So much for Merrick Garland doing “nothing”
It’s become such a frequent refrain from political pundits and activists alike, you’d almost be tempted to think it’s true: “Attorney General Merrick Garland is doing nothing.” Not too little, mind you, but nothing. This is primarily coming from people who either aren’t paying attention to what is going on, or aren’t familiar enough to recognize “something” when they see it.
While all this complaining has been going on, Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has raided the homes of Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing, arrested Trump money man Tom Barrack, arrested Kushner sidekick Ken Kurson, and most recently raided Trump-connected Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The DOJ keeps moving in on and taking down one key figure in Trump world after another, which is in fact precisely how the DOJ would go about building a criminal case against Donald Trump himself, if such a thing is happening. If the DOJ is going to indict Trump, it’ll certainly flip some of his top henchmen first. And now there’s a new development.
Now the FBI, which answers to Merrick Garland’s DOJ, is criminally investigating a 2019 plot involving the Libyan civil war and Erik Prince. Prince of course is the guy who spent the Trump era running around the world causing trouble with his private army, and he’s also the brother of Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
This is of course a criminal probe that should have taken place back in 2019, but as we keep seeing, criminal cases against Trump allies mostly had the brakes put on them until the Trump era was over. Now that Merrick Garland has seized control of the Department of Justice, these criminal cases are proceeding accordingly. It’s just that it takes time to build (or rebuild) these previously sabotaged cases.
The fact that Merrick Garland’s DOJ is going after Erik Prince should be the final proof you need that Garland is playing for keeps. With the likes of Prince, Giuliani, Toensing, and Deripaska on their way toward indictment, and others like Barrack having already been indicted, it’s a matter of time before one or more of these individuals decides to flip on Trump. That’s when a federal criminal case against Trump will happen if it’s going to happen. In the meantime, there’s a whole lot of “something” going on, even as those misunderstanding the situation keep insisting it’s “nothing.”
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report