Just Fire Garland

Musical Accompaniment

It appears that US Attorney General Merrick Garland had to be dragged kicking and screaming into as meaningful investigation of Donald Trumps corruption and insurrection.  (Whichever editor decided to have a hed which pointed to the FBI should go Cheney themselves.)

Faced with clear and convincing evidence of wrongdoing, Garland still had to be shamed into investigating document mishandling, false electors, conspiring on the insurrection, tax fraud, pressuring etc., because he did not want to be seen as taking a political act, even though covering up for Trump is a political act, and a corrupt one at that.

I get that he wants to increase the respect that the DoJ is held to, but his job is to to protect the people of the United Sates of the America.

I agree with Keith Olbermann, Biden should fire him:

Hours after he was sworn in as attorney general, Merrick Garland and his deputies gathered in a wood-paneled conference room in the Justice Department for a private briefing on the investigation he had promised to make his highest priority: bringing to justice those responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

………

But according to a copy of the briefing document, absent from [Acting US Attorney for Washington, DC Michael] Sherwin’s 11-page presentation to Garland on March 11, 2021, was any reference to Trump or his advisers — those who did not go to the Capitol riot but orchestrated events that led to it.

A Washington Post investigation found that more than a year would pass before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election. Even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.

A wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him all contributed to the slow pace. Garland and the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, charted a cautious course aimed at restoring public trust in the department while some prosecutors below them chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him, The Post found. 

This is cowardice, it should not be rewarded.

In November 2022, after Trump announced he was again running for president, making him a potential 2024 rival to President Biden, Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to take over the investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

On June 8, in a separate investigation that was also turned over to the special counsel, Smith secured a grand jury indictment against the former president for mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Trump was charged with 31 counts of violating a part of the Espionage Act, as well as six counts arising from alleged efforts to mislead federal investigators. If Trump had not announced his running for President, Garland would not have appointed Jack Smith, and we would still not see any movement toward charging Trump.

………

[Assistant Director of the FBI DC field office Steven] D’Antuono, who was interacting with lawmakers and reporters, told colleagues: “Everybody keeps asking, ‘Where the hell is the FBI?’”

The answer they heard did not instill confidence. Top FBI aides told D’Antuono and Sherwin that Wray wanted to stay on as Biden’s FBI director. They said they would not put the top boss “out there” — in the public eye — because they feared any public comments might spur Trump to unceremoniously fire him. 

It might be a good time to fire Christopher Wray too. 

Cravenly caving to a lame duck President is a pretty good indication that he is unsuited to the job.

………

But a group of prosecutors led by J.P. Cooney, the head of the fraud and public corruption section at the U.S. attorney’s office, argued that the existing structure of the probe overlooked a key investigative angle. They sought to open a new front, based partly on publicly available evidence, including from social media, that linked some extremists involved in the riot to people in Trump’s orbit — including Roger Stone, Trump’s longest-serving political adviser; Ali Alexander, an organizer of the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the riot; and Alex Jones, the Infowars host.

………

In February 2021, Cooney took his proposal to investigate the ties with people in Trump’s orbit directly to a group of senior agents in the FBI’s public corruption division, a group he’d worked with over the years and who were enmeshed in some of the most sensitive Jan. 6 cases underway.

According to three people who either viewed or were briefed on Cooney’s plan, it called for a task force to embark on a wide-ranging effort, including seeking phone records for Stone, as well as Alexander. Cooney wanted investigators to follow the money — to trace who had financed the false claims of a stolen election and paid for the travel of rallygoers-turned-rioters. He was urging investigators to probe the connection between Stone and members of the Oath Keepers, who were photographed together outside the Willard hotel in downtown Washington on the morning of Jan. 6.

………

Axelrod called a meeting for the last week of February with Sherwin, D’Antuono, Abbate and other top deputies. Cooney wasn’t there to defend his plan, according to three people familiar with the discussion, but Axelrod and Abbate reacted allergically to one aspect of it: Cooney wanted membership rolls for Oath Keepers as well as groups that had obtained permits for rallies on Jan. 6, looking for possible links and witnesses. The two saw those steps as treading on First Amendment-protected activities, the people said.

Axelrod saw an uncomfortable analogy to Black Lives Matter protests that had ended in vandalism in

………

Some in the group also acknowledged the political risks during the meeting or in subsequent conversations, according to people familiar with the discussions. Seeking the communications of a high-profile Trump ally such as Stone could trigger a social media post from Trump decrying yet another FBI investigation as a “witch hunt.” And what if the probe turned up nothing? Some were mindful, too, that investigating public figures demanded a high degree of confidence, because even a probe that finds no crime can unfairly impugn them.

All who assembled for the late February meeting were in agreement, with Axelrod making the final call: Cooney’s plan would not go forward.

………

About the same time, attorneys at Main Justice declined another proposal that would have squarely focused prosecutors on documents that Trump used to pressure Pence not to certify the election for Biden, The Post found.

Officials at the National Archives had discovered similarities in fraudulent slates of electors for Trump that his Republican allies had submitted to Congress and the Archives. The National Archives inspector general’s office asked the Justice Department’s election crimes branch to consider investigating the seemingly coordinated effort in swing states. Citing its prosecutors’ discretion, the department told the Archives it would not pursue the topic, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.


