He can make money on speaking tours, a book deal.
Land a cushy job at a think tank.

Still get bribes, oops I mean tips, for a job well done.

I already wasn't a fan of the guy, but when someone posted that timeline the other day, it really hit home what a pathetic failure Garland has been.

tRump hasn't tried to impose martial law, ... yet (and I hope never).

Yes, tRump should go to prison for Jan 6, but the two cases are not comparable.

tRump's involvement is buried deeply, but uncovered by Smith. tRump's free speech ("It'll be wild&quot is protected 1A and generic exhortation ("you have to fight for your America&quot is not an insurrection. Yoon was very public and very overt.

...both should immediately be imprisoned.

Peru has a special penitentiary for its corrupt presidents and it’s full.

I doubt he'll be very complimentary.

I think he should've fired him, the way things went, it would've been forgotten in two weeks. He ran a tight ship and had ZERO personnel issues as opposed to literally every other administration. He had room to make some changes, and Garland should've been one of them. Along with Chris Wray, who did us absolutely no favors on any front and soft-pedaled a lot of shit. He certainly didn't give two fucks about reforming the NY FBI office. If they can try to get Kash fucking Patel appointed, we should've been able to appoint a goddamn Democrat to the position.

Shouldn't have listened to Ron Klain on this one.

...as Litman is reading from the Smith report, which puts forward details of the actual case, not the internet fantasy one that thrived when those details were mostly secret.

Now some people want to continue the lies about some inaction by Garland, refuted in the final report, but they should be challenged to present facts in response to the details in Jack Smith's 170-plus page document, not just spout more derision and falsehoods about an investigation they mostly conjured in their misinformed or uninformed heads.

We saw and read about what happened.

Kyle Cheney at Politico did:

A common sentiment on the left is that Garland was too deferential to Trump after Joe Biden took office and failed to unleash the full might of the department on the former president for nearly two years. The delay, critics say, made it much more difficult for Smith — once he was appointed in November 2022 — to bring Trump to trial before the 2024 election.

But Smith’s report emphasized that the Justice Department was aggressively investigating leads related to Trump long before the special counsel’s tenure began. Litigation tactics by Trump and his allies, Smith argued, were the key factors that slowed the process to a crawl.

For example, Twitter, newly purchased by Elon Musk, delayed Smith’s effort to access Trump’s account data for weeks despite a court order that ultimately resulted in the company being held in contempt and fined $350,000.

It took Smith more than a year to obtain text messages between Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark. And the department spent months fighting to access communications of John Eastman, a lawyer who helped devise Trump’s last-ditch efforts to remain in power.

The most protracted battles of all stemmed from Trump’s “broad invocation of executive privilege to try to prevent witnesses from providing evidence,” Smith wrote. It took months of secretive legal proceedings to secure testimony from Trump White House aides such as Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino and Pat Cipollone. Former Vice President Mike Pence also resisted testifying until a court ordered him to reveal some — but not all — details about his interactions with Trump. Smith noted that judges broadly rejected Trump’s privilege claims, with one holding that he was engaged in an “obvious” effort to delay the investigation.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/14/jack-smith-special-counsel-report-takeaways-00198252

when Congress finished their investigation, all of the delays and obstacles thrown up would have been answered, and the immunity response, which was that the Supreme Court's immunity ruling would have already been determined not to apply. A year earlier would have been plenty of time to get this to trial and get a guilty verdict.

Still not buying it. He admitted to slow walking.

and prosecuting the former president and his cabal that tried to overthrow the government. The most grave attack against the government since th Civil War.

A huge failure. No special counsel was needed. The AG himself should've taken it on immediately. Nothing was of more importance...certainly not going after all the small fry rioters Garland prioritized. Now all those traitors have been released by the main instigating traitor who is back in the WH again.

Massive fail.

