Attorney General Merrick Garland this week called for “attacks” against the Justice Department to stop, in a rare op-ed a day before the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena.
Garland said in the piece, which appeared in the Washington Post on Tuesday, that in recent weeks, there have been an “escalation of attacks that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work,” and claimed that the attacks are “baseless, personal and dangerous.”
He suggested the attacks were coming from Trump supporters, in response to the recent trial of former President Donald Trump, as well as several other ongoing federal and local government cases against him.
“These attacks come in the form of threats to defund particular department investigations, most recently the special counsel’s prosecution of the former president,” he wrote, adding:
They come in the form of conspiracy theories crafted and spread for the purpose of undermining public trust in the judicial process itself. Those include false claims that a case brought by a local district attorney and resolved by a jury verdict in a state trial was somehow controlled by the Justice Department.
He also appeared to reference a recently-unsealed FBI operations order that stated that agents were authorized to use deadly force during the raid of Mar-a-Lago for suspected classified documents, saying that “come in the form of dangerous falsehoods about the FBI’s law enforcement operations that increase the risks faced by our agents.”
Garland also referenced accusations from Trump himself, that the cases against him was part of a Democrat strategy to hurt him at the ballot box, calling them “false claims that the department is politicizing its work to somehow influence the outcome of an election.”
Garland claimed it was “absurd and dangerous” that public servants are “being threatened for simply doing their jobs and adhering to the principles that have long guided the Justice Department’s work.”
Nowhere in his op-ed did he address a recent DOJ special counsel decision not to prosecute President Joe Biden for retention of classified material after leaving as vice president in part due to him being a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” while at the same time another DOJ special counsel has charged Trump with 40 counts pertaining to his retention of classified materials after leaving office.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference at Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, Thursday, March 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Nor did Garland address revelations from the past several years that FBI agents launched an investigation in 2016 into then-candidate Donald Trump and his advisers on the flimsy notion that he and his campaign was colluding with Russia, based on opposition research funded by his political rival Hillary Clinton. Nor did he mention FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith doctoring an email to hide a former Trump adviser’s status as a CIA informant.
The op-ed also did not mention that DOJ official Bruce Ohr was involved in circulating the baseless claims against Trump and his campaign throughout the department on behalf of his wife, Nellie Ohr, who worked for the opposition research firm that compiled the bogus allegations of collusion against Trump.
Instead, Garland said every DOJ employee lives by “an unwavering commitment to the fair and impartial application of our laws.”
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“The Justice Department makes decisions about criminal investigations based only on the facts and the law. We do not investigate people because of their last name, their political affiliation, the size of their bank account, where they come from or what they look like. We investigate and prosecute violations of federal law — nothing more, nothing less,” he claimed.
“Continued unfounded attacks against the Justice Department’s employees are dangerous for people’s safety. They are dangerous for our democracy. This must stop,” he wrote.
Shortly after his piece published, a conservative satirical news site, published an article mocking him entitled: “Merrick Garland Threatens To Arrest Anyone Who Says His DOJ Is Corrupt.” It said:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As accusations continue to mount regarding the impartiality of the American justice system, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland threatened to arrest anyone who said his Department of Justice was corrupt.
Though clear evidence was presented by many on the right of DOJ targeting political opponents with questionable charges and harsh sentences while ignoring illegal activity from people on the left, Garland vowed to bring the full weight of the federal government on anyone who dares to question his fairness.
“Anyone who questions the impeccable integrity of my Department of Justice is a danger to democracy and must be arrested,” Garland said in a statement. “It’s un-American to question my authority. And if you do, you probably need to be indicted for something or other. Don’t worry, we’ll find something.”
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