Hutchinson knocks Ramaswamy for Trump pardon comments ‘to get an applause line’

Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson on Sunday knocked fellow GOP 2024 contender Vivek Ramaswamy for his promise to pardon former President Trump if Ramaswamy wins the White House.

“You just heard your fellow 2024 candidate Vivek Ramaswamy say that he would pardon Donald Trump on his first day in office. What’s your reaction?” Dana Bash asked the former Arkansas governor on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“It is simply wrong for a candidate to use the pardon power of the United States, of the president in order to curry votes and in order to get an applause line. It’s just wrong. And it shouldn’t happen that way,” Hutchinson replied.

“If you start down that path, it is unending, and so we shouldn’t be promising and holding out the fig leaf of a pardon, because that undermines our jury system. It undermines the grand jury that found probable cause … And so that really undermines the rule of law in our country that I have served my lifetime supporting, and it’s offensive to me that anyone would be holding out a pardon in- under these circumstances,” Hutchinson added.

Shortly after Trump announced his attorneys had been informed of an indictment in the classified documents probe last week, Ramaswamy promised “to pardon Trump promptly on January 20, 2025 and to restore the rule of law in our country” if he’s elected in 2024. The conservative entrepreneur doubled down on those comments on Sunday.

Trump has been charged with 37 counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified materials, according to an unsealed federal indictment.

“Certainly he’s innocent until proven guilty. Absolutely,” Hutchinson said of Trump on Sunday. “And we know that Donald Trump is not going to drop out of the race. This is gonna be an issue that the voters have to decide. My point is that this is bad for our country, bad for the presidency, and it is a legitimate campaign issue.”

Hutchinson has previously called for Trump to step out of the 2024 race.

He said on Sunday that he expects Trump will raise money off the indictment, which the former president has already moved to do.

Hutchinson also said that “obviously, with a lot of Republican leaders saying that this is selective prosecution that this is unfair … there’s a sympathy factor that’s built in” as Trump campaigns for the White House.