Attorney General Merrick Garland told NBC News on Tuesday that he was outraged by the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, saying that authorities must do everything they can to ensure that type of "horrific attack" never happens again.
"This should not happen in America. This kind of security failure is not acceptable," Garland said in an exclusive sit-down interview that will air on "NBC Nightly News" on Tuesday evening. "This kind of a horrific attack on a former American president just can’t continue. We have to be sure we stop this."
Garland said Trump was hit by a bullet, and there was "no question" that Trump was "the object of an assassination attempt," even if authorities were still trying to determine the motive. Garland said that it was "extremely alarming" that the shooter was able to get so close to the former president.
"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," Garland said. "That’s why we have to find out what happened here, why it happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again."
With less than 100 days until the 2024 presidential election, Garland also warned that political violence poses a major threat in America's "more polarized society," pointing to a "quite scary" increase in threats.
“Political violence goes against the core of what makes this country different from most other countries. We're a democracy, people make their views known vociferously, but in the end, they resolve matters by voting, by having their representatives vote and then accepting the results,” Garland said.
Garland also warned about threats to law enforcement, saying that when people "call out" the names of individual career prosectors and FBI special agents, they increase the risk posed to those individuals.
“I think that the personification of these matters, the calling out of individual names and identification of the names of career people who are just doing their jobs, that does put people at risk,” Garland said.
With Trump already once again sowing doubt about the outcome of the election in November, Garland also warned that "democracy won’t survive" if election losers deny the outcome.
"This is a democracy, and in a democracy, people, as I said, argue with each other vociferously, yell at each other, disagree with each other and then vote. And that is how we resolve matters," Garland said. "There will always be a winner and a loser ... and that person's supporters will always be upset. But in a democracy, we have to accept the results. Otherwise, democracy won’t survive. I can say that America’s elections are the most secure on the planet. And everybody has to accept that if our democracy is going to survive."
Ahead of the first election certification since the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, Garland said that the Justice Department's job was to ensure "fair, safe, and secure" elections and that DOJ would do everything in its power to make sure that happens. Garland said there were "lessons learned" from Jan. 6 that were being taken into consideration this time around.
Garland also said he disagreed with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling that his appointment of special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional, a decision that could theoretically impact all of the special counsel appointments.
"I picked this room for this interview. This is my favorite room in the Justice Department. It’s a law library. For more than 20 years, I was a federal judge," Garland said. "Do I look like somebody who would make that basic mistake about the law? I don’t think so."
In the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity, Garland stressed the importance of independence and separation between the Justice Department and the White House. That's a major concern for DOJ alums who have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris because they worry that an unrestrained Trump would use the Justice Department in a second term to carry out his personal vendettas and protect himself and his own political allies from criminal accountability.
"I think the lessons of Watergate are that there has to be a separation between the Justice Department and the White House, whether it’s a legally required separation or a policy separation that’s necessary to ensure confidence in the rule of law, to ensure confidence that our law enforcement efforts are not political. One way or the other, we have to have that distinction. And that’s what we have put in place in this administration," Garland said.
Garland, who appointed special counsels who investigated President Joe Biden and secured a conviction against his son Hunter Biden, said it was a "very difficult job" to get the message across to Americans that the Justice Department was working independently.
"Internally, what we do is ensure that every prosecutor knows that their job is to do the right thing in an individual case, to exclude politics in any way from their considerations," Garland said. "That has been a message in the Justice Department since I first came in the years after Watergate. That as part of our principles of federal prosecution, it's part of the DNA of every federal prosecutor."
Garland also said that the video of the killing of Sonya Massey by a sheriff’s deputy in Illinois was “horrific.” The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, he said, is carefully monitoring the state prosecution of the officer who fatally shot her; the deputy is facing murder charges.
NBC News' Daniel Barnes and Michael Kosnar contributed.
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