Attorney General Merrick Garland has a stark warning for all of us: The GOP’s attacks on the Justice Department put our democracy in jeopardy. Those attacks, he writes in his op-ed for The Washington Post, range from sending bomb threats to FBI offices to senior Republican lawmakers peddling conspiracy theories about the DOJ plotting against convicted felon Donald Trump.
They come in the form of conspiracy theories crafted and spread for the purpose of undermining public trust in the judicial process itself. Those include 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.
They come in the form of dangerous falsehoods about the FBI’s law enforcement operations that increase the risks faced by our agents.
They come in the form of efforts to bully and intimidate our career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out.
Garland warns that “unfounded attacks against the Justice Department’s employees are dangerous for people’s safety. They are dangerous for our democracy.”
Garland is too polite to directly call out one of the primary instigators of the conspiracy theories and ongoing attacks: Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. But Carlos Uriarte, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, is less circumscribed about doing that.
Uriarte mocked Jordan in a letter Tuesday for demanding "information from the Department because of what you describe as a ‘perception that the Justice Department is’ behind the District Attorney’s so-called ‘politicized prosecution’ and a ‘perception’ that the Biden Justice Department is politicized and weaponized’ to that end.”
“The Department has no control over the District Attorney, just as the District Attorney has no control over the Department,” Uriarte wrote. “The Committee knows this.”
Indeed, the difference between state and federal prosecutions is something that the chair of the Judiciary Committee should know. Uriarte’s public schooling of Jordan shows just how ridiculous and politically toxic Jordan’s histrionics are. And, echoing Garland, how dangerous his conspiracy theories are.
“Accusations of wrongdoing made without—and in fact contrary to—evidence undermine confidence in the justice system and have contributed to increased threats of violence and attacks on career law enforcement officials and prosecutors,” he wrote. “Our extraordinary efforts to respond to your speculation should put it to rest.”
Yes, it should. But it won’t.
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