Schiff Claims Biden’s DOJ Couldn’t Have Been ‘Weaponized’ Because Merrick Garland Wasn’t Partisan

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) claimed that the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden could not possibly have been “weaponized” because Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, was not a particularly partisan actor.

Schiff spoke on Saturday at the Texas Tribune Festival, and he mocked his Republican colleagues in Congress — some of whom were actively targeted by Biden’s DOJ — saying that it was “absurd” to believe that Garland would oversee a Justice Department driven by politics.

WATCH:

Adam Schiff: It’s “absurd” to say that the Biden DOJ was weaponized, because Merrick Garland wasn’t known as a partisan.

Adam acts as if none of us were alive from 2021-2024. pic.twitter.com/Oxoc7Ictbs

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) November 17, 2025

“I listened in the Judiciary Committee to a lot of my colleagues across the aisle rail with just the most righteous indignation about the horrible weaponization of the Justice Department under that well-known partisan Merrick Garland,” Schiff began, his tone already mocking, prompting laughter around the room.

“And it was so fanciful as to be absurd, but they speak it with what appears to be total conviction,” he claimed, shifting his tone to convey shock. “And I don’t know, maybe they’re better actors than they used to be, or maybe they’ve so internalized the talking points that they’ve persuaded themselves …”

Schiff also raised eyebrows with other comments he made at the Texas Tribune Festival, particularly when he argued that lawmakers should not destroy presidents or make them “unsuccessful” simply because it was “good politics.”

“That attitude that you can make a president or a party unsuccessful, no matter what damage it might do to the country, because it’s good politics — we have to get past that ruinous idea,” the California senator said. “We have to figure out a way to stop viewing each other as our enemy.”

Critics, of course, quickly pointed out the fact that Schiff had spent a fair amount of his time and energy devoted to doing just that to President Donald Trump.

Schiff spent most of Trump’s first term telling any media personality who would listen that he had proof of Trump’s “collusion” with Russia — proof that he never delivered. He then served as one of the House Managers during President Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, presenting a case that was so one-sided that it provoked an angry response from George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.