Some Republican politicians and officials fanned out on Sunday to denounce Donald Trump over his handling of classified documents but also to question the motives of the US justice department in bringing an unprecedented 37-count indictment against the former president.
The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who announced a run for the Republic presidential nomination last week, called Trump’s conduct outlined in the criminal charges “deeply disturbing”, adding that “we have to have a full trial here and fair one”.
Speaking to CBS Face the Nation, Christie acknowledged that he had questions about politically “equitable” application of the law when it comes to politicians but that did not change accusations about Trump’s conduct.
“We would not be here if Donald Trump had simply returned the documents that the government had asked him to return dozens of times,” Christie said. That conduct, he said, is “indefensible” and if true as alleged in the indictment “he is in severe legal trouble”.
Trump’s record in the White House, including undermining and diminishing his own cabinet appointees, amounted to the behavior of a “petulant child”, Christie said, “because when you disagreed with him, you get called names”.
Christie, who was fired from running Trump’s transition just days after Trump won the presidency in 2016, added: “Look, it’s Father’s Day today, and I want to talk to every father out there – if your child acted like this you send them to their room, you wouldn’t send them to the White House.”
Separately, Christie described Trump on CNN’s State of the Union as a “three-time loser”, referring to his loss of a legislative majority in Congress in 2018, the White House in 2020, and in the mid-term elections in 2022, which was partially seen as a referendum of Trump-endorsed candidates.
According to opinion polls, Christie is running in third place among Republican voters for his party’s nomination behind Trump and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.
“I will do what I need to do to be up on that stage to try to save my party and save my country from going down the road of being led by three-time loser Donald Trump,” Christie said of his nascent campaign.
Meanwhile, former vice-president Mike Pence argued that the issue for Republicans underlying Trump’s 37-count criminal indictment was that the charges were brought by a politicized justice department – regardless of whether the allegations in the complaint are proved by the government.
“The American people – or I will tell you among Republicans, vast majority of Republicans – have lost confidence in the Department of Justice,” Pence said. He vowed to “clean house at the highest levels of the department of justice” if he is elected president.
Trump’s former attorney general William Barr told CBS that the investigation and charges that followed was not a situation in which Trump is “the victim or that this is government overreach”.
“He provoked this whole problem himself,” Barr said.
Also on Sunday, the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson – another of the 10 announced Republican presidential candidates – cautioned his party’s lawmakers to “back off” allegations that the justice department has been “weaponized”. Hutchinson alluded to how Trump recently promised that, if he’s elected president, he intends to appoint a special prosecutor “to go after” Joe Biden and the president’s family.
“That’s called a weaponization of the justice department,” Hutchinson told ABC’s This Week. “And so let’s back off of these accusations, and let’s get back to being the party of the rule of law, of the justice system supporting law enforcement and the equal application of law.”
Nonetheless, Hutchinson also made it a point to say the justice department had “made some bad decisions”.
On Wednesday, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, contended that the justice department had followed the rules and regulations for special counsels in charging Trump. “We live in a democracy. These kind of matters are adjudicated through the judicial system,” Garland said.
Trump’s former secretary of defense Mark Esper told CNN that Trump’s hoarding of classified documents was “unauthorized, illegal and dangerous”.
Asked if he thought Trump could be trusted with classified information again, Esper said: “Based on his actions, again, if proven true under the indictment by the special counsel, no. It’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation’s security at risk.”
