"It’s not that I think Garland’s caution was the correct posture. I am actually open to the possibility that Garland and his redoubtable deputy, Lisa Monaco, were too slow in opening what became the investigation of Trump. I am also open to the possibility that had they acted more swiftly, prosecutors may well have been able to file one of the two federal cases against Trump earlier than they did.
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But let’s imagine for a moment that the Justice Department had managed to get an indictment done and filed within a year after Trump left office, which is to say Jan. 20, 2022. This is, roughly speaking, a year and a half earlier than it managed the task in fact. This would account for both the year that the investigation appears, at least publicly, to have been a bit sluggish getting off the ground and, let’s hypothesize, the difference between a cautious attorney general who wants to follow norms and a “damn the torpedoes” attorney general who doesn’t mind blowing them up in order to bring Trump to justice as soon as humanly possible. And let’s imagine as well that the indictment was of a reasonable quality notwithstanding the rush. Would things have been different?
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To be clear, I am not saying that the investigation was handled with optimal speed. And I have a lot of questions about a number of choices regarding both the Jan. 6 investigation and the classified documents case. Most pointedly, I have never understood the decision to bring the classified documents case in Florida, rather than to try to establish venue in Washington, D.C., using the many points at which Trump’s alleged conduct interacted with the jurisdiction of the federal government in Washington.
All of these questions, including the speed question, are legitimate."
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