Vivek Ramaswamy on Third Trump Indictment: ‘Political Persecution Through Prosecution’

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released a video statement on Tuesday slamming the third indictment of his competitor, former President Donald Trump, as “political persecution” and vowed to pardon him, should he win the presidency. 

“It’s another sad moment in our country’s history: the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, has yet again been indicted by the Biden DOJ — a political party in power that is now repeatedly using police force to indict and arrest and potentially eliminate it’s political opponents from competition,” Ramaswamy said in the four-and-a-half minute video address. 

“This is a politicized prosecution. It is a political persecution through prosecution. Now in a third indictment just in a matter of months against the person who is still, at present, the lead contender in the Republican primary for U.S. president,” he continued. 

Ramaswamy said that while the race would be “easier for [him]” if Trump was not in the running, “that’s not how [he] want[s] to win.”

“This is not about politics to me. This is about first principals,” he said. “We do not want to become a country where the party in power is able to use banana republic-like tactics to eliminate its political opponents. Yet, I’m sad to say, that’s exactly where we are.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith announced on Tuesday that a grand jury in Washington, D.C., had indicted former President Donald Trump on charges relating to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump was indicted on four counts: one of conspiracy to defraud the U.S.; one of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; one of obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and one of conspiracy against rights.

Ramaswamy said the allegations in the indictment “fall flat.”

“It is wrong, and incorrect, and inaccurate to place blame for what happened on January 6 at the feet of Donald Trump. I said this at the time. I’ve said it ever since then. I continue to say it today,” he said. 

“I would not have made the same judgments that Donald Trump did in how he handled that day, but that’s different from saying he committed a crime. He did not. He specifically told the protesters that day to behave peacefully,” he added. “The First Amendment in this country gives political protesters the ability to express themselves and their opinions freely.”

Ramaswamy continued by blaming “systematic, pervasive censorship in this country” for the events of January 6.

He said:

That was after a year where we had told people across this nation that you had to stay locked down in your house, in your basement and shut up, sit down, do as you’re told. If you question that, you’re racist, you’re anti-science. Your social media accounts were silenced. You had to stay home and lockdown unless you were part of BLM (Black Lives Matter) or Antifa, in which case it was perfectly fine to roam the streets of this country and burn many of them down.

That was the double standard that then applied, and if you said the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, you were again a racist and had your internet accounts shut down. You were then told you had an election where you could express yourself to put the right person in charge of fixing these problems, and instead,  your accounts were suppressed if you sent a mere message saying that the Hunter Biden laptop story from the New York Post was real. You had your accounts locked. Even the New York Post had its own account locked.

“And if you then repeatedly tell people they cannot speak, that is when they scream. If you repeatedly tell people they cannot scream, that is when they tear things down. And I think we are making a grave mistake in this country by trying to pin the blame for that at the feet of one man,” he said. 

Ramaswamy said he fears the United States is “doomed to suffer an even worse fate in the future” should we “refuse to learn from our mistakes in the past.”

“I worry that will create a country where January 6, 2021 was a friendly parlay compared to what’s actually to come,” he said.  I’m running for president to make sure we don’t march toward some kind of national divorce.”

He also called on other presidential candidates to “speak forcefully on the side of principal even if we are competing against Donald Trump” and called on Biden to “do the right thing and drop these politicized charges.” 

The indictment was notably announced the day after President Joe Biden was implicated in a long-running influence peddling scheme by his son Hunter’s former business partner, Devon Archer, in testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

Trump has now been indicted three times: first, in Manhattan, in April, on state charges relating to payments to porn star Stormy Daniels; second, in Miami, in June, on federal charges relating to White House documents; and third, in Washington, on Jan. 6.

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Twitter @thekat_hamilton.