A DJT crime confession, but of no importance; About the Trumpified DoJ

The HuffPo and lots of others are reporting about comments DJT made in an interview with Mark Levin, a RRA (radical right authoritarian), that RRA Faux News broadcast. What DJT said amounted to a confession that he interfered in the 2020 election. He said:

“Whoever heard, you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it, you get indicted, and your poll numbers go up.”

But, his confession is of no importance. Why? Well, if it is up to Merrick Garland to do anything about it, he won't because he is as corrupt as DJT and actively protects DJT and his toxic RRA legacy. Maybe Jack Smith or some state prosecutor can use that admission as evidence in some prosecution or another. But given the way our rule of law routinely fails to touch rich and/or powerful people and businesses, odds of this being significant evidence is a court case appear to be low.

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The American Prospect writes about one lingering ill-effect on the DoJ (Dept. of Justice) that is left over from DJT's time in office and before even then:

Garland Has Yet to De-Trumpify His Office of Legal Counsel

The Department of Justice has failed to revise dubious decisions made to shield Trump from scrutiny

One former employee of the Office of Legal Counsel, upon quitting her job during the Trump presidency, described the OLC’s work to The Washington Post succinctly: “using the law to legitimize lies.” Three years later, and a year after Trump left office, most of those legitimized lies remain intact.

It will come as no surprise that former President Trump abused the powers of the Department of Justice. But in reviewing the opinions released by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel over Trump’s four years, its deference to his agenda, in spite of those abuses, stands out. Deferring to the president has been the OLC’s norm since the pre-2016 era, which is itself troubling; that impulse becomes particularly alarming when the president is charting a course to sabotage American democracy.

The OLC is both a powerful and secretive force within the executive branch. It provides authoritative legal opinions to the president and executive branch agencies, opinions that can form the basis for controversial executive actions. Most of the OLC’s determinations are never released to Congress or the public. A few are published without fanfare on its website.

We have no idea how many confidential opinions, formal or informal, the OLC offered Trump or anyone else during Trump’s term, and no idea if any of them have been reconsidered since. That’s an obvious problem. In the aftermath of a presidency marked by a norms-shattering regime of corruption, the usual procedures—like the OLC’s stubborn secrecy, and reluctance to depart from its past opinions—have become unacceptable. The Office of Legal Counsel requires new transparency and deserves renewed scrutiny.

While we don’t know the full extent of the OLC’s misdirection under Trump, we do know that of the 48 opinions published on its website during Trump’s presidency, only three have been publicly revisited under President Biden. (Again, 48 isn’t the full number of released opinions, since some aren’t listed on the website—like the 2017 OLC memo approving Trump’s travel ban, which was released in response to a FOIA request. Visibility of the office remains patchwork.)

Strengthening executive power and undercutting legislative power is a running theme throughout the Office of Legal Counsel’s Trump-era opinions, so it’s significant that the OLC in 2021 acknowledges that it “failed to accord the respect and deference due a coordinate branch of government.” In fact, it weaponized the separation of powers to undermine congressional oversight of the executive branch. By that same token, the OLC can now play a role in restoring congressional oversight. All it takes is Garland deciding it isn’t his job to defend the last president’s loathsome legacy.

All it takes is Garland deciding it isn’t his job to defend the last president’s loathsome legacy. Really? 

From what I can tell, Garland firmly believes it is his job to defend the last president’s loathsome legacy because he has done a damn good job of doing just that so far.