"On a Friday evening in October, 2021, the Justice Department launched into damage-control mode. The Attorney General, Merrick Garland, the Deputy Attorney General, Lisa Monaco, and other senior officials gathered on an emergency conference call to decide how to deal with what they considered out-of-line remarks from President Joe Biden. Steve Bannon, the former adviser to Donald Trump, had defied a subpoena from the House select committee investigating January 6th."
"As Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis report in their new book, "Injustice," those three words so alarmed Garland and his team that they felt compelled to issue a statement effectively rebuking their boss. Just fifty-one minutes after Biden's comments, the department's chief spokesman, Anthony Coley, released this deliberately tart comment: "The Department of Justice will make its own independent decisions in all prosecutions based solely on the facts and the law. Period. Full stop.""
"Compare this with the reaction of another Department of Justice, on another fall Friday, four years later, to a Presidential directive that was far more pointed. "Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's involve"
Senior Justice Department officials convened an emergency call after President Joe Biden said those who ignored subpoenas should face contempt charges. Steve Bannon had defied a House January 6th subpoena and committee members considered referring him for prosecution. The DOJ spokesman issued a terse statement asserting that the Department would make independent prosecutorial decisions based solely on facts and law. The department's swift public rebuke reflected concern about presidential commentary affecting prosecutions. A different presidential intervention years earlier involved a direct public request to A.G. Pam Bondi and the FBI to investigate Jeffrey Epstein, eliciting a contrasting DOJ response.
#department-of-justice #doj-independence #presidential-influence-on-prosecutions #january-6-investigation
Read at The New Yorker
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