If Merrick Garland Doesn’t Charge Trump and His Coup Plotters, Our Democracy is Toast

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The Justice Department announced this week that it would destroy the airline’s passengers who were upset. Now, if only Attorney General Merrick Garland would do something about people planning to overthrow our government and a former president who has consistently obstructed justice and abused power we could get somewhere.

Not because flight safety is not important. This is. Just as important to arrest and prosecute the moron Trumpist foot soldiers who stormed the Capitol on January 6. All of that is important. But this is not enough.

President Joe Biden can correct everything but if his administration — starting with the Department of Justice — makes a mistake in responding to the threats to our democracy posed by Trump and the GOP, they will do nothing else.

A widely respected jurist, Garland was chosen by Biden to depoliticize the DoJ and end the abuses of its power that we have seen under Trump appointees Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr. Surely, he has already taken some steps in that direction. But if the result of his de-politicization is winding up in the horrific successive mistakes of Republican Party leaders, then his efforts will have the exact opposite of the intended effect. By failing to hold Trump and Co. accountable, Garland will set the stage for them to continue relentlessly their efforts to make the U.S. a one-party state where only Republicans can win elections and any tactics that can they use to stay in power. was effectively substantiated by the inaction of Garland and his DOJ.

Garland has, on more than one occasion, already taken steps that have actually strengthened or encouraged those currently threatening our system. A particularly appalling example of this is Garland’s decision to side with Trump by arguing that the former president was acting in his official capacity when he lied and slandered journalist E. Jean Carroll following the her accusation that Trump raped her before she was elected. president.

Garland’s position was defended by allies who argued that he was an “institutionalist” who felt it was his duty to defend the president’s prerogatives. the threat is as serious as that of the self -anointed “institutionalists.”

Recently, Garland won praise for the Justice Department’s execution of contempt of Congress charges against disheveled Trump crony Stephen Bannon. However, the DOJ’s decision to file lawsuits against Bannon took several weeks when it should have taken several minutes. The case is clear. Bannon ignored a legitimate Congressional subpoena, claiming rights he did not have.

Merrick Garland speaks to staff on his first day at the Department of Justice March 11, 2021.

Getty

Wise and respected friends, such as former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman, advised me that we should be grateful for Bannon’s decision because it would empower Congress to do its job. I understand the view. But this Congressional investigation has a clock running at it. If the GOP takes over the House again next November, as many have predicted, the investigation into the January 6 coup attempt will be immediately terminated by Republicans. So for all those called by the committee, it may appear that all they need to do to avoid any consequences for their action is to stop like Bannon does. In this case, the delay of justice is definitely a denial of justice.

What bothers me more is that the only reason we hear of any lawsuit filed against Bannon as a senior coup plotter (or upper middle management in any case) is because Congress is investigating the events of January 6. We haven’t heard a peek from the Department of Justice about the prosecution of those responsible for inciting, planning or funding an effort to undo the legal transfer of presidential power to the man elected by the Americans, Joe Biden.

We also haven’t heard a peek from them in terms of prosecution on the dozens of instances of clear obstruction of justice mentioned in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report against Trump. We see that Garland lets the high political investigation of special prosecutor John Durham continue in the conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation (by continuing its funding). Therefore, we have real hope that those wishing to view the Trump-Russia relationship that both Mueller’s and Congressional investigations have shown to be true, unprecedented and dangerous can be prosecuted while those who actively seek help. to a foreign enemy to win an election would not be.

The other smart and experienced legal observer I highly respect argues that more patience is in order, that we don’t know what Garland is doing behind the scenes and we should give him more time. One of them is former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade. He told me, “While I understand the frustration that the DOJ has not yet charged defendants with a higher level of assault on Jan. 6, I don’t think it’s time to get angry with AG Garland for not action.We don’t know what investigative steps might take place due to the grand jury’s confidentiality requirement.Robert Mueller spent nearly two years on his investigation.I expect this investigation to last at least that long.

AG Gill, another analyst of these matters for whom I am highly respected, creator and host of the Daily Beans and Mueller She Wrote podcast, argues caution for another reason. He feels there are efforts being made to divert public opinion against Garland and the DOJ as a means of weakening and destroying these institutions.

However, Garland’s behavior so far has left me in awe. My conversations with people within the DOJ have not allayed those concerns. There, Garland’s frustration begins with his management style (which insiders liken to a judge running his rooms where his office is a kind of bubble apart from the department and staffed by a small team that similar to the clerks he had when he was in the judiciary).

It extends to concerns that he is too mistaken in the name of caution and a desire that cannot be imagined as political. It was also a hold-over from his court days and ignored that A) he was a political appointee, B) the issues he faced were hyper-politicized and c) there was no way to prosecute politicians for crimes committed in the name of partisanship without coming out of politics.

But, still, I will admit. I can hear our judicial clock as loud as Mona Lisa Vito’s biological clock. Because the stakes are so high and I see some of the decisions Garland has made, I wonder when it’s ok to be alarmed, when it’s ok to be angry.

I asked Slate senior editor and host of the “Amicus” podcast, Dahlia Lithwick if my emerging anger was acceptable, and she replied: “I’m pretty okay about being angry this past summer. It’s possible to admire and honor this. all the good and very important initiative that Garland’s DOJ has taken, to rejoice in his principled efforts to restore the wall between the Justice Department and the White House that Bill Barr and Donald Trump built as a picket fence, and still resent in the DOJ’s apparent hope that the reckoning of Trump’s lawlessness could be left to prosecutors in New York and in Congress.

He continued, making an important point in history: “When the Obama Administration chose to draw a line under the torture and singing programs of the Bush era, it didn’t disappear into the past, it just buried it. And because Trump’s rejection of the election is emphatically not in the past – according to a poll in November from the Public Religion Research Institute, 68 % of Republicans believe the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ from Donald Trump. that growing number not only raises doubt on the integrity of the election and the rule of law, it is used to pass election suppression and initiatives to overthrow democracy in states across the country.The ‘big lie’ that resulted on Jan. 6 became a litmus test for the GOP’s loyalty.I understand that the optics of prosecuting someone’s political opponents and criminalizing fervent speech and politics is a frightening callback to the McCarthy era. But the lies and violence and white supremacy and misogyny of Jan. 6 is not buried in the past, it is metastasizing and spreading in ways that also threaten the future. ”

The respected law scholar, Lawrence Tribe, who taught Garland when the attorney general was still a student at Harvard Law School, suggests that we give his former student a little time, but not an unlimited amount. He could also hear the clock ticking. The Tribe told me, “If Merrick Garland hadn’t allowed Bannon to be accused when he did, I would have been angry for a long time. As for someone like me, he bought a few weeks with that perfect — but not a few months.

“Everything is taken into account,” he continued, “I would be both disappointed and angry if we find ourselves going into January 2022 without solid evidence – in a town leaking like a strainer – that the DOJ is acting at full speed in holding Trump and his enablers, facilitators, funders and co-conspirators criminally responsible for the coup d’etat they tried to pull off and the violent uprising they launched against the Capitol to delay, obstruct and, if possible, overthrow the solemn electoral process there taking place.

That, too, makes sense to me. What is certain is this: Time is running out. There is every reason to fear that Trump and the coup plotters are not responsible in any meaningful way. Otherwise, they will see the inaction of our justice system as a license to continue their attacks on our system of government. Furthermore, without effective efforts by the Department of Justice, those attacks are more likely to succeed and add to even greater abuses. And at that point, all the institutionalists in the world will not be able to restore our Humpty Dumpty of a democracy.

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