Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on Thursday told host Alex Marlow on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Daily that the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump was “a very disappointing moment.”
“Alex, it’s a very disappointing moment,” Cotton told the Breitbart News editor-in-chief before referencing the FBI swat raid of pro-life activist Mark Houck. “I would say that it’s surprising, but I think if you look at what Merrick Garland has done over two and a half years, how can you be surprised at the uneven application of justice? You know, when he sics the FBI to raid … a pro-life activist outside of Philadelphia, who’s then acquitted by a jury of his peers in barely an hour.”
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Houck was arrested, allegedly at gunpoint, at his Pennsylvania home in front of his wife and young children last September. Biden’s DOJ brought assault charges against Houck under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, as Breitbart News noted, but he was found not guilty:
The DOJ decided to press charges against Houck, 48, who pushed a Planned Parenthood escort twice on October 13, 2021 — even though local authorities declined to press charges. Houck said he pushed the escort, 73-year-old Bruce Love, because he was verbally harassing his 12-year-old son as he was sidewalk counseling outside the abortion clinic.
Cotton, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism, contended Biden’s leading political opponent, Trump – who was indicted on 37 counts relating to documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his presidency – should not be prosecuted “on a stretch case or novel legal theories or an edge case.”
“Remember, the most important thing about Donald Trump right now is not that he’s the former president. It’s that he’s the opposition party’s leading candidate for the presidency,” Cotton emphasized. “That was, in no small part, why [Former FBI Director] Jim Comey refused to indict Hillary Clinton in 2016 on much worse … behavior, behavior that was more injurious to the immediate national security interests of this country,”
Former FBI Director James Comey (L) and Hillary Clinton (R) (Carsten Koall/Getty, Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty)
“And certainly having made that decision in 2016, whatever you think about it, whether you think it was a prudent step not to indict or whether you think that he rigged the game in Hillary’s favor, that standard should certainly be applying here,” he said. “The Department of Justice should not be stretching legal theories or pursuing edge cases against the opposition party’s leading presidential candidate.
Jim Jordan: Trump Indictment ‘the Most Political Thing I Have Ever Seen’
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 to 9:00 A.M. Eastern.