Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner: ‘Hard to Watch’ Trump Indictment

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner responded on Friday to former President Donald Trump’s historic indictment, saying that it’s “hard to watch” the Democrats continue to go after him.

“I love my father and I love my country,” Ivanka wrote in an Instagram story. “Today I am pained for both. I appreciate the voices across the political spectrum expressing support and concern.”

Kushner, a former White House senior advisor to Donald Trump, made his remarks at the FII Institute’s Priority Summit in Miami Beach, Florida.

“I think that that shows obviously the fear that the Democrats have of Trump and the political strength that he has,” Kushner said at the beginning of his speech about peace in the Middle East and the Abraham Accords, according to Breitbart News. “As an American, it’s very troubling to me to see the Leader of the Opposition party be indicted.”

He went on to say that he and Ivanka “love him [Trump] very much” and it has “been hard to watch” the Democrats continue their attacks on the former president.

“The opponents of him politically continue to break every norm over the last years to try to get him, and we’ve seen them accuse him of colluding with Russia,” Kushner said. “We saw them impeach him. We saw them raid his home. And all this is a continuation of that.”

He also suggested that incidents like the indictment and the impeachments only make Trump “stronger and his resolve to take on big challenges, to fight for change, to fight for the American people, has only gotten stronger.”

Trump is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday by acting Justice Juan Merchan after 2:15 p.m. ET. Merchan is the same judge that presided over Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s tax fraud prosecution of Trump’s company last year.

The former president is expected to remain at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, through the weekend and travel to New York on Monday.

A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Trump on Thursday on charges stemming from hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 election.

The indictment was sealed, but Reuters reported on Friday that a judge is now authorizing Bragg to make it public.

Trump has said the multiple investigations into him and his company, as well as the Manhattan indictment, are politically motivated and designed to keep him from winning another term in the White House.

Responding to news of the indictment, former Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that the former president has the right to prove himself innocent.

“The grand jury has acted upon the facts and the law,” she tweeted Thursday night. “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.”

Twitter added a disclaimer to Pelosi’s comments, posting a link to the Cornell School of Law’s explanation on the presumption of innocence.

“Ms. Pelosi mistakenly says that Trump can prove his innocence at trial,” Twitter’s disclaimer read. “Law in the US assumes the innocence of a defendant and the prosecution must prove guilt for a conviction.”