Attorney General Merrick Garland has faced tough criticism over his deliberate approach to investigating former President Donald Trump.
The American Prospect’s Ryan Cooper put it this way: “The real reason Trump hasn’t been indicted for his major crimes is that the people in charge of that decision — Attorney General Merrick Garland, above all — are all part of the culture of elite impunity that produced Trump in the first place.”
But a series of legal victories indicate that patience appears to be paying off for America’s top law enforcement official, MSNBC’s Michael A. Cohen writes.
Just last week, Judge James Boasberg ordered former Vice President Mike Pence to testify before a grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a probe led by special counsel Jack Smith.
Boasberg’s ruling followed two additional major Garland wins within a two-week span.
Another federal judge, Beryl Howell, ordered former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, among other Trump officials, to testify before the same grand jury.
Howell, in a separate ruling, ordered Trump attorney Evan Corcoran to testify against the former president in the classified documents case, piercing attorney-client privilege. That probe is also led by Smith.
Cohen argues that “Garland’s critics are understandably outraged at Trump’s consistent ability to break the law without consequence. But prosecuting a former president is a fraught exercise.”
Especially considering the defendant is the 2024 GOP presidential front-runner, who is likely to face Garland’s boss, President Joe Biden, in the General Election.
“So all the more reason for Garland to dot every “i” and cross every “t” before going down that road,” Cohen writes.
“The last thing that Garland or the country can afford is for a presidential prosecution to even have the appearance of a political investigation — even if that is precisely how Trump and his lackeys in the GOP will portray it. Indeed, calls to prosecute Trump without knowing all the evidence against him, the applicability to criminal statutes and the likelihood of conviction have a strong odor of demands for a political prosecution — or at the very least, one not firmly grounded in the law.”
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