Merrick Garland gives new interview, appears to hint that the DOJ is targeting Donald Trump
Even as doomsday pundits have baselessly insisted that the DOJ will never target Donald Trump no matter what, and the DOJ itself has remained largely silent on the matter, we’ve always tried to explain what these kinds of things always come down to. The DOJ starts at the bottom of the criminal conspiracy hierarchy, with the people who actually did the deed, and keeps attempting to flip them upward in the hope of eventually having cooperating witnesses at the highest levels who can help take down the biggest fish. In other words, whether the DOJ charges Trump will come down to whether it can keep flipping people that far up the chain.
When Roger Stone’s Oath Keeper chauffeur cut a cooperating plea deal last week, we pointed to this as a huge step in the right direction. The chauffeur’s cooperation ensures that the DOJ now has Stone nailed. And if at some point Stone figures out that he’s indeed nailed, he’ll have to consider cutting a cooperation deal of his own – which would then give DOJ its case against Trump. When the DOJ followed up the Oath Keeper plea deal with an out-of-nowhere indictment of the Proud Boys leader this week, it appeared the DOJ’s attempt at working its way up the January 6th chain was going to succeed after all.
Now Merrick Garland has given a new interview to NPR, and he’s made a point of spelling out that the DOJ is “not avoiding cases that are political or cases that are controversial or sensitive.” That alone feels like a de facto confirmation that the DOJ is targeting Donald Trump for his alleged crimes, and will charge Trump if it ultimately concludes that it can make the charges stick at trial. But there’s more.
Garland added this: “We begin with the cases that are right in front of us with the overt actions and then we build from there … And that is a process that we will continue to build until we hold everyone accountable who committed criminal acts with respect to January 6.” In other words, the DOJ has been approaching January 6th more or less exactly like we’ve been telling you it would. Not because we’ve got Nostradamus over here, but because there’s a way these things work – and they don’t cease to work that way just because some doomsday pundit on Twitter doesn’t understand how things work, or sees an opportunity for attention by ignoring how things work.
Here’s what stands out to us. Sure, Merrick Garland’s official reason for doing this NPR interview is that it’s the one year anniversary of him taking office. But there’s no rule that says a new Attorney General has to suddenly go do an interview on his first anniversary. What we find interesting is the timing, within the context of what’s happened over the past week.
The DOJ lands a seditious conspiracy plea deal with Roger Stone’s Oath Keeper driver, meaning it finally has Stone nailed, meaning it finally has a clear path to get to Trump, and now suddenly Merrick Garland decides to do an interview in which he appears to strongly hint that the DOJ is targeting Trump. That doesn’t feel like a coincidence. It’s as if the DOJ finally feels like it’s going to be able to get to Trump, and so Garland is now willing to begin setting that expectation with the public. In any case you can check out Merrick Garland’s full NPR interview here.
