In the Washington Post, Attorney General Merrick Garland has published a full-throated defense of the Department of Justice’s independence from political influences. Garland, who is currently facing an effort by House Republicans to hold him in contempt of Congress for his continued refusal to release a recording of former special counsel Robert Hur’s White House interview with President Biden, decried “false claims that the department is politicizing its work.”
Garland rightly deplores threats of violence — unlawful intimidations whose perpetrators are regularly prosecuted and convicted of serious crimes — against federal agents and federal prosecutors as “heinous.” Far less credible, however, is his insistence that the Justice Department “makes decisions about criminal investigations based only on the facts and the law” coupled with his dismissal of well-founded criticisms of the department’s legal decisions as “falsehoods” and “conspiracy theories.” Indeed, Garland’s defense defies what is obvious even to casual observers of his DOJ.
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