CNN
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Lawyer Basic Merrick Garland stated in a Washington Post op-ed printed Tuesday that rising “baseless, private and harmful” assaults on the Justice Division have turn out to be “harmful for our democracy.”
“We is not going to be intimidated by these assaults. However it’s absurd and harmful that public servants, a lot of whom threat their lives each day, are being threatened for merely doing their jobs and adhering to the ideas which have lengthy guided the Justice Division’s work,” Garland wrote within the op-ed.
Continued unfounded assaults on the company’s staff, he added, “are harmful for folks’s security. They’re harmful for our democracy. This should cease.”
Garland’s newest feedback echo his forceful protection of the Justice Division earlier than the Home Judiciary Committee final week. Whereas he didn’t point out political events in his op-ed Tuesday, Garland denounced a lot of ”conspiracy theories” floated by Republicans concerning the Justice Division being weaponized towards former President Donald Trump.
“The Justice Division makes selections about legal investigations based mostly solely on the info and the legislation. We don’t examine folks due to their final identify, their political affiliation, the scale of their checking account, the place they arrive from or what they appear to be. We examine and prosecute violations of federal legislation — nothing extra, nothing much less,” Garland stated.
The Home Guidelines Committee will meet later Tuesday to contemplate recommending expenses of contempt for the legal professional basic over his refusal to show over audio recordings of President Joe Biden’s interview with particular counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Biden’s dealing with of categorized materials and declined to deliver expenses.
Garland stated in his testimony final week that whereas the division is not going to present the audio recordings sought by the GOP lawmakers, it has “gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure that the committee will get responses to its official requests for info,” together with offering transcripts of the interview with Biden.
The DOJ has argued that the precise privateness issues associated to an audio recording of an interview are distinct from these of a written transcript, and the way the discharge of such an audio file might dissuade cooperation from future witnesses in legal investigations.
CNN has sued for entry to recordings of federal investigators’ interview with Biden within the now-closed probe over his dealing with of categorized paperwork.