Frankly, I think our law isn’t set up to account for this shit and we need some serious reforms if and when sanity is able to take hold again.
I think it’s a delicate balance. It can be risky to make it easier to prosecute your political enemies, in view of the fact that one day you will be in the minority again.
This is not to say that Garland did all that he could do under the law, as fast as he might have been able. I don’t know the answer to that, which is why I asked.
Except for the fact that the Right cares nothing for precedents, and won’t restrain itself just because their opponents do. And that letting people into power who care nothing about the law renders the entire issue moot, anyway.
You don’t try to fight according to Marquis of Queensbury Rules when your opponent is a maniac with an axe. You just end up with an axe through your face.
I don’t agree with this argument, it’s got nothing to do with being polite, it’s got all to do with being practical with a long-term strategy to strengthen the good rules and structures, and weed out the loopholes, without exposing your side to legally valid but bogus prosecutions. I think @Atamasama’s post, specifically
was sufficiently ambiguous as to warrant an expression of caution.
As to the original question, Garland was not in a position to change any laws, he was in the executive branch and could only prosecute or not. Did he do the maximum he might have done in the time he had? Consensus here seems to be that he did not. I understand the impatience, I really do. But I think we need to recognize that prosecuting a president for actions during his presidency that had at least minimally plausible deniability is a major undertaking, for which you would probably want as ironclad a case as possible. It would be worse to have him acquitted (in my opinion) than to fail to prosecute at all.
Well, we didn’t get either, and never will. So, “Yay” I guess.
As pointless as it seems to be, I just wrote one of my Senators again. 
Is there a statute of limitations on sedition? If not, it could still happen (barring arguments that the US has already fallen irrevocably off the cliff, which I don’t yet agree with).
Yep.
I’d say that he did rely on the facts and the law IF you grant that Fact #1 for him was “any Republican disapproval (of any action of mine) is intolerable.”
Given that this was his primary consideration, “the law” was distinctly secondary.
Why would you say that? You write as if you know it to be true, so how do you know?
ISTM Garland would be one of those people who will stand proud that he did things By The Book, and oh well we lost but no one can say we cheated.
Small consolation.
And really, I don’t think that even had Garland — or the Atlanta DA or the NY AG — not cared about it looking too political, they would have been able to “take him out” in time before the election rolled up. I’d have expected come summer of 2024 the courts would have postponed everything for after November anyway.
He’d had FOUR YEARS to bring a case. They convicted Manson in less time, and never actually killed anyone at the Tate-LaBIanca homes..
Yes. People comforting themselves with ‘he wouldn’t have been able to finish before the 2024 election season’ are not being sensible.
Why does anyone post anything on a forum? Generally because in the light of known facts, it is both reasonable and logical to reach such a conclusion.
Sometimes people post on forums based on citable facts; in this case, Garland might (for example) have written something that agreed with or at least pointed to your conclusion. Lacking anything concrete like that, what you have is conjecture, with some degree of probability that is well below 100%.
I have to wonder also about motivation. Why would Garland, who was prevented by Republicans from serving what would be any jurist’s dream job, seek to serve them by purposefully dragging his feet or whatever he is alleged to have done.
Perhaps he is only incompetent rather than malicious. Perhaps he was more cautious than he needed to be, as a result of poor judgment. I am not invested in any particular interpretation, but it would be helpful on some level to know the right one.
eta: In any event, I don’t agree that assigning motive based on results produces accurate information.
He’s a Democrat, and the first goal of a Democrat is to aid and defend the Republicans. Just as one of the first things that Obama did upon taking office was forbid all further investigation into Bush’s employment of torture, Gerrick was never going to do anything but try to keep Trump free and unpunished in hopes he’d get re-elected and render it all moot.
I wouldn’t dispute that Merrick Garland’s approach was flawed. But would a perfectly timed, perfectly crafted prosecution have made any difference? Probably not.
Trump evaded justice not because of the attorney general’s incompetence but because of the Supreme Court’s treachery. Six unscrupulous justices handed Trump a bogus “presumptive immunity” on July 1, 2024. All six were sitting on the court as of 2021. How was any attorney general or prosecutor going to get around them?
By 2024, he was running for reelection and the presumptive GOP candidate. If he had moved faster it is possible (I don’t know about likely although the Pollyanna in me would hope) that SCOTUS would not have made such an egregious ruling.
I don’t really want to defend the guy because Garland should have investigated Rump and his cronies. But a hallmark of banana republics is the constant politicized prosecution of the outgoing regime. Garland was an institutionalist who had faith in America and Americans to never again allow the orange turd back into the White House. He wanted to avoid looking like he was engaging in politically-motivated prosecutions to preserve respect for our law enforcement institutions and the rule of law. Of course, in the end he screwed the pooch royally and the situation is far worse than he could have imagined but his instinct is understandable without saying that he’s a Democrat looking to protect Republicans.
I think “trying to not appear political” made Garland’s life a lot easier. The reality is that the more pertinent principles were of showing no-one is above the law and that American institutions take insurrection and other lawlessness seriously.
As it is, most of MAGA believe that it was a politicized justice department anyway, so trying to play nice to the people in the cult turns out to have been an absolute waste of time. And the rule of law and american institutions now look weaker than ever. So lose-lose.
And now there is an administration that focuses the DOJ solely on personal and political retribution.
That asshole should be behind bars, Garland.
Instead, well, just look.
Oh don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t “comfort” me at all it dismays me. The whole show looks like everything about it was working to prevent swift justice.
(And it was by no means solely up to Garland. Trump’s defense worked hard and fought dirty if they had to, and others also failed in the face of that. How much time and confidence was wasted in the Georgia election-tampering case, the one that should have been a slam dunk and was not subject to winding up in front of Aileen Cannon, with the nonsense about the Atlanta DA and the special prosecutor?)