"We pursue justice without fear or favor." -- Attorney General Merrick Garland, on numerous occasions, on the Justice Department's role in upholding the rule of law.
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Some of us gave AG Garland the benefit of the doubt for many months that the Justice Department was investigating the Malignant Loser for the January 6 coup attempt, while others warned that the lack of action we were seeing was the reality, not a cover for a robust investigation of the Malignant Loser and his coup plotters. The doubters were right all along.
If you haven't already taken time to read the Pulitzer- worthy Washington Post exposé by Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis on why the Department delayed investigating the coup leaders, please stop reading this and do so. It reports on how key officials in the Department indeed feared pursuing justice in the name of caution, restoring public trust in the Department, and not appearing to be "partisan." Garland's timidity was reinforced by others named in the Post article, including his own deputy AG Lisa Monaco, FBI Director Chris Wray, and the acting U.S. Attorney for DC, Michael Sherwin -- but the buck stops with Garland, who could've foreseen the peril in allowing the Malignant Loser to evade justice for so long but resisted (not to mention allowing statutes of limitations to expire for other crimes the Malignant Loser likely committed).
History will not judge this leadership kindly.
That's also the judgement of Jennifer Taub, who concludes her excellent piece in Washington Monthly on how "Garland's Inaction on January 6 Gave Trump Breathing Room" thusly:
Current and former DOJ officials urged him not to delay. When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the creation of a select committee to investigate the January 6 attack, many of us wrongly assumed the DOJ was investigating Trump on a parallel course, even without the appointment of a special counsel. Plenty of evidence merited a special counsel’s probe into Trump that could get underway even as individual insurrectionists were identified, arrested, and prosecuted. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in Other People’s Money, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” And with Garland taking his sweet time illuminating the festering sore, is it any wonder it continued to grow? Not holding Trump accountable emboldens him further. After Garland let the clock run out on statutes of limitation for the obstruction set out in the Mueller Report and the hush money payments for which Michael Cohen went to prison and blocked the investigation into Trump’s role in the fake electors and insurrection, is it any wonder that Trump decided to hold onto those highly classified documents?
Garland may end up causing the Justice Department to become what he feared most, a discredited political actor. By the time he appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith in November, 2022—something he should have done after his March 2021 swearing-in—the die was cast. Trump had already launched his bid for the presidency in 2024. Given this late date, any related indictment will come well into Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination and any trial, quite possibly, after his second inaugural in 2025 when the 47th president won’t dawdle and will end the federal case against himself.
"Without fear or favor" my ass.
At some point when it won't disrupt the ongoing Special Counsel investigations and prosecutions, this AG and others involved in ignoring or slow- walking justice for the Malignant Loser need to go.
(Photo: Patrick Semansky/ AP)
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