Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., criticized the political pursuit of former President Donald Trump on “The Ingraham Angle” Thursday night, hours after a Manhattan grand jury indicted him.
The Florida congressman said the decision by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to continue “this terrible witch hunt” against Trump is “clearly political” and “frivolous,” adding that it “seems to leave the nation on edge.”
Gaetz reminded viewers that Bragg is a DA backed by left-wing billionaire George Soros, who donated $1 million to his campaign while Bragg promised to continue the attacks on the former president by the Manhattan DA’s office.
“We will wake up in a very different America tomorrow because can no longer have moral authority against the dictators and despots who have always found it easier to jail their political rivals than to compete against them in free and fair elections,” Gaetz said.
Gaetz also criticized President Joe Biden for not speaking out against the pending indictment, accusing him of encouraging the witch hunt with his rhetoric against Republicans.
“He functionally gaslit this indictment by saying that extreme MAGA Republicans were dangerous,” Gaetz told Ingraham.
He added that it’s a double standard that the Chinese Communist Party can give money to various members of the Biden family over the years, but payments cannot be made to Stormy Daniels “to resolve a legal dispute.”
“They would have to prove that Donald Trump would have no reason, other than the election, to try to resolve this issue with Stormy Daniels privately and outside of the public sphere,” he said.
Gaetz said he believes the next move will be a motion to dismiss.
“By a margin of about two to one, the American people see this is not based in the law and the facts, but raw, ugly politics,” Gaetz said, referencing a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday.
Though the charges against Trump have not been revealed, the indictment is believed to stem from hush money payments leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
These include the $130,000 payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and the $150,000 made to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, Fox News Digital has learned.
Hush money payments made to both McDougal and Daniels were revealed and reported by Fox News in 2018. Those payments had been investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York and by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York opted out of charging Trump related to the Daniels payment in 2019, even as former Trump attorney Michael Cohen implicated him as part of his plea deal.
The FEC also tossed its investigation into the matter in 2021.
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
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