(Radio Iowa) – Senator Joni Ernst says since former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t face federal charges for using a private email server for official communications, then former President Trump shouldn’t face charges for taking classified documents when he left the White House. “Of course the former president did have classified information. We know that,” Ernst says. “However, we know that’s true of a number of other players on the other side of the aisle.”

Ernst says Trump’s indictment sows more doubt in American institutions and goes against the concept of equal application of the law. “What I hear from Iowans and what I personally feel is that there have been two systems of justice here,” Ernst says. Trump has been charged with the willful retention of national defense information after resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve classified materials. Ernst says Trump was careless.

“As a senator and as someone who served in our nation’s military, I cannot imagine leaving a SCIF or taking unclassified documents out of a secure location,” Ernst says. “That should never happen, but we have seen it over and over and over again the last number of decades and yet we have one form of justice for this previous president than we have seen with other players across the political spectrum.”

Ernst made her comments during a debate series sponsored by the Edward Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate that will be broadcast Sunday night on the Fox News Channel. Bill Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general, said on Fox yesterday (Sunday) that Trump had been the victim of witch hunts in the past, but he’s not a victim in this case and he had no right to take the documents with him when he left the White House.