Adam Schiff comes out swinging
For a few weeks there, liberal media pundits tried as hard as they could to paint Attorney General Merrick Garland as a shadowy evil figure who was secretly plotting with Bill Barr and the ghost of Richard Nixon or something. Garland managed to largely put an end to this ratings-driven narrative by showing his face at a few press conferences and beginning to lay out his vision for protecting voting rights and other important matters.
But the trouble with ginning up a pitchfork brigade is that once the fever breaks, the entire movement tends to vanish. This brings to the fact that while Merrick Garland was always one of the good guys and was never the fire breathing monster that MSNBC and others made him out to be earlier this month, he does need ongoing pressure placed on him to be as aggressive in his job as possible. If nothing else, that kind of constructive pressure makes it easier for him to get away with being aggressive.
Fortunately, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff hasn’t forgotten about this fact. He appeared on Face The Nation this morning and called on Merrick Garland to do a “wholesale” review of every inappropriate and/or illegal thing that the Trump-era DOJ was doing over the previous four years:
AG Merrick Garland “really needs to do a wholesale review of all of the politicization of the [DOJ] of the last four years,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) says. “What happened to our committee, members of the press – that’s just a subset.” pic.twitter.com/PhC44XVovH
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) June 20, 2021
This is how you do it. Schiff is placing the correct kind of constructive public pressure on Merrick Garland to continue doing the right thing. Schiff isn’t assuming the worst about Garland for effect, or making up conspiracy theories about him. Nor has Schiff abandoned the pressure he’s placing on Garland now that the fever pitch moment has come and gone.
Those among the public who are looking to place pressure on someone like Merrick Garland, and get real results, should take a page from Adam Schiff’s playbook. In spite of the pitchfork brigade’s claims, the Democrats in office largely know what they’re doing and are quite politically savvy. But they need us, the political activists, to support them in these efforts in equally savvy fashion.
