The attorney general denied claims of a weaponized Justice Department as he testified before the House Judiciary Committee.
Attorney General Merrick Garland pushed back on Republican lawmakers’ claims of a weaponized Justice Department on Capitol Hill on June 4 amid their threats to hold him in contempt of Congress.
“These repeated attacks on the Justice Department are unprecedented and unfounded. These attacks have not, and they will not, influence our decision making,” the attorney general told members of the House Judiciary Committee at a 10 a.m. hearing.
Mr. Garland has repeatedly refused to provide House impeachment investigators with the audio recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden and his ghostwriter in defiance of congressional subpoenas. Those refusals led members of the Judiciary and Oversight and Accountability panels to advance contempt resolutions against him.
Evidently, those resolutions have done little to convince Mr. Garland to change course.
“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,” he said.
While he said he viewed contempt as “a serious matter,” the attorney general said he would not acquiesce to requests that he claimed would “jeopardize the ability of our prosecutors and agents to do their jobs effectively in future investigations.”
“I will not be intimidated. And 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,” he added.
Hur Tapes
One of Mr. Garland’s cited reasons for refusing to provide the committees with Mr. Hur’s recordings has been that he does not want to deter future presidents from cooperating with similar investigations down the road. His office has also claimed concern that artificial intelligence (AI) could be used to create “deep fakes” of the audio to distort what President Biden actually said.
At Mr. Garland’s request, President Biden asserted executive privilege over the recordings to prevent impeachment investigators from obtaining them.
Executive privilege also renders the statute that empowers Congress to hold individuals in contempt “inapplicable,” the attorney general contended during the hearing, citing the Office of Legal Counsel.
The transcripts of the recordings, which the Justice Department has provided, are accurate, he assured the committee.
“The special counsel, the FBI agents, and the senior [Justice Department] career officials said that the transcripts match the audio,” he said.
Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.) was doubtful about this.
“I don’t know that though,” he said. “Attorney General, we’re unaware because we haven’t heard the tapes. We don’t know if they match.”
Republicans have suggested that the Justice Department may have edited the transcripts to shield President Biden, whom Mr. Hur ultimately decided not to prosecute.
That decision, according to Mr. Hur’s report, was partly based on the president’s presentation as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” The committees say they need the recordings to confirm whether that conclusion was justified.
And they aren’t the only ones seeking the tapes.
A group of government watchdog and media organizations, led by the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, are also trying to obtain access to the recordings via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Citing a recent filing in that suit, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) noted that the Justice Department has already admitted that the transcripts were edited to remove filler words.
“There was editing. Your own office admitted it, but you won’t admit it today,” Mr. Biggs said. “You’ve been nonresponsive. And that’s why we need the audio, and that’s why you’re here.”
‘Conspiracy Theory’
Mr. Garland also criticized calls to defund the office of special counsel Jack Smith over his prosecution of former President Donald Trump in two federal cases.
Republicans allege that the Justice Department had a hand in ensuring President Trump was indicted in four different criminal cases, including the New York trial in which he was convicted on falsification of business records charges last week.
Mr. Garland dismissed those allegations as a “conspiracy theory”—a claim that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said the attorney general could easily prove if true.
“You can clear it all up for us right now. Will the Department of Justice provide to the committee all documents, all correspondence between the department and Alvin Bragg’s office and Fani Willis’s office and Letitia James’s office?” Mr. Gaetz asked, referring to the Manhattan and Fulton County, Georgia, district attorneys and New York’s attorney general.
Mr. Garland stressed that the Justice Department has no control over those officials or their decisions. But Mr. Gaetz pressed him to answer the question he asked—whether the department communicates with those offices and will provide those communications.
“Make a request, we’ll refer it to our Office of Legislative Affairs,” the attorney general began to reply before the congressman cut him off.
“You come in here and you lodge this attack that it’s a conspiracy theory that there is coordinated lawfare against Trump. … But when you say, well, we’ll take your request and then we’ll sort of work it through the DOJ’s accommodation process, then you’re actually advancing the very dangerous conspiracy theory that you’re concerned about.”
‘Politicized’ Prosecutions
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the committee, is looking to defund the offices of Mr. Bragg, Ms. Willis, Ms. James, and Mr. Smith, whom he believes are targeting President Trump for political purposes.
In a June 4 letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.), Mr. Jordan said he hoped to use the House’s power of the purse to stop such “politicized prosecutions” in the coming fiscal year.
“We have seen rogue prosecutors abuse the rules of professional conduct and their duty to do justice in service of politicized ends,” he wrote. “We recommend that the Appropriations Committee, with appropriate consultation from leadership, include language to eliminate federal funding for state prosecutors or state attorneys general involved in lawfare and to zero out federal funding for federal prosecutors engaged in such abuse.”
Among several other recommendations, the congressman also suggested that Congress strip the FBI of any nonessential funding—including rescinding prior appropriations and barring new funds for a new FBI headquarters—citing witness testimony of “egregious abuses” and misconduct.
“By working together, we can ensure that the appropriations process will continue to be a powerful check against the weaponization of the federal government,” he wrote.
But like the attorney general, Democrats also challenged the idea that the government was being weaponized against President Trump and other Republicans.
Commending Mr. Garland for applying the law “without fear or favoritism,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) noted that the Justice Department was prosecuting President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in a Wilmington, Delaware, courtroom on felony gun charges.
“You can’t love your country only when the candidate you like wins. And you can’t love law and order except when the criminal felon is someone you like,” the congressman said.
The younger Biden is also being prosecuted for alleged tax evasion. The start of that trial has been pushed to Sept. 5 to accommodate his other case.