Attorney General Merrick Garland: NAJ screen shot
The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –
WASHINGTON, D.C. — If Donald Trump somehow avoids bankruptcy, a criminal conviction and prison time and wins the support of enough voters in key battleground states to assume the presidency in November and move into the White House again in January, 2025, no doubt commentators may blame a number of factors, decisions and individuals. At the top of the list will be the name of Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden’s pick for attorney general.
If this is not a cautionary tale proving that you cannot live life or lead in a democracy by playing it safe, going by the book and the letter of the law, I don’t know what would be.
For the sake of context before I go off on a detailed rant here, let’s just try to keep in mind one of my heroes and yours, Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Clearly he saved the Earth and its people quite a few times in the Star Trek series and movies, and he was not one to always play it safe and go by the book or the letter of the law and Federation rules and regulations. If he had, the Earth and its people would have been obliterated several times over.
In the end of “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” the final voyage and film with the original crew, Kirk is back on the Enterprise as Captain and as he comes onboard the bridge, he says, “Once again we saved civilization as we know it.”
Shortly thereafter, Star Fleet orders the ship back to space dock to be decommissioned.
Spock, normally always one to follow logic, says, “If I were human, I believe my response would be, ‘go to hell’.”
The crew awaits Kirk’s orders.
“Second star to the right, and straight on till morning,” he orders, a quotation borrowed by the script writers from “Peter Pan” by J.M. Barrie.
I suspect Garland is no fan of Star Trek.
If he was, Trump would have already been placed on trial, convicted by a jury and ordered to prison by a federal judge for trying to halt the peaceful transfer of power in the United States on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn a legitimate election by engaging in a seditious conspiracy to incite an insurrection and pull off a coup d’état with the help of a radical, rag tag group of malitia, to become the first dictator of America.
To their credit, the New York Times published a story on Friday, March 22, with an investigation about what went wrong with the Department of Justice under Garland that has delayed Trump prosecution until a few months before the election — in an election year. This must be Garland’s worst nightmare come true.
The headline?
I’m not going to go to the trouble or take your time today to summarize the entire investigation, in part because I believe it also falls short of a full explanation. I posted a comment after reading the story myself, which was published and you can see, since the story seemed somehow incomplete to me. Maybe they edited it and cut some stuff out? Is the Times playing it safe here too?
“Is this part one of a seres? Where’s the conclusion?” I asked. “Clearly Garland made a mistake by taking so long. Liz Cheney told him not to wait. Why did he? Worst Attorney General ever?”
The Times quotes Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who was on the House Select Committee which conducted its own investigation of Trump and the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“I think that delay has contributed to a situation where none of these trials may go forward,” Schiff said in a recent interview on CNN, citing the Justice Department’s approach as a factor. “The department bears some of that responsibility.”
The story of how it unfolded, according to the Times, based on dozens of interviews, “is one that would pit Mr. Garland, a quintessential rule follower determined to restore the department’s morale and independence, against the ultimate rule breaker — Mr. Trump, who was intent on bending the legal system to his will.”
“Mr. Garland, 71, a former federal judge and prosecutor, proceeded with characteristic by-the-book caution, pressure-testing every significant legal maneuver, demanding that prosecutors take no shortcuts and declaring the inquiry would ‘take as long as it takes’.”
And here we are, with eight months to go before the election, and still Trump is not on trial. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court now has the case. Who knows how they will rule? But it’s probably a safe bet it will not be good for democracy.
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Trump’s Immunity Appeal
Mary L. Trump, an American psychologist, writer and niece to Trump who has been critical of him in the past and helped the Times investigate the New York fraud case that has been in the news of late, and also wrote a book called Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, had this to say about Garland recently on Twitter(X).
“It really does not feel like Merrick Garland and his DOJ are on the side of the American people,” she said.
It really does not feel like Merrick Garland and his DOJ are on the side of the American people.
