On Friday morning, The Midwesterner sat down with Sen. Tom Cotton, R-AR, who was in Michigan to campaign for fellow Republican Mike Rogers.

Rogers is seeking to replace Michigan’s retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, and is competing in a tight race with Democratic opponent U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin.

In the time allotted to interview Cotton, The Midwesterner focused on reforming the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the building of Chinese-controlled businesses in the United States in general and Michigan specifically.

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First, Cotton addressed the Democratic response to remarks made by Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump during his debate Tuesday night with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic contender for the presidency. In those remarks, Trump said he would prosecute anyone caught cheating in the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.

“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” Trump posted last Saturday on Truth Social, and repeated the same sentiments during the debate. Democrats represented the threat as an indication Trump will not accept election results if he loses, but Cotton disagrees.

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“It is rich that Democrats are accusing Donald Trump of potentially weaponizing the Department of the Justice, which is not something he did when he was president for four years,” Cotton said. “But it’s what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have immediately done to Donald Trump and so many of his supporters around the country.”

The Biden-Harris administration indicted Trump in four different cases, Cotton noted. “Almost all of which should be dismissed from the very beginning, never pursued, you’ve had the FBI justice investigating Catholics because they go to traditional mass, for cracking down on parents who are angry at what schools are teaching their kids and who go to school board meetings, so it it’s very ironic Kamala Harris and the Biden administration would say they’re afraid Trump would weaponize the justice system when that’s exactly what they did,” he said.

Cotton said the FBI needs to be reformed for its treatment of Trump, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the entire FBI is corrupt.

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“I know a lot of great FBI agents,” he said, listing Rogers among the former FBI agents that performed admirably.

“Mike Rogers himself was an FBI agent, however I think they’ve been failed by their leadership,” Cotton said. “They’ve been a part of the effort going back almost a decade now to bend the rules to try to get President Trump and then try to cover up their tracks. So there needs to be real accountability in the FBI or Justice not just for the American people to have confidence in the FBI, but for the sake of those thousands of brave and capable men and women in the FBI across the country and states like Michigan, Arkansas, and elsewhere.”

He urged Trump to pick new leadership for the agency.

When asked about the proposed electric vehicle battery component manufacturing plant Gotion outside Big Rapids, Cotton aligned himself with Rogers.

“Mike Rogers is very knowledgeable about this question because he was sounding the alarm more than 20 years ago when most politicians in Michigan and Washington just wanted to chase after more Chinese money or Chinese investment in their local communities without regard for what it meant for the long term,” Cotton said. “This Gotion battery plant, for instance, has the possibility like any big Chinese investment to crowding out American competitors, to end up taking jobs from Americans in the long run, to create influence that works inside of your state.”

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He said that Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Curtis Hertel, the Democrat running to replace her in the U.S. House against Republican contender former state Sen. Tom Barrett, both signed nondisclosure agreements with Gotion, a company with known ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

“Now I guess she reports to have flip-flopped,” Cotton said. “She has a nondisclosure agreement that she won’t discuss about what she did to bring this agent of Chinese influence into Michigan. I think the last thing our country needs is more Chinese investment that often doesn’t deliver on the promises but it does create the influence networks around the country, even here in Michigan, that undermine our politics and make it harder for us to confront China in so many other realms.”

Cotton said China’s long-term plan is to replace America as the world’s dominant superpower.

“We should never allow that to happen,” he said. “Mike Rogers committed to not allowing it to happen and he was one of the very first congressmen to ring the alarm about the Chinese activities in the United States.” Cotton also noted Barrett would be a powerful ally in the U.S. House for Rogers’ efforts in the U.S. Senate.

“I don’t think any politician should be chasing after Chinese money and they certainly shouldn’t be signing nondisclosure agreements about what they did to get more Chinese money into their state and I think it’s important for all of your audience to know that Chinese companies are not independent of the Chinese government. It’s not like it is here in America where we have a genuine free enterprise system. If you’re a Chinese company you dance to the tune of the Chinese Communist Party, especially if you’re going to make investments into America and try to open factories here. You are doing it as a de facto arm of the Chinese Communist Party.”