Attorney General Merrick Garland says he’s committed to holding everyone accountable who committed crimes related to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection and won’t shy away from pursuing cases likely to invite accusations of a politically motivated Justice Department.

Garland made the comments in an interview with NPR that coincides with his first anniversary on the job, which is Friday. 

The remarks also come a week after the House committee investigating Jan. 6 said in a court filing that it has evidence to suggest former President Donald Trump might have engaged in a criminal conspiracy to “defraud the United States by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort.”

Garland called inquiries into the Jan. 6 riot "the most urgent investigation in the history of the Justice Department."

The department has never said whether it is pursuing a case against Trump, and Garland has avoided directly answering questions about the former president's involvement. But on Jan. 5, a day before the first anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, the attorney general said prosecutors would hold “all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable.”

In the NPR interview, Garland said: “We are not avoiding cases that are political or cases that are controversial or sensitive. What we are avoiding is making decisions on a political basis, on a partisan basis."

He said the department is starting “with the cases that are right in front of us with the overt actions and then we build from there.”

On Tuesday, in the first Jan. 6 case to go to trial, a jury convicted Guy Wesley Reffitt, of Wylie, Texas, of interfering with police officers who were guarding the Capitol and of obstructing justice for threatening his two teenage children if they reported him to law enforcement. He faces up to 60 years in prison at his sentencing.

Also last week, Joshua James, an Alabama man affiliated with the far-right Oath Keepers militia group, pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding for his actions before, during and after Jan. 6. 

In all, 725 people have been charged with crimes related to the Capitol breach, and more than 200 have pleaded guilty. 

"Every FBI office, almost every U.S. attorney's office in the country is working on this matter,” Garland said. “We've issued thousands of subpoenas, seized and examined thousands of electronic devices, examined terabytes of data, thousands of hours of videos. People are working every day, 24-7, and are fully aware of how important this is. This had to do with the interference with the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another. And it doesn't get more important than that."

In a statement in response to the Jan. 6 committee’s filing last week, Trump continued to make false claims of election fraud while accusing the Democratic-led panel of being driven by partisan politics.