Supporters of former President Donald Trump and other conservatives lashed out at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for what they said was an underwhelming response to news of the latest indictment against Trump and said it shows he’s the wrong pick for 2024.

‘As President, I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI Director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans,’ DeSantis tweeted shortly after news broke Tuesday that Trump had been indicted on charges stemming from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

‘While I’ve seen reports, I have not read the indictment. I do, though, believe we need to enact reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, DC to their home districts. Washington, DC is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality. One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicization of the rule of law. No more excuses — I will end the weaponization of the federal government.’

The DeSantis tweet calling for an end to the weaponization of government was seen over 4 million times and ‘ratioed’ mostly by Trump supporters and surrogates. They accused the Florida Republican of not speaking out forcefully enough against the specific targeting of Trump, not mentioning him by name and not promising a pardon.

‘It makes me really sad that the best, most based governor in America decided to base his entire presidential campaign on not knowing what time it is,’ Federalist CEO Sean Davis tweeted. ‘Robotically reciting ‘I will enact reforms’ is not how you respond when a corrupt government announces that it plans to throw its opposition in prison for the crime of opposition.’

‘Not a wartime conservative,’ political commentator Jack Posobiec tweeted.

‘YOUR TOP POLITICAL OPPONENT IS BEING UNJUSTLY PERSECUTED,’ Fox News contributor Caitlyn Jenner tweeted. ‘Agree to pardon him! This is a sham and you know it. But you hope you benefit from it. SHAME ON TEAM DESANTIS!’

DeSantis was criticized by some, including author Mike Cernovich, for not reading the indictment before he posted.

‘‘While I’ve seen reports, I have not read the indictment’ – sir, the indictment dropped 15 mins *before* you tweeted this,’ Vivek Ramaswamy Comms Director Zachery Henry tweeted. ‘This boilerplate statement doesn’t cut it.’

‘Had a chance to read this BS from the regime trying to interfere in the election by removing your number one political opponent on sham charges (for the third time) yet?’ Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington tweeted.  ‘Give me a break. How do you beat the deep state if your goals are the same as theirs?’

Ramaswamy, another Trump rival for the nomination, said after the indictment news that ‘the corrupt federal police just won’t stop until they’ve achieved their mission: eliminate Trump. This is un-American & I commit to pardoning Trump for this indictment.’

The DeSantis campaign pointed Fox News Digital to a clip posted on their War Room Twitter account showing the Florida Republican speaking more at length about the indictment.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Legal experts are criticizing special counsel Jack Smith for his latest indictment against Donald Trump for accusing the former president of spreading disinformation and other activities protected by the First Amendment.

Trump was indicted out of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation related to 2020 election interference and the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, and is facing charges such as conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

‘The most jarring thing about this indictment is it basically just accuses him of disinformation — this is a disinformation indictment,’ said legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a Fox News contributor.

‘It said [Trump] was spreading falsehoods, that [he] was undermining integrity of the election — that is all part of the First Amendment,’ Turley said. ‘And I think that courts will look skeptically.’

Turley said that one thing that is noticeably absent from the indictment is a charge for ‘conspiracy for incitement’ or ‘seditious conspiracy.’

‘Those were the claims the Democrats used in the impeachment and said the evidence was absolutely clear, people like (Rep.) Adam Schiff and others saying [Trump] is clearly guilty of those crimes,’ Turley explained. ‘Well, they’re not in here.’

He added: ‘I think there are some serious legal problems with this indictment.’

Andy McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a Fox News contributor, told Fox News Digital that Smith brought ‘a lousy case.’

‘I think all the counts have significant legal problems, and that’s even before you get to the complex problems of trying to prove Trump’s intent,’ McCarthy said.

McCarthy said that one ‘significant problem’ is the fraud that Smith has alleged.

‘It is not actionable fraud as the Supreme Court has described fraud — as recently as May,’ McCarthy said. ‘The Supreme Court made very clear that fraud in federal law is a scheme to swindle someone out of money or physical property.’

McCarthy added that this is ‘exactly the kind of case’ the court was telling prosecutors not to bring, ‘and he brought it anyway.’

McCarthy also dismissed the ‘conspiracy against rights’ charge that Smith brought against Trump.

