(WASHINGTON) — For the first time since his appointment of two special counsels to oversee investigations into both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland testified before lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday for an annual oversight hearing.
The attorney general began his testimony by telling the committee that the department’s employees face “complex threats to our national security.”
“Every day, the 115,000 employees of the Justice Department work tirelessly to fulfill our mission: to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights,” he said.
Garland, who is famously tight-lipped in terms of discussing any aspects of ongoing criminal investigations before his department, was pressed on a wide-ranging number of topics and was expected to be questioned about investigators’ actions in the Trump and Biden cases, the new revelations of classified materials found in former Vice President Pence’s home.
Garland on Wednesday declined to engage when asked about the ongoing criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, citing the ongoing work by the U.S. Attorney David Weiss in Delaware.
“I have pledged not to interfere with that investigation and I have carried through with my pledge,” he said.
Garland made clear that Weiss has been told he has “full authority” to make any charging decisions stemming from the investigation, even if that would involve bringing a case in a district outside of Delaware. He also said that he has pledged any resources necessary to Weiss to be able to conduct his investigation and has received no reports thus far of his investigation being stymied in any way by personnel at Main Justice.
The attorney general grew emotional as he discussed fentanyl deaths as he was pressed by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee chairman, about the scourge of fentanyl and how the DOJ can counter the widespread sale of laced pills to young people.
“The cartels that are creating these pills and that are distributing them within the United States are the most horrid individuals you can imagine,” Garland said.
Several Republican senators, including Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, pressed Garland on the protests that occurred outside the homes of Supreme Court justices following the decision to overrule Roe v. Wade.
Garland revealed he mobilized more than 70 U.S. Marshals to provide around-the-clock protection to the justices due to concerns about their safety.
“I ordered the Marshals to do something that the United States Marshals had never in history done before,” Garland said, “which was to protect the justices’ homes, residences and lives 24/7. No attorney general had ever ordered that before.”
Other topics Garland could be pressed on — the department’s formal position regarding when prosecutors should recommend the death penalty for certain federal offenders, the recent arrest of former FBI special agent Charles McGonigal in New York over his ties to a Russian oligarch, DOJ’s civil rights investigations into alleged incidents of police brutality, and how DOJ is responding to various threats from abroad.
His appearance also comes as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox host Tucker Carlson unfettered access to thousands of hours of video from the Capitol during the Jan. 6 assault on Congress, despite warnings in the past from prosecutors that widespread release of such video could potentially compromise the safety of lawmakers. McCarthy on Tuesday defended giving the footage to Carlson and said other networks and the American public would get access to the video as “soon as possible” but did not commit to a timeline.
Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.