Garland’s Biggest Blunder: The Inaction That Paved Trump’s Path Back to Power
A timid Justice Department gave Trump the time he needed to escape accountability—and now, America faces the consequences.
Let us not forget that former Attorney General Merrick Garland brought us to this disastrous point in our democracy.
Trump is in power again and emboldened largely because of Garland’s failures as Attorney General.
I know it is not usually productive to look backward, especially as we are trying to fight the current frenzy of President Trump’s autocratic onslaught. However, I need to get this retrospective point off my chest.
Instead of being a strong Attorney General going after Trump’s wrongdoings, Garland was a limp noodle. He was dilatory and indecisive. (Thank God that he never made it to the Supreme Court, or we never would have received any decisions from him.)
Coming to office after the Trump inspired attack on our Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Garland instantly went after the 1.500 or so attackers instead of going after Trump and his minions, the leaders of the insurrection.
Those attackers, for the most part, were low hanging fruit in a legal sense…easy to charge, easy to intimidate into pleas and easy to convict. Overall, their cases were not that challenging for the Department of Justice.
While going after the foot soldiers, it took Garland almost two years to appoint Special Counsel Jack Smith in November 2022 to go after Trump for election interference and for illegally harboring classified documents.
Smith did not receive indictments on the election interference case against Trump until August 1, 2023, 32 months after the criminal attack on the Capitol.
That delay was fatal.
As a former criminal defense attorney and trial judge, I know that the longer a case is delayed from the point of the crime, the easier it is to either win an acquittal or to delay the case by motions and appeals to the point where the actual case becomes meaningless.
When I was advocating for a defendant who really had no chance of winning on the merits of his or her case, I would stall. Delay, delay, delay became my mantra. The more a case was delayed, the more chances I had to either win or get a much better plea deal for my client.
Witnesses would forget facts and thereby be easier to impeach on cross-examination. Evidence would get lost. Sometimes witnesses would die or move away or lose their vigor to prosecute.
I used these tactics, not because I was a brilliant defense attorney, but because they are common tactics used when an attorney is trying to defend the indefensible. It is Criminal Defense 101.
Delay and appeal. Delay and appeal. Delay and appeal. That’s exactly what Trump’s defense team did.
Ultimately, they tossed a “Hail Mary” pass to the Supreme Court on the issue of presidential immunity.
The Justices caught the pass and for the Trump defense, ran for a touchdown giving Trump absolute presidential immunity for official acts. When did this happen? The decision was rendered on July 1, 2024, just four months prior to the election and 42 months after the Jan. 6th insurrection.
All of this easily should have been anticipated by Garland.
Appointing a Special Counsel to go after Trump’s alleged crimes should have been his first item of business but it wasn’t. It should have been his Day One priority.
Instead, he diddled around trying to be “apolitical.” He was more concerned about the image of the Department of Justice than seeking justice.
During his confirmation hearings, he told Senators that he wanted to “turn down the volume of public discourse” about the Justice Department, as reported by the Associate Press.
He did not want the Department of Justice to be the “center of partisan disagreement.”
As a result, Trump never was held legally accountable for either his acts relating to Jan. 6 or his mishandling of classified documents. He went into the 2024 election unblemished and not convicted of any of his alleged federal crimes.
Why? Because of Merrick Garland’s temerity and inaction.
Trump skated into the November 2024 election unscathed by the Justice Department and not accountable for any of his actions to cause a violent insurrection against the American government or to compromise national security.
Trump gave the middle finger to our legal system and the rule of law while Garland stood on the sidelines whimpering that his Department of Justice was “apolitical.”
Now, as a country, we suffer the aftermath of Garland’s weakness and misjudgment.