Here comes Attorney General Merrick Garland. This is going to be fun.
The obstructionist Senate Republicans have used procedural moves to drag it out for as long as they could, but the Merrick Garland confirmation hearings got underway this week. He’ll officially be Attorney General within days. And now the fun begins, so to speak.
By all accounts the Acting Attorney General has done a fine job this past month in Merrick Garland’s absence. It’s a reminder that career officials tend to do their jobs correctly more often than not, when they’re not being pressured by a corrupt President. But it feels like a given that some of the biggest decisions and judgment calls of the Biden-era DOJ have been on pause, waiting for Garland to officially be in there, so he can make or weigh in on those decisions.
For instance, it’s long been widely reported that the DOJ has a criminal case going against Rudy Giuliani. With Garland in place, will we finally see him arrested? We’ve seen a large number of lower and middle tier Capitol insurrectionists arrested, but no “big names” or ringleaders just yet. This month it became clear that the likes of Roger Stone were part of the conspiracy. Are we about to see Stone get sent to prison for real this time?
And of course there’s the comprehensive federal criminal case against Donald Trump that the DOJ has surely spent the past four years clandestinely assembling, just in case it was ever in a position to use it. Now is that time. Will Merrick Garland sign off on the federal prosecution of Trump, or will he leave it to states like New York and Georgia to put him in prison instead?
So many Trump-aligned people have committed crimes over the past four years, big and small, and (temporarily) gotten away with it because Donald Trump controlled the Department of Justice. But no more. Now we’re about to see a fair and honest man take control of the DOJ in the form of Merrick Garland. It’s going to be fun watching justice finally served.
