By Steve Brawner
© 2023 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
What have Arkansas’ leading Republicans been saying about former President Trump’s indictment? It varies from quite a bit to not much at all.
Sen. Tom Cotton, the combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and also is an attorney, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Tuesday that he was disappointed with the indictments.
Trump is accused of taking classified documents, including highly sensitive ones related to national security, showing them off a little, refusing to turn them over and then taking steps to hide them.
Cotton said that’s not as serious as what Hillary Clinton did while secretary of state, which was conduct a lot of official business using her private, unsecured email server that included sending classified information, though not documents marked as classified. He said what Clinton did was worse and that it compromised national security, and he criticized the Justice Department for its inconsistency in indicting Trump but not her.
“Indicting the opposition party’s leading candidate is a step that’s more reminiscent of Third World banana republics than the greatest republic known in the history of mankind, and it’s not something that should be done on edge cases or stretching legal theories,” he said. “Only on ironclad serious matters in which the law has been applied equally in a fair-handed manner.”
Asa has opposite view
On the other side of the argument is former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is running against Trump for the Republican nomination for president.
As noted in my previous column – which I won’t presume you’ve read because you have a life – Hutchinson took the other side when it comes to the equal application of the law argument. While Cotton compared Trump to Clinton, Hutchinson compared Trump to the average person.
“If these allegations and probable cause had been found against any military person or any public servant that wasn’t named Donald Trump, they would have been indicted a long time ago,” he said on CNN June 11.
On Tuesday, Hutchinson told ABC News that he would not vote for Trump if Trump were convicted, saying, “I’m not going to be supporting somebody who is convicted or who has wrongfully handled material that jeopardizes the security of the United States.”
That’s notable because Hutchinson has said he would sign a pledge to support the nominee, whoever it is, that the Republican National Committee is making all the presidential candidates sign to participate in the debates. He said he’s hoping that the final version of the pledge will give candidates an out if the Trump is convicted.
Pressed, he would not say that he would support Trump if he is NOT convicted. However, he said he doesn’t expect Trump to be the nominee, and he really wants to be on that debate stage.
Hutchinson’s participation is not a certainty regardless. The RNC has said only candidates polling at 1% with 40,000 donors would be allowed to debate. Together, that’s a high bar.
Arkansas’ most famous current elected official, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has defended Trump, which is not surprising because she was his presidential press secretary. In a June 8 tweet, she accused the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the Department of Justice against “their number one opponent.” She asserted, “The American people should choose our next President, not politicized prosecutors hand-picked by Joe Biden.”
As for Arkansas’ other congressional delegation members, Rep. Rick Crawford, a military veteran, was quoted by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette saying, “And for the sake of our country, this case better be a slam dunk and involve seriously dangerous crimes. … A secretive indictment of your political opponent is a terrifying precedent with significant potential to maim our democracy and is a tactic used in dictatorships – not the United States.”
In the same article, Rep. Steve Womack, also a military veteran, took a middle-of-the-road approach, neither defending nor criticizing Trump while saying that “a rush to judgment – either way – is out of order.”
I have not found where the state’s other members of Congress – Sen. John Boozman and Reps. French Hill and Bruce Westerman – have had much to say about the indictment. They’re certainly not getting out in front of it one way or the other.
Make of all this what you will.
Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 13 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.