Rep. Elise Stefanik addresses Army soldiers alongside President Donald Trump at Fort Drum in August 2018. (Provided photo — Daytona Niles, Watertown Daily Times)

WASHINGTON — Rep. Elise Stefanik is sticking by Donald Trump, despite the former president’s third indictment and still-looming legal troubles.

Stefanik, R-Willsboro, has featured prominently in defense of Trump since he was first indicted in April in Manhattan. After Trump was indicted for a third time on Monday in Washington, D.C., on federal charges related to his alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the congresswoman reinvigorated her criticisms and leveled them at the Biden administration.

The congresswoman tied the timing of Trump’s indictment to the case involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, who had seen a plea deal with federal prosecutors on tax crimes and a gun charge hit a wall the previous week.

“This is what we’ve seen for the past few months,” she said on the Mark Levin radio show Tuesday, in remarks she later shared in multiple press releases. “When there is bombshell testimony that continues to expose the corruption, of what I believe is the greatest political scandal in my lifetime, that is the Biden family corruption, then the DOJ gets weaponized against Joe Biden’s top opponent which is Donald Trump.”

There’s been no clear link drawn between Hunter’s activities and his father’s. The probe of Hunter’s activities started in 2018 under a special counsel investigation begun by the Trump administration, which was continued under Biden’s administration without apparent interference. The investigation has not named President Biden as a person of interest or a potential witness to any of his son’s alleged crimes.

Stefanik said she supports an impeachment inquiry against the president, a suggestion that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. has begun supporting in public as well.

“It’s a constitutional responsibility that Congress must undertake as part of our oversight,” she said. “It’s a tool laid out in the Constitution, and unlike the Democrats, who weaponized impeachment, these are significant corruption scandals of anything we’ve seen in my lifetime that we’re seeing in the Biden family.”

She’s argued that the justice system is broken, and recently introduced a resolution in partnership with Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-Ga., that would strike both of Trump’s impeachments from the congressional record.