Attorney General Merrick Garland will appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning to address claims that the FBI planned to assassinate former President Trump during the Mar-a-Lago raid and that the Justice Department was involved in New York’s silence. case.
Garland will also resist the committee’s attempt to hold him in contempt on the measure, which has passed committee but has not yet been sent to the House.
“Certain members of this committee and oversight committees are seeking defiance as a means to obtain sensitive law enforcement information — without any legitimate purpose — that could compromise the integrity of future investigations,” Project Garland said in testimony. .
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that the attorney general “will lead the important work of the Department of Justice during his tenure, including reducing homicide rates, prosecuting hate crimes and combating international terrorism, but he will also vigorously counter disinformation.” Narratives about department employees and their work. “
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Attorney General Merrick Garland will dismiss efforts to hold him in contempt of court. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Last month, Trump falsely claimed that Biden’s Justice Department authorized the FBI to kill him during a search of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022, referring to an unsealed FBI document about the search. Bureau files. Trump was not home when the FBI conducted the search.
“Wow! I just came out of the ‘Refrigerator’ Biden witch hunt trial in Manhattan and saw reports that Joe Biden’s DOJ authorized the FBI during the illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-a-Lago Lethal (lethal) force,” Trump wrote on The Truth Society.
Trump’s legal team also filed a court filing citing the Justice Department’s authorization to use force.
But the use of force cited by the Trump team in court filings is standard language used by the Justice Department for years, the same language used when FBI agents searched President Biden’s home for classified documents.
Garland will testify that the contempt against him “is due to the spread of baseless and extremely dangerous lies about FBI law enforcement operations.”
Special counsel Jack Smith said Trump’s team omitted the keyword “only” from documents filed in late May, leading Trump to accuse the FBI of preparing to kill him.
Smith wrote: “Although Trump included the search warrant and action form as attachments to his motion, the motion incorrectly cited the action form, omitting the keyword ‘only’ before ‘when necessary’ and without any ellipses to reflect this.” One omission. “The motion also fails to explain that deadly force is only required ‘when the officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the person to whom such force is being used poses an imminent risk of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or others.'”
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Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower on Thursday, May 30, 2024, following his conviction on 34 counts of first-degree falsification of business records. (Felipe Ramales, Fox News Digital)
Trump’s team has been given until June 14 to respond to Smith’s move to issue a gag order prohibiting Trump from speaking about the FBI.
Smith and Garland said Trump’s comments put law enforcement at risk.
Garland will also testify about Republicans’ claims that the Justice Department was involved in the hush-money case against Trump in New York, in which the former president was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The New York case was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, not the Justice Department. This is a state case, which means that if Trump wins the presidential election, he will not be able to pardon himself.
Garland said in his testimony that the contempt action “comes with the false allegation that jury verdicts in state trials brought by local district attorneys are somehow controlled by the Justice Department.” “This conspiracy theory is an attack on the judicial process itself.”
Garland said the measure was “just the latest in a long line of attacks on the Department of Justice’s work.”
“At the same time, there have been threats to defund specific department investigations, most recently the special counsel’s indictment of the former president,” Garland said.
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Trump falsely claimed that the Justice Department authorized the FBI to kill him during a search of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022. (Getty Images)
It also comes at a time when “we are seeing outrageous threats of violence against career civil servants in the Department of Justice” at a time when individual career agents and prosecutors are “singled out simply for doing their jobs,” he said.
Garland said these “repeated attacks” on the Justice Department are “unprecedented and baseless” and will not affect the department’s decision-making.
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“I think contempt is a serious thing,” Garland said. “But I will not compromise the ability of our prosecutors and agents to work effectively in future investigations.”
“I won’t be intimidated,” he added. “The Department of Justice will not be intimidated. We will continue to do our work free from political influence. We will not back down from defending our democracy.”
