Shortly before former President Donald Trump’s unprecedented arraignment in federal court on Tuesday, GOP presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy hosted a press event.
Ramaswamy urged each of the other aspirants to sign a declaration promising to pardon Trump if they win the election during his press conference outside the Miami Courthouse.
Additionally, Ramaswamy pledged to file suit against the Justice Department with campaign cash if they ignore his Freedom of Information Act request.
Here is a portion of the transcript:
So the bottom line is there are two things that matter. One is how are we going to hold the Biden Department of Justice accountable? The first answer is that yesterday I submitted a freedom of information act request, a demand to the Biden Department of Justice demanding what did Biden tell Jack Smith, what did Biden tell Merrick Garland, what did Merrick Garland tell special prosecutor Jack Smith? They’re required within 20 business days to give us an answer about any direct or indirect communications. And the first announcement I want to make today is that if they do not comply with the law in the next 20 business days, then we will sue them in federal courts at our campaign’s expense to get to the bottom of those answers. The news media should be doing this. It is a shame that a competitor to Donald Trump in this election has to do the job of the political news media.
It is a shame it takes a leader outside of the media to stand up. That’s what we’re doing. They now have this freedom of information act request and if they don’t comply within 20 days and they don’t follow the law we’ll see to it in federal court that they do. That brings me to my second announcement that I will make today. This is an announcement of a letter that my campaign has sent to every other campaign in this race, to Mike Pence, to Nikki Haley, to Larry Elder, to RFK junior, to Marianne Williamson, to dougburg um, to perry Johnson and Chris Christie, to ran DeSantis the governor of the state where we are today who is not here today in his own state.
I will tell you that we have sent this letter, I’m happy to announce this is my commitment on January 20th, 2025, if I’m elected the next U.S. president, to pardon Donald Trump for these offenses in this federal case.
And I have challenged – I have demanded that every other candidate in this race either sign this commitment to pardon on January 20th, 2025, or else to explain why they are not.
I think that we need to declare independence from our donor class in the Republican Party. That is why I challenge every one of the other candidates to actually act on their convictions. If you are not going to pardon President Trump on January 20, 2025, you deserve to say why and we’ll hold you accountable just as we are holding the Biden Administration accountable.
WATCH:
Ramaswamy gained attention on Sunday as he used a CNN interview to criticize the establishment media and CNN host Dana Bash for disregarding the Biden administration’s use of the Department of Justice as a weapon against a political rival.
In Dana Bash’s “State of the Union” interview, the topic of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 37 allegations against Trump for handling sensitive documents dominated the discussion.
Trump, who will challenge Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential race, may spend years in custody if he is deemed guilty on every charge.
The indictment claims that on at least two different occasions, Trump exposed a number of individuals who lacked the necessary security clearances to classified information. According to the DOJ, both incidents happened at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Ramaswamy criticized the indictment for being “deeply politicized” and asserted that “The top question actually we should be asking is what did [Joe] Biden tell Merrick Garland? What did Merrick Garland tell Jack Smith?”
Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court recently received the politically motivated case.
In a recent case, Cannon handed down a slew of pro-Trump rulings that enraged the left.
They want her removed from the Trump case, according to their current demand.
Garland would try to remove Cannon, MSNBC analyst Joyce Alene said, in an effort to calm the enraged Left.
Several leaks to the media about cases involving Trump have drawn criticism from a legal expert, who claimed they “further reinforce” Republican assertions that the investigations are politically motivated.
Constitutional specialist and professor at Georgetown Law School Jonathan Turley stated that the disclosure of the confidential document was “deeply troubling” and part of a “pattern of selective leaks that are designed to influence public opinion.”
“This is a continuation of a pattern of leaks related to the Trump investigations that extend seven years, through the Russian collusion investigation,” Turley claimed.
Turley continued, “These leaks make a mockery of the system, and they “further reinforce the narrative of Donald Trump that the Department of Justice is engaging in unethical or improper means to target him in election year.”
Turley stated that Garland has shown “no interest in investigating his own department,” adding that “These leaks have one overriding common denominator: they all tend to undermine Donald Trump and to implicate him in the alleged crime.”
