Garland set to face House Judiciary amid myriad investigations

Attorney General Merrick Garland is set to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, as lawmakers gear up to touch on a number of matters House Republicans are probing as part of their impeachment inquiry.

Garland’s appearance, his first before the panel since the GOP took control of the House in January, comes as the Judiciary has become part of a trio of committees leading investigations into the president and his son.

Garland is likely to face numerous questions about the sprawling probe as well as other developments the GOP sees as part of the “weaponization” of the Justice Department.

An excerpt of Garland’s opening remarks shows he plans to push back on claims from some corners of Congress that his office makes any decisions based on political motivations.

“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 the prepared remarks.

“As the President himself has said, and I reaffirm here today: I am not the President’s lawyer.  I will also add that I am not Congress’s prosecutor.”

The ongoing probe into Hunter Biden

Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) made clear he has a number of questions for the Justice Department, firing off a letter to Garland on Monday with one of his most expansive requests yet. It stems from claims made by two IRS whistleblowers who approached the House Ways and Means Committee to complain that the investigation into Hunter Biden had been slow-walked.

Their testimony — released just days after news that Hunter Biden was slated to sign a plea agreement on two tax charges — has been key to a GOP claim that he received a “sweetheart deal” due to his status as the president’s son.

The plea deal in the matter has since evaporated, but the GOP has been fixated on the broader handling of the case and why prosecutors didn’t treat the matter more aggressively.

According to IRS agent Gary Shapley, prosecutors found stronger evidence of tax crimes in other jurisdictions, expressing frustration those matters were not pursued as the statute of limitations was approaching.

He also criticized communication prosecutors had with the Secret Service headquarters ahead of their plans to speak with Biden — something an FBI agent working the case, Thomas Sobocinski, said was necessary to avoid confusion among two sets of armed agents.

Shapley has stopped short of saying prosecutors had political bias in the case, but that’s becoming a rallying cry for the GOP, which argues the case is a sharp contrast with how former President Trump has been treated.

Hunter Biden’s plea deal, however, has since fallen apart, and special counsel David Weiss has charged him with three counts related to failure to disclose drug use when buying a weapon. It’s unclear if further tax charges will be filed.

Garland previously told lawmakers he left oversight of the probe in the hands of Weiss, appointed by Trump to serve as U.S. attorney in Delaware, to avoid interference in an ongoing matter. Still, Republicans have sought to hold Garland and the Justice Department in general responsible for the investigation.

Weiss’s status as special counsel

More central to Garland is testimony from Shapley that Weiss sought and was denied special counsel status, alleging the prosecutor told his team that in an Oct. 7 meeting.

Since that issue was raised, Weiss did seek and was granted the status in August, shortly after Hunter Biden’s plea deal dissolved.

But the lead up to that moment spurred a back-and-forth over whether Weiss even sought the status — a claim both he and Garland deny.

The GOP has tried to cast this as a he said, he said issue, arguing that if Shapley’s testimony is true, Garland misled Congress.

“The United States Attorney had been advised that he has full authority to make those referrals you’re talking about or to bring cases in other districts if he needs to do that,” Garland said in a March appearance before lawmakers.

“He has been advised that he should get anything he needs. I have not heard anything from that office that suggests they are not able to do anything that the U.S. Attorney wants them to do.” 

In recent weeks, more investigators involved in the probe have countered Shapley’s recollection, saying they never heard Weiss say he had been blocked from being elevated to a special counsel and that their understanding was that he had total control of the investigation.

Sobocinski, who leads the Baltimore FBI field office, told House Judiciary investigators that he would remember such a comment from Weiss, as it would be “a total 180 from all our previous conversations about authorities.”

“My memory of this is that it was a process or a bureaucracy thing he moves through, not a permission or authority issue,” Sobocinski said.

“Approval means, to me, that’s more like, ‘Hey, I can say no.’  I never thought that anybody was there above David Weiss to say no,” he added. 

‘Targeting’ of conservatives 

The GOP has a set of favored memos it argues shows the department has a bias toward converservatives, pointing to a 2021 directive dealing with threats against school board members and a swiftly withdrawn FBI memo from one field office on extremism within some branches of Catholicism as evidence of improper targeting.

The school board memo was drafted during an uptick in threats against school board officials at the height of the pandemic. Garland’s memo asked law enforcement to coordinate about the threats — noting that protected speech “does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.” 

But the GOP fixation on the memo centers on the request that spurred it, a letter from the National School Boards Association noting that some of the “heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism.” Amid public backlash, the group apologized for the letter.

There is no domestic terror law in U.S. statute, but the GOP has nonetheless argued that the memo allows the Justice Department (DOJ) to label parents as domestic terrorists. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly called on the DOJ to withdraw the memo.

The memo that Republicans argue shows an anti-Catholic bias was one from the FBI that detailed growing overlap between white nationalist groups and “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics,” which it identifies as a small minority within the church. 

FBI Director Christopher Wray agreed with Republicans that it was inappropriate, saying the bureau does not conduct investigations “based on religious affiliation or practices, full stop.”

“When I first learned of the piece, I was aghast, and we took steps immediately to withdraw it and remove it from FBI systems,” Wray said in a March congressional appearance.

“I will note it was a product by one field office, which, of course, we have scores and scores of these products. And when we found out about it, we took action.” 

GOP lawmakers are also likely to ask about Biden administration communications with social media companies, pointing to a lawsuit by GOP-led states challenging outreach made about COVID-19 and election interference.

An appeals court panel earlier this month found the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to moderate specific content, ruling that federal agencies cannot “coerce” social media platforms to take down posts the government doesn’t like. 

The suit has bolstered the GOP, which argues the administration was trying to censor conservatives.

It was a big loss for the Biden administration, but the appeals court dramatically scaled back a lower court injunction barring certain agencies from contacting social media companies, emphasizing the “limited reach” of its order and sharply narrowing the list of agencies that could not reach out to social media companies to just the White House, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and surgeon general’s office, and the FBI.