Garland failed our nation!
JAN 14, 2025 (deanobeidallah.substack.com)
It’s no longer sufficient to simply slam Attorney General Merrick Garland for failing to swiftly prosecute Donald Trump for his attempted coup. At this point, Garland must be held accountable for dereliction of duty.
That was my visceral reaction after reading Jack Smith’s final report released early Tuesday morning that detailed the Special Counsel’s investigation of Trump. The headlines tell us that Smith was confident that if it weren’t for the DOJ memo barring the prosecution of Trump as a sitting President, “the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.” (The DOJ guidelines should have an exception to allow for prosecuting a President who attempts a coup!)
From there, Smith’s report lays out how Trump “engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power.” Smith serves up a litany of examples of Trump’s criminal conduct. Later the report noted about the Jan 6. attack that, “the evidence established that the violence was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it, that it was beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification, and that when it occurred, he made a conscious choice not to stop it and instead to leverage it for more delay.”
How Trump is not in prison for these crimes is one of the gravest injustices of our lifetimes. But the only reason—and I mean only reason—Trump is not being held accountable is because Garland delayed the investigation into Trump for more than one year after the Jan. 6 attack.
I have written and slammed Garland’s delay many times in the past beginning in 2022 and continuing to literally today. As we learned from NY Times reporting in July 2022, Garland had not focused on Trump’s role in the attempted coup and Jan. 6 attack until former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson testified publicly before the House Jan 6 committee. That testimony in June 2022 tying Trump directly to the attack reportedly finally “jolted” Garland and the DOJ into action to examine Trump’s role. (It’s impossible to believe DOJ with their vast resources were unaware of these facts until that testimony.)
This was backed up by reporting from The Washington Post in June 2023 that found Garland’s “determination to steer clear of any claims of political motive has chilled efforts to investigate the former president” for more than a year. As The Post noted, “You couldn’t use the T word,” [as in Trump] said one former Justice official briefed on prosecutors’ discussions.”
Smith’s own cover letter for his final report is even (unintentionally) damning to Garland. The former Special Counsel notes that Garland appointed him promptly after Trump announced in November 2022 that he was running for President–which would pit him against President Biden. Given DOJ was part of the Biden administration, Garland wanted to avoid the appearance of investigating Biden’s potential political opponent.
However, if Garland’s sincere motivation was to avoid targeting Biden’s potential opponent, he should’ve appointed a Special counsel within a few months of being sworn-in as AG in March 2021. We all saw Trump was running for President beginning in February 2021—just a month after the Jan. 6 attack—when Trump spoke at the CPAC convention. The headlines noted at the time: “Trump teases 2024 presidential run in lie-filled CPAC speech.” And in July 2021—yes, 2021—Trump was holding his first campaign type rallies where it was obvious he was running in 2024.
Trump was not holding rallies to simply spend time out of the house, he was obviously running for President in 2024! That is why Garland should have swiftly appointed a special counsel after being sworn in. As a reminder, it took Smith only nine months from his appointment to charge Trump. That means if Garland had appointed a Special Counsel when he took office–even with the GOP Supreme Court delaying the case-Trump is on trial in late 2023/early 2024 and convicted based on the tsunami of evidence against him.
Smith’s report demands reading for some of the other key points raised. A few that stand out include detailing how Trump consistently encouraged “violence against his perceived opponents” and the horrific injuries caused to the police officers by Trump supporters, including “traumatic brain injury” and “psychological trauma.”
Another compelling passage was Smith explaining why the prosecution was mandated since it was grounded in protecting, “the integrity of the United States’ process for collecting, counting, and certifying presidential elections, and in a peaceful and orderly transition of presidential power.”
Smith even cited the words of Ronald Reagan at his first inaugural address on this point: “The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.”
But as we lived through, Trump ended that two hundred plus year tradition with his attempted coup and Jan. 6 terrorist attack. Yet Trump will never be held accountable for attempting to thrust a dagger into the heart of our democracy.
Smith deserves praise for his work and for laying out in the cover letter that if Trump wants to target anyone for this prosecution, then he should come after Smith. As Smith wrote, “I want it to be clear that the ultimate decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump was mine. It is a decision I stand behind fully.”
Smith knows Trump is coming for him, yet he has the courage to stand up. In contrast, Garland failed our nation. We can debate all day why Garland delayed for more than a year the investigation into Trump. But Garland’s delay lit the fuse to where we are today and that is watching Trump get sworn as President on Monday–instead of rightfully reporting to prison.
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