Attorney General Merrick Garland is one of the most important and most scrutinized people in the country. He is under pressure unlike any Attorney General in history. He will make the decision on whether to indict former President Trump on charges ranging from interfering with and trying to overturn the election of 2020 to the violating the Espionage Act and obstructing justice for taking classified, secret and top secret documents to his estate at Mar-a-Lago. This has never happened before in American history. It comes at a time when the country is seething with hate and mistrust between the political parties that are getting ready to start serious campaigning for the midterm elections. These elections will determine who controls congress and many expect will be followed by Trump announcing he will run again in 2024.
After all the investigations, Garland will have to decide if any of these allegations against Trump rise to the level of crimes that Garland believes he can prove in court. Any indictment could come in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign. You potentially have the leading Republican candidate being prosecuted by a Democratic Attorney General. Some would argue that’s an untenable political atmosphere to bring charges. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsay Graham once said Trump was unqualified to be president before Trump’s election in 2016. He has since become one of his biggest defenders. In an interview last weekend Graham said, “Most Republicans, including me, believe when it comes to Trump, there is no law. There’s a double standard when it comes to Trump.” Later in the interview he said, “I’ll say this, if there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle, there will be riots in the streets.” He was referring to Hillary Clinton using a personal e-mail account for State Department business. She was never charged with a crime, only bad judgment.
Graham’s statements are stunning and frightening. He believes Trump should get away with any crime just because he’s Trump. These comments come as Graham is fighting a subpoena from the District Attorney in Atlanta. She wants Graham to testify before a grand jury about calls he made to the Georgia Secretary of State about possible voter fraud in the 2020 election. It’s the same Secretary of State Trump asked to find over eleven thousand votes for him. I don’t think Graham would say the same thing if he was talking about a Democratic president. Richard Painter, a former White House ethics chief, said, “A senator who calls for ‘riots in the streets’ if Trump is indicted should be expelled from the Senate. He’s inciting January 6th all over again.”
Garland has the reputation as a moderate Democrat. He is known for being reasoned and methodical in his approach to the law. Mitch McConnell, when he was Majority Leader of the Senate, refused to even give Garland a hearing after President Obama nominated Garland for a seat on the Supreme Court in March 2016. McConnell said it was too close to the election, which was eight months away, and the next president should make the pick. He later pushed for the confirmation of Trump’s pick of Amy Coney Barrett in September of 2020, less than two months before the election.
Garland worked for years in the Justice Department. He worked on some of the biggest cases while there, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Unabomber, and the Atlanta Olympic bombings. He was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia when Biden nominated him for Attorney General. When asked about the investigations into Trump, Garland would not be specific about ongoing investigations but he was emphatic when he said, “No one is above the law.” These investigations will eventually come to conclusions. Garland will stand at the crossroads and decide what’s right under the law. It will be one of the most important decisions in our history.
And perhaps among the scariest! As always, well written Michael.
It has always been my experience that ultimately it is better to do the ethical and legal thing (and sometimes they do intersect) than to not because of a concern for backlash. In this case, if an indictment triggers (more) violence, let it come as it is a pot waiting to boil over anyway. Much better to indict and even possibly lose in court than to codify the concept that a president is above the law.