‘Smith is using a statute enacted right after the Civil War, which was actually directed at violent intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan against Black voters in the South — which doesn’t have any connection to what we’re talking about here,’ McCarthy explained. ‘They applied that law to ballot box stuffing, so what Smith is trying to tease out of that case is what then-Justice Thurgood Marshall said in the 1960s: You don’t have to have violence. You just have to have activity that functionally cancels out people’s votes.’

McCarthy said the ‘most insidious thing’ the special counsel does is ‘he doesn’t charge Trump with any violence because there is no connection.’

‘The Justice Department would love to charge Trump with seditious conspiracy, but the problem is, he said he supported a peaceful march on the Capitol,’ McCarthy said. ‘That may have been a stupid thing to do, but not a criminal thing to do.’

McCarthy told Fox News Digital that Smith alleges that Trump ‘exploited the violence at the Capitol riot.’

‘That’s an unseemly thing for a prosecutor to do when he is not charging Trump with the Capitol riot,’ McCarthy explained. ‘Inconveniently for him, he has no evidence that Trump orchestrated them, or intended for them to do it.’

McCarthy added that Smith put this into the indictment so he can argue that he ‘needs Capitol riot evidence in the trial.’

‘And then he’ll try to rush the trial in the run-up to the election,’ McCarthy said. ‘Then the American electorate will have Capitol riot imagery in the front of their minds as they go to vote in 2024.’

But not every legal expert says Smith’s case is weak. Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard University, told Fox News Digital that Smith has brought an ‘airtight’ indictment against the former president.

‘The factual details, if true as claimed, leave Trump with no legitimate legal defenses,’ Tribe said. ‘And the sources for all the damning direct quotations, including those by Mr. Trump himself, are all individuals he hand-picked for their loyalty to him — they have no conceivable motive to lie. And there’s no chance they’re misremembering anything so stark.’

Tribe told Fox News Digital that Trump’s ‘only hope to avoid conviction’ on this latest set of charges is ‘to get someone installed as president who would pardon him or get the Justice Department to drop the case.’

Smith announced the charges against Trump on Tuesday, saying Jan. 6 was ‘an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.’

‘Described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies — lies by the defendant — targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election,’ he said.

Trump has been ordered to appear in federal court in Washington, D.C., for his arraignment on Thursday at 4:00 p.m.

This is the second federal indictment the former president faces out of Smith’s investigation. Trump, who leads the 2024 GOP presidential primary field, has already pleaded not guilty to 37 counts related to his alleged improper retention of classified records from his presidency.

Those charges include willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and false statements. Trump was charged with an additional three counts as part of a superseding indictment out of that probe last week.

The current and previous Republican labor commissioners in North Carolina are backing competing candidates in next year’s GOP primary for the job.

Cherie Berry, who was commissioner for 20 years through early 2021, endorsed Raleigh attorney Luke Farley this week for the Republican nomination.

The announcement came less than a week after current Commissioner Josh Dobson’s support of state Rep. Jon Hardister of Guilford County to be the next commissioner was made public.

Dobson succeeded Berry, who is the longest-serving commissioner in state history. Dobson said late last year he wouldn’t seek a second four-year term to head the Department of Labor.

‘Luke has the skills, background and passion to lead the Department and protect the more than 5 million workers in North Carolina,’ Berry is quoted as saying in a Farley news release. Berry added that Farley’s experience as a lawyer on construction and occupational safety law matters makes him ‘the most qualified candidate in the race.’

Other announced candidates for the commissioner’s post include Republican Travis Wilson of Union County and Democrat Braxton Winston, a Charlotte city council member. Primaries will be held in March.

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GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called on the Tennessee governor, FBI and Metropolitan Nashville Police Department to release the Covenant School shooter’s manifesto.

Ramaswamy delivered a speech outside Nashville City Hall on Wednesday, calling on Tennessee GOP Gov. Bill Lee to release the manifesto that transgender shooter Audrey Hale wrote prior to the mass shooting at the Presbyterian school on March 27.

Hale, 28, killed six people in the rampage: 9-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney; Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.

‘I’m here today to make a demand of the governor of Tennessee, to make a demand of the Nashville Police Department, to make a demand of the FBI,’ Ramaswamy said. ‘Release the manifesto. Speak the truth.’

‘The hard times are the times where we must openly speak that truth,’ Ramaswamy continued. ‘It is hardest to speak the truth under difficult circumstances, but that is when we require it the most.’

