Well, I haven’t said Garland should be fired. The question is muddled by the fact that–of course–the GOP wants the heads of ANYONE who has ever criticized Trump, let alone inconvenienced him.
How I wish that McConnell had fallen into some other dimension after Scalia died, so that Garland could have become a SCOTUS Justice. His best qualities would have served him well there, and his (in my view) propensity for motivated reasoning, used to fit his timorous nature, would likely have done less harm.
(I’ll admit I wouldn’t mourn unduly should Garland decide to resign, though. But that’s unlikely, and probably too disruptive to the project of holding the insurrection-conspirators to account.)
Judge Cannon has ordered the trial to start in two months! According to the article, the defense will ordinarily want much more time. This may have been to help Trump with his campaign in that it could be over before before the primaries.
My day is ruined. I mean, there are clearly people with their heads in the sand…
I don’t hate Garland. I just think he’s clearly unqualified for the job. He lets the fear of appearing biased prevent him from doing his job to protect our country. That he was eventually shamed into investigating Trump doesn’t absolve him if his cowardice.
How do you know all this? IANAL, but AFAICT the known facts are also consistent with a cautious and methodical (but still determined, patriotic, and well-meaning) prosecutorial approach.
Washington Post claims DOJ delayed the probe into Jan. 6th for over a year. They also say it took media and public pressure before DOJ would look at the fake electors conspiracy.
If they are correct how would that be consistent with any prosecutorial approach? Do you think there wasn’t evidence to support those investigations? Or was Garland for whatever reason not getting the job done?
That’s not my understanding of the article – my understanding is that the investigation started promptly, but the DOJ started at the bottom and worked their way up. That’s very different than delaying for a year.
In another thread, others said there is a 70-day goal for starting a trial (after indictment). While it’s very unlikely to actually start that soon (for good, typical reasons, not just nefarious delay attempts by Trump’s team), Cannon appears to be trying to at least show respect for the goal of a relatively speedy process — a good thing,
(Someone speculated that we won’t really know her degree of impartiality until she starts ruling on pre-trial and during-trial things like admissibility of certain evidence — but so far, she’s done okay.)
If you want to gripe that Garland prioritized going after the small players before moving on to the people at the top, I’m with you. Maybe it’s a good strategy, prosecute the low-hanging fruit and then move on to the harder stuff, but I’m skeptical. And if it was also influenced by the fear of political blowback, I don’t like that and I’ve called out a few people here on the board who have advocated that viewpoint (that we have to be careful not to make MAGA angry).
But the DOJ didn’t sit on their hands and do nothing. That’s bullshit, the same wrong bullshit that people were spewing before in this thread, that Garland and the DOJ will never do anything about Trump. Those people have been duly humiliated by how wrong they were.
How much more has to be said? There was evidence of crimes and Garland refused to investigate. We don’t need the Attorney General to prosecute rioting idiots. We needed an investigation of the people who engaged in a broad conspiracy to overthrow the government and there was evidence everywhere anybody looked, but Garland didn’t look.
“Sources say Garland didn’t want to look into that” is not the same thing as “Garland didn’t look into that”. Especially when Garland appointed someone to look into that (and other things), and so far that appointee has brought strong charges.
Remember that the complaints that Garland and the DOJ will never do anything were made before classified documents were a thing. Those complaints have not been proven wrong as of yet since none of the crimes people were talking about at the time have been charged.
That’s completely irrelevant. The claim was that Garland was never going to go after Trump because he was afraid of the political fallout, not when an election was pending. The claim wasn’t that Garland wasn’t going to pursue specific charges for specific crimes. It was that he wasn’t going to do anything.
Well, Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination, and he has been indicted on dozens of serious charges by Garland’s DOJ, and in the midst of his attempt to get that nomination he will also be trying to defend himself in court while potentially being in prison for whatever bit of life he has left on this planet.
So, yeah, they were extremely wrong. Some folks have said okay, I was wrong, and my hat’s off to them. Others have doubled down and look like clowns.