Justice Department faces its biggest test
WASHINGTON — When the Justice Department was announcing the highest-profile prosecution in its history in Washington, Attorney General Merrick Garland was 100 miles away, meeting with local police in Philadelphia.
He stepped outside briefly to speak about how the decision to indict Donald Trump for conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election came from career prosecutors and was led by a special counsel committed to “accountability and independence.”
In other words, it wasn’t about politics.
Try as Garland might, though, there is no escaping the politics of the moment when the Justice Department of a president who is running for re-election is indicting his chief political rival, the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
And though he has distanced himself from the investigation since he appointed special counsel Jack Smith 10 months ago, Garland has the last word on matters related to the prosecution of Trump as long as he is the attorney general.
The Justice Department is facing its biggest test in history — navigating unprecedented conditions in American democracy while trying to fight back against relentless attacks on its own credibility and that of the U.S. election system. The success or failure of the case has the potential to affect the standing of the department for years to come.
“In grand terms this is a really huge historic moment for the Department of Justice,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
President Joe Biden has sought to distance himself from the Justice Department to avoid any appearance of meddling when the agency is not only probing Trump, but also the president’s son Hunter. But it’s going to get more challenging for Biden, too. Anything he says about the
Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol from now on could complicate matters for prosecutors. And any trial is likely to take place against the backdrop of the 2024 presidential election.
The latest indictment is the third criminal case filed against Trump this year, but the first to try to hold him criminally responsible for his efforts to cling to power in the weeks between his election loss and the Capitol attack that stunned the world. He pleaded not guilty Thursday before a federal magistrate judge and was ordered not to speak about the case with any potential witnesses.
Trump has said he did nothing wrong and has accused Smith of trying to thwart his chances of returning to the White House in 2024. Trump and other Republicans have railed against the investigation and the Justice Department in general, claiming a two-tiered system of justice that vilifies Trump and goes easy on Biden’s son, who was accused of tax crimes after a yearslong probe.