WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — In an interview Tuesday with The Star News Network, former Arkansas Governor and freshly declared Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson said a Manhattan grand jury’s indictment of former President Donald Trump is a “sad day for America.”
Hutchinson, the latest Republican to announce his run for the White House, talked about his campaign, the border and the “tainted” prosecution of Trump in a conversation with The Star.
Trump, the leading GOP candidate for president, is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday on charges stemming from a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election — for an affair that allegedly occurred 17 years ago. Trump arrived in New York Monday amid protests and heightened security.
Hutchinson, a former federal prosecutor, said he would not have brought the charges against Trump based on the reported facts in the case.
“There’s a lot we don’t now yet. We should wait and see what they actually bring forth,” he told The Star. “But it is a sad day for America that we have a former president under criminal charges and under further investigation.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a highly partisan Democrat, campaigned for office on a promise to “get Trump.” His website insists he practices “One Standard of Justice for All.” Legal experts on both sides of the aisle, however, have questioned the strength of Bragg’s felony case, which apparently involves legally risky campaign finance violations and an expired statute of limitations.
“Any time you campaign (as a prosecutor) saying you’re not afraid to go after Donald Trump, it gives it a partisan taint,” Hutchinson said. “In fairness, we have law enforcement on the Republican side going after cases against (President Joe Biden). But it does provide that taint. Prosecutors need to be careful about the language they use.”
Paul du Quenoy, president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute, opined that Bragg’s aggressive, politically-driven prosecution might have just re-elected Donald Trump.
“Surely this is not the end for Trump, who has reportedly been fantasizing about a very public arrest in which he is handcuffed and led away in a New York-style perp walk,” du Quenoy wrote in Newsweek. “He clearly expects that such a spectacle will make him a martyr to his followers, who have been re-energized of late, and even to non-supporters who fear the politicization of American criminal justice more than they dislike him.”
Already with deep campaign pockets, Trump had, as of Sunday, raised more than $5 million off of his indictment.
That can’t help longer-shot Republicans like Hutchinson running in an increasingly crowded field of presidential candidates dominated by Trump and Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who has yet to officially declare his candidacy.
But Hutchinson, who served as 46th Governor of the State of Arkansas and was a key official in President George W. Bush’s administration, said his travels and conversations with Americans over the past six months inspired him to seek the Republican presidential nomination. He said he’s convinced the American people want leaders that “appeal to the best of America and who do not simply appeal to our worst instincts.”
“The American people deserve good leadership rooted in common sense and consistent conservatism that is optimistic about our great country,” Hutchinson said in a press release announcing his campaign. “I know I can bring that leadership and I look forward to sharing my message with the rest of the country.”
He’ll do so soon in Iowa, the critical first-in-the nation caucus state. He plans to be back in the Hawkeye State next week.
Hutchinson does bring to the race an insider’s perspective on the U.S. southern border, among the greatest national security threats facing the United States. The former congressman was tapped by Bush to serve as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration and later as the nation’s first Undersecretary of Homeland Security and Border Protection.
The Biden administration’s border policy has raised security concerns from El Paso, TX to Elmont, NY.
President Joe Biden finished his second year in office with an untenable record-high monthly southern border encounters of more than 250,000 immigrants. U.S. border agents conservatively estimate 1.2 million more “gotaways,” or illegal immigrants who slipped through without processing, thanks to Biden’s porous border policies.
With the flood of humanity – and the accompanying humanitarian crisis – comes very real security threats: Gangs, murderers, and the scourge of deadly fentanyl. In fiscal year 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confiscated more than 50,000 pounds of the drug at the southern border, with untold amounts flowing in undetected. At the end of the consumption chain, more than 110,000 dead from fentanyl overdoses in the 12-month period ending March 2022.
As a former frontline drug enforcement administration and Homeland Security official, Hutchinson said he understands the challenges and complexity of securing the border. He said the United States needs to reform its asylum laws so that migrants aren’t simply released because they make an asylum claim. “Catch-and-release” needs to end, Hutchinson said.
“And we need to go after the drug cartels in Mexico, and they are not cooperating right now. These cartels are causing the human suffering,” he said, adding that the federal government needs to put more resources at the border — through technology, border patrol agents, and a wall.
Reports show cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico on the drug war has hit its lowest point in decades. Last month, Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador claimed fentanyl is America’s problem.
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, one of Hutchinson’s competitors in the chase for the GOP nomination, toured the border Monday with U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX-23).
“This is a dereliction of duty by President Biden…Biden thinks if he doesn’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist. But for the people now in Hondo, Texas, for the people here now in Del Rio, it does exist,” Haley told Fox News.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Asa Hutchinson in Iowa” by Asa Huchinson.
