The NPR Politics Podcast - Exclusive: Attorney General Merrick Garland

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

The head of the Justice Department said that he is committed to unraveling the conspiracy behind the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, and reiterated that political considerations are no reason to overlook possible criminality. Garland is also clear-eyed about the limits on the department's ability to protect Americans' right to vote in the face of restrictive new laws passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures. Democrats in Congress repeatedly failed to pass federal voting rights legislation and the Supreme Court struck down much of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Allie Blackburn from Heber City, Utah, where me and my family have just become licensed and approved as a foster home. This podcast was recorded at 1137 AM on Thursday, March 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we'll still be anxiously awaiting our first foster placement. Okay, here's the show. Oh, I love that. That's so kind. Yeah, it's the show. right now, including the ongoing investigation and prosecution of the January 6th rioters. You had a chance to sit down and talk with Attorney General Merrick Garland just yesterday.

So what did he tell you about where the department is in their work? Yeah, he takes this investigation extremely seriously. He talked about how many resources the DOJ has been throwing at all of these cases and how many there are? I would say that this is the most urgent investigation in the history of the Justice Department. It is the most resource intensive. We've issued thousands of subpoenas, seized and examined thousands of electronic devices, examined terabytes of data, thousands of hours of videos. People are working every day, 24-7, and are fully aware of how important this is. This had to do with the interference with the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another, and it doesn't get more important than that. Good reminder of the resources being put at this. I mean, Carrie, can you give a status update

on where they are with prosecutions? There's also been some major developments in this in the last week or so. Yeah, major developments. This was an extraordinary week or 10 days. Earlier this week, a trial I covered with our colleague Tom Dreisbach in the federal district court here in Washington, D.C., the first person charged in connection with January 6th, the former oil worker from Texas named Guy Reffitt was convicted on all charges, including obstruction and weapons offenses. His own son testified against him at the trial. And just during this whole time that the trial was going on, the Justice Department added Enrique Henry Tarrio, the leader of the far-right group known as the Proud Boys, to a conspiracy indictment. Tarrio, remember, wasn't at the Capitol on January 6th,

but prosecutors say he was involved in planning and directing people. And that's going to be a big development moving forward. One thing we're also taking a close look at is that just in the last week or so, the DOJ got its first guilty plea to the very serious charge of seditious conspiracy. That person who's pleading guilty, a man from Alabama, is charged alongside Stuart Rhodes, who's the leader of the far right militia, the Oath Keeper. So the DOJ is moving on some of this. I mean, they are looking at hundreds of prosecutions of regular citizens. But the biggest question in this investigation is, what are they going to do about potential criminal activity against the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, and his advisors,

who are all potentially implicated in some kind of behavior around the January 6th attack? And that's a very politically tricky question for any attorney general. There's never been a prosecution of a former president. What did he tell you about it? This is an enormously politically fraught question. You know, we've heard from so many people, former prosecutors, current members of Congress, some of Merrick Garland's own close friends who have been arguing that the DOJ is moving too slowly on some of these January 6th cases. And they're worried that the Justice Department will be wary of the firestorm that would result if DOJ ever confirmed

it were investigating Trump or some of his top aides. So I asked the Attorney General, you know, how high up on the chain he might go and how he viewed these questions. He answered pretty carefully. We are not avoiding cases that are political or cases that are controversial or sensitive. What we are avoiding is making decisions on a political basis, on a partisan basis. These are both two halves of the requirements of the rule of law, that we don't avoid matters that are controversial. We can't. Part of the rule of law is like cases are treated alike. It doesn't matter whether it's the powerful or the powerless. And at the same time, the rule of law requires that non-merit issues,

partisan influences, we have to be sure they do not influence our decision-making. So it's not any idea of avoiding political cases. That would be impossible. In the United States, it's avoiding political decision-making. You know, to hear him talk there, there's a lot of judicial precision in his words, a lot of lawyerly language in those words. But what I heard him say, deep down was that they're not afraid of making righteous criminal cases against people who happen to be involved in politics. And that the fact that those people happen to be

involved in politics is something they're not going to consider. They're going to look at the facts and the law, and you're not going to get this attorney general to say who he's investigating and who he's not investigating. That is the way he's going to answer a question like that. And I think it's quite significant. There is frustration, certainly on the Hill, about the slow-moving nature of this. I talked to Benny Thompson just this week, who is the chair of the special committee investigating the January 6th attack. And he said he was very measured, also very measured in his tone. He said he understands there's a firewall, like DOJ doesn't tell Congress what they're doing. But he did say he has been hearing a lot from lawmakers inquiring about why is this moving so slowly. And he also referenced

