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Former president Donald Trump declared this week in his 2024 campaign announcement that the single gravest threat to “our civilization” was the Justice Department, which has been investigating his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his role in the effort to prevent his successor from taking office.
When Attorney General Merrick Garland responded Friday by appointing a special counsel to take over the Trump investigations — an effort to put to rest claims that they were politicized — the former president simply doubled down. He described Garland’s announcement to Fox News as “the worst politicization of justice in our country” and called on the Republican Party to “stand up and fight” on his behalf.
The decision by Trump to conflate his political ambitions and potential criminal exposure — elevating the issue as a central plank of his campaign — has created a dramatic and bizarre beginning to the 2024 presidential race, in…
This article was written by Michael Scherer and originally published on www.washingtonpost.com