“I won’t let myself be intimidated”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday rejected what he called unprecedented attacks on the Justice Department and told Republicans who had tried to charge him with contempt of court that he would “not be intimidated.”

Testifying before a House committee led by allies of former President Donald Trump, Garland denounced the “conspiracy theory” that the department was behind Trump’s indictment in New York state court that found the former Republican president guilty on 34 counts, and he opposed “baseless and extremely dangerous falsehoods” being spread about law enforcement.

Garland’s unusually impassioned testimony was a forceful defense of the Justice Department’s independence and integrity amid an assault on the U.S. criminal justice system by Trump and his allies. Garland said the attacks on the Justice Department “have not and will not influence our decision-making.”

“I will not be intimidated,” Garland said. “And the Department of Justice will not be intimidated. We will continue to do our work free from political influence. And we will not stop defending our democracy.”

His appearance came as Republicans attempted to charge him with contempt of court because the Biden administration refused to release audio recordings of President Joe Bidenwith special counsel Robert Hur, which dealt with the president’s handling of classified information.

A transcript of Biden’s interview was released, but the president invoked executive privilege last month to prevent the audio from being released. The White House has said Republican lawmakers only want the audio to chop it up and use it for political purposes.

The Justice Department argues that witnesses would be less willing to cooperate if they knew their testimony could become public. Garland told lawmakers he would not “jeopardize the ability of our prosecutors and agents to do their jobs effectively in future investigations.”

The committee’s top Republican, Jim Jordan, criticized Garland in his opening statement for a wide range of federal law enforcement decisions that he described as politically motivated, including the conclusions of various special counsels that Trump had criminally mishandled classified documents while Biden had not.

“Many Americans believe that there is now a double standard in our justice system. They believe this because there is,” Jordan said.

Representative Matt Gaetz, who was investigated by the Justice Department as part of a sex trafficking investigation but has not been charged, engaged in a tense exchange at the start of the hearing when he asked whether the department would release documents related to the New York state case in which Trump was convicted last week.

Garland denied that Gaetz had made false allegations, that he had “sent” a Justice Department lawyer to the Manhattan district attorney’s office who later became part of the Trump prosecution team, and stressed that he had nothing to do with it.