Attorney General Merrick Garland is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning to respond to allegations that the FBI plotted to assassinate former President Trump during the Mar-a-Lago raids, as well as suggestions that the Justice Department was involved in a New York hush-money lawsuit against the former president.
Garland will also likely oppose the committee’s efforts to hold him in contempt on the bill, which has passed the committee but has not yet advanced to the full House.
“Certain members of this committee and the Oversight Committee have asserted contempt claims without any legitimate purpose, as a means to obtain confidential law enforcement information that could undermine the integrity of future investigations,” Garland is expected to say in his testimony.
A Justice Department spokesman said in a statement that the attorney general “will lead the important work the Department of Justice has done during his tenure, including reducing murder rates, prosecuting hate crimes, and combating international terrorism, but he will also vigorously deny any misrepresentations about Department of Justice personnel and their work.”
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Attorney General Merrick Garland is likely to resist efforts to hold him in contempt. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Last month, Trump falsely claimed the FBI had been authorized by Biden’s Justice Department to kill him while searching his Mar-a-Lago estate for classified documents in 2022. This was a reference to publicly available FBI documents about the search. Trump was not at the home when the FBI carried out the search.
“Wow! Just got back from the Biden witch hunt trial in Manhattan’s ‘Icebox’ and was shown a report showing that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice authorized the FBI to use lethal force in the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump’s legal team also filed court papers citing the Justice Department’s authorization to use force.
But the use of force cited by the Trump campaign in court documents is standard language the Justice Department has used for years, and it was the same language used when FBI agents searched President Biden’s home in search of classified documents.
In his testimony, Garland is expected to say the contempt efforts against him come “amid the dissemination of baseless and deeply dangerous falsehoods about the FBI’s law enforcement activities.”
Special counsel Jack Smith said Trump’s team left out the key word “only” in a filing in late May that led Trump to accuse the FBI of being prepared to kill him.
“Trump included the warrant and the operation form as exhibits in his motion, but the motion miscited the operation form and omitted the crucial word ‘only’ before ‘if necessary,’ with no ellipsis to indicate the omission,” Smith wrote. “The motion also omitted language explaining that deadly force is only necessary when ‘the officer has a reasonable belief that the subjection of such force will result in imminent death or serious bodily injury to the officer or another person.'”
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Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower on Thursday, May 30, 2024, after being convicted of 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records. (Felipe Ramares for Fox News Digital)
Trump’s team has been given until June 14 to respond to Smith’s action to issue a gag order banning Trump from speaking out about the FBI.
Smith and Garland said Trump’s comments put law enforcement at risk.
Garland is also scheduled to testify against Republican allegations that the Justice Department interfered in a hush-money lawsuit against Trump in New York state, where he was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The New York lawsuit was filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, not the Department of Justice, and because it is a state lawsuit, Trump cannot pardon himself even if he wins the presidential election.
The move to hold Garland in contempt “comes alongside false allegations that the Department of Justice somehow manipulated the jury verdict in a state case brought by a local district attorney,” Garland is expected to say in his testimony. “This conspiracy theory is an attack on the very process of justice.”
Garland will say the move is “only the latest in a long series of attacks on the operations of the Department of Justice.”
“This comes in tandem with threats to cut off funding for certain State Department investigations, including the recent special counsel prosecution of a former president,” Garland said.
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Trump falsely claimed in 2022 that the Justice Department authorized the FBI to kill him while searching for classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. (Getty Images)
He said the situation is one in which individual career investigators and prosecutors are “targeted simply for doing their jobs” and where “we are seeing vicious threats of violence directed at career civil servants at the Department of Justice.”
Garland said these “repeated attacks” on the Justice Department are “unprecedented and unfounded” and that the attacks will not affect the department’s decision-making.
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“I view contempt as a serious matter,” Garland said, “but I am not going to jeopardize the ability of prosecutors and investigators to do their jobs effectively in any future investigation.”
“I will not be intimidated,” he added. “Neither will the Department of Justice be intimidated. We will continue to do our job free from political influence. And we will not shy away from protecting our democracy.”
