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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday said he hopes Donald Trump won’t face charges after the former president said he’d been notified by special counsel Jack Smith that he is a target in the criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“I hope he doesn’t get charged,” said DeSantis, who is challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. “I don’t think it’ll be good for the country.”
In an interview with CNN, DeSantis said it won’t serve the country to have an election focused on the past, and said “I’ve got to focus on looking forward.”
Trump is more than 30 points ahead of DeSantis in an average of polls about the GOP nomination for 2024.
In the interview, DeSantis projected confidence about the nomination, even as his campaign has lately struggled.
Read more: DeSantis presidential campaign cuts staff as new financial pressure emerges
“They’ve been saying that I’ve been doing poorly for my whole time as governor,” he told CNN.
The interview was recorded shortly after Trump announced that he was a target in the Jan. 6 investigation.
DeSantis said ahead of the CNN interview that Trump “could’ve come out more forcefully” to stop the insurrection on January 6, 2021. Later, he told CNN, “I don’t think it serves us good to have a presidential election focused on what happened four years ago in January.”
