You would think that an attorney general who has presided over the Shameful debacle of Hunter Biden investigation he would express contrition, or perhaps a little anger at the subordinates who have embarrassed him, when he is brought before a congressional committee to explain his failures.
But alas, Merrick Garland is just another Mr. Magoo.
His department is on fire but he knows nothing.
The country’s chief law enforcement officer has no special insight into the embezzlement that is unfolding under his nose.
He’s just an unwitting bystander, unfazed by the tyrannical turn the DOJ has taken under his leadership, going after his boss’s political enemies and coddling the president’s corrupt relatives.
Although Garland used to be a judge, he doesn’t make any judgments.
He professes to have no insight into US Attorney David Weiss’ five-year “investigation.” of the president’s 53-year-old son, Hunter.
“I promised the Senate that I would not interfere,” he said he told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
“I have not intervened or tried to evaluate it, because that was the promise I made in the Senate.” What an honorable man, keeping his promises.
But he is the captain of the ship. There’s a fire in the hold, the ship is sinking, and he doesn’t even care to know what happened.
“Have you had personal contact with anyone at FBI headquarters regarding the Hunter Biden investigation?” asked Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La).
Merrick stammered
For what felt like an eternity, but was really about seven seconds, Garland looked down at her tightly clasped hands, slowly turning her head left and right as if the answer might materialize somewhere on the table. void beneath him, then stuck out his tongue and said, “ahhhh,” he pursed his lips, exhaled, and fixed the edges of his mouth in a downward shrug, before finally looking at Johnson with an embarrassed expression and stammering, “I don’t understand. . . I don’t. . . ah. . . I don’t remember the answer to that question, but does the FBI work for the Department of Justice? a delivered non sequitur in a cascade of upward inflections as if he were the one asking questions, or perhaps channeling a Valley Girl.
He wants us to applaud his pathological curiosity about the corruption of Weiss’s research, as laid out by the two brave IRS whistleblowers, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. The kind of professional, nonpartisan public servants that Garland claims to support are the heroes of this sordid story.
They blew up their careers to testify about the slow march, the kid-glove treatment available to no other American, the warnings about search warrants, the limitations of investigators, the no-go areas near the Big Guy, the refusal of geolocation searches to determine whether Joe was actually in the room, as Hunter claimed in his WhatsApp message to a Chinese benefactor, the burying of incriminating evidence such as report FD-1023 FBI alleging that Hunter and Joe each received a $5 million bribe. of a Ukrainian oligarch, and of course Hunter’s infamous laptop, which the FBI had authenticated and seized in December 2019, but which remained off limits to IRS investigators.
It’s not his problem, Garland communicated, as he delivered the bravura performance we’ve come to expect from Biden’s appointees.
Attribution bias
Speaking of which, his favorite line was to point out that Weiss, whom he has elevated to special counsel despite manifest failures, was a “Trump appointee.”
He said it nine times.
He seems to think that bias can be attributed to prosecutors depending on which party appoints them. Presumably he applies that logic to himself, as Biden’s appointee.
Smart people generally find it boring to say the same thing nine times in a row, but Garland seemed to enjoy it, until Liz Cheney’s wonderful smack Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) wiped her smile off her face. expensive
“Mr. Garland, one of the things that you have done and repeated over and over again is to point out that Mr. Weiss was appointed as United States Attorney by President Trump, as if that somehow inoculates him from criticism by our Is that really how this game is played, that if someone is appointed by a Republican, they are supposed to be on the Republican team, or if they are appointed by a Democrat, they are on the Democratic team? You were nominated by Mr. Biden, right? Are you on the Democratic team?”
touched He never said it again.
The audience stumbled in a pointless way, alternating between Republicans positing that went nowhere and obsequious Democrats talking about “extreme MAGA Republicans.”
“The Justice Department treats everyone the same” was Garland’s central lie. Any criticism of his biased prosecutors is “dangerous,” he said darkly.
He allowed himself a flash of indignation in his opening remarks when he drew on his family’s history of persecution as Jews in present-day Belarus. His grandmother survived the Holocaust while two of his brothers died.
“This country welcomed her and under this protection [and] she was able to live without fear of persecution,” she tweeted. “The protection of the law, the rule of law, is the foundation of our system of government.”
But if he thought those kind words would get him soft treatment from the committee, Ukrainian-born Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) deftly turned the tables on him.
“You had a very moving statement about your grandparents coming here from Belarus to live in the country without fear of persecution,” he said.
“I grew up in a very similar country, now Ukraine, and when I came here as a young man, I believed in the value as an American of not being afraid of my government. . . . You know many Americans are now afraid of be prosecuted by your department? Are you aware of that?”
Sick and tired voters
Garland began to whine about “constant attacks on the department,” but interrupted.
“Don’t attack . . . a lot of good Americans of mine district came here [on Jan. 6] because they are fed up with this government not serving them. They came with prams and children, and it was a chaotic situation because there was no proper security. [And then] FBI agents showed up at people’s homes. You have in my district in my city, FBI phone numbers all over the place [saying] please call [and inform on people].
“People are really afraid. That’s a big problem when people are afraid of their own government. . . .
“It’s like the KGB.”
Does Garland understand that rogue prosecutors and disproportionately harsh J6 prosecutions are destroying confidence in the justice system as murderers and shoplifters get away with it and a spirit of lawlessness and corruption infects the land?
No. There was no sign that his conscience was troubled.
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