Attorney General Merrick Garland published an op-ed in the Washington Post Tuesday, declaring that unfounded attacks on the Justice Department "Must end." It's strange and unsettling for the chief law enforcement officer of the United States to write such a thing.
Garland goes on to say that in recent weeks the Justice Department has seen "An escalation of attacks that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work. They are baseless, personal and dangerous."
If these Americans are spreading what Garland thinks are "Conspiracy theories" for the purpose of persuading their countrymen that the Justice Department is untrustworthy, that is their right as Americans.
We should expect nothing less from the attorney general who smeared concerned parents who speak out at school board meetings as "Domestic terrorists." But what Garland alludes to is bone-chilling, because he's saying that "Unfounded" criticism of a weaponized and politicized Justice Department is the equivalent of a bomb threat.
Setting aside that such criticism is well within the bounds of protected speech, it's also not true that it's "Unfounded." For example, Garland says the DOJ is being attacked with "False claims that a case brought by a local district attorney and resolved by a jury verdict in a state trial was somehow controlled by the Justice Department." He's referring here to the case Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought against Trump in New York, winning a conviction against the former president last month on murky, convoluted charges that will likely be overturned on appeal.
When Garland decries accusations that the case was "Somehow controlled by the Justice Department," he's referring to the fact that one of his own attorneys, Matthew Colangelo, left the DOJ and three days later joined Bragg's office to work on the Trump case-a pretty obvious indication that Garland's Justice Department was in fact controlling, or at least involved in, the Bragg case.
Because he refuses even to acknowledge these things, Garland can make absurd statements such as that the Justice Department "Makes decisions about criminal investigations based only on the facts and the law. We do not investigate people because of their last name, their political affiliation, the size of their bank account, where they come from or what they look like."
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