Score one for Merrick Garland
Ever since Attorney General Merrick Garland took office a little more than a year and a half ago, the media and pundit class has fed us the same daily soundbite: Garland is a coward and his DOJ is doing nothing. This outrage-inducing narrative has been good for ratings. But the thing is, it keeps turning out to be false.
We could cite the obvious, such as the fact that Garland’s DOJ took down the entire Oath Keepers leadership, raided Donald Trump’s home to recover the classified nuclear secrets he stole, and has appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to prosecute Trump. But it’s the less obvious stuff that’s served to underscore just how much Garland’s DOJ has been doing.
Take, for instance, the DOJ’s recent criminal indictment of the former top FBI official who was in charge of the Trump-Russia investigation. If the Garland DOJ were “doing nothing” and seeking to protect the establishment, as so many pundits spend every day yelling, would it really have busted one of its own top people like this?
After all, it’s embarrassing for the DOJ that its top official in charge of investigating Russian collusion turned out to be guilty of Russian collusion. But the Garland DOJ made a point of busting the guy anyway. Yes, it took time. But these things always do. This official was in a position of power for years and fooled everyone on all sides. Yet the Garland DOJ decided to get to the bottom of whoever within the FBI was doing Russia’s bidding, and when it turned out to be such a key former insider, it dutifully indicted him.
Now it turns out the Garland DOJ has infiltrated and taken down a ransomware group that had bilked Americans out of more than a hundred million dollars. Again, it took time for this to come together. But again, these things always do. The bottom line is that Merrick Garland and his DOJ are making serious tangible progress, which is what ultimately matters when it comes to these things. Just as the federal indictment of Trump, which has taken a long time, will surely be so comprehensive as to guarantee a conviction.
