"worried about political blowback". Isn't political blowback a sticks and stones, they called me names kind of thing?
Jan. 2024, Top Arizona Dem: Biden’s DOJ Is Failing to Protect Election Workers From ‘Domestic Terrorism’
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/biden-justice-department-trump-election-threats-terrorism-fontes-1234950693/
Biden’s Justice Department is too “worried about political blowback” to protect election workers, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes tells Rolling Stone
In a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes described his mounting “frustration” at President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland for failing to respond to a wave of threats against election workers and officials with the urgency that he believes is necessary. The surge in death threats and intimidation efforts directed against election staff across the country, Fontes warns, could have disastrous consequences, not just for the expected 2024 election between Biden and Donald Trump, but for years to come.
“As cautious a person as Attorney General Merrick Garland is, I think he is being far too cautious here, when it comes to these investigations and prosecutions of threats against election administrators and election workers,” Fontes says. “I have a lot of respect for the attorney general, but he is not being nearly aggressive enough on this threat, which is imperiling our democracy, and he and the department are not devoting nearly enough resources to it. This should be treated like the emergency that it is.”
= new reply since forum marked as read
From the article:
He (AZ Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes) continues: “If there is a political figure to be called out on this, it’s [Garland], not President Biden. Joe Biden does not control the Justice Department, nor should he. There has to be independence of the department. Even though doing the wrong thing can sometimes be a lot more satisfying, or maybe even achieve what should be done on this issue, the president of the United States should not intervene or pressure the department that way, especially on an issue as critical as this. You can’t allow yourself to, even in the service of something justified, act like the bad guys do, because the [authoritarian types] want the Justice Department to act as an arm of the guy sitting in the Oval Office.”
Garland. Again.
In November, Fontes testified that one Arizona county election official had her two dogs poisoned “as a means of intimidation.”
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