In a pair of tweets sent midafternoon, Trump suggested that the Justice Department should not have brought charges against two “very popular” Republican lawmakers running for re-election so close to November because it could jeopardize the party’s control of the House.

“Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff.”

In another tweet, he suggested that Sessions, a former senator who was one of Trump’s few vocal defenders early in his campaign, had fallen into favor with Democrats after the charges were delivered.

The president was most likely referring to two recent cases: Last month, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., was indicted by a federal grand jury for charges that he and his wife, Margaret, used more than $250,000 in campaign funds to pay for personal expenses. Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., an ardent supporter of Trump’s, was indicted on charges of insider trading.

Both lawmakers have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Trump has frequently berated Sessions and publicly questioned his judgment since the attorney general’s decision in March 2017 to recuse himself from the special counsel’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia.

Trump’s tweets criticized indictments that fall well within the Justice Department’s window for bringing charges during an election cycle.

His comments triggered a swift rebuke from former prosecutors and members of his own party.

“The United States is not some banana republic with a two-tiered system of justice — one for the majority and one for the minority party,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “These two men have been charged with crimes because of evidence, not because of who the president was when the investigations began.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Katie Rogers and Katie Benner © 2018 The New York Times