Merrick Garland Spars With Republicans at Hearing: ‘I Will Not Be Intimidated’

Attorney General Merrick Garland slammed Republican attacks against the Justice Department in a tense House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.

“I will not be intimidated,” Garland said in his opening statements. “The Justice Department will not be intimidated. We will continue to do our jobs free from political influence. And we will not back down from defending our democracy.”

In May, Republicans initiated proceedings to hold Garland in contempt of Congress after the Justice Department refused to provide lawmakers with audio recordings of a deposition President Joe Biden gave to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into classified documents found at Biden’s office and residence. When Hur announced that the DOJ would not be leveling criminal charges against Biden, he described the president “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” and claimed Biden could not remember critical dates and events, including the death of his son Beau. The White House strongly condemned the characterization of the president’s mental faculties, calling the report, released in February, “highly prejudicial” against Biden.

As the GOP moved to punish Garland for refusing to hand over the recordings – despite the fact that lawmakers already had access to full transcripts of the interview — the Biden administration exerted executive privilege over the recordings.

“Certain members of this committee, and the Oversight Committee, are seeking contempt as a means of obtaining – for no legitimate purpose – sensitive law enforcement information that could harm the integrity of future investigations,” Garland told the committee on Tuesday.

Inevitably, lawmakers’ focus was repeatedly directed to last week’s conviction of Trump in New York on charges of falsification of business records.

Garland was adamant in his testimony that state prosecutor’s offices — including the New York office that brought the case against Trump — operate independently of the Justice Department.
“We don’t control the Manhattan district attorney and he does not report to us. The Manhattan district attorney makes its own decisions about cases that he wants to bring under his state law,” Garland said.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) pushed back on the GOP’s claims that the Justice Department has been weaponized to unfairly persecute conservatives. Cohen noted that the DOJ was currently prosecuting cases against Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar , and Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

Cohen also noted that the department had declined to bring charges against Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) after an investigation into allegations of sex trafficking. “He is living testimony to the fact — and direct evidence — that you have not weaponized,” the department.

In one explosive moment, Republicans attempted to shout down Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) after he described members of the GOP who uncritically — and often hypocritically — backed Trump as being in a “cult.” Swalwell continued to read off from a list of countries that ban travelers with felony convictions as Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) angrily attempted to drown Swalwell out with his gavel.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) also went after Republicans, alleging that they are targeting the Justice Department because “they’re about to nominate a convicted felon. and they don’t know how to cope with that. They don’t know how to cope with a justice that treats Donald Trump the same as it would any other citizen, and so they have to push these conspiracy theories they know are patently false.”

Garland warned that the conspiracy theories surrounding the Justice Department, including claims that the FBI had planned to assassinate Trump during their search of Mar-a-Lago, “raises the threats of violence against prosecutors and career agents.”

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