The Attorney General takes a stand against PP attacks in the Senate: "If I resigned I would be making a concession to criminals"

MadridThree weeks after the State Attorney General declare the Supreme Court as being investigated for revealing secrets, Álvaro García Ortiz faced questioning from the PP in the Senate on Tuesday afternoon. "He is acting as Pedro Sánchez's attorney general. If he had the slightest dignity [...] he would have resigned a long time ago," criticized the popular spokesperson in the Justice Commission, María José Pardo. For the first time since the high court charged him with allegedly leaking the email from the lawyer of Isabel Díaz Ayuso's partner in which Alberto González Amador acknowledged two crimes of tax fraud, the highest official in the public ministry has given explanations in parliamentary headquarters without going into detail about the ongoing procedure. García Ortiz has defended, once again, his continuity in office, which he recalled has been "freely appointed by the government" since 1981, also when the PP held power.

"If he resigned, he would be making a concession to criminals [...] and putting the Prosecutor's Office in a weak position," he justified. The Attorney General has argued that it would be "much more comfortable" to leave, but that he wants to "defend" from his position an institution that he believes "will not lose any credibility or rationality" for him to be investigated. The PP has used up all its speaking time harshly attacking him. "His management can be summed up in two words. Servility and accusation. He represents the dark history of the Prosecutor's Office. For democratic hygiene and out of respect for the institution he represents, he should leave," Pardo insisted. García Ortiz has not entered into the melee, arguing that "entering the political arena" would make him "lose his status of neutrality." "It is easy to mess with the Attorney General. A four-year-old child could do it, but we do not speak the same language. I am not a parliamentarian but a jurist," he responded to the attacks from the PP and also from Vox.

Hours before the appearance in the Senate, the PP has already been warming up its engines and has announced that its spokesperson in the European Parliament, Dolors Montserrat, has raised the issue with the European Commission. The PP has sent a letter to the Commissioner for Justice, Michael McGrath, denouncing the situation of García Ortiz. "It is clear that the permanence of the Attorney General could violate the principle of judicial independence," says the letter, which argues that the fact that he deleted messages from his mobile "demonstrates behaviour that obstructs justice." Montserrat also says that it is "even more serious" that the Spanish government "contributes to his protection and systematically attacks the work of the judges."

The Attorney General has arrived at the Senate chamber where he has appeared accompanied by the PSOE senators. A demonstration, in the opinion of the PP, that he has neither "neutrality" nor "impartiality." "Who gave him the order to hold on to his position? Was it the 1st? Who does he want to protect?" asked the popular senator in charge of giving voice to the argument used by the main opposition party for months, but never until now in a face-to-face meeting with García Ortiz. The socialists have come to his defence, predicting the failure of the investigation against him, while ERC, Junts and the rest of the groups of the plurinational majority have tried to open the focus to other issues such as the application of the amnesty law or the use of Catalan in justice.

Deleted messages

Faced with accusations from the PP about the messages he deleted, which have gone so far as to accuse him of acting like a "criminal", García Ortiz has defended that he did so "in compliance with legal provisions". "You cannot imagine the data that the Attorney General has," he stressed. In addition, the head of the public ministry defended his "right to privacy". In this regard, the Attorney General assured that he deletes WhatsApp messages "regularly" and that if he deleted his personal email account, "on December 27 or 28", when the investigation had been underway for two months, it was because the leak of his personal data caused him to suffer "harassment".