Ron DeSantis swears to violate US Constitution to protect accused criminal Trump

Just months after suspending a local prosecutor for saying he would not prosecute abortion cases, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is vowing to defy the US Constitution to protect newly indicted Donald Trump from criminal prosecution by refusing to hand it over to New York State.

“It certainly looks like Governor DeSantis needs to suspend Governor DeSantis immediately,” said Andrew Warren, whom the Republican governor removed from his position in Hillsborough County in Tampa last summer and who is now suing to get his job back. “The hypocrisy speaks for itself.”

DeSantis’ promise will likely be moot in this case as Trump’s lawyers have indicated he will voluntarily surrender for his impeachment next week, but it again demonstrates the presidential candidate’s likely problem as he is seeking to woo Trump’s Republican voter base.

“He says he intends to take a subordinate posture to Trump in a primary, where he’s campaigning to do Trump’s bidding instead of affirmatively defending his case,” said Amanda Carpenter, a former aide. principal of Republican Senator from Texas Ted Cruz. “Ron is creating a problem in the primary, forget about the general.”

DeSantis’ press office did not respond to questions from HuffPost about this.

The Constitution of the United States, in article 4, section 2, as well as the Extradition Act clearly say that each state must honor the arrest requests of all other states to avoid the problem of criminals fleeing justice simply by crossing state lines.

Thursday evening, two hours after news broke that Trump had been indicted by a New York grand jury on charges related to his payment of $130,000 in silent money to a porn star just before the 2016 election , DeSantis released a statement accusing the District of Manhattan. Prosecutor Alvin Bragg of a politically motivated prosecution.

“Florida will not assist with an extradition request given the questionable circumstances involved with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda,” he said. writingreferring to a common right-wing attack on George Soros, the liberal billionaire donor and philanthropist.

How a Harvard-educated lawyer and a former Navy judge advocate general can simply dismiss his legal and constitutional liability, Floridians puzzled on both sides.

“What’s he going to do? Stand at the school gate? Be another George Wallace? wondered a top Republican consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Maybe that he can offer Trump a safe haven in the governor’s mansion.”

Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, said the statement offered further evidence that DeSantis was willing to flout the law whenever politically expedient. “He never cares what the law or the Constitution says. It all depends on the title,” said Fried, who served in the state’s elected cabinet during DeSantis’ first term as agriculture commissioner.

Norm Eisen, a former Obama White House attorney who later worked on the House impeachment of Trump for extorting Ukraine, said DeSantis had shown a willingness to repeatedly break the law, from his using taxpayers’ money to scare asylum seekers out of Mexico. border with Martha’s Vineyard to suspend Warren for prosecuting former felons for voting after election officials allowed them to register. “He’s not that different in that regard from the man he’s trying to protect,” Eisen said.

DeSantis was attacked as disloyal two weeks ago for not supporting Trump enthusiastically enough after he falsely claimed he would be arrested in the silent money case next Tuesday, March 21. DeSantis said he would wait to see what charges were actually filed, and anyway he had no knowledge of how it’s done to pay silent money to porn actors.

The remark came shortly after he declared that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was just a “territorial dispute,” which DeSantis reversed less than a week later.

“He was given a dose of the base drug the last time he said he wouldn’t step in, so now he’s backtracking, just like he did on Ukraine,” Sarah said. GOP consultant Longwell, who added that DeSantis could get into a “sour point” with primary voters. “Where a large part sees him as insufficiently loyal to Trump while another part thinks he is too sycophant.”

Even promising to break his oath to protect the Constitution to help Trump, however, does not appear to have caught the attention of the coup-attempting former president, who has been attacking DeSantis on a regular basis for weeks. On Thursday, Trump’s supportive super PAC began airing more than $1 million in negative DeSantis ads on national cable networks.

And in a Friday campaign statement citing more than 100 Republican lawmakers who criticized Bragg’s indictment, including several members of the Florida House, U.S. senators and even state Attorney General Ashley Moody, the DeSantis’ vow was not mentioned.

Trump, in addition to the New York indictment, is also facing criminal investigations in Georgia for his attempt to reverse his 2020 election loss in that state as well as by the US Department of Justice, which examines both his January 6, 2021 coup attempt as well as his refusal to hand over classified documents in defiance of a subpoena.