March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010
August 2010
September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 September 2015 October 2015 November 2015 December 2015 January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 September 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 June 2017 July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019 January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 April 2020 May 2020 June 2020 July 2020 August 2020 September 2020 October 2020 November 2020 December 2020 January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021 May 2021 June 2021 July 2021 August 2021 September 2021 October 2021 November 2021 December 2021 January 2022 February 2022 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 October 2022 November 2022 December 2022 January 2023 February 2023 March 2023 April 2023 May 2023 June 2023 July 2023 August 2023 September 2023 October 2023 November 2023 December 2023 January 2024 February 2024 March 2024 April 2024 May 2024 June 2024 July 2024 August 2024 September 2024 October 2024 November 2024 December 2024 January 2025 February 2025
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
News Every Day |

No, Merrick Garland Did Not Let Donald Trump Skate

Some time in the next five days, Merrick Garland will step down as the nation’s eighty-sixth attorney general, bringing to a close one of the most distinguished careers in public service in the last century.

But the accounts of his departure will likely include widespread criticism that he slow-walked the prosecution of Donald Trump. Critics allege that had he moved more quickly, Trump might have been held accountable for his misdeeds and the recent election might even have turned out differently.

The charge of foot-dragging has become a meme. Elie Honig, writing in New York magazine, was particularly cocksure: “The debate about whether Garland took too long to charge the Trump cases—or to appoint a Special Counsel to get the job done—is over. Exhibit A: there’s not going to be a federal trial before the 2024 election. End of story.”

But the charge is a bum rap.

The record demonstrates that Garland made investigating Trump a top priority, even as he also focused on restoring integrity to the Justice Department. The investigation was extraordinarily complicated and slowed by unusual and unpredictable obstacles, including the Supreme Court’s lawless immunity ruling. Moreover, events entirely outside of Garland’s control ensured that Trump would not have been held accountable before the election. Finally, Garland’s efforts, among others, made Trump’s criminality more than clear to the voters, but they nevertheless were content to reelect a felon and serial sexual offender.

The storyline that Garland let moss grow on the investigation—some say until Jack Smith came aboard, others until the work of the January 6 committee embarrassed the department—doesn’t gibe with even the publicly available evidence, which likely will be supplemented over time with details that we still don’t know.

Within days of being sworn in as attorney general on March 11, 2021, Garland gathered prosecutors from several divisions working on any aspect of the Trump investigations and instructed them to “follow the connective tissue upward”—i.e., to follow the money in pursuit of connections between the January 6 marauders and Team Trump. Garland charged the entire team to proceed without restrictions, even if it led to Trump. The money line of investigation didn’t bear fruit, but it made sense to pursue. More important for the Garland critics, it shows that Garland and his deputy, Lisa Monaco, were focused on the Trump trail from day one.

Critics also argue that Garland merely piggybacked on the January 6 committee’s work, implying that the panel’s efforts spurred the DOJ into action and that its investigative work was derivative. Not so. Documents cited in the January 6 indictment were not included in the committee’s report. Furthermore, as Marcy Wheeler has documented, before Smith came aboard, the Department obtained phones seized for the indictment—including those of Boris Epshteyn and Mike Roman.

In any case, the comparison between the committee and the DOJ is flawed. The committee’s role was to present a compelling narrative to the public, while the DOJ had to construct a case that would hold up legally and persuade a jury unanimously beyond a reasonable doubt. Given the stakes, any misstep in prosecuting Trump would have been catastrophic for the DOJ and the country.

 A third critique is that Garland’s dedication to a by-the-book approach led him to work the case from the “bottom up,” focusing first on ground-level insurrectionists. He surely was focused on this enormous effort, the largest group investigation in DOJ history—but not to the exclusion of investigations of Trump’s immediate circle. For example, the Department executed a warrant at the apartment of Rudy Giuliani (later identified as “Co-Conspirator 1”) in April 2021, followed by an expedited privilege review. It similarly went after Trump lawyer Sidney Powell (Co-Conspirator 3), who couldn’t interpose lengthy executive privilege claims.

