Indictment details where Trump allegedly stored documents at Mar-a-Lago
Jessica Wood The top two Republican leaders in the Senate remain silent a day after former President Donald Trump, the current GOP 2024 frontrunner, was indicted by the federal government.
While the charges have yet to be unsealed, the top two Republicans in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip John Thune, have not put out statements.
That's a stark contrast to the swift reaction among House GOP leaders, who quickly rushed to Trump’s defense.
“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America. It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted Thursday night.
House and Senate Republican leaders have diverged for years on how and whether to even respond to Trump’s legal woes. During Trump’s first indictment this spring, McConnell didn’t jump in to defend the former president. When he returned in April after a fall and was asked at a news conference by CNN’s Manu Raju about the indictment, he dodged.
“I may have hit my head, but I didn’t hit it that hard,” McConnell said at the time. “Good try.”
For McConnell, who has not maintained a relationship with Trump since January 6, 2021, the former president could be viewed as a distraction from his ultimate goals of recapturing the Senate. But for McCarthy, an alliance to Trump is an important factor for assuaging those in his right flank, especially at a moment when the House speaker has come under fire for a deal he cut with President Joe Biden on the debt ceiling.
Some in the Senate are already backing Trump, however: The third-ranking GOP senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, put out a statement Friday, saying, “This indictment certainly looks like an unequal application of justice.”
“Nobody is above the law,” Barrasso tweeted. “Yet it seems like some are.”
Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is also backing the former president. Daines has stayed in touch with Trump as he’s sought to recruit candidates in primaries across the country.
He tweeted Friday: “The two standards of justice under Biden’s DOJ is appalling. When will Hunter Biden be charged?”
