Posted on 06/12/2024 5:30:14 AM PDT by Heartlander
Attorney General Merrick Garland published an op-ed in the Washington Post Tuesday, declaring that unfounded attacks on the Justice Department “must end.” It’s strange and unsettling for the chief law enforcement officer of the United States to write such a thing. Whatever the merits of his argument, it doesn’t come off as an argument. It comes off as a threat.
Garland opens with the case of a man recently convicted for threatening to bomb an FBI field office. That’s a crime, of course, and it has no place in American society. Garland goes on to say that in recent weeks the Justice Department has seen “an escalation of attacks that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work. They are baseless, personal and dangerous.”
You would think, then, that he’s referring to attacks like the bomb threat. But he’s not. In the very next sentence, he says these attacks “come in the form of threats to defund particular department investigations, most recently the special counsel’s prosecution of the former president.”
So for Garland, a bomb threat is apparently the same as threats by lawmakers to defund the obviously corrupt investigation of former President Donald Trump by DOJ special counsel Jack Smith.
Garland then says that some of these “attacks” come in the form of “conspiracy theories crafted and spread for the purpose of undermining public trust in the judicial process itself.”
But there’s no law in America against spreading “conspiracy theories”—just ask the entire corporate media that spent years spreading outlandish conspiracy theories about how Trump was a Russian agent. What’s more, many Americans now sincerely believe (with good reason) that in light of the ongoing lawfare against Trump, the judicial process itself is indeed compromised and undeserving of public trust. If these Americans are spreading what Garland thinks are “conspiracy theories” for the purpose of persuading their countrymen that the Justice Department is untrustworthy, that is their right as Americans.
But Garland doesn’t appear to think so. Throughout his op-ed, he elides the stark difference between specific threats of violence (like a bomb threat) and First Amendment-protected speech (like disagreeing with Merrick Garland). We should expect nothing less from the attorney general who smeared concerned parents who speak out at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists.” But what Garland alludes to is bone-chilling, because he’s saying that “unfounded” criticism of a weaponized and politicized Justice Department is the equivalent of a bomb threat.
Setting aside that such criticism is well within the bounds of protected speech, it’s also not true that it’s “unfounded.” For example, Garland says the DOJ is being attacked with “false claims that a case brought by a local district attorney and resolved by a jury verdict in a state trial was somehow controlled by the Justice Department.” He’s referring here to the case Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought against Trump in New York, winning a conviction against the former president last month on murky, convoluted charges that will likely be overturned on appeal.
When Garland decries accusations that the case was “somehow controlled by the Justice Department,” he’s referring to the fact that one of his own attorneys, Matthew Colangelo, left the DOJ and three days later joined Bragg’s office to work on the Trump case—a pretty obvious indication that Garland’s Justice Department was in fact controlling, or at least involved in, the Bragg case.
To suggest as much is, in Garland’s view, a “conspiracy theory” that “must end.” That’s what his office said to the useful idiots at Politico like Kyle Cheney, who dutifully carried water for Garland this week by posting on X about how the DOJ informed House Republicans that it searched for emails between Colangelo and Bragg’s office but found none.
The outlandish implication of Cheney’s tweet is that Colangelo left the Justice Department to work for Bragg without ever talking to anyone who worked there. As my colleague Mollie Hemingway commented, “I guess if they didn’t use their public emails to discuss anything, Colangelo didn’t really go to Bragg’s office, and it’s a ‘conspiracy theory’ to talk about it.”
Because he refuses even to acknowledge these things, Garland can make absurd statements such as that the Justice Department “makes decisions about criminal investigations based only on the facts and the law. We do not investigate people because of their last name, their political affiliation, the size of their bank account, where they come from or what they look like.”
Bur of course we all know that’s not true. Just consider the classified documents case against Trump. Both Biden and Obama improperly removed classified documents from the White House, and neither was prosecuted by their successor’s Justice Department. It’s also obviously true that Garland refuses to investigate people because of their last name, as evidenced by special counsel David Weiss allowing the statute of limitations to expire on Hunter Biden’s alleged financial crimes connected to his dealing with the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
The most dangerous aspect of Garland’s op-ed is how he lumps things together. He claims that “using conspiracy theories, falsehoods, violence and threats of violence to affect political outcomes is not normal.”
Using conspiracy theories and falsehoods to affect political outcomes is absolutely normal in American politics—especially among Democrats and their courtesans in the corporate press. They’ve turned it into an art form. But of course Garland isn’t talking about those conspiracy theories and falsehoods. He’s only talking about the ones that come from Trump supporters, which to him are the real danger.
In fact, the real danger here is an attorney general who thinks he’s above criticism, and who feels comfortable issuing public threats that we’d better cut it out—or else.