The report from Jack Smith that the Department made public early Tuesday confirms these points generally and in many particulars. Smith sets out the broad range of investigative measures that preceded his appointment in November 2022 and that “developed a thorough record of independently verified facts.” He also documents the time-consuming sealed privilege litigation that occurred beginning in the summer of 2022 and followed from other investigative work.

There’s more evidence of DOJ activity early in Garland’s tenure (I will be publishing a more detailed account in my Substack soon), but these points firmly rebut the widespread suggestion that Garland was indolent before Smith came aboard.

At the core of the attacks on Garland is an “if only” claim: If only Garland had focused earlier on the Trump prosecutions, Trump’s cases would have gone to trial earlier, he would have been convicted, and the nation would have seen Trump’s unfitness in terms that could not be ignored.

The claim just doesn’t hold water. Even if Garland had appointed Jack Smith on Garland’s first day in office—about 18 months before he did—there was no way that the federal prosecutions would have been completed before the election.

When the cases were dismissed, on November 25, the January 6 case had another trip up and down to the Supreme Court to deal with immunity issues before trial could be scheduled. The documents case was in the court of appeals, which was reviewing Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal. When it returned to Cannon, it had, conservatively, many more months before trial, particularly with classified documents issues and Cannon’s solicitude for Trump’s delay strategy. It is very hard to see either case’s resulting in a jury conviction in under 18 months.

But that’s only half of the process, and likely the less time-consuming half. A conviction is not final until it has completed appellate review, meaning in this case that the federal court of appeals has upheld the conviction and sentence, and the Supreme Court has denied cert. Until that time, a president can simply order the Department of Justice to drop the case, as Trump surely will as one of his first orders of business.

In any plausible scenario, we are well past the extra time that Garland critics think was lost. There is simply no tenable way that either of Trump’s cases would have been final before January 20, 2025.

That leaves some much more speculative charges that had the cases been brought sooner, they might at least have proceeded to conviction at the trial level. And in that event, the chain of speculation goes, the people’s judgment would have been altered by hearing the overwhelming evidence against Trump, and perhaps the fact of his losing.

But this lesser claim doesn’t pan out, either, and not just because it turns on an optimistic account of the calendar.

First, the nation did get to see Trump convicted and hear evidence of his perfidy in the New York case. True, the charges there were far less serious than in either federal case. Still, neither the evidence—which, after all, included some nasty sexual misconduct and hoodwinking of the voters—nor the fact of conviction seemed to move the needle in the view of Trump voters.

Second, prosecutors did publicly present a detailed and voluminous account of the evidence against Trump in the January 6 case. Almost everything in the Smith report, including everything about Trump, already had been made public. Again, it provoked indifference, at least among most Republicans.

Put it all together, and the odds are overwhelming that in no possible world is Trump convicted before the election. That’s a galling, infuriating, tragic fact, and perhaps an indictment of our system and the way rich people can game it; but it’s got little or nothing to do with Merrick Garland. 

Finally, there’s the charge that Garland’s priorities were misplaced—that he devoted too much attention to restoring the integrity of the Department after four years of bruising assault on norms by Trump and his circle.

It’s true that Garland was focused on repairing the damaging effects of Trump’s assaults when he took office. But that focus didn’t require him to go light on Trump, and the available record suggests that he did not. And critics make a classic cognitive error if they judge Garland’s conduct early in his term through the prism of the unpredictable court delays that came later and, even more, Trump’s improbable political resurrection after January 6. In any event, when Trump did announce his candidacy, Garland immediately installed Smith.        

It’s understandable that some of the frustration over Trump’s escape from justice has been displaced onto Garland. We put our hope in him to bring Trump down, and it didn’t happen. It’s easy to make him a scapegoat. But once you factor in all the other reasons for delay, it never was in the cards to bring Trump to justice before Election Day. And that was notwithstanding an overall diligent focus on the prospect from Garland’s first days in office.

Garland has previously opined that tough reproach goes with the territory, and it’s likely that he accepts the unjust reproaches with relative equanimity. Future generations will almost certainly view Garland more favorably than his critics do today. For now, he’ll have to rely on history to deliver a fair appraisal of his service.

