(Holder USA) In a surprising departure from his usual insistence that the Department of Justice applies the law equally, without fear or favor and regardless of politics, Attorney General Merrick Garland has been cleared of the same crime for which he previously prosecuted two top advisers to former President Donald Trump.
The decision to exercise the prosecution in the cases of Steve Bannon i Peter Navarro it was controversial, given that no one had been prosecuted contempt of Congress in four decades and that serious questions surrounded both the legitimacy of the Commission January 6 that he had subpoenaed them and his investigative reason for demanding their testimony.
Both argued that their private lawyer for then-President Donald Trump was protected executive privilege and they had been ordered not to comply until a legal challenge that had been brought to the courts to resolve the matter had been fully resolved.
Ultimately, a partisan judge asked Chutkan determined that executive privilege did not apply in the circumstances.
Garland was cited in contempt of Congress on Wednesday in a 216-207 House vote for refusing to turn over the audio of President Joe Biden's interview with his classified documents case as part of the House's ongoing impeachment investigation.
But deputy attorneys general at the Justice Department, under his direct supervision, say the refusal to comply with the congressional subpoena “did not constitute a crime.”
In a letter to the Speaker of the House Mike Johnsona Justice Department official brazenly cited the department's longstanding policy of not prosecuting congressional officials in contempt who fail to comply with subpoenas over a president's claim of executive privilege.
On the last day to comply with a Republican subpoena for the audio, the White House blocked the release by invoking executive privilege based on Moon's legal theory that the audio could be tampered with artificial intelligence.
Republicans have countered that the transcript provided to them earlier was likely tampered with and that the audio is the only way for Biden to prove he also did not perjure himself in the interview with a special counsel. Robert Com or, even worse, genuinely demonstrate that he is unfit to stand trial, which would also raise questions about his fitness to be president.
A media coalition has also sued to obtain the audio recordings under the Freedom of Information Actfurther undermining the spurious basis for the White House's claim that its lack of transparency served anything but its own political imperative.
Garland has vocally complained about oversight efforts, claiming he is the victim of persecution, despite ample evidence that he himself has weaponized the Justice Department against his political adversaries at all levels, even going so far as to name supporters of Trump as his own special terrorist group. to the FBI
Bannon is expected to arrive in prison at the end of the month, while Navarro began serving a four-month sentence in March.
Asked recently about the distinction between the contempt charge against Garland and those made by Democrats against her political adversaries, Johnson highlighted several key points of distinction, including the fact that the January 6 committee has been exposed by the efforts to cherry-pick information in order to reach partisan conclusions while hiding the real truth from the public.
“I don't think it's properly constituted,” Johnson said.
“I don't think it was administered correctly,” he added. “And now we know that apparently some of the evidence was hidden and some of it maybe even destroyed. So you'll see, you'll be hearing a lot more in the coming days.”
He pointed out that the Judicial Committee of the Chamberwho had led the effort to bring the contempt charge against Garland, was not only a bulwark of legitimacy, but the investigation led by the President Jim JordanR-Ohio, had been painstakingly thorough and extremely careful to avoid predictable allegations that it was nothing more than a political witch hunt.
“You talk about apples to oranges, there couldn't be a clearer contrast between that and what we're talking about here,” Johnson said.
Adapted from an Associated Press report
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