Reaction to Donald J. Trump’s indictment broke down, predictably, along partisan lines. While top Republican leaders defended Mr. Trump on Thursday and some Fox News hosts called the indictment politically motivated, Democrats called on the former president to respect the rule of law.
“The grand jury has acted upon the facts and the law,” former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, said in a statement. “No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence. Hopefully, the former president will peacefully respect the system, which grants him that right.”
Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said: “I encourage both Mr. Trump’s critics and supporters to let the process proceed peacefully and according to the law.”
On the other side of the spectrum, Republicans questioned the merits of the case against Mr. Trump.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and a potential rival to Mr. Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, criticized the indictment as “un-American.”
“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head,” he wrote on Twitter.
In The Wall Street Journal, the columnist Peggy Noonan wrote that the subject of the indictment of Mr. Trump — his role in making hush-money payments to a porn star — was “beneath” the United States. Instead, she said, attention should be paid to a Georgia investigation of his attempts to sway the vote there, and a federal investigation into his role at the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“Save the mug shot for Georgia, the handcuffs for Jan. 6. Those were real offenses against the country,” she wrote.