— Mary L Trump (@MaryLTrump) March 15, 2024
Other celebrities on Twitter(X) have also been critical, including Mia Farrow.
“If only AG Merrick Garland hadn’t stalled for SO long. It’s unconscionable.”
If only AG Merrick Garland hadn’t stalled for SO long. Its unconscionable
— Mia Farrow 🏳️🌈 🌻🇺🇦 (@MiaFarrow) March 15, 2024
In the interest of being “fair and balanced,” the Times quotes Garland’s friends and colleagues who defend the attorney general and the investigation.
“… he set the course of a determined and methodical, if at times dysfunctional and maddeningly slow, investigation that would yield the indictment of Mr. Trump on four counts of election interference in August 2023.”
But “in trying to avoid even the smallest mistakes, Mr. Garland might have made one big one: not recognizing that he could end up racing the clock. Like much of the political world and official Washington, he and his team did not count on Mr. Trump’s political resurrection after Jan. 6, and his fast victory in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, which has complicated the prosecution and given the former president leverage in court.”
In 2021 it was “simply inconceivable,” said one former Justice Department official, that Trump, rebuked by many in his own party and exiled at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, would regain the power to impose his timetable on the investigation.
“A question that has long dogged Mr. Garland,” according to the Times, is “What took so long?”
The Times reports that officials in the Biden White House “have long expressed private consternation with Mr. Garland’s pace. The select committee established by the House in 2021 to investigate what led to the Jan. 6 riot made it an all-but-explicit goal to force the Justice Department to pursue the case more aggressively …”
But of course President Biden has said he will not even so much as meet with Garland, much less try to get involved or influence the investigation, unlike Trump, who liked to bring his FBI and DOJ leaders into the White House for regular browbeating sessions. Remember Jeff Sessions, James Comey and Bill Barr?
Both the president and his attorney general have literally seemed obsessed with trying to play it safe by the old rules that governed justice way back in the 20th century, before the Republicans in the 21st made it clear they have no interest whatsoever in playing by any such rules.
Related
Liz Cheney: The U.S. is ‘Sleepwalking into Dictatorship’ by Supporting Trump
Pressure Mounts on Justice Department to Bring Charges Against Trump
House Select Committee Unanimously Recommends Criminal Charges Against Donald Trump
The Congressional investigation was clear.
“They aimed straight for Mr. Trump’s inner circle, issuing one of their first subpoenas to his final chief of staff, Mark Meadows. By late in the year, the committee was making clear that one of its goals was to force Mr. Garland to bring more urgency to the Justice Department investigation, suggesting it could make a criminal referral to the department on election interference charges,” the Times reports.
But the investigation stalled.
On November 18, 2022, Garland expressed concerns once again about “political perceptions” and punted the investigation from the DOJ by appointing Jack Smith as special counsel.
By then, the Times reports, “the department was in a race for time.”
Now we are in a race to save democracy one more time. If this does not work out, Garland will bear the brunt of the criticism, not just the uneducated fools who vote for Trump. At least 20 percent of Trump’s supporters have said they would not support him again in 2024 if he is convicted of a felony.
A Criminal Conviction Would End Trump’s Chances of Being Elected President Again
What will they do if no case is brought and finished by Election Day? What do you think?
I don’t think Trump supporters have been moved one iota in dropping their support of their king and savior by the pretense of non-partisanship on the part of Mr. Garland. Especially considering the blatant partisanship on the part of this Supreme Court.
How can you restore the trust of the justice system by the American people in this fraught environment? Not by playing it safe and going by the book.
It might help to demand swift justice for the most corrupt politician to ever come along in the United States, threatening the destruction of this experiment in government by the people. After all, a “speedy trial” is guaranteed to all by the Constitution itself, the foundational rule that governs all. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the rights of criminal defendants including the right to a public trial without unnecessary delay. It also guarantees legal representation, an impartial jury and the right to know who your accusers are and the nature of the charges and evidence against you.
Let’s get on with it.
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