Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) called special counsel Jack Smith’s latest indictment against former President Donald Trump a “diatribe” that is similar to what “you would get from an MSNBC producer for a special on that channel.”
Smith announced Tuesday that Trump was charged on four counts in a case surrounding alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
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Cotton rejected the legitimacy of the indictment while appearing on The Ingraham Angle.
“These are all constitutionally protected activities in which former President Trump engaged — political activities and free speech, protected by the First Amendment,” Cotton said. “You don’t have to agree with him. You don’t have to think he was right.”
“I also just want to point out that Jack Smith is an ideological zealot,” the senator continued. “He charged Bob McDonnell, the former governor of Virginia, on similar crimes years ago. He got a conviction, and then it reversed unanimously at the Supreme Court because his legal theories were so far-fetched. I think it’s very curious that Merrick Garland chose that man to pursue the former president.”
Cotton also said that Democrats, too, have objected to election results yet were not prosecuted.
“Every time a Republican has won the presidency in this century, the Democrats tried to stop the certification of that victory, yet, none of them faced criminal charges over what is obviously a First Amendment protected activity,” Cotton said.
The Republican senator added that Tuesday’s indictment puts the United States at risk regarding foreign relations.
“I’m sure a lot of our adversaries like China or Iran are very pleased that they see this kind of unprecedented action by the [Biden] administration against his chief political opponent that is bound to cause more division in the country, cause more distraction in Washington at a time when we need to be confronting our adversaries,” he said.
“You don’t have to believe anything that President Trump said or did Jan. 6, the days leading up to it,” Cotton said. “You don’t have to believe allegations of fraud in the election in 2020, but I think anyone should be dismayed that the administration in power is pursuing its chief political opponent on such flimsy, novel, untested legal theories that go right up against the president’s First Amendment rights.”
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In announcing the indictment on Tuesday, Smith called the Jan. 6 riot “an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.”
“It was fueled by lies,” Smith said. “Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election."