Good evening. I'm Abby Philip in New York. Tonight, if at first you don't succeed, dust yourself off and try again. Well, Republicans, okay, they may not have Aaliyah committed to memory, but it definitely seems like they've taken that advice to heart, and they are perpetually in search of evidence to pin crimes on Biden's allies. Now, there's supposed to be proof in the pudding, but Republicans can't seem to make jello. The GOP struck out on the Mayorkas impeachment. They whift again when they tried to impeach Joe Biden. And just yesterday, they tried to turn Anthony Fauci into Dr. Frankenstein. They laid the blame for a monster COVID pandemic at his feet. And now today, Congress gave us the latest example. Republicans want America to believe that the attorney general, Merrick Garland, is a Biden henchmen, and that he is the principal orchestrator of a plot to stop Donald Trump. Now, the problem with that is that it's just not true. Now, you wouldn't know that if you judged today's hearing based on the accusations per minute, like this, from the Republican Judiciary Committee chairman, Jim Jordan.

Did Jack Smith ask for the job?

He did not ask me for the job, no.

Did he convey through some Noone else said he wanted the job.

I would be surprised if that were the case, but I don't know. You don't know? No, I don't know.

So he may have?

I can only tell you what I know. I chose him because he had a record of impartial career experience as a prosecutor. That's why he was chosen.

Or there's this from Republican Matt Gates.

Kalanchilla makes this remarkable downstream career journey from the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC, and then pops up in Alvin Bragg's office to go get Trump. And you're saying that's just a career choice that was made that has nothing to do with the law fair coordinated by the-I'm saying it's false.

I did not dispatch Mr. Mr. Colangelo anywhere.

Do you know how he ended up there?

I assume he spoke. He applied for a job there and got the job.

But see, you know what-I can tell you I had nothing to do with it.

Or there's this from Steve Bannon. He picked up the ball from Gates and is running straight into conspiracy land.

That's a bald-face lie. You're telling me the number three guy in the Justice Department, Matthew Colangelo, just ends up in Bragg's office as the architect of this? This is just gaslighting people. This is why people detest you.

Or Republican Blake Moore of Utah.

I think we all have a responsibility to respect jury verdicts, and the failure to respect jury verdicts.

It's the way that we arrive at the verdict. I think that's the problem. And the American people see it, sir. And under your watch, the system is losing credibility.

So if you believe Republicans, Garland manipulated the Justice Department into multiple Trump prosecutions. He enticed a Manhattan jury into convicting the former President. And if you ask for evidence, you'll get nothing, none, only questions. So what is the cumulative effect of all of this? Well, here's what Garland had to say about that.

Yes, the threats to the judiciary, threats to prosecutors, threats to law enforcement agents have all spiked significantly, and in some cases, have accelerated from threats to actual violence. Our democracy cannot continue if the people who make the democracy run are afraid, if they make their decisions based on fear of being threatened or of being assaulted.

So how do Republicans respond to that sobering warning? Well, now they're saying they're going to shut the government down.

I always think that that should be on the table. I think we should constrain dollars to force change.

Joining me now, Miles Taylor. He's the former Chief of Staff to the Homeland Security Secretary, Kirsten Nielsen. Miles, good to see you. I wonder, why do you think Republicans are so eager to go into these conspiratorial the Sacks as opposed to, say, just winning elections the old-fashioned way?

Well, Abby, I think the simple answer is it seems like political convenience, attack the sitting administration, go after the President since key lieutenants. But that political convenience, I think the worry is, could turn into public chaos. And Merrick Garland pointed this out in his opening statement. And that's what was so remarkable about this hearing, is his opening statement was primarily about those threats, those threats to law enforcement and to judges and to civil servants. Those are the non-political appointees in the Justice Department. And he said those threats were coming from conspiracy theories. They were coming from misinformation. They coming from these politically convenient statements that are being used to paint a picture on the Justice Department that is inaccurate. And then, remarkably, in that hearing, as you showed, Abby, they then went into more of those conspiracy theories. And I want to just quickly put some numbers to that for you. Tenfold increase since 2016 of death threats to members of Congress. There's been a fourfold increase in threats to federal judges over the same period. And nearly 40 % of election workers in this country say they've been harassed or threatened in their jobs.

Merritt Garland, tonight at the Justice Department, is not thinking about protecting Joe Biden or helping Joe Biden win re-election. The Justice Department is focused on those numbers and the extraordinary period of threat we are in to public servants from these conspiracy theories.

And he even went further in a way saying that some of those threats have actually become attacks. Now, just because they may or may not be successful doesn't mean that they're not real and that they haven't happened. Do you think that most of the Republican Party actually believes this stuff. I mean, it takes quite a conspiracy to think that the entire universe from the federal government all the way down to the Manhattan DA is controlled by one man who is also, according to Republicans senile.

Well, Abby, when I was working for Republicans on Capitol Hill, up to and including working in the Trump administration, the GOP standard line here was to back the blue. And you You remember it. There was a multi-year effort to paint the Republican Party as the party that backed law enforcement at the federal, state, and local level. What's so alarming to me as a conservative is that the messaging has swung around 180 degrees, and now you've got members of Congress talking about, in their words, detonating the FBI, clearing house, gutting the deep state. So it's no longer just one person. It's not just Donald Trump saying these things. His views have been transmuted onto the wider party and on members of Congress that were otherwise previously considered mainstream, but now they're talking about going after law enforcement. It's really spread quite substantially. And what I think that means is Trump's agenda. He'll be able to advance it if he gets a second term as it relates to going after these institutions.

Trump has continued to float this idea that if he's elected or reelected President, that he's going to go after Democrats. He did it again tonight in an interview saying that he's going to seek basically vengeful prosecutions. Do you expect that that is going to be on the agenda if he's reelected?

Well, I mean, Abby, it feels just banal to say that this is hypocrisy. I mean, we're just talking seconds ago about how people that I used to work with are concerned that the Biden Justice Department is being weaponized despite any evidence in support of that. And now their response to this, their remedy, is to weaponize the Justice Department. I mean, that's extraordinary. I mean, what you would hope to hear out of a Republican candidate and his allies right now, if they actually had these concerns, is that they'll restore impartiality, integrity, and the rule of law to the Justice Department, not go back in and push their fingers on the scales in the other direction. But that's what you're hearing about. And it's certainly what was clear to me at the end of the first term of the Trump administration is there were a lot of plans to go into a prospective second term to go weaponize those institutions, to turn them against political adversaries. The only thing that's gotten worse since then is they've had four years to systematically and methodically plan that. Trump was very unprepared to become President of the United States. He did not accept it, or he did not expect it.

And now they've had a lot of time to prepare to go after those institutions and political rivals in the meantime.

And the warnings that we've heard from former officials like yourself and many others is they all believe that there will be fewer people to stand in the way. One of the principal reasons why some this did not work in the first Trump administration. Miles Taylor, thanks for joining us tonight.