AG Garland may some day be seen as more valuable to Trump's legacy than Bill Barr ever was. Should it continue, Garland's inertia & "institutionalism" may shield & validate Trump & set precedents that grant impunity to future presidents in ways Trump's bent puppet AG could not.
This admin is doing great work on many fronts. The week ahead may be transformative if Democrats stick together and advance President Biden's bold and essential agenda for American renewal. Even the DoJ is doing great work in advancing a diverse, qualified slate of new judges.
But failure to act on Trump's serial abuses of power--from the repeated obstruction of justice highlighted in the Mueller Report (but not limited to those instance) to the open effort to use his office to coerce election officials to pervert the course of the last election--
will open the door for Trump and the GOP to claim vindication, to compounding the arguments that presidents are above the reach of the law and to further undermining democracy in America...during a moment at which it is under attack.
Perhaps Garland and the prosecutors within the Justice Department are being cautious. But the January 6 coup attempt was nine months ago, Mueller's well-documented charges have been a matter of public record for two and a half years...
and the president's other violations of the law from ethics violations to tax fraud to election law violations have taken place in plain sight. During the 2d impeachment, GOP leaders called said the Biden DoJ would have to be the one to act to get accountability.
The new AG, who has a distinguished record as a jurist, is entitled to the benefit of the doubt from us--up to the point that it becomes clear that his caution is actually timidity and a misreading of the threat posed by allowing Trump and his cronies to go unpunished.
Perhaps we will soon see action. That would be welcome. But at this point we also must alert ourselves to the possibility that the delays and inaction to date are a prelude to a failure to act, to see the depth of Trump threat and the extent of his crimes, and therefore...
...are part of a miscarriage of justice that will have lasting and grievous consequences for the country and for our system of justice.
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