The Biden administration’s Department of Justice “want to do bad things,” former president Trump insists, “but in particular bad things to me.” The DOJ, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) agrees, has been “completely weaponized to attack [the Democrats’] political opponents … This is Trump derangement syndrome, but this time with a gun and badge.”
With Republican control of the House of Representatives, Speakers Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) warned Attorney General Merrick Garland to “preserve your documents and clear your calendar.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted in all caps that she wants to “IMPEACH MERRICK GARLAND!”
And this month, House Republicans established a select subcommittee with broad power to oversee “ongoing criminal investigations” designed to highlight what Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) calls a “two-tiered system of justice,” in which FBI agents raid Mar-a-Lago to recover government documents but not the home or office of President Biden.
Republican charges of weaponization, however, constitute a textbook case of what psychologists call “projection”: displacing one’s own unacceptable motivation to another person or persons.
The Department of Justice, it seems clear, was obliged to investigate potential crimes arising out of attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and Trump’s failure to return government documents he removed from the White House. In 2022, Judge David Carter ruled that John Eastman, one of Trump’s lawyers, could not invoke executive privilege because Trump had likely committed felonies in obstructing Congress and Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Bill Barr, Trump’s Attorney General, maintained there probably was a legitimate basis for the DOJ to indict the former president, if he was “consciously involved in misleading the department, misleading the government, and playing games after he had received the subpoena for the [classified] documents.”
Thus far, in fulfillment of Garland’s pledge to bring justice, “without fear or favor” to everyone who is “criminally responsible for interfering with the peaceful transfer of power … the fundamental element of democracy,” the DOJ has charged 978 people connected to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6, 2021; 465 have pled guilty to various crimes, including obstruction of a Congressional proceeding, trespass, property damage, and assaulting police officers. Stewart Rhodes — the founder of the Oath Keepers who told his followers, “We are not getting through this without a civil war,” — was convicted of seditious conspiracy in November 2022. Trials of members of The Proud Boys, another violent militia group, are scheduled to begin soon.
In our polarized political climate, Garland has tried to avoid appearing to make — or actually making — decisions based on partisan considerations. The DOJ indicted and convicted Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress. Despite recommendations by the Jan. 6 Committee, however, the DOJ did not charge former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows or Social Media Director Dan Scavino with the same crime.
Soon after the National Archives informed the FBI that government documents had been found at President Biden’s home and private office, Garland asked John R. Lausch, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Chicago, to conduct a preliminary investigation. When Lausch recommended a Special Counsel, Garland selected Robert Hur — who worked in the Trump administration’s Deputy Attorney General’s Office in 2017 and 2018, and then as U.S. Attorney for Maryland — to examine “possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents and other records” by Biden.
Republicans, it is worth noting, are no strangers to weaponizing political institutions. Indeed, Merrick Garland has been one of their most prominent victims. In March 2016, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused to schedule hearings, let alone a vote, on President Obama’s nomination of Garland, the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who had been praised by several Republicans, including Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), to replace the recently deceased Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. With a presidential election less than a year away, McConnell insisted that Scalia’s successor should, in essence, be chosen by the voters. Four years later, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, McConnell did an about face and orchestrated a lightning-fast Senate consideration and confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump had nominated on Sept. 26, 2020.
President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey because Comey refused to pledge personal loyalty to him or publicly declare that Trump was not a target of the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Trump urged the FBI to investigate more than two dozen of his critics, including several Democratic members of Congress. He complained when the DOJ filed charges against two GOP congressmen shortly before the 2018 midterm elections. In 2020, Trump pushed the DOJ to prosecute Hunter Biden. After his defeat in November, Trump pressured Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to participate in his scheme to discredit the results of the election.
In January 2023, the House of Representatives announced it will investigate a “coordinated effort” by the DOJ to “go after parents,” whom FBI agents allegedly deemed domestic terrorists, following threats against school board members, teachers, and other employees.
And — no surprise — the House Oversight Committee will investigate the business dealings and alleged influence peddling of Hunter Biden and the finances of James Biden, the president’s brother.
Expert practitioners of “whataboutism,” MAGA Republicans will surely claim that turnabout is fair play. Even though it isn’t — and despite strong evidence that they own the patent on partisan weaponizing.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”