Don’t Fall for the Myth of Moderate Merrick Garland
Color me unconvinced criticism of the AG by President Biden and House Democrats is all about pressuring the supposed centrist into action
For years we were subjected to hysteria over the idea that Donald Trump would politicize the very Justice Department that arguably led the bureaucracy’s war against him. Now, open criticism of the DOJ by the party genuinely in control of it has been deemed acceptable.
Leading Democrats are apparently fed up with an attorney general, in Merrick Garland, too feckless to satisfy their Jan. 6 bloodlust. But does their hypocritical bluster presage an epic internecine clash, or are we witnessing a charade, and if so, to what end?
I explore in a new piece at the Epoch Times.
As I write in part:
Garland ironically finds himself under public assault just as his Justice Department is expanding its Jan. 6 probe to encompass people and events that are removed from the breach of the Capitol itself—as the Select Committee has done—and while the DOJ is seeking to add dozens of new prosecutors for its effort at the cost of tens of millions of dollars.
This builds on the DOJ’s unprecedented investigative and prosecutorial effort in size, scope, and intensity to match the narrative of insurrection, regardless of how unmoored from reality it may be. This was recently laid bare when a federal judge for the first time acquitted a Jan. 6 defendant on all trumped-up trespassing charges—the kind the Justice Department has leveled at a substantial number of similarly situated defendants—the accused testifying to having been “waved” in to the Capitol by cops before spending roughly 10 minutes in the building.
Garland’s Justice Department too is responsible for handing down sedition charges this past January, amid pressure from progressive partisans, knowing full well how grave the charges are, and how rarely such cases are successfully prosecuted.
Meanwhile, many nonviolent Jan. 6 defendants without prior criminal backgrounds languish in horrible pretrial detention conditions as federal prosecutors have advocated for on often ideological grounds, giving the accused a legitimate claim to the idea that they’re political prisoners.
So why do the long knives seem to be out for the AG?
Find out here.
In this week’s NatCon Squad, we discuss:
The right’s approach to labor
The great Sovereignty Reclamation Movement
DOJ's crumbling domestic terrorism narrative
Why American teens are so depressed