Lisa Needham writes:

It has often been said that Donald Trump was running for president to keep himself out of prison. Mission accomplished.

But the fact that Trump wasn’t behind bars long ago, that he didn’t suffer any consequences for his criming and now likely never will, can be laid squarely at the feet of one man: Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland dragged his feet on prosecuting Trump for election interference and pilfering classified documents, making it easy for him to run out the clock.

Coming in on the heels of a literal insurrection, Garland was a bad fit for his job from the jump. He made clear early on that he didn’t see addressing issues from the Trump era as a priority, declaring that he would not look backward. Garland is an institutionalist, leading him to see his real job as protecting the Department of Justice rather than imposing any consequences on Bill Barr and others who turned the DOJ into a corrupt playground.

Someone who saw the abstract notion of an institution as more important than actual people and actual wrongdoing was never going to be the person who aggressively pursued an ex-president whose crimes were always in full view, which was what the country desperately needed back in 2021.

Rather than moving quickly to prosecute people — including Trump — for January 6, Garland’s first moves were to take actions that actually favored Trump, all in the name of protecting the institution. [Continue reading…]