WASHINGTON (AP) - When the Justice Department was saying the highest-profile prosecution in its historical past in Washington, Attorney General Merrick Garland was 100 miles away, assembly with native police in Philadelphia.

He stepped outdoors briefly to discuss how the choice to indict Donald Trump for conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election got here from profession prosecutors and was led by a particular counsel dedicated to “accountability and independence.”

In different phrases, this wasn’t about politics.

Try as Garland would possibly, although, there isn't any escaping the politics of the second when the Justice Department of a president who's operating for reelection is indicting his chief political rival, the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

And although he has distanced himself from the investigation since he appointed particular counsel Jack Smith 10 months in the past, Garland has the final phrase on issues associated to the prosecution of Trump so long as he's the lawyer basic.

The Justice Department is dealing with its greatest take a look at in historical past - navigating unprecedented situations in American democracy whereas attempting to struggle again towards relentless assaults by itself credibility and that of the U.S. election system. The success or failure of the case has the potential to have an effect on the standing of the division for years to come back.

“In grand terms this is a really huge historic moment for the Department of Justice,” mentioned Wendy Weiser, vice chairman for the Democracy Program on the Brennan Center for Justice.

President Joe Biden has sought to distance himself from the Justice Department to keep away from any look of meddling when the company is just not solely probing Trump, but in addition the president’s son Hunter. But it’s going to get more difficult for Biden, too. Anything he says concerning the Jan. 6, 2021, rebellion on the Capitol any longer may complicate issues for prosecutors. And any trial is prone to happen towards the backdrop of the 2024 presidential election.

The newest indictment is the third legal case filed towards Trump this 12 months, however the first to attempt to maintain him criminally liable for his efforts to cling to energy within the weeks between his election loss and the Capitol assault that surprised the world. He pleaded not responsible on Thursday earlier than a federal Justice of the Peace choose and was ordered not to discuss the case with any potential witnesses.

Trump has mentioned he did nothing fallacious and has accused Smith of attempting to thwart his probabilities of returning to the White House in 2024. Trump and different Republicans have railed towards the investigation and the Justice Department generally, claiming a two-tiered system of justice that vilifies Trump and goes simple on Biden’s son, who was accused of tax crimes after a yearslong probe.

“Another dark day in America as Joe Biden continues to weaponize his corrupt Department of Justice against his leading political opponent Donald J. Trump,” mentioned U.S. Rep Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.

Trump’s personal Justice Department was topic to complaints of politicization, drawing heavy criticism because the federal probe of Russia’s 2016 election interference thrust prosecutors heart stage and dragged out scandals that Trump seized on as proof of a “deep state” working towards him.

The launch of the Russia report by particular counsel Robert Mueller was coloured by politics, with then-Attorney General William Barr issuing a four-page memo forward of the report that was broadly criticized as spinning the investigation’s findings in favor of Trump. Mueller’s precise report - two volumes and 448 pages - was way more nuanced and specified by half how Trump directed others to affect or curtail the Russia investigation after the particular counsel’s appointment in May 2017.

On Nov. 9, 2020, as Trump started to recommend with no proof there is likely to be widespread voter fraud, Barr issued a directive pushing prosecutors to research any suspected situations. But by the waning days of the Trump administration Barr had turned towards Trump, telling The Associated Press earlier than he advised the president that there had been no widespread election fraud.

Garland, a longtime federal appeals courtroom choose who had been Barack Obama’s selection for the U.S. Supreme Court however by no means received a listening to, was chosen by President Biden to be a stabilizing drive. He promised to return the Justice Department to “normal,” restoring its fame for political independence and making certain equal justice.

Throughout his profession, Garland has been steeped in Justice Department procedures and norms, and as a choose his choices had been thorough however “judicially modest,” mentioned Jamie Gorelick, a lawyer who served as deputy lawyer basic within the Nineties and has been a Garland colleague and buddy for many years.

“His view was, you do what you need to thoroughly and well and you don’t reach, you don’t do more than you have to do,” she mentioned.

While Garland hasn’t been straight concerned with the Trump case since naming Smith as particular counsel, the indictment handed down Tuesday displays the same method, she mentioned. “It doesn’t rely on crazy new theories. It does not try to do more when less would be more effective,” she mentioned.

Indeed, the indictment lined a lot of identical floor that performed out on reside TV, or was unearthed within the House investigation into the Jan. 6 rebellion, the place violent protesters beat and bloodied cops, smashed via home windows and occupied the Capitol for hours.

If Smith loses the case, the Justice Department may lose credibility, significantly because the barrage of Republican assaults towards the division grows. If prosecutors win, a former president may see time behind bars. If Trump is reelected, he may undo the fees and has mentioned he plans to “completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI,” half of a bigger effort by Trump to push extra energy towards the presidency.

“There are pieces now in play that the Justice Department is going to continue to take on for years to come,” mentioned Robert Sanders, a senior lecturer of nationwide safety on the University of New Haven. “The next 12 months are going to be a critical stage in the history of this nation.”

Against that fraught backdrop, the broader work of the division goes on.

On the identical day Trump was arraigned in Washington, federal prosecutors introduced responsible pleas in a racist assault on two Black males who had been brutalized throughout a house raid in Mississippi. And U.S. officers additionally introduced the arrest of two U.S. Navy troopers for spying for China in California.

Garland, throughout his Philadelphia go to, went nearly instantly again to the neighborhood occasion he’d gone there to look at, chatting with cops outdoors, as reporters shouted questions concerning the unprecedented indictment. But Garland wouldn’t chunk.

“I appointed Jack Smith special council to take on the ongoing investigation in order to underline the department’s commitment to accountability and independence,” he mentioned. “Any questions about this matter will have to be answered by the filings made in the courtroom.”

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Associated Press writers Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia and Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.

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