not just about the president, but around the people around him, specifically his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who Congress has already sent to DOJ for a possible criminal referral for refusing to participate with the investigation. So Garland is certainly under a lot of political pressure to not seem political, but to also maybe give some clarity on whether there is actually going to be any pursuit of these investigations. Yeah, you know, he's a complicated guy, and he operates at his own pace, which is methodical, sometimes too methodical for some people's liking. But he usually gets where he

intends to go. He just takes time. The question for a lot of Democrats, especially as we near the midterms and beyond, is if there is a case to be made against people in the inner circle of the Trump White House and perhaps the president himself, how long is it going to take to get there? And is it going to run into the election calendar? And we don't have the answer to that question now. What the Attorney General told me yesterday is that they're building these cases from the ground up. They started with the men and women, mostly men, who stormed the Capitol and beat up cops and engaged in all kinds of other conduct.

They've now charged the leader of the Oath Keepers and the leader of the Proud Boys. And I imagine that they're now looking at who those men were in contact with. And the answers to those questions could be fruitful for moving up the chain. All right, let's take a quick break. And we'll talk more about your interview with Garland when we get back. And we're back. And Carrie, you also spoke to Garland about voting rights and racial justice. These have been big priorities for the Democratic Party, big priorities for President Biden, even though I'd note that they haven't been able to get any of their voting rights legislation through Congress.

And the Supreme Court in recent years has weakened the Voting Rights Act, which the DOJ had relied on in the past to protect voters' rights. So where did Garland tell you he sees the department's role in this issue in light of those realities? Yeah, he's fully aware of these realities. Remember, this is a man who was nominated to sit on the Supreme Court by President Obama, and he never got a hearing. In fact, he never got a meeting with a Republican. Oh, I remember. Right? And so he's analyzed these laws, and he knows what they say. And he happens to think he told me in a polite way that the Supreme Court majority has been wrong, dead wrong. First, dead wrong several years ago when it restricted the part of the Voting Rights Act that allowed the Justice Department to pre-approve changes in places with a history of discrimination, and then wrong again more recently in a case out of Arizona that restricted further the Justice Department's ability to sue under another part

of the law. Here's what he said. The Justice Department was founded in the wake of the Civil War during the Reconstruction for the principal purpose of protecting black Americans whose civil rights, and particularly the right to vote, was being materially interfered with by terrorist acts and threats of violence. That's our job. That's in the DNA of the Justice Department. And after the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department was particularly given tools which it could use to protect the right to vote. You are right that the Supreme Court has taken away some of our tools. So we have problems in both of those areas. That has not prevented us from bringing cases against states that have instituted practices and procedures. It has not prevented us from

bringing cases against redistricting maps that were discriminatory, both at the state and at the county level. And we will continue to do that. And we will make those decisions based on our best reading of the law and the facts. What I hear there, though, Carrie, is that like, there's only so much DOJ can do right now, if Congress doesn't get its act together and actually pass laws to that effect. I think that's exactly right. So DOJ does have ongoing litigation in Texas and Georgia on some of these issues. But it's very hard for the Justice Department to keep track of all of the voting and election changes in a lot of states around the country. And usually by the time they find out and they sue, the horse is out of the barn.

All right. Before we wrap up, Carrie, I also want to ask you about some of the reporting you did about the issue of compassionate release and your conversation with Garland about it. But can you first explain what that reporting was about? Sure. A few weeks ago, we reported at NPR that federal prosecutors in at least six jurisdictions around the country seem to be limiting people's rights to seek compassionate release as part of federal plea agreements. Now, compassionate release is reserved for people in prison who have, you know, very, very serious health issues or some kind of other extraordinary circumstance.

And this program allows them to petition the Bureau of Prisons and then a judge to see if they can be let out early to take care of those problems or maybe, sadly, to it's hard for people to know five, 10 years down the road if they're going to get sick or their wife is going to get sick and their kids are going to be left with no parents at home. And so that seemed to be a particularly cruel practice and also to violate the intent of the First Step Act that Congress passed back in 2018. And Garland told you he actually had no idea about this until he heard your report. That sounded wrong. And we immediately, after I read your piece, started investigating that. And I can tell you that very soon we will be issuing new policies to prevent those kind of across-the-board requirements that defendants waive their rights to seek compassionate release. So to that I say, thank you, Mr. Attorney General,

for listening to NPR. All right, well, then let's leave it there for today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Carrie Johnson, national justice correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.