BTTT
“The law is what I say it is.”
Garland is a bigger retard that Bidenskyyyyyyyyyyyy.
Another distraction to try to keep focus on things other than the HORRIBLE ECONOMY.
Garland has become a power mad fanatic.
This happens when you surround yourself with Yes Men and Women who buy into the delusion that they are above reproach.
Hi.
Thank the Lord (and Mitch) that this asshole isn’t on the Supreme Court
5.56mm
Thank the Lord (and Mitch) that this asshole isn’t on the Supreme Court
You got that right! Don’t want to think about what damage he would have caused if what he’s doing now is any indication.
What he’s really saying is that his justice department is above the law.
Garland and his accomplices are zealots.
Do not underestimate these people.
It is above criticism, at least so far. And given his attitude, he thinks our President’s “greatest voter fraud organization in history” is going to succeed again in November. (Not that I’m being critical of him or anything. Please make a note of that, Mr Agent.)
It needs to be understood that these people are out to make the US a Democratic Party-run country run on according to the precepts of Karl Marx, Eugene Debs and Upton Sinclair.
The Republican Party must make bold policy changes to stop Garland and his fellow travelers.
Relying on Trump’s coattails will not be sufficient.
Trump is likely to be wearing NY Department of Corrections clothing in the months before voting.
Relying on traditional Republican campaign marketing will not be sufficient. The Democrats will happily buy the votes of college graduates at $10,000 to $20,000 each.
The issues younger people face must be addressed. Perhaps by limiting estate tax deductions to student loan payoff and UK-style housing association funding.
The issues older people face must be addressed.
The Republicans in Congress should try to send to the states a constitutional amendment that would cap middle class property taxation, such as:
Property tax on any residential property of less than 2799 square feet of finished space shall be no higher the 2019 dollar amount on the property, or for a newer or since resold property what a similar property in the same area would have been taxed at for 2019 if it lacked owner specific tax breaks, increased by 3% per calendar year since 2019 and by any percentage increase to its finished living space.
Fighting for such a property tax cap now in Congress would add the electors of several deep blue states to Trump’s total and make Congress turn deep red come November.
Even devoted Democratic voters do not want to get taxed out of their homes.
We also need to cap the ability of Democrats to buy votes by a middle-class income tax cap in the federal constitution.
Fighting for such a middle-class income tax cap now in Congress would add the electors of several deep blue states to Trump’s total and make Congress turn deep red come November.
[perhaps]
Federal income taxation shall be capped as follows, on personal income:
below the average yearly apartment rent in the District of Columbia, 10%,
below the median federal full-time civilian employee compensation amount, 22%,
below the average upper quartile of federal full-time civilian employee compensation amount, 30%,
below the average upper decile of federal full-time civilian employee compensation amount, 40%.
[Note: All percentages include employee FICA. They do not fully include self-employment tax, so people that pay SE tax might choose to voluntarily invest in the SS system or otherwise arrange for their own retirement funding.]
Not getting appointed to the Supreme Court may have something to do with it as well. Revenge for that insult.
Peach
Laws are for the little people.
Garland, et al, don’t THINK they’re above the law, they KNOW it . . .
He also thinks that all liberals and the whole liberal agenda from hell are above being criticised- going so far as to call moms who never did anything wrong or criminal labeled as “domestic terrorists” for resisting dei and crt
“come in the form of threats to defund particular department investigations, most recently the special counsel’s prosecution of the former president.”
It is my understanding that federal law requires special in-house DoJ people to prosecute national security document cases.
I don’t see that Jack Smith brings anything to the prosecutorial table.
“Before working at the DOJ, Colangelo worked for Attorney General Letitia James, who investigated Trump for three years before bringing a massive civil lawsuit against him and the Trump Organization in the fall of 2022.”
QUOTES via NPR
“I’m running for attorney general because I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president,” James said in another campaign video.
After winning office, James gave an interview to NBC News in December 2018 where she promised to “use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/20/1232056652/new-york-attorney-general-letitia-james-trump-nra
QUOTES
James will be picking up where her predecessors left off. Former AG Eric Schneiderman — who resigned earlier this year amid abuse allegations — and current AG Barbara Underwood have taken more than 200 legal actions against Trump and his administration.
But she also hopes to succeed where they could not: passing a state law that would close the so-called pardon loophole. The change would allow the AG to prosecute those who’ve committed crimes in New York state, even if they’ve received a presidential pardon for federal charges.
James said she’s already discussed the legislation with Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. And she raised the possibility Trump could vacate the office, and receive a pardon himself.
“If, in fact, Vice President Pence were to pardon President Trump,” she said, “clearly the office of attorney general — when the bill in Albany is passed — we will prosecute the president for crimes committed in New York state.”
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