(USNewsMag.com) – Attorney General Merrick Garland responded to the recent guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump in New York by accusing his Republican supporters of spreading unfounded conspiracy theories that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was somehow involved in that conviction.
On Monday, June 3rd, Garland spoke at a House Judiciary Committee hearing during which he claimed to have endured listening to a “long line of attacks” against the DOJ, including threats from Congress members to cut its funding due to the guilty verdict against Trump by a Manhattan jury.
Garland said the idea that a state trial jury verdict “brought by a local district attorney” could be “controlled” by the DOJ is a false claim that amounts to a “conspiracy theory.” He added that such conspiracy theories attack “the judicial process itself.”
Trump was convicted on Thursday, May 30th, by a Manhattan jury on all counts for falsifying business documents in an attempt to hide hush money payments to cover up alleged affairs and other misadventures leading up to the 2016 presidential election. His lawyers have promised to appeal the verdict.
Trump himself dismissed the entire trial as a “scam” and continues to accuse Judge Juan Merchan of bias, for which Trump’s team attempted to have Merchan recuse himself. The former president has also consistently maintained that all of the legal attacks on him are part of a larger effort by the Democratic Party and the federal justice system to keep him from returning to office. In a Fox News interview a few days after the verdict, he told the anchors that his “revenge” would be his “success” in the polls in November.
Although most of the GOP are rallying behind him, not all Republicans are on board with his narrative, of course. John Bolton, for example, who served as national security adviser during the Trump administration, said a week before the verdict that questioning the “integrity of our entire legal system” was “dangerous.”
Trump’s sentencing hearing will be held on July 11th, just a few days before the Republican National Convention where he’s expected to be officially declared the GOP nominee.
Copyright 2024, USNewsMag.com
