Attorney General Merrick Garland Meets the Moment - Horowitz

Attorney General Merrick Garland Meets the Moment - Horowitz

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is living up to his well-earned reputation for integrity,  intelligence, and steadfastness, deftly navigating a series of politically fraught challenges and restoring morale to the Justice Department-- which had reached a low point during the Trump presidency.  In doing so, Mr. Garland is drawing on his experience as a prosecutor and a highly regarded long-time federal appeals court judge.

 

As a top justice department official, Mr. Garland led the comprehensive investigation into the worst case of homegrown terrorism in American history, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, an anti-government, militia-affiliated extremist, that resulted in the deaths of 168 people.  His performance on the bench led to President Obama nominating him for the US Supreme Court—a position that even most Republican senators acknowledged he was well-qualified to hold (Senator McConnell blocked a vote on his nomination to keep the post vacant for a Republican president to fill).

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Merrick Garland’s decision to approve seeking and executing a search warrant to recover government documents located at Mar-a-Lago demonstrate his willingness to go where the facts, law and evidence lead, even if it is sure to be controversial and likely to result in harsh initial attacks.   Given all the efforts the justice department made to gain the return of the materials before resorting to a search of the premises, the classified documents found in the search despite the former president’s attestation through his attorneys that all the documents had been returned, and the judicial decisions upholding the search’s validity, Garland’s judgment in this matter has stood the test of time. Except the most-fierce Trump backers, Republicans have muffled their criticism.

 

At the same time, Mr. Garland made prudent decisions to appoint special counsels when facing the unprecedented challenge of investigating the former president and the current one.  These appointments show Garland understands the importance of building public trust and knows how to bring it about. Soon after the former president announced a campaign to regain the office in 2024, the attorney general appointed Jack Smith, a highly regarded career prosecutor, as a special counsel to lead both the investigation into Mr. Trump’s mishandling of government documents and the investigation of his role in January 6th as well as the events leading up to it.  Similarly, Garland appointed another highly regarded prosecutor Robert Hur, to handle the investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of government documents. Having served in the Trump and George W. Bush administrations and clerked for then Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Hur will be difficult to label as someone who is likely to go easy on President Biden and/or his staffers.  The attorney general went ahead with this appointment, knowing that it was going to make the president and others in the administration unhappy.  They believe their self-reporting and cooperation as well as the limited number of documents in question precluded the need to take this step.

 

Along the same lines, Merrick Garland did not replace the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Delaware, Daniel C. Weiss, as would usually be the case with a change in which party controls the presidency, so he could continue to oversee the investigation into Hunter Biden, launched in 2019.

Additionally, the attorney general is effectively leading a sweeping law enforcement effort designed to bring to account all those responsible for the January 6th insurrection, described by the justice department as “the attack on the U.S. Capitol that disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress in the process of affirming the presidential election results.” It has already resulted in more than 950 arrests, 484 guilty pleas and 40 people convicted at trial.  The trial convictions include winning a finding of guilty on the charge of seditious conspiracy, among other charges, against Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, and Kelly Meggs, the leader of its Florida chapter.  Taken together, the mounting merited punishments that are being meted out, including significant jail time for the most egregious offenders, serve as a powerful deterrent, providing a substantial and needed disincentive for people who may want to plan or participate in future attempts to block the orderly transfer of power.

 

In today’s highly polarized and partisan political climate, Merrick Garland will likely never persuade hard-core Trump supporters of his independence or fairness. And with the House of Representatives now in Republican hands, we can count on stepped-up attacks on the attorney general. FBI and federal law enforcement in general. For the overwhelming majority of Americans, however, the attorney general is restoring faith in our justice system. Most importantly, he is staying true to his values, performing admirably in a very difficult and politically charged job.