Джиган

Жена Джигана Самойлова подарила пятилетнему сыну живую корову 

Hamas claims youngest Israeli hostages aged just 2 & 5 and their mum are all dead leaving Bibas family in ‘turmoil’

Exact date Aldi’s brand new anti-ageing skincare range that ‘maintains youthful skin’ hits middle aisles for just £4.99

Don't let AI phantom hackers drain your bank account

Asian flag carrier to launch more flights from the UK this summer to bucket list destinations

Ria.city






Read also

I wish my elderly husband would die – then I wouldn’t have to sneak around for sex with toyboys

2025 Cannabis Trends

Trump signs order to expand White House control of independent agencies

News, articles, comments, with a minute-by-minute update, now on Today24.pro

News Every Day

Don't let AI phantom hackers drain your bank account

Today24.pro — latest news 24/7. You can add your news instantly now — here


News Every Day

Hamas claims youngest Israeli hostages aged just 2 & 5 and their mum are all dead leaving Bibas family in ‘turmoil’



Sports today


Новости тенниса
WTA

Касаткина вновь приблизилась вплотную к топ-10 рейтинга WTA



Спорт в России и мире
Москва

Московское «Торпедо» объявило о подписании воспитанника ЦСКА



All sports news today





Sports in Russia today

Москва

Просмотр в футбольный клуб: ключевые этапы и роль футбольных агентов


Новости России

Game News

YouTuber The Swedish Maker wears a Meta Quest 3 VR headset for his entire woodworking project and miraculously emerges with all fingers intact


Russian.city


Москва

В Кремле оценили опыт Минских соглашений фразой «на обиженных воду возят»


Губернаторы России
Певица

AI Певица. Создание AI Певицы. AI Певец. AI Артист.


Цифровой родолог Марина Шац: что такое родовая программа и как ее поменять

Разведданные из России способны спасти Дональда Трампа? СЕНСАЦИЯ! Новости. В.В. Путин, Д.А. Медведев, Илон Маск, Дональд Трамп. Россия, США, Европа могут улучшить отношения и здоровье общества?!

Кинолог и собака ОМОН Росгвардии– участники СВО стали лауреатами международного конкурса профессионального мастерства

В Ингушетии сотрудники ФСБ задержали двух сторонников ИГИЛ


«Какая-то сплетня очередная»: сестра Фриске отреагировала на новость о смертельной болезни Лисовца

«Марафон романтических сонат» проходит на зимнем фестивале искусств Юрия Башмета

Консультант Актёра. Консультирование Актёра.

«Как она жива в принципе»: Тимати воссоединился со своей юношеской любовью


Даниил Медведев обошел Новака Джоковича в обновленном рейтинге АТР

Рыбакина узнала свое место в мировом рейтинге после разгрома

"Не уверена в доверии": Соболенко прокомментировала ситуацию с Синнером

Сенсация прогремела на топовом турнире с участием Елены Рыбакиной



В Москве и Московской области более 25,5 тысячи многодетных мам досрочно получают пенсию

В Екатеринбурге наградили юных звезд на благотворительном фестивале «Добрая волна»

С 2025 года демобилизованные участники СВО бесплатно могут пройти санаторно-курортное лечение в центрах реабилитации Социального фонда

В Екатеринбурге наградили юных звезд на благотворительном фестивале «Добрая волна»


DAASHA даст сольный концерт – билеты на Like FM

Генпрокуратура: активы экс-менеджера "Газпрома" на миллиарды будут изъяты

Консультант Певца. Консультирование Певца.

Турнир по хоккею на Кубок генерала армии Николая Рогожкина состоялся в Тамбовской области


Сергей Собянин рассказал о реконструкции стадиона "Торпедо"

Путин: целью встречи США и России в Эр-Рияде было повышение доверия

Екатеринбуржцы готовы потратить по 4000 рублей на подарки к 23 февраля

Надежный японский кроссовер привезли в Россию: цена доступна



Путин в России и мире






Персональные новости Russian.city
Филипп Киркоров

Концерты Киркорова в Петербурге потребовали отменить



News Every Day

How Man Utd could line up in the CHAMPIONSHIP with top stars sold as Rio Ferdinand fears they won’t win another game




Friends of Today24

Музыкальные новости

Персональные новости