Attorney General Merrick Garland hits back at GOP’s ‘unprecedented’ attacks on the justice system after Trump hush money verdict

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland pushed back on Republican attacks on the justice system during a grueling House committee hearing on Tuesday that followed the conviction of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on 34 felony counts in connection with a scheme to hide unlawful efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election with hush money payments to a porn star.

Garland, who Republicans want to hold in contempt unless he turns over audio tapes from President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, said he would not be intimidated by threats of contempt and called the attacks on the Justice Department from some politicians “unprecedented” and “unfounded.”

Garland noted that, despite conspiracy theories spread by some members of the GOP, the Justice Department had no control over the actions of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case against Trump in connection with the hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign.

The conspiracy theory that the jury verdict was “somehow controlled by the Justice Department” is “an attack on the judicial process itself,” Garland said.

Garland said that “individual career agents and prosecutors have been singled out just for doing their jobs,” and that there had been “baseless and extremely dangerous falsehoods” being spread about the FBI’s law enforcement operations as well as “heinous threats of violence being directed at the Justice Department’s career public servants.”

Last month, Trump and his allies spread a conspiracy theory that Biden had enlisted the FBI to assassinate the former president during the 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in connection with the subsequent classified documents case, in which Trump has pleaded not guilty.

In reality, the FBI chose a date to search Mar-a-Lago when they knew that the former president was hundreds of miles away. After the search, a Jan. 6 participant showed up at an FBI field office in Cincinnati with an AK-15-style rifle and was subsequently killed by police.

In the aftermath of Trump’s conviction, numerous individuals — including the prosecutor, the judge, witnesses and even purported jurors — have been targeted online. Trump has suggested there could be a “breaking point” for the public if he’s sentenced to house arrest or to prison on July 11.

“We will not back down from defending democracy,” Garland said during his testimony on Tuesday.