President Donald Trump's claim that the Department of Justice engaged in a conspiracy against him, which is at the heart of his proposal that he be reimbursed $230 million for his legal fees and pain, falls apart under an examination of former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s meddling, according to a columnist.
According to MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian, a new book by MSNBC investigative correspondent Carol Leonnig and Washington Post reporter Aaron C. Davis documents Garland forcing investigators to take it slow while investigating the then-former president over his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection and stolen government documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago after he lost re-election.
Using the book’s revelations, Dilanian wrote, “The picture painted of a hesitant Justice Department runs contrary to the GOP allegation that the federal indictments of Trump by special counsel Jack Smith were the product of a Democrat-led plot to weaponize the Justice Department. Instead, the book depicts example after example of the opposite happening.”
As he explained, Garland, now another target of Trump for prosecution, “slow-walked” all things Trump-related.
After a grand jury tasked with looking into fake electors was empaneled in January 2022, “the FBI debated another 10 weeks before approving a memo formally opening that investigation, further delaying the gathering of evidence,” and then did not specify Trump as a target, only his campaign.
“In fall 2022, ahead of the midterm elections, Garland opted to freeze both the classified documents and election investigations because of what some officials believed was his overly cautious reading of a DOJ policy not to take any public action close to an election,” Dilanian reported. “Trump was not even on the ballot and had not yet declared his presidential candidacy for 2024. But Garland nonetheless imposed the freeze.”
He also noted Leonnig and Davis wrote, “For months, investigators would have to wait to issue subpoenas or interview witnesses to gather new information,” because Garland “had chosen to impose a very conservative interpretation of what DOJ officials called the 60-day rule" regarding investigations near elections.
“Taken together” he wrote, “the decisions described by Leonnig and Davis show that Garland, [special counsel Jack] Smith and others supervising the cases leading to the federal indictments against Trump were straining to give the former president every benefit afforded under DOJ norms and policies.”
You can read more here.