Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, often mentioned as Donald Trump’s biggest rival for the 2024 presidential nomination, took the former president’s side over the weekend following news that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was preparing to indict Trump this week over a hush money payment he reportedly made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.

DeSantis ripped into Bragg, calling the situation a “manufactured circus” by a prosecutor “trying to virtue signal for his base,” the Daily Wire noted.

“I’ve seen rumors swirl. I have not seen any facts yet,” DeSantis observed at a press conference. “And so I don’t know what’s going to happen.

“But I do know this, the Manhattan district attorney, is a Soros-funded prosecutor. And so he like other Soros funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety,” the GOP governor continued.

“He has downgraded over 50 percent of the felonies to misdemeanors, he says he doesn’t want to even have jail time for the vast, vast majority of crimes. And what we’ve seen in Manhattan is we’ve seen the crime rate go up, and we’ve seen citizens become less safe,” said DeSantis.

He added that Bragg was “weaponizing” the justice system by choosing to go after Trump over a years-old case while “ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction.”

“And I think that that’s fundamentally wrong,” DeSantis said. “I also think it’s important to point out when you’re talking about these Soros funded prosecutors, yes, they may do a high profile politicized prosecution. And that’s bad.”

DeSantis has claimed that the rise in crime is partly due to big-city prosecutors who have received campaign donations from Soros. He asserts that these prosecutors prioritize their political agenda over fighting crime, resulting in harm to ordinary Americans.

He further noted that he is the sole governor in the nation who has removed a Soros-funded prosecutor from office. This is in reference to his suspension of State Attorney Andrew Warren of the 13th Judicial Circuit in August 2021 for dereliction of duty.

“We are not involved in this, won’t be involved in this,” DeSantis said. “I have no interest in getting involved in some type of manufactured circus by some Soros DA. He’s trying to do a political spectacle. He’s trying to virtue signal for his base.”

In addition to DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence also came to Trump’s defense over the weekend.

“I’m taken aback at the idea of indicting a former President of the United States, at a time when there’s a crime wave in New York City, that — the fact that the Manhattan DA thinks that indicting President Trump is his top priority, I think is, just tells you everything you need to know about the radical left in this country,” Pence told ABC’s Jonathan Karl.