Kari Lake, a onetime GOP nominee for Arizona governor, told Newsmax that the American people "see right through" the latest indictment of former President Donald Trump.
Appearing Wednesday on "The Chris Salcedo Show," Lake contended that Trump only encouraged peaceful demonstrations outside the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
"It was people showing up to peacefully protest a fraudulent election," the former candidate said, "and we had some folks who turned that into a phony riot to try to distract from the fact that they were about to certify that fraudulent election."
Lake further insisted that "President Trump did nothing wrong" in and around that date and "gave a wonderful speech" before the joint session of Congress, telling his supporters to protest peacefully.
"It's our duty as American citizens to call out corruption in our government, and frankly in our elections when we see it. And both sides have done this over the years," Lake said, giving her opinion.
"We're stuck here in an America that has gone completely fraudulent, and we, the people, can't vote our way out of this corrupt system if we don't have honest elections," she added.
Trump was indicted for the second time — third overall — by Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's office on Tuesday, charged with four counts related to conspiracy to defraud the country and overturn an election.
He was previously indicted by Smith for classified files harbored at his Mar-a-Lago property in South Florida, with a superseding indictment coming out one month later for his alleged role in a cover-up of those files.
Trump is expected to be arraigned Thursday before Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya. The case is assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the federal District Court for the District of Columbia.
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