‘I understand that there are legitimate concerns that we do not want details released that will motivate copycats, I don’t want that. The fellow Americans who earnestly have called for the release of this manifesto, they don’t want that either. And I want to go on record and say it would be perfectly reasonable for the police to redact any sections of this manifesto that lay out specific plans, that lay out specific premeditated plots on details of execution that could be copied by another individual.’

Ramaswamy also said that ‘what we do need to know is this killer’s motives’ and Hale’s ‘psychological state of mind.’

‘The truth of the matter is that we have a mental health epidemic in this country that is driving a wave of violence around this country,’ Ramaswamy added. ‘And we are going to have to deeply understand it if we are to address it.’

Ramaswamy’s comments come amid his push ahead for the White House in a crowded GOP field.

Hale’s violent rampage quickly sparked calls for the release of Hale’s manifesto, which Nashville police and the Tennessee government have yet to release.

Neither Lee’s office, FBI nor Nashville police immediately responded to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was not ‘smart enough to be president’ after the Republican criticized a new Illinois state law allowing non-citizens to serve as police officers.

‘This man isn’t smart enough to be president,’ Pritzker said Tuesday of DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

Pritzker added: ‘I proudly signed the bill allowing legal permanent residents & DACA recipients in IL to serve their communities as police officers. Our military already does it & it’s the right thing to do—no matter what lies the right-wing spreads.’ 

The post came in response to DeSantis, who sharply criticized Pritzker for signing Illinois House Bill 3751 into law, which no longer requires U.S. citizenship as a qualification to becoming a police officer in the state.

‘To the Left, citizenship is meaningless,’ DeSantis wrote in a post on Monday. ‘Illinois is now letting illegal aliens become police officers.’

The presidential candidate also contrasted Illinois to his home state, writing: ‘In Florida, we took action to combat the harms of Biden’s border crisis. We also value our citizen officers who serve and protect our communities.’ 

DeSantis added: ‘As President, I will restore American sovereignty. No illegal alien should have authority over any American citizen. It is a sad commentary on the state of America that this is even a debate.’

The Florida governor joined a chorus of Republicans at the state and federal levels that criticized Pritzker’s signing of the new Illinois law last week. It also faced heavy opposition from prominent police groups.

On Monday, Pritzker defended the legislation at a press conference when he said it would be limited to individuals who are legally allowed to work in the United States and who are legally allowed to possess firearms, NBC Chicago reported. 

Pritzker also addressed Republican criticisms, saying are misrepresenting the bill.

‘I am tired of the right-wing twisting things,’ he said. ‘They put it on Facebook, they tell lies. There are people out there that think we’re just allowing anybody to become a police officer. That’s just not accurate.’

The law was signed by the Democratic governor on Friday and will go into effect on January 1, 2024, despite its opposition. It was introduced amid police shortages in Illinois, as departments struggle and recruiting and retaining challenges.

The bill ‘provides that an individual who is not a citizen but is legally authorized to work in the United States under federal law is authorized to apply for the position of a police officer, subject to all requirements and limitations, other than citizenship, to which other applicants are subject,’ HB3751 reads, adding that non-U.S. citizens must be able to obtain, carry, purchase, or otherwise possess a firearm under federal law to apply for the job.

Non-citizens in the country under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Act can also apply for a position to join law enforcement, per the bill. 

Pritzker previously said he would support President Biden in 2024.

Fox News’ Yael Halon contributed to this report.

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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday that his government is standing firm against the U.S. and its prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over the journalist’s publication of classified U.S. military documents more than a decade ago.

Since winning the elections last year, the center-left Labor Party government has been pushing for the U.S. to drop the charges against Assange, who is fighting against extradition to the U.S. to face 17 charges for receiving, possessing and communicating classified information to the public under the espionage act and one charge alleging a conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He could be sentenced to as many as 175 years in an American maximum security prison if he is extradited.

The Australian journalist has been held at London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy on April 11, 2019, for breaching jail conditions. He had sought asylum at the embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations he raped two women due to Sweden failing to ensure it would protect him from a U.S. extradition. The investigations into the sexual assault allegations were eventually dropped.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a visit to Australia on Saturday that Assange is accused of ‘very serious criminal conduct’ in publishing hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military documents in 2010 after U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked them to Wikileaks.

