Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Federal law enforcement continues to fail: Fire Merrick Garland

“Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” -- façade of the Justice Department building in Washington, D.C.

“The DoJ should read and act in accord with its own façade.” -- Germaine


In another deep disappointment from federal law enforcement, the Department of Justice looks set to try to defend the ex-president by keeping the public in the dark about his crimes and the crimes of the thugs who worked for him. The Washington Post writes:
The Justice Department late Monday night released part of a key internal document used in 2019 to justify not charging President Donald Trump with obstruction, but also signaled it would fight a judge’s effort to make the entire document public.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued a scathing opinion saying that she had read the memo and that it showed that Barr was disingenuous when he cited the document as key to his conclusion that Trump had not broken the law.

She also accused department lawyers of misleading her about the internal discussions that surrounded the memo and ordered the memo be released, though she gave the government several weeks to decide whether to appeal.

As that deadline neared, the government filed papers seeking both to appeal the ruling and to appease the court by offering a partially unredacted version of the document — making the first two pages public, while filing an appeal to try to keep the other half-dozen pages secret.

“In retrospect, the government acknowledges that its briefs could have been clearer, and it deeply regrets the confusion that caused. But the government’s counsel and declarants did not intend to mislead the Court,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote in asking the judge to keep the rest of the document under seal while they appeal her ruling.

The government acknowledges that its briefs could have been clearer? That's a lie. Opacity was the intent from the get go.[1] But the government’s counsel and declarants did not intend to mislead the Court? Another lie. The DoJ is still lying, corrupt and incompetent. The rule of law continues to erode and fascist Republican tyranny keeps moving closer. 

If there is a good reason for Garland to keep the American people in the dark, he owes us an explanation right now. There has been enough time for the DoJ to get its act together and do something. If there's no solid justification, Garland should be fired immediately.


Question: Should Garland be fired for corruption and/or incompetence? Should the ex-president be above the law, as he has mostly been so far?


Footnote: 
1. Former DoJ attorney Andrew Weissmann was one of Robert Mueller’s top deputies in the special counsel’s investigation of the 2016 election. The Atlantic interviewed Weissman and wrote this in September of 2020:
“There’s no question I was frustrated at the time,” Weissmann told me in a recent interview. “There was more that could be done that we didn’t do.” .... Suddenly, in March 2019, the Special Counsel’s Office completed its work. A report, hundreds of pages long, with many lines blacked out, was delivered to the attorney general. Before releasing it to the public, Barr pronounced the president innocent, in a brazen mix of elisions, distortions, and outright lies—for the report presented extensive evidence of cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russian assets, and of the president’s efforts to obstruct justice. The lesson Trump took from the Mueller investigation was that he could do anything he wanted. He declared himself vindicated, vowed to pursue the pursuers, and immediately turned to extorting favors for another election from another foreign country. Uproar over “Russiagate” gave way to uproar over “Ukrainegate.” The Mueller report faded away, as if it had all been for nothing.

So far, it looks like it really was all for nothing. The American people still have not seen the entire, unredacted Mueller report or the underlying evidence. Each day that passes is another lie of omission and another outrageous insult of the American people. A pox and a curse on both corrupt, lying, incompetent political parties.

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