The Post story reports that the Attorney General didn't want the investigation to look political. The article drew outrage from the left. How could he waste time jailing the gullible true believers who were conned by Trump instead of the person who was the engine for the whole thing? And doesn't he realize that Trump's obvious strategy would be to delay criminal accountability until after the 2024 election, and the Justice Department's two years of slow-walking accommodates that very plan?
Meanwhile, the GOP and Trump assert that Biden and Garland have weaponized and politicized the Department of Justice. Of course that is their message, shouted from rooftops and on Fox. It was always going to be their message. Here's an example of what all that caution won Garland:
College classmate John Shutkin is the General Counsel of a major accounting firm. He is a frequent speaker and panelist at accountants' risk management and legal ethics conferences.
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| John Shutkin and wife, Kathie, at a Harvard football game |
The Washington Post had a long article last week about how, as some of us had suspected, the Department of Justice slow-walked the investigation of Trump and other Trump officials and cronies in the January 6 insurrection, presumably out of concern that the criminal investigation of one President by his/her successor would be perceived as too overtly political. (I might say “Biden’s Department of Justice” for clarity, but he has, honorably. returned that Department to the independent role it is supposed to serve, rather than, as Trump and Barr would have it, “The President’s Roy Cohn”.)
The article also made clear how grateful we should be for the January 6 Congressional Commission’s dogged and telegenic efforts not only to bring these Trump-related efforts to light but to ultimately prod – or perhaps we might more properly say embarrass – the Department to finally commence its own investigation.
I understand the Department’s reticence here and realize that some of this stems from Merrick Garland’s very rectitude and commitment to avoid the sins and stains of Barr’s Department. But, as one of my (wiser) classmates has noted, “We are in our current situation because too many people deferred to norms that protected ‘their’ institutions, instead of those protecting the overarching institution of our democratic system.”
Moreover, did Garland and his senior advisors naively believe that Republicans would give him or Biden any credit for not investigating Trump and his inner circle? We already know what the response of Republicans will be to most any investigation or non-investigation of Republican or Democratic politicians. Indeed, I rightly predicted their hysterical screams of "cover up by the Biden crime family" within a nanosecond of the recent announcement of the Hunter Biden plea deal -- a plea (they failed to mention) reached after a years-long investigation by a Trump-appointed Delaware US Attorney whom Biden chose not to replace. Nothing but the usual Republican projection. So why even bother with it?
The Department should just do its damn job, which, at least from afar, it would appear that Jack Smith is now – and finally -- doing. And, for many reasons, Merrick Garland should be on the Supreme Court.
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5 comments:
It also applies to whether Democrats should gerrymander when they can just like republicans do. Instead it seems like Democrats do the fair, right thing and the Republicans don’t, leading to a stacked deck. Until the republicans become a normal party, democrats need to be like them. They should not fight with one hand tied behind their back. It was frustrating to watch nothing being done on the legal front so slowly.
I agree about the Democrats seemingly fighting with their strong hand tied behind their back, but believe a more equitable solution to the Gerrymandering issue is to take the allocation of Congressional Districts out of the hands of the Political Parties, entirely, and have District lines drawn by nonpartisan Committees, if such can be found or created.
I also think the Republican Party I grew up with, and supported until Darth Cheney and the Shrub started their Forever Wars, is as dead as Hogan's Goat, and will never return to "normal", until it is razed to yhe ground, plowed and the earth salted over them.
Trump and his party’s lust for power led to their boldfaced lies about a ‘stolen election’ and an attempted coup. That so many have embraced such anti-American sentiment demonstrates how the American right is living in its own universe, and Trump still dictates the parameters of that separate reality. You’d think Democrats would have learned by now that there’s no appeasing such madness.
How principled should you be when fighting an unprincipled opponent? The answer depends on the stakes.
If it’s life and death, as principled as you can be, consistent with winning. Winning is the first priority.
For circumstances that are not as dire, you can afford to be more principled.
MT, Well said. I thought then, and still think Michelle Obamas "when they go low, we go high" might work in a playground spat or middleschool argument, but revealed that the Obamas, who I deeply respect, badly underestimated the venality of the forces arrayed against them, and by extension, the Republic.
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