Assange’s prosecution is in connection with the publication of cables detailing war crimes committed by the U.S. government in the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp, Iraq and Afghanistan. The materials also expose instances of the CIA engaging in torture and rendition. 

Wikileaks’ ‘Collateral Murder’ video showing the U.S. military gunning down civilians in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists, was also published 13 years ago.

‘I understand the concerns and views of Australians. I think it’s very important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter,’ Blinken told reporters on Saturday.

But on Tuesday, Albanese responded by saying, ‘This has gone on for too long. Enough is enough.’

The prime minister told reporters that Blinken’s public comments were similar to previous remarks the Biden administration has made during private discussions with Australian government officials.

‘We remain very firm in our view and our representations to the American government, and we will continue to do so,’ Albanese said.

Assange’s case was discussed in annual bilateral meetings in Brisbane, Australia, last week between Blinken and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Wong said Australia wanted the charges ‘brought to a conclusion.’ Australia remains ambiguous about whether the U.S. should end the prosecution or reach a plea deal.

Australian officials argue that there is a disconnect between the U.S. government’s treatment of Assange and Manning. Former President Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence, for violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, to seven years.

The Obama administration decided not to indict Assange after Wikileaks published the cables in 2010 because it would have had to also indict journalists from major news outlets who published the materials as well. But Former President Trump’s Justice Department later moved to indict Assange under the Espionage Act, and the Biden administration has continued to pursue his prosecution.

Last year, the editors and publishers of U.S. and European news outlets that worked with Assange on the publication of excerpts from more than 250,000 documents he obtained in the Cablegate leak — The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País  — wrote an open letter calling for the U.S. to end its prosecution of Assange.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., led a letter to the Justice Department earlier this year demanding the charges against Assange be dropped.

Albanese said in an interview in May he was ‘frustrated’ that there has not been a diplomatic solution to Assange’s continued detention and that he was concerned about the Wikileaks founder’s mental health.

‘I can’t do more than make very clear what my position is and the U.S. administration is certainly very aware of what the Australian government’s position is,’ Albanese said at the time. ‘There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration.’

During the Trump administration, the CIA reportedly had plans to kill Assange over the publication of sensitive agency hacking tools known as ‘Vault 7,’ which the agency said represented ‘the largest data loss in CIA history,’ Yahoo reported in 2021. The CIA had discussions ‘at the highest levels’ of the administration about plans to assassinate Assange in London. And, acting on orders from then-CIA director Mike Pompeo, the agency had also drawn up kill ‘sketches’ and ‘options.’

According to the report, the CIA had advanced plans to kidnap and rendition Assange and had made a political decision to charge him.

Wikileaks also published internal communications in 2016 between the Democratic National Committee and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The communications revealed the DNC’s attempts to boost Clinton in that year’s Democratic primary.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Several California politicians are urging Taylor Swift not to perform concerts in Los Angeles as a way to stand in solidarity with striking hotel workers.

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and dozens of state and local politicians signed an open letter urging Swift to postpone her concerts in the city, saying the region’s hotels stand to make tremendous profit from her tour.

Some properties are ‘doubling and tripling what they charge because you are coming,’ they wrote.

The officials continued: ‘Hotel workers are fighting for their lives. They are fighting for a living wage. They have gone on strike. Now, they are asking for your support. Stand with hotel workers and postpone your concerts.’

The letter also expresses many of the concerns of the striking housekeepers and other hotel workers, who say they cannot afford to live near their jobs. Others sleep in their cars amid rising costs and lagging pay.

According to Swift’s tour dates, she is scheduled to perform six sold-out shows at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles starting Thursday, Aug. 3.

Unite HERE Local 11, which represents some 30,000 hotel workers, is negotiating new contracts for better wages, improved health care benefits, and higher pension contributions after previous contracts expired last month at more than 60 hotels.

The expired contracts include properties owned by Marriott and Hilton.

Kounalakis, who is running for governor in 2026, told POLITICO that she is standing in solidarity with the striking workers.

‘I stand with Unite HERE in their fight for a living wage,’ she said. ‘And I hope we can use this moment to bring attention to the hardworking men and women who are the engine of our economy.’

Kounalakis told the outlet she attended Swift’s Eras tour in Santa Clara, California.

California Assembly Majority Leader Issac Bryan, state senators Dave Min and Maria Elena Durazo, as well as mayors of several cities, signed the letter.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Recreational cannabis has been legalized in more than 20 states and Washington, D.C., and there is now a bipartisan effort on Capitol Hill to change a law that limits federal hiring by automatically disqualifying candidates who admit to having used cannabis.

