Mike Pence says Trump indictment sends 'terrible message' about US just
Former US Vice President Mike Pence. File Picture: Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP, Pool
The indictment of former US President Donald Trump sends a "terrible message" to the world about American justice and will encourage dictators to abuse power, former Vice President Mike Pence has said.
"There are dictators and authoritarians around the world that will point to that to justify their own abuse of their own so-called justice system," Pence, Trump's former vice president and a potential rival for the Republican Party's 2024 White House nomination, said during an interview at the National Review's Ideas Summit.
Pence has joined fellow Republicans and Trump's other potential 2024 rivals in condemning the indictment, calling it an "outrage."
“I think the unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage," he said.
“And it appears for millions of Americans to be nothing more than a political prosecution.”
Trump is due to be fingerprinted and photographed in a New York courthouse next week as he becomes the first former president to face criminal charges, in a case involving a 2016 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump, who is mounting a comeback bid for the presidency he lost in the 2020 election, was indicted on Thursday in New York.
