Trump was representative of a longstanding tenet of American law and legal philosophy.

“Fundamental to the strength and survival of democracy is the principle that no one is above the law – including a former President of the United States,” the Revere Democrat said in a statement.

“We must allow the judicial process to continue unimpeded and free from any form of political interference or intimidation. This is not a time for partisanship, but for all Americans to act peacefully and put their faith in the justice system,” she continued.

Partisanship is exactly what has led to charges against the leading candidate in the Republican Primary and, depending on the poll, potentially the leading candidate in the race for the 2024 nomination, according to Carnevale.

“The arraignment today of the former President appears to be based on contrived legal arguments and discredits the notion of judicial integrity and impartiality. The case was declined by both the Department of Justice and the Federal Elections Commission yet incredibly was taken up by the Manhattan DA,” she said.

The leader of the state’s Republican party also doesn’t appear to see any of President Joe Biden’s oft promised unity in the arrest and arraignment of a leading political opponent.

“The last several years have been marked by political divisiveness both at a national level and here in Massachusetts. This arraignment does a disservice to our Nation’s attempt to move toward more productive political dialogue,” she continued.