Florida Governor Ron DeSantis criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Donald Trump’s indictment of former President Donald Trump on Saturday during a book tour stop on New York’s Long Island.
In a speech at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Nassau County, DeSantis, without mentioning Bragg by name, applauded Lee Zeldin, former congressman and GOP nominee for governor of New York, for becoming a vocal critic of the Democrat’s district attorney Manhattan while on the 2022 campaign trail amid rising crime in the Empire State.
“This guy is all about politics. He comes in, his whole thing is he doesn’t want people in jail. He wants to relegate felonies to misdemeanors. Really, really dangerous stuff,” DeSantis said of Bragg’s now infamous day — a soft-on-crime memo issued when he took office in January 2022. And then what does he do? He turns around, makes a flimsy indictment of a former president of the United States based on a bunch of things they say business documents, which in the first place, even if that’s true, that’s a crime.”
“And they try to do all this legal gymnastics to try and pretend it’s a felony, when almost every other time he tries to take the felonies and relegate them to felonies. This guy is political. He has an agenda that is not the rule of law,” DeSantis added Saturday, also without mentioning Trump.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at “The Florida Blueprint” event in Long Island, New York, on April 1, 2023. DeSantis made comments about the grand jury indictment of former President Donald Trump. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Trump, an early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is expected to face charges in New York City on Tuesday.
Details of the charges have not been released, as they typically remain sealed before arraignment. The charges are believed to be related to Trump’s alleged 2016 hush money scandal, which the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has been investigating for five years.
If the allegations are related to the hush money scandal, prosecutors are expected to allege that the sum of $130,000 given to Stormy Daniels and the $150,000 given to former Playboy model Karen McDougal were improper donations to the Trump campaign, which aided his candidacy in the 2016 election.
DeSantis, who has not announced whether he plans to run for president in 2024, also criticized President Joe Biden’s agenda, who has also not confirmed a bid for a second term.
“Our president, Joe Biden, he is weak, he is floundering. He’s really controlled by these leftist elements of the Democratic Party,” DeSantis said. “If you look at our financial problems, we’re now $31 trillion in debt. They’ve put out trillions and trillions of dollars in fiscal stimulus. The Fed has printed trillions and trillions of dollars of money. What do you think will happen? Of course? “You get inflation. They tried to say it was transient. That didn’t work for them. Then last year they raised rates very quickly and that disrupted our economy.”
New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg had been investigating former President Donald Trump over alleged hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. (Shane Bevel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images/Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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DeSantis went on to speak in Long Island about his “blueprint for Florida” intended to serve as a model for the rest of the country.
“The Democratic Party in the state of Florida is dead, dead, dead right now,” DeSantis said, referring to his historic nearly 20-point victory in the November 2022 election.
“We really had a fundamental shift in our electorate. When I was elected governor, we had nearly 300,000 more registered Democrats in Florida than Republicans. And we never had more registered Republicans and registered Democrats in the history of the state,” he continued. “Well, fast-forward four and a half years later, we now have nearly 450,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats.”
Former President Donald Trump faces an indictment in Manhattan. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
“And President Reagan was right. The way to get big support is to rule in bold colors, not pale pastels. So we did. And not only did people in Florida who voted differently vote for us, we, of course helped spark a great migration to our state the likes of which we’ve never seen,” he said. “And I don’t need to tell you about it in New York, because you’ve seen it in New York and Illinois and California, states ruled by leftist politicians who impose leftist ideology, have driven good, productive people out of their jurisdiction.”
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Fox News’ Marta Dhanis and Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.
Danielle Wallace is a reporter for Fox News Digital covering politics, crime, police and more. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @danimwallace.
