Attorney General Merrick Garland stressed his unhappiness with the Florida-based judge who said his appointment of a special counsel to prosecute Donald Trump was illegal, saying he wouldn’t make a “basic mistake about the law.”
In an interview with NBC News, Garland was asked about Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling this month that threw out the indictment charging the former president with mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The attorney general, a former federal judge and a Supreme Court nominee blocked by the Senate, didn’t hold back as he spoke from a Justice Department library.
“Look as you well know, I picked this room for this interview,” Garland said in response to a question about Cannon’s ruling. “This is my favorite room in the Justice Department. It’s a law library. For more than 20 years I was a federal judge. Do I look like somebody who would make that basic mistake about the law? I don’t think so.”
Garland added: “Our position is that it’s constitutional and valid. That’s why we appealed.”
The Justice Department is appealing the ruling to the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in hopes of allowing special counsel Jack Smith to resume his case in Florida. It’s unclear if Cannon’s ruling will impact the charges against Trump related to January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC.
Garland said he followed the same process in appointing Smith as was previously done when John Durham and Robert Mueller were appointed as special counsels during the Trump administration.
“’Til now, every single court, including the Supreme Court, that has considered the legality of special counsel appointment has upheld it,” Garland said.
Iranian threats
Garland also warned in the interview published Tuesday of threats against US government officials from Iran, saying, “I don’t think we’ve seen the end of Iranian plotting.”
He told NBC that “our intelligence community has made clear that we believe that the Iranians are attempting to kill or injure former high government officials.”
“This is an ongoing issue,” he said. “We have ongoing investigations.”
The attorney general also said it was “extremely alarming” that a would-be assassin was able to get so close to Trump.
“Democracy will not survive if people decide that the way in which they’re going to get whatever outcomes they want, or whatever other motive he may have, is by killing someone,” he said. “That’s why we have to find out what happened here, why it happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
