This week, Austin Knudsen announced his candidacy for Montana Attorney General for the 2020 election.

Knudsen is a 5th generation Montanan, current Roosevelt County Attorney and former two-time Speaker of the House. He told KGVO News there are two issues he wants to vigorously pursue if elected as the state’s Attorney General.

“Meth is beyond epidemic in this state,” said Knudsen. “What I’ve learned being a county attorney and prosecuting this stuff , dealing with federal law enforcement and task forces, is that the days of people cooking poor quality meth in their kitchens are pretty well over. The meth we’re seeing coming into the state of Montana is almost exclusively Mexican meth. It’s very, very high quality and it’s being smuggled in through our porous southern border.”

Which leads to the second issue Knudsen said Montana’s new Attorney General needs to pursue, the crisis at the southern border can no long be ignored.

“We need to support President Trump and get that southern border closed,” he said. “Politics aside, just looking at this purely from a law enforcement standpoint, this is where all the meth is coming from,” he said. “It’s all being trafficked through the southern border. It’s all being smuggled in and there's this idea that it’s a New Mexico or Arizona issue, but it’s not. That unsecured southern border is right here in Montana, let me tell you.”

Knudsen also served the maximum four terms as the Representative for House District 34, and was elected unanimously by his peers -- Republicans and Democrats -- to serve twice as the Speaker of the House in 2015 and 2017. He was the youngest Speaker in Montana history.

Also running on the Republican ticket is the current Deputy Attorney General, Jon Bennion.

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