Several convicted criminals are running for office as Republicans this year, and a CNN panel on Wednesday took the party to task for attracting so many convicts to run under its banner.

During the panel, hosts John Berman and Poppy Harlow ran down the rogues gallery of criminal GOP candidates running for office — including disgraced former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, former mining tycoon Don Blankenship, and convicted tax fraudster Michael Grimm — and asked guests Amanda Carpenter and Robby Mook what was going on with the Republican Party.

ADVERTISEMENT

In particular, Harlow zeroed in on an ad from Blankenship in which he admits he went to prison after he was found criminally negligent for an explosion at his mine that killed dozens of workers — before going on to shrug it off as no big deal.

“He’s not hiding from it!” Harlow marveled. “This is the Republican Party — the ‘Law and order’ party — and yet you have multiple people running as Republicans that have been convicted of crimes.”

“This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” Mook replied. “The facts don’t matter and I don’t think the law matters for these folks anymore. The president has 100 percent enabled and nurtured this kind of behavior.”

Conservative Amanda Carpenter also torched Vice President Mike Pence for praising Arpaio, who was found guilty of contempt of court for willfully violating a federal judge’s order to stop a program of racially profiling Latinos, and who is now running for Senate in Arizona.

In particular, she slammed the Trump administration for pardoning Arpaio for flagrantly disobeying court orders, which she said sends a terrible signal to abusive law enforcement officials.

ADVERTISEMENT

“The Trump administration said, ‘Hey, you don’t have to obey court orders, you don’t have to go to trial,'” she said. “Pardoning someone without going to trial is nearly unprecedented and that hasn’t gotten nearly enough focus.”

Watch the panel below.