Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) went after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for the possible indictment of former President Donald Trump on Monday.
DeSantis said at a press conference that he has not seen any facts regarding an arrest of Trump but did go after Bragg’s record on crime, whom he lamented as a George Soros-funded district attorney who is using his office to “impose a political agenda.”
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“The Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor, so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety,” DeSantis said. “He has downgraded over 50% of the felonies to misdemeanors. He says he doesn’t even want to have jail time for the vast vast majority of crime, and what we’ve seen in Manhattan is we’ve seen the crime rate go up and citizens being less safe.”
He also said that Bragg ignoring everyday crime while digging to find something on Trump is a key example of how he is weaponizing his office.
“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I can’t speak to that, but what I can speak to is that if you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction and he chooses to [go] back many, many years ago to try to use something about porn star hush money payments, that is an example of pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office, and I think that is fundamentally wrong,” DeSantis said.
The governor discussed how he believes district attorneys who have their campaigns donated to by Soros make their communities less safe while alluding to how he suspended Florida state attorney Andrew Warren in August 2022. DeSantis suspended Warren, who had been backed by Soros, for failing to enforce state laws on crime and abortion. Warren is appealing the suspension, with the trial recently being fast-tracked by the circuit judge presiding over the case.
He also said his office will not get involved in the “manufactured circus” and did not directly answer a question about an extradition of Trump.
“We won’t be involved in this. I have no interest in getting involved in some type of manufactured circus by some Soros DA,” DeSantis said. “He’s trying to do a political spectacle. He’s trying to virtue signal for his base. I’ve got real issues I got to deal with here in the state of Florida.”
When asked a follow-up about if there has been any communication between law enforcement in New York and Florida about an arraignment of Trump in New York, DeSantis said he was not aware of any conversations between the states.
Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., slammed DeSantis’s response on Twitter as “pure weakness,” claiming he is controlled opposition and is “totally owned by Karl Rove, Paul Ryan & his billionaire donors.”
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Trump has said he believes he will be arrested on Tuesday after reports circulated suggesting Bragg was readying charges against Trump regarding him paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
The crime for which Trump would likely be indicted if charges are pursued is a misdemeanor in New York, but reports suggest Bragg may elevate the crime to a felony by arguing the payment was done to conceal a crime.
