Washington
CNN
—
Attorney General Merrick Garland appeared defiant on Tuesday as he took questions from lawmakers on a range of topics, at times sparring with House Republicans who sought to use his testimony to attack the Justice Department.
During a roughly five-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Garland defended the Justice Department’s operations and role in several high-profile criminal cases, including those against former President Donald Trump and Hunter Biden.
Garland’s testimony came as Republicans argue the Justice Department is being used as a weapon against conservatives and just weeks after the Republican-led House Judiciary and Oversight committees voted to move forward with contempt of court proceedings against the attorney general for refusing to turn over audio recordings of meetings between President Joe Biden and special counsel Robert Hur.
“I view the contempt action as a serious matter,” Garland said at one point Tuesday, “but I am not going to jeopardize the ability of our prosecutors and investigators to do their jobs effectively in any future investigation.”
Here are five takeaways from Tuesday’s hearing:
Garland spent much of his opening remarks making clear that he was unfazed by the “unprecedented” attacks on the department in recent months.
“These repeated attacks on the Department of Justice are unprecedented and baseless,” he told lawmakers. “I will not be intimidated, and neither will the Department of Justice. We will continue to do our job free from political influence, and we will never back down from protecting our democracy.”
“Nothing will stop me from fulfilling my duty to uphold the rule of law,” he said, “and that duty includes ensuring that the Department of Justice respects Congress’s important role in our democracy.”
Garland said the Justice Department would not provide the audio recordings sought by Republican lawmakers, but that it had “made extraordinary efforts to ensure that the committees were able to respond to their legitimate requests for information,” including by providing a transcript of the interview with Biden.
The Justice Department argues that its specific privacy concerns about audio recordings of interviews are different from those about written records, and that release of such audio files could discourage witnesses from cooperating in future criminal investigations.
CNN has filed suit seeking access to recordings of interviews with Biden by federal agents in a now-closed investigation into his handling of classified documents.
Trump’s conviction last week in the New York hush-payment case was a major talking point at Tuesday’s hearing, with lawmakers repeatedly bringing it up and Garland emphasizing that the Justice Department is “totally independent” from the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
House Republicans continue to allege without evidence that Biden used the Justice Department to attack Trump, including in a lawsuit in New York.
“The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has jurisdiction over matters involving New York state law and is completely independent from the Department of Justice, which has jurisdiction over matters involving federal law,” Garland said.
“We do not control the Manhattan District Attorney,” he continued. “The Manhattan District Attorney does not report to us. The Manhattan District Attorney makes its own decisions about cases it wants to bring under state law.”
A New York jury convicted Trump last week of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment scheme that he helped set up before the 2016 presidential election.
During a particularly tense exchange on Tuesday, committee Chairman Jim Jordan pressed Garland about his selection of Jack Smith as special counsel in the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump, which ultimately led Smith to file two criminal charges against the former president in Washington, D.C., and Florida.
“I appointed someone who was not a political appointee, someone who was independent, nonpartisan, with a background as a prosecutor. To me, that seemed like the perfect background,” Garland said in an exasperated exchange with Jordan.
“Did he ask for this job?” the Ohio Republican once asked. “This is not a job. I don’t think anybody asked for it,” Garland replied with a laugh.
Jordan then asked Garland if he regretted choosing Smith.
“No, I don’t regret choosing him,” Garland retorted.
As the hearings continued on Capitol Hill, jurors in Hunter Biden’s firearms trial in Delaware listened to opening statements in the case, and in what may have been a split-screen moment, some lawmakers used the time to talk about the president’s son and his legal woes.
When Republican Rep. Ben Klein asked Garland if he had spoken to the president’s son at a state dinner at the White House in May, Garland replied, “To my knowledge, I have never spoken to Hunter Biden in my life.”
Garland also denied various accusations Klain made about the Justice Department’s handling of the case against the president’s son, insisting he could not discuss ongoing litigation.
Asked if he tried to obstruct the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, Garland said, “Absolutely not.”
Democrats, meanwhile, spent much of their time praising the Justice Department and defending its actions amid attacks on the department by their Republican colleagues.
As House Republicans repeatedly accused the Justice Department of unfairly targeting Trump’s allies, Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu listed the names of people close to Trump who were indicted under the previous Republican administration.
These individuals include Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, former lawyer Michael Cohen, former adviser Roger Stone and fundraiser Elliott Broidy, all of whom were indicted under an attorney general appointed by Trump himself.
“It’s not the Department of Justice’s fault that Donald Trump is surrounded by criminals,” Liu said. “It’s what he brought upon himself.”
Lieu also noted that President Biden’s son, Hunter, is currently being prosecuted in federal court by Justice Garland’s Department of Justice.
