Merrick Garland, Justice Department push back on Republicans’ claims about Trump prosecution

Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice are pushing back on Republicans who have falsely accused the department of masterminding the recent prosecution of former president Donald Trump in a New York State court.

Garland took to pages of the Washington Post on Tuesday with an op-ed in which he slammed what he described as “an escalation of attacks that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight” from Republicans. He called those attacks “baseless, personal and dangerous” and noted that they’ve directly inspired threats of violence against his department’s personnel.

The AG also decried threats from Republicans in Congress who want to defund the department’s work investigating Trump. He said that attacks “in the form of conspiracy theories crafted and spread for the purpose of undermining public trust in the judicial process itself”.

That includes “false claims” about the prosecution of Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose work resulted in the ex-president being convicted of 24 felony counts by a jury of his peers earlier this month.

Other threats, Garland said, have come against his department “in the form of dangerous falsehoods about the FBI’s law enforcement operations that increase the risks faced by our agents”. Garland referred to similarly false claims by Trump and his allies regarding the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at the former president’s Florida home in August 2022. He added that “false claims that the department is politicizing its work to somehow influence the outcome of an election” are also harmful, adding that the department “will not be intimidated by these attacks.”

Garland’s op-ed came on the same day that