Attorney General Merrick Garland took aim on Wednesday at Republicans who routinely bash the Justice Department, defending the independence of his agency in his first appearance before the House Judiciary Committee since the Republican takeover of the chamber. Garland alluded to the increasing friction between the Justice Department and Republicans who have requested information on ongoing investigations, including those into former President Trump and Hunter Biden. “Our job is not to do what is politically convenient. Our job is not to take orders from the President, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate,” he said in prepared remarks, The Hill reports. He added, "I am not the president’s lawyer ... I am not Congress’s prosecutor.”
Garland addressed a series of bruising remarks leveled at his department. He said DOJ “will not be intimated” amid rising threats to employees and outside pressure. The Judiciary Committee is one of three panels in an impeachment inquiry of President Biden and is also home to a subcommittee dedicated to probing the “weaponization” of the federal government. House Judiciary members have echoed Trump, saying the Justice Department is promoting a “two-tiered system of Justice” by prosecuting the former president. “Our job is to uphold the rule of law. That means that we apply the same laws to everyone,” Garland said. "There is not one set of laws for the powerful and another for the powerless; one for the rich, another for the poor; one for Democrats, another for Republicans; or different rules, depending upon one’s race or ethnicity or religion.”