What’s really going on with Merrick Garland and Steve Bannon
Many of the major political pundits on Twitter are holding a ceremonial count of how many days it’s been since the January 6th Committee referred Steve Bannon for prosecution to the Department of Justice, and pushing hysterically negative narratives about Merrick Garland because it hasn’t happened yet.
To hear these pundits tell it, Garland has clearly decided not to prosecute Bannon, and unless Garland changes his mind within an hour or a day, our democracy is doomed. But in reality there’s no possible way that any pundit could know for sure what Garland is going to do, and these pundits are pretty clearly pushing this kind of doomsday hysteria in the hope of driving retweets and TV bookings.
Meanwhile back in the real world, two legal experts, both of them former U.S. Attorneys, are trying to factually explain the Garland / DOJ / Bannon dynamic. Joyce Vance pointed out that “it does take some time to issue & return grand jury subpoenas to get all the evidence you need in admissible form. Discovery needs to be prepared for turnover to the defendant. These aren’t insignificant tasks.”
Barb McQuade tweeted her agreement with Vance and added this: “The longer DOJ spends reviewing Bannon subpoena matter, the more likely it is they will charge … it takes time to get your ducks in a row to file an indictment, which means producing discovery, anticipating motions, and preparing for a speedy trial.”
In other words, the pundits who are insisting the DOJ is taking an unreasonably long amount of time, or insisting that the amount of time that has passed means Garland has decided to let Bannon off the hook, are full of it. They’re claiming to know doomsday things they cannot possibly know, and they’re ignoring the realities of how the legal system actually works.
Unfortunately, the nuanced and factually accurate legal takes from the likes of Vance and McQuade are largely getting drowned out by other pundits who are getting a whole lot more attention by tweeting simplistic doomsday nonsense along the lines of “It’s been too many days, Garland needs to be fired by tomorrow, or else our democracy is DOOMED.”
