Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on Sunday doubled down on his pledge to pardon former President Trump amid fresh charges filed against the former president accusing him of trying to delete security camera footage from Mar-a-Lago in the case involving his retention of highly sensitive documents.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Kasie Hunt, the biotech billionaire entrepreneur reaffirmed his pledge to pardon Trump, which he made after the former president was first indicted on 37 criminal charges in the classified documents case.
The superseding indictment unveiled last week adds three additional charges related to an alleged attempt to work with employees to try and delete security camera footage after allegedly learning that it would be subject to a subpoena. That brings the total number of charges against Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary race, to 40.
“The standard I use as our next president is what moves our country forward. What is the right thing for the United States of America? Absolutely the right answer is to move on and I would pardon him. I would,” Ramaswamy told Hunt.
“I intend to be our next president. And yes, I do believe I will move us forward. And yes, I think one of the right ways to do that is to pardon the former president of the United States from what is clearly a politicized prosecution,” Ramaswamy added.
Ramaswamy became one of the first candidates to openly pledge to pardon Trump after he was indicted by a grand jury in Florida in June. At the time, Ramaswamy called on his fellow presidential primary candidates to join him in his pledge.
“I condemn these charges by the U.S. Department of Justice. Below, I have signed a commitment to pardon President Trump promptly on January 20, 2025, for the federal charges … I respectfully request that you join me in this commitment or else publicly explain why you will not,” Ramaswamy wrote in a letter to each of his primary competitors.
On Sunday, Ramaswamy further dismissed the new charges against Trump as a “process crime” and said, as a general principle, he does not support prosecuting those types of crimes without prosecuting an underlying crime.
“This is not specific to Trump. This is part of my broader view on the justice system in our country. I think that our general norm in our Justice Department is you should not convict somebody of a process crime when there was no actual underlying crime,” Ramaswamy said Sunday.