What 2024 GOP candidates are saying about Trump’s Jan. 6 indictment

Former President Trump’s 2024 GOP presidential rivals are reacting to his third indictment as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the former president’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election, which culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Trump is facing four new criminal counts in Smith’s case for actions including allegedly attempting to get officials in certain states to overturn their election results and trying to organize false pro-Trump slates of electors in states like Arizona and Georgia. 

Overall, the 45-page indictment puts Trump at the center of a lawless campaign to block the transfer of power, charging him with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and other crimes.

“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” the indictment states. “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”

Here’s how other 2024 Republican candidates have responded so far. 

Ron DeSantis

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the former president’s closest competitor in the 2024 race, has previously waffled on whether charges against Trump should disqualify him. After the third indictment dropped Tuesday, the governor posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that he has not read it yet but does “believe” reforms need to be “enacted” so “Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, DC to their home districts.”

“Washington, DC is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality,” DeSantis’s post read. “One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicization of the rule of law. No more excuses—I will end the weaponization of the federal government.”

Vivek Ramaswamy

Fellow GOP candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy made more of a direct statement against the new indictment, calling it “un-American” and promising to pardon Trump if elected in his own X post. He said the former president “isn’t the cause” behind the events of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“The real cause was systematic & pervasive censorship of citizens in the year leading up to it,”  Ramaswamy said. “If you tell people they can’t speak, that’s when they scream. If you tell people they can’t scream, that’s when they tear things down. If we fail to admit the truth, Jan. 6 will just be a preview of far worse to come & I don’t want to see us get there.”

Asa Hutchinson

Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas and a consistent critic of the former president, said Trump is “morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 attack. 

“Now, with today’s indictment, our system of Justice will determine whether he is criminally responsible,” Hutchinson said in a post on X.

Will Hurd

Another critic of Trump, former Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, made a thread on X, which included that he believes Trump’s 2024 run is only an “attempt to stay out of prison and scam his supporters into footing his legal bills.”

“The Trump of 2016 is a far cry from the desperate figure we see in 2024,” Hurd said in his thread. “It’s about time our party, including the 2024 candidates, wake up to the fact that this guy only cares about himself, not our country’s future.”

Mike Pence

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who faced death threats for his refusal to not overturn the 2020 election results during its certification in Congress, said his former running mate’s legal woes would create “distractions” from current President Biden’s “disastrous economic policies” in a statement obtained by The Hill.

“I will have more to say about the government’s case after reviewing the indictment,” Pence’s statement read. “The former president is entitled to the presumption of innocence but with this indictment, his candidacy means more talk about January 6th and more distractions.”