That would be the same Harry Litman who's been lauded and extensively quoted right here on DU. The selfsame Harry Litman who is a former law clerk for SCOTUS Justices Thurgood Marshall and Anthony Kennedy, former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant AG in the Clinton administration and is now a law professor and regular commentator on MSNBC. That Harry Litman, the one we used to love and cite regularly. Nevertheless, now we know that he's a moron because he has tragically failed to recognize that Merrick Garland is an agent of Satan. I'm not sure why the devout Catholic Joe Biden would have appointed an agent of Satan but obviously he did. And now Litman has committed the heresy of arguing that even if Garland had indicted Trump as soon as had been humanly possible, or even if Sally Yates or Jesus Christ had been the AG instead of Garland, the cases against Trump could not have been completed in time for the 2024 election. Litman says that the interference of Judge Cannon and the immunity decision by SCOTUS would have stopped the process in its tracks no matter when it started! How ridiculous! How would a guy like Harry Litman have the faintest idea how the federal criminal process even works? It was all Garland's fault, every bit of it, and anyone who suggests otherwise must be a craven tool of Trump and maybe also Satan.

of how Garland investigated the top secret stolen documents? Some of those documents were so sensitive that they could only be viewed in a SCIF, and they were sitting in a bathroom at Trump's house.

It took Garland 5 days to investigate President Biden, and a damn good thing he acted so quickly. The FBI found a classified document in Joe's garage, it was the Secret Service route that they used to transport Joe to his son's funeral. Then Garland had the balls to release the entire Hur report that lied about Joe, that stated the only reason he was not prosecuted was because he was so old and forgetful.

On the other hand Jack Smith says he knows why Trump stole those documents, but if Garland released that report he would appear to be partisan and he couldn't go back on his word because he publicly told Magats that he would not be partisan.

There are a lot of people on national TV fluffing Trump because they fear him. I still can't believe my Senator, John Fetterman.

So, I'm not taking that bait. Nope.

Joining a discussion on a public discussion board!

It's shocking!

OK, you don't have to answer, I'm OK with that.

Question; How long should law enforcement wait to investigate and announce details of a perp when some little child has been kidnapped?

Question #2; How long should law enforcement wait before investigating a perp who stole top secret, military/nuclear, sensitive classified documents so critical to our national security that they can only be viewed in a SCIF?

I can tell you how long Garland waited to have the FBI investigate Question #2.

He shares a large part of the blame.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/the-country-is-paying-for-garlands-timidity-toward-trump/

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-18/forget-matt-gaetz-merrick-garland-is-americas-worst-attorney-general

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/january-6-doj-trump_n_67783f7ce4b0f0fdb7b19d36

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/legal-expert-why-ag-garland-s-spectacular-failures-are-to-blame-for-trump-s-white-house-return/ar-AA1umkeJ

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/07/trump-legal-failures-blame-column-00187945

Garland took everyone's phone, and then gave them back so that Clark and Perry could continue with the insurrection.

When Trump stole military/nuclear top secret documents DOJ told the National Archives to handle it. many months later the NA had to go to Garland to ask him to take over the investigation. 11 months later the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago.

Here is my suggestion for Garland. I knew early on that Kash Patel helped Trump steal those top secret documents, Patel was never president of the United States, he didn't have immunity. Wishing that Garland had prosecuted Patel that 1st year, I doubt he would have flipped on Trump but he could be in prison instead he will be Director of the FBI.

What does Marcy Wheeler have to say about that?

It took Garland 5 days to send the FBI to Joe's home.

sent Merrick Garland a blistering letter condemning him for releasing lies in the Hur report.

Why doesn't President Biden like Merrick Garland? I never wrote a blistering letter to Garland.

You can go back in the archives and early on in Garland's tenure I wrote a thread praising Garland to high heaven. Sadly Garland didn't follow up on what he said he was going to do so as Hank Williams sang, "I saw the Light."