The Justice Department didn’t expound at the time on why they turned down the elector probe, but the department made clear its strategy on the riot. Investigators would rely on the traditional method for prosecuting organized crime cases — rolling up of smaller criminals to implicate bigger ones.


To make it work, however, Sherwin began agitating that the government would need a hammer — a charge that would fit the historic nature of the crime and potentially carry decades in prison — to leverage rioters to tell everything they knew about the planning.


On Feb. 19, Sherwin signed an indictment charging nine Oath Keepers with conspiring to obstruct a government proceeding. In meetings, he instructed his top deputies to rapidly draft a superseding indictment charging some of them with seditious conspiracy and present it to DOJ headquarters so they could weigh applying this novel charge. 

………




Sherwin had announced he would step down, making way for Biden to nominate a new U.S. attorney, but he felt so strongly about the seditious conspiracy approach that it figured into his briefing for the new attorney general on Garland’s first day on the job.


Sherwin emphasized that most of the rioters were “stand-alone” actors who got caught up in the mob mentality. He said he was worried prosecutors risked getting bogged down trying hundreds of defendants and recommended the government plead out hundreds of lesser Jan. 6 cases. He stressed that the department should focus on the planners and leaders of the attack and consider using the little-used charge of attempting to violently overthrow their government.


Garland thanked Sherwin but did not reveal his thinking on seditious conspiracy, according to two people familiar with the meeting. It would become the norm in Garland’s buttoned-down Justice Department to share information on only a need-to-know basis. ………


Before returning to Miami, Sherwin agreed to tape an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes.”


Sherwin suggested to CBS that investigators had obtained enough evidence to prove some rioters engaged in sedition. “I personally believe the evidence is trending toward that, and probably meets those elements,” he said.

………

Garland’s top deputies were livid, and the attorney general himself was visibly upset, several people familiar with his reaction said. The attorney general, who was painstaking in preparing his own public remarks, was especially angry at Sherwin for speaking off the cuff. In the hearing with Mehta, John Crabb, chief of the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office, said it appeared that “rules and procedures were not complied with” regarding the television interview, and that Sherwin had been referred to the department’s internal affairs office for an ethics probe. Sherwin later told people he thought he’d had the department’s support to tape the interview.


Sherwin heard from a close Justice Department ally that Garland and his deputies now felt boxed into the seditious conspiracy charges — or to tough questions if they didn’t bring them.

Oh the poor delicate f%$#ing flowers. They might have to f%$#ing do their f%$#ing jobs.

………

A permanent replacement was slow in coming, leaving some prosecutors describing the investigation as “rudderless” throughout the summer of 2021. Near the end of July, Biden nominated Graves, a lawyer in private practice who had once led the office’s fraud section.

During that time, Justice officials continued to have conflicting views over whether to pursue people in Trump’s orbit. The debate reached the deputy attorney general’s office.

Monaco, 55, had begun her career as a staffer in Biden’s Senate Judiciary Committee, and had herself worked as a federal prosecutor in the D.C. office. Monaco later rose to be the chief of staff to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and subsequently was President Barack Obama’s homeland security adviser. By design, conflicts that arise between the U.S. attorney’s office, the FBI or other branches of the Justice Department are managed by the deputy attorney general’s office.

………

Some prosecutors even had the impression that Trump had become a taboo topic at Main Justice. Colleagues responsible for preparing briefing materials and updates for Garland and Monaco were warned to focus on foot soldiers and to avoid mentioning Trump or his close allies.

Late that summer, members of the team leading one of the most high-profile parts of the bottom-up probe into members of the Oath Keepers became frustrated, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Prosecutors wanted to charge Stewart Rhodes, the group’s founder, and several lieutenants with seditious conspiracy. But by fall, the decision remained in limbo. Prosecutors had put Rhodes in their sights since February, when they first referred to him as “Person One” in court records, but still hadn’t arrested him.

“The agents kept asking, ‘What’s going on?’” recalled one of those familiar with the case. “They were ready to pick up Rhodes.”

While FBI agents and line prosecutors wanted to move forward with the charge, a decision was delayed in part because of wariness and debate among some officials inside Monaco’s and Garland’s offices about the risk of sedition charges being overturned on appeal. On top of that, the department still lacked Senate confirmation for two of Biden’s nominees — for U.S. attorney in D.C. and an assistant attorney general for national security, the key supervisors over the investigation.

If you are unwilling to prosecute, or even investigate a crime unless it is a slam dunk, you should not be a prosecutor in traffic court, much less Attorney General.

And that investigation of phony electors? 

A new prosecutor on the case, Thomas Windom, wanted to investigate, and got stonewalled by the D’Antuono, so he turned to, "Discreetly inquire if another agency might help: the U.S. Postal Service inspector." (As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know.")

………

Behind the scenes, federal prosecutors in Michigan who received Nessel’s referral were waiting to hear from Monaco’s office about how Main Justice wanted to proceed. National Archives officials were dumbstruck; the Justice Department was suddenly interested in the fake electors evidence it had declined to pursue a year earlier.

One person directly familiar with the department’s new interest in the case said it felt as though the department was reacting to the House committee’s work as well as heightened media coverage and commentary. “Only after they were embarrassed did they start looking,” the person said.

Again, we see a steadfast refusal to even investigate until public and Congressional pressure reached a fever pitch.

To quote Atrios, "I'll just say that efforts to not look "political" are, in fact, political."

To quote Rush, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."  (Hence the video posted above)