By Michael Goodwin
Attorney General Merrick Garland assisted Special Counsel Jack Smith in making a case against Donald Trump, according to columnist Michael Goodwin.AP
Assume you are the attorney general of the United States and have a devilish desire to persuade as many Americans as possible they should not trust their government.
How would you do that?
If your name is Merrick Garland, the answer is a two-fold plan of attack.
On one hand, you give the corrupt son of your boss every possible break, bend the rules to protect him and hand him a get-out-of-jail-free pass.
The sweetheart deal also serves another purpose.
Because you definitely don’t want anyone to know to what extent your boss was involved in the family’s influence-peddling schemes, the son’s guilty plea to fairly minor crimes slams the door on any possibility probers would keep digging and find the goods on dear old dad.
There is a hiccup when whistleblowers go public with evidence of favoritism, but you display umbrage at the insult, deny, deny, deny, and count on the handmaiden media to cover for you, which they do.
Meanwhile, the second part of your plot also unfolds in spectacular, if orderly, fashion. Making history, you greenlight the prosecution of a former president, who also happens to be your boss’ leading political opponent. What a coincidence!
And you don’t just give the greenlight on one case, but in a belt-and-suspenders approach, you oversee the indictment of the former president in two separate federal cases, piling up charges that could land him in prison for the rest of his life.
Your final move is to put on a solemn demeanor and insist publicly that every action in both cases — everything! — is above board and strictly according to the law.
Most Americans are not fooled and see in your disparate treatment the dirty hand of partisan politics and conclude the whole thing is corrupt.
Ordinarily, that would dismay a public official charged with defending the Constitution and applying the laws fairly, and give rise to second thoughts.
You, however, are cut from a different cloth and have a different agenda.
To you, it’s mission accomplished!
OK, Garland is not actually trying to deepen the political gulf dividing the nation, but there is nothing he could have done that would have a greater impact if that had been his goal.
There is no way to be more politically obvious than the way he slow-walked and settled the Hunter Biden case and the vengeance with which he repeatedly goes after Donald Trump.
Fait accompli
In that sense, the news that Trump is a target of the grand jury examining the Jan. 6 Capitol riot evokes a ho-hum shrug. There was never any doubt, that was the whole point when Garland took Nancy Pelosi’s tainted House select committee file and made a federal case out of it.
Even when Garland, in a phony bid to appear fair, named headhunter Jack Smith as special counsel to go after Trump and somnolent Robert Hur to probe Biden over each man’s stash of classified documents, the smell of a fix was unmistakable.
It has become even more so because Trump was indicted on 37 counts and Hur has fallen off the face of the Earth.
Not a peep, not a leak about Biden having secret documents scattered around various houses and offices for years, available for his scheming, crackhead son to use. But as for his opponent, well, that’s different.
Not so long ago, Trump faced four criminal investigations. He now has been indicted in the first two, one by the Manhattan district attorney and the other by Garland and Smith over the documents.
The third indictment, over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, is now a given after the target letter Trump got. A fourth set of charges, in Georgia, is waiting in the wings, so all four cases are headed for the same result.
For those who need reminding of the playing field, Trump is a Republican and holds a commanding lead in the race to face Joe Biden in next year’s presidential election.
And in another incredible coincidence, all the prosecutors gunning for him are Democrats, but we are told to believe politics has nothing to do with it.
We’re also supposed to believe that while Trump tried mightily to steer his Justice Department toward probing his political opponents, Biden would never do that and is playing zero role in Garland’s decisions to go after Trump.
Truth beyond doubt
Some extremely naive people might have swallowed that once upon a time, especially those driven mad by the mere mention of Trump’s name. But there is no excuse for cluelessness now that the truth of how the Justice Department behaves under Garland stands so nakedly obvious.
Indeed, the results unfolding before us were predictable, thanks to a New York Times article back on April 2, 2022. Here’s a key section: “The attorney general’s deliberative approach has come to frustrate Democratic allies of the White House and, at times, President Biden himself. As recently as late last year, Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments.
“And while the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.”
Assuming the article is accurate, it would mean Biden has been telling people he wanted Trump prosecuted since late 2021. And how precious of the Times to say Biden never spoke “directly” with Garland about the matter, as if that makes it all kosher.
In reality, White House anonymous sources tell the Times what Biden wants, and the Times delivers the message to Garland and the world with its story. The two men don’t have to speak “directly” when the Gray Lady plays messenger.
None of this means Trump is innocent and that the charges against him are bogus. But it does mean that the zealousness for prosecuting the former president compared to the soft, favored treatment given the current president and his son smells to high heaven.
That, too, oughta be a crime.
Just blows your mind
Reader Cindy Forgash is trying to reconcile the great police work on Long Island with the Keystone Kops saga in Washington. She asks: “Can someone please tell me how police can get DNA from a pizza crust and link that to decade-old murders, while cocaine found in the White House cannot be linked to anyone?”
‘Trust’ is busted
Reader Jack Weinberg has a related question, writing: “Back when James Clapper, John Brennan, Jim Comey and Lois Lerner were doing their best to muck up our country, I asked rhetorically if there is a government agency we can trust. Now I add the Secret Service to that list and ask again: Is there any government agency we can trust?”