The proposed bill introduced by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has already received bipartisan support, with Raskin and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., sponsoring the Cannabis Users Restoration of Eligibility Act. The bill comes as a growing number of states enact laws to legalize recreational marijuana, on top of the several states that have had legal pot use for years.

But despite state laws allowing cannabis use, thousands of people who consumed the plant have still been barred from gaining employment as federal workers, even if it was consumed legally.

‘Every year, qualified and dedicated individuals seeking to serve our country are unable to secure federal jobs and security clearances because the federal government has not caught up with the widely established legal use of medical and recreational cannabis,’ Raskin said in a statement. ‘I am proud to partner with my friend Representative Mace to introduce the bipartisan CURE Act that will eliminate the draconian, failed and obsolete marijuana policies that prevent talented individuals from becoming honorable public servants in their own government.’

The CURE Act would make it so that a person’s past or current marijuana use cannot be used to deny security clearance or be the basis to be found unsuitable for federal employment. The legislation would also allow someone who has previously been denied a security clearance or a federal job opportunity over marijuana use over the past 15 years the chance to have that denial reviewed.

According to the bill, all federal agencies would be required to create a process within one year of enactment to review each past decision to deny security clearances or job opportunities over cannabis use from as far back as January 1, 2008. These agencies would need to maintain a website, so people could request a review of a decision and the agencies must also reconsider the applicant’s security clearance or employment application within 90 days if they find that the individual was denied solely because of marijuana use.

‘Look we’ve got 2.8 million federal employees in America. In my state, more than 100,00 people and people have been disqualified from federal [employment] because they honestly admit on a security clearance that they have once used marijuana,’ Raskin said in front of Congress, according to Fox 5 DC.

The bill would treat legalized marijuana like alcohol, meaning federal workers could still face serious consequences for getting high during work.

Last year, President Biden announced a blanket pardon for people convicted at the federal level of simple possession of marijuana. Roughly 6,500 people convicted in federal court of simple marijuana possession were affected by this mass pardon, although none of them were in prison at the time and nobody is currently in federal prisons solely for simple possession of marijuana. 

The president had also announced that his administration would review the Schedule I narcotic classification of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act.

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FIRST ON FOX: Republicans on Tuesday called the latest indictment of former President Trump an ‘outrageous abuse of power’ and dismissed it as an attempt by the Biden administration to distract from testimony from earlier in the week about President Biden’s son Hunter.

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York told Fox News Digital Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment against Trump marks ‘yet another dark day in America as Joe Biden continues to weaponize his corrupt Department of Justice against his leading political opponent Donald J. Trump.’

‘Less than 24 hours ago, Congress heard testimony from Hunter Biden’s longtime business partner that Joe Biden joined Hunter’s business calls over 20 times,’ Stefanik said. ‘This directly contradicts Biden’s lie that he never discussed business with his son.

‘Today’s sham indictment of Donald Trump is yet another desperate attempt to distract attention away from the mounting evidence of Joe Biden’s direct involvement in his family’s illegal influence peddling scheme, one of the greatest political corruption scandals in history.

‘President Trump had every right under the First Amendment to correctly raise concerns about election integrity in 2020. Despite the DOJ’s illegal attempt to interfere in the 2024 election on behalf of Joe Biden, President Trump continues to skyrocket in the polls and will defeat Joe Biden and be sworn in as President of the United States in January 2025.’

Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Digital the ‘double standard is baffling’ to him.

‘How can the justice system recommend a plea deal for Hunter Biden but continue to pursue President Trump this way?’ Scott said. ‘It’s like we are in [an] authoritarian state.’

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital the ‘news of another indictment against President Trump is no shock ahead of 2024.’

‘The left knows they can’t beat Trump amid Biden’s failures, so they’re trying to take him out with criminal charges,’ Blackburn said. ‘Biden’s abusing two tiers of justice to target his greatest political opponent.’

Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin told Fox News Digital, ‘Once again, leftist Democrats are weaponizing the Department of Justice to attack Joe Biden’s strongest political opponent while turning a blind eye to the corrupt Biden regime.

‘President Trump is a champion for America First, and I’ll do everything in my power to help him win back the White House in 2024.’

Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital ‘President Trump truly cares and wants the best for the American people.

‘He’s committed to draining the swamp, and the left hates him for it,’ Nehls said. ‘This is yet again another attempt by the current administration to imprison their top political rival.’

‘Shameful!’ he added.

Nehls also tweeted ‘witch hunt’ after the indictment was handed down.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., told Fox News Digital that barely ‘a day after devastating testimony from Hunter Biden’s business partner that the Big Guy Joe Biden was a part of conversations related to Hunter’s sleazy influence peddling, Biden’s corrupt and weaponized Department of Justice magically brings more charges against Biden’s political opponent and biggest threat to re-election, President Donald J. Trump.

‘The American people are smart enough to see through this disgraceful cover-up of the Biden Crime Family and the unjust persecution of President Trump.’

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tweeted about the recent revelations regarding President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, saying Americans ‘could see what was going to come next: DOJ’s attempt to distract from the news and attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, President Trump.’

‘House Republicans will continue to uncover the truth about Biden Inc. and the two-tiered system of justice.’

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., tweeted, ‘Let’s be clear about what’s happening: Biden’s DOJ is cutting sweetheart deals for Hunter to cover for the Biden Family’s influence peddling schemes while at the same time trying to persecute his leading political opponent.

‘It’s an outrageous abuse of power.’

Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley tweeted the ‘Biden DOJ unveils the latest effort to stop Trump from running against Biden – totally unprecedented in American history.’

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan tweeted when ‘you drain The Swamp, The Swamp fights back.

‘President Trump did nothing wrong!’

The Republicans’ comments come after Smith’s indictment Tuesday of Trump for his actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Smith said Tuesday the riot was ‘fueled by lies’ from former President Donald Trump, who he charged with ‘conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.’

Smith made a public statement shortly after the federal indictment against Trump was unsealed Tuesday afternoon, encouraging ‘everyone to read it in full.’

‘The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,’ Smith said Tuesday. ‘Described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies — lies by the defendant — targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.’

Smith added, though, that the indictment ‘is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.’

The indictment names only the former president, but lists six unnamed co-conspirators. Smith said the investigation into ‘other individuals continues in this case.’

Smith said the ‘men and women of law enforcement who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6th are heroes.’

‘They are patriots, and they are the very best of us. They did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it,’ Smith said. ‘They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people. They defended the very institutions and principles that defined the United States.’

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed reporting.

FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Rick Scott’s 2024 re-election campaign is getting support from several national-level Republicans, including former presidential candidates who faced off against former President Donald Trump in 2016.

Scott, R-Fla., plans to unveil members of his Senate campaign’s National Finance Committee this week as he faces his first re-election bid for another six-year term. The former Florida governor unseated incumbent former Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., in 2018 by a razor-thin margin of roughly 10,000 votes.

His honorary 2024 campaign finance co-chairs include several 2016 White House hopefuls, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the state’s senior senator Marco Rubio, former Texas governor Rick Perry and former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Perry went on to serve as Trump’s Energy Secretary.

Other honorary chairs are his fellow conservative senators Mike Lee of Utah and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich – another ex-presidential candidate.

Scott praised his finance committee in a statement given to Fox News Digital where he also said he was Senate Democrats’ ‘top enemy this cycle.’

‘I’m Chuck Schumer and national Democrats’ top enemy this cycle and you can bet that they are going to spend millions upon millions to air false attacks and lies against me,’ Scott said.

‘I’ve been traveling the state meeting with Floridians on my 67 Counties Sunshine Tour, and I’ve been working hard to raise money so we have the resources to counter Democrats’ phony attacks.  I look forward to continuing to fight for Florida families in the U.S. Senate and appreciate everyone on my finance team who will help ensure we keep the Democrats failed socialist policies out of Florida.’

Scott’s alliance with Florida’s top mainstream Republicans comes despite forging an identity as a foil to longtime Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who he tried to push out of leadership in late 2022.

Lesser-known names on Scott’s finance committee list include beer heir August Anheuser Busch III and former U.S. Ambassador Mel Sembler, among others.

Florida has traditionally been a battleground state, but it’s seen a distinct shift to the right in recent elections. Before winning his Senate seat in 2018 Scott, a Navy veteran, served two terms as governor.

It’s also home to the top two 2024 Republican primary candidates – Trump and current Gov. Ron DeSantis.