Harry Litman makes some good points. OTOH, the way he handled the whole Hunter Biden situation was a shitshow.

after the ridiculous SCOTUS ruling. At that point, Smith should have been directed to drop all cases and release a report. Even now the cases against the flunkies should be dropped and the documents case report released.

Had Garland prosecuted some higher ups like Mark Meadows and Kash Patel that 1st year it would have created a much different climate for the Supreme Court to get involved.

Kash Patel and Mark Meadows helped Trump steal those classified documents.

and at that point the reports should have been written and released.

If Biden won, the cases could have gone forward. I posted a timeline in a previous thread. I noticed things were supposed to pick up on the DC case in January 2025. However, since the AG and state attorneys would all be Trump's people, it was obvious the case would go nowhere and would be dismissed by Trump's AG etc.

after that decision. I will say that I never thought they would issue such a decision but after it was issued it was clear they would literally adopt any form of reasoning to justify letting him go.

The main idea seems to be there was no way we'd have gone to trial and even if he'd gone to trial appeals would have gone past 25 so none of it matters.

Which completely ignores the impact of a conviction well before even the primaries started which is what would have happened if he'd started in Feb 21.

Took Smith 9 months from appointment to indictment on both charges. So assume a year of pretrial delay and it's late 22 for a trial. A conviction was not assured but assuming you have one, could have absolutely changed the outcome of the 24 election.

But he was too focused on a "return to normalcy" that simply was a pipe dream.

I don't know where it leads. But then there would have been a flurry of this and that and how many months before the trial could begin? Henry Cuellar was indicted in May 2024. His court case is scheduled for June 2025. (One year)

So without the immunity question Trump's actual trial would probably have started in 2023

Also gets resolved earlier because it gets raised earlier.

Because he would have faced jeopardy earlier.

Why wouldn't they wait a year at another date?

Almost two years earlier then waiting a year doesn't cut it for them.

He took care of the trump and ignored the rule of law. He betrayed America and it's people.

Merrick Garland Weighed Search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago for Weeks
Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/merrick-garland-weighed-search-of-trumps-mar-a-lago-for-weeks-11660601292

WASHINGTON—Attorney General Merrick Garland deliberated for weeks over whether to approve the application for a warrant to search former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, people familiar with the matter said, a sign of his cautious approach that will be tested over coming months.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142956907

The decision had been the subject of weeks of meetings between senior Justice Department and FBI officials, the people said. The warrant allowed agents last Monday to seize classified information and other presidential material from Mar-a-Lago.
Mr. Garland now faces a more momentous decision that will further sharpen an already unprecedented and politically fraught situation: whether to pursue charges against Mr. Trump or any of his allies over their handling of the records at issue and their interactions with Justice Department officials seeking to retrieve them.
A decision to bring charges in the matter against Mr. Trump or any of his allies would thrust the Justice Department deeper into a political environment in which the former president’s supporters and Republican lawmakers are already accusing Mr. Garland and the department of overreach.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/merrick-garland-weighed-search-of-trumps-mar-a-lago-for-weeks-11660601292

was he all bad? no

did he do everything he could? HELL FUCKING NO

he can drop the charges against Nauta & de Oliveira and release Jack Smith’s report on the stolen documents case.

Trump’s AG is going to drop the charges against them anyway.

For those of us who are not well versed in the law, it's important to get a clearer view of the processes.

Last edited Wed Jan 22, 2025, 11:22 PM - Edit history (1)

and jailed trump first thing on taking office. HE TRIED TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT. Nothing close has happened since the CIVIL WAR. Nothing was more important than prosecuting trump and his cabal of insurrectionists and Garland failed to recognize that, or maybe he didn't want to go in that direction.

Think about that.

We all saw trump's crimes in real time on TV. trump should've been in jail long before the corrupt SCOTUS 6 ever got involved with their immunity bullshit.

Now we've got trump in the WH again and he's released all the J6 rioters, wiping out the work Garland did get done.

A wasted term...accomplishments wiped out.