In 2016, the American Bar Assn. I couldn't say enough good things about Merrick Garland, then chief judge of the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, when he sent a report approving him to the Senate highest rating. So at Garland's confirmation hearing, a lawyer gave Senators were examples of the unanimous praise of hundreds of lawyers, judges and law professors contacted by the group's reviewers.
“Maybe he's the perfect person,” enthused one anonymous fan. Another: “Judge Garland has no weaknesses.”
Opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes takes a critical look at the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Therein lies the tragedy of Merrick Garland. A man who could have been a truly top justice — without the unprecedented Republican blockade of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — instead became a seemingly ineffective attorney general, at least in light of the defining challenge of his term: Donald Trump for attempted theft to hold accountable the 2020 presidential election.
The qualities that legal experts saw as Garland's strengths – thoughtful caution, modesty, judicial temperament, indifference to politics – turned out to be weaknesses for the Justice Department chief in these times.
Garland was so intent on restoring the department's independence and integrity – after Trump openly sought to use it as a weapon against his enemies in his first term – that the attorney general initially shied away from taking action against Trump over his role in post-war subversion Election investigations and prosecutions that culminated in January. 6. 2021. From all AccountsGarland feared that the Justice Department would turn its legal powers against the man President Biden had just beaten in the election.
Of course, Trump, the master of projection, wanted and did to the attorney general exactly what Trump himself was guilty of: arming the Justice Department. But in a nation founded on the rule of law, the case against Trump had to be pursued.
Garland succeeded in reviving the department's post-Watergate norms limiting contacts between law enforcement officials and the White House, norms that Garland helped develop as a young attorney general in the Carter administration in response to abuses in the Nixon era. But so much for Garland's performance: Trump, whose election saved him from having to answer for Jan. 6 or a separate federal indictment for stealing classified documents, will be back in power next week, more emboldened than before and with the Supporting candidates willing to comply with his vindictive orders against the Justice Department and the FBI.
Last week saw small victories on accountability, if not on Trump's alleged federal crimes. He was sentenced on Friday Sentencing in May in New York state courtfor falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star before the 2016 election. Judge Juan M. Merchan did not impose any punishment on the president-elect, but at least the conviction underscored Trump's distinction as the only criminal president. Separately, Garland specified he would release special counsel Jack Smith's final report detailing the evidence of Trump's guilt on January 6th.
The 72-year-old attorney general is soon leaving office after angering all sides – Republicans for pursuing Trump in the first place and Democrats for not moving quickly and forcefully enough against him. California Sen. Adam B. Schiff, a former member of the House committee on Jan. 6, was among the first Democrats to speak publicly accuse the Justice Department, at least in part, for allowing Trump to avoid trial before the 2024 election, complaining on CNN that the department had focused for too long on “the foot soldiers” who attacked the Capitol “and failed to do so.” “To look at…the instigators.”
A recent CNN retrospective on the Trump impeachment called 2021 “the lost year.” At a time when the former president was still on the defensive around Jan. 6, the Justice Department pursued a bottom-up strategy that targeted more than 1,500 rioters largest criminal investigation always. Prosecutors insisted they were pursuing leads implicating Trump and close allies while sorting out the legal complexities of the trial of a former Oval Office occupant.
In 2022, questions about Garland's deliberate dawdling were inevitable. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled in March governed in a civil case that “the illegality of the (fake voter) plan was obvious.” The next month, FBI Director Christopher Wray authorized a criminal investigation into the plan. Then in June, the House committee held its televised meeting on January 6th Hearingsessentially a daytime drama about Trump's multifaceted efforts to retain power, starring Republican eyewitnesses.
This development finally led Garland to take a serious look at the man at the top. In November 2022, Garland called Smith as special counsel. As quickly as Smith seemed to have an impact, Trump only succeeded in August 2023 – two and a half years after the insurrection criminally charged. Months of legal challenges from the Trump team followed, delaying everything and making the seemingly crazy claim that Trump should have presidential immunity.
But simply pointing the finger at Garland for letting Trump off the hook shifts the blame away from those who deserve it even more. McConnell, for example, who engineered Trump's acquittal in the Senate in February 2021 after his impeachment for incitement of insurrection; The conviction could have been accompanied by a vote barring Trump from running for federal office. And the right-wing supermajority of the Supreme Court, which had previously lasted seven months mostly on the side of Trump's claim that he and future presidents are immune from criminal charges for alleged official acts.
Even if Garland had acted aggressively, There is a good argument that any delays available to Trump would have made a trial and verdict unlikely before the election. And this fact remains: The ultimate jury – the voters – had more than enough incriminating facts at their disposal to decide that Trump was unfit to be president again. A majority decided otherwise.
Still, Garland's performance makes me doubly sad that he made it at Justice instead of becoming A Justice.