Garland Invoked A Special Counsel, Was It Warranted?

[gab13by13]

A special counsel is used to investigate criminal activity. The US Marshall had better have found possible criminal activity from President Biden or the invoking of this special counsel was done because of politics.

[Meowmee]

1. No

What a ss this is all going to be. Wake me up if it ever ends if I’m still alive.

[Jamastiene]

2. Same here.

I can't help but notice Garland is moving super fast now all of a sudden. He jumped on this with the speed of a predator. He's still dotting his i's and crossing his t's while he avoids doing anything about Trump after all this time, though.

Trump will never pay or return all of the missing docs. Biden will be dogged the rest of his time in office. I can't help but notice the double set of rules, one for Republicans that lets them get by with everything, one for Democrats that makes a sneeze a major crime.

[Mad_Machine76]

3. DOJ is investigating his son too (for unrelated charges)

Don't hear much about Trump or anybody else.

[maxsolomon]

5. DOJ's been doing nothing about that investigation for a while now.

The laptop cannot possibly be admissible evidence.

[Mad_Machine76]

14. It's not about the laptop

There were some tax and gun charges I believe?

[maxsolomon]

29. Yep. Petty shit.

for the Right-Wing Noise Machine, it's about the laptop.

[uponit7771]

31. They don't even have jail able offenses, DOJ is full of hacks

[secondwind]

8. I think well over 600 folks have been prosecuted and jailed so far.

I don’t consider this shabby.

[PufPuf23]

43. Looks like a "Hey squirrel" to me.

Folks that have been prosecuted and convicted or plead guilty may be vile but in a sense they ae also victims.

Victims of Trump and his ilk that would benefit had they been successful and would have been ignored or condemned by Trump and those others that benefited in money and power.

Have been sitting on my hands for months. Garland is a mistake that kicks the cans down the road. How many times have we gone this same path?

Feeling really shitty at the moment about the false equivalency that comes so easy to MSM.

[Meowmee]

25. Exactly

Speed of a predator

It’s getting worse each day to watch this ss while that pos murderer who has committed numerous crimes and continues to commit more I’m sure walks free along with his merry band of traitor criminals.

This is a clear indication of what’s to come, as if we haven’t had enough indications already from what has not been done and all of the wasting of time.

Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse it gets even worse. I just wonder what it’s gonna take for somebody in this country to stand up and put a stop to this fascist crap and to all of the criminals who are running the show.

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. I don't think so

but it fends off criticism, if anything can. Look at it that way.

[48656c6c6f20]

6. I've had this nagging thought about Garland

What if he blames Obama and Biden for not being a Supreme? I don't trust the guy, he creeps me out.

[TheProle]

12. Excellent! Another worthy addition to the DU Conspiracy Vault

Personal vendetta over a career slight.

Fuckin' hell.

[wnylib]

39. Not likely.

[Karma13612]

42. McConnell was the road block

Keeping Garland off the SCOTUS.

Obama wasn’t allowed to nominate him and get his hearing because McConnell made up some stupid $hitty rule that it was too close to an election.

[Emile]

7. So Garland now all of a sudden is ready to do his damn job!

WTF, STRANGE!

[secondwind]

10. Oh, for crying out loud...

[Emile]

15. Is Garland still crossing the T's and dotting the i's?

Asking for a friend.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

9. This is what I found

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/600.1

§ 600.1 Grounds for appointing a Special Counsel.
The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted and -

(a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney's Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances; and

(b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.

From a literal reading of the bolded section, it doesn't say that Garland thinks Biden has committed a crime. It says that Garland thinks a criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted. Meaning, that he thinks this is something that needs to be looked into. And it doesn't have to be an investigation of a person.

So the question is this: Classified docs were found in one of Biden's offices and Biden's home. Is this something that the DOJ should look into? If yes, then a special counsel is needed, because I think it clearly fits under the conflict of interest.

[gab13by13]

11. Exactly, it sure looks like to me

that Garland is afraid of Gym Jordan. Jordan is coming after DOJ, FBI, DHS.

Look at the subpoenas (that we found out about) that Jack Smith is sending out, basic stuff that should have been done a year and a half ago.

Nicolle Wallace laid it to Garland when she said that Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony before the J6 committee shook DOJ into doing something.

[Scrivener7]

16. No one who has been insisting Garland has been on top of this from the start has

acknowledged that very important point:

"Look at the subpoenas (that we found out about) that Jack Smith is sending out, basic stuff that should have been done a year and a half ago."

Either Jack Smith is a big old leaker, or Garland has been sitting on his thumbs for a year and a half.

One of those two must be true.

And the likelihood is not that Smith is leaving a careless paper trail. Which means the lack of any evidence of investigation of the planners of the insurrection for the past year and a half means there has been no investigation.

[gab13by13]

18. The pyramid strategy now appears to me

to have been an excuse to not "investigate" Trump and his inner circle.

Day 1 after the Brazil insurrection they are investigating who funded it. This week jack Smith is investigating who funded our insurrection.

[Scrivener7]

23. Did Garland ever state that he was using a pyramid strategy, or was that just a

phrase the DU cheerleaders grabbed out of the ether? Like "dotting i's and crossing t's?" and "It's not a Law&Order episode!"

Whatever it is, though, it's baloney. Those who planned and executed the Watergate break-in were in jail seven months after the break-in. Two years after the insurrection, Smith JUST NOW subpoenaed the participants in the Willard Hotel "war room" planning meetings.

The Mafia acts in secret. That's why that strategy was used on them.

Tfg acted on television and in the public eye. Lordy, there are tapes galore.

[wnylib]

40. A question and a correction:

Question: If Garland had no intention of following through on investigations of Trump, why did he appoint a Special Counsel, and especially one with such credentials for getting things done as Jack Smith?

Correction: Your statement about Watergate is not completely accurate. The only people who were initially indicted and tried soon after the Watergate break in were the low level people who actually committed the burglary and McCord and Hunt. But McCord and Hunt were not the planners and masterminds behind the burglary and other crimes.

Also, they were caught red handed in the act of the burglary, plus there was written evidence and checks signed by Hunt. Slam dunk case. But, the involvement of Hunt and McCord indicated that higher ups among Nixon's aides were involved. Those higher ups (the Watergate Seven) were not indicted until March 4,1974, just 2 months short of 2 years after the break in. That was possible because there were people who flipped and testified.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Watergate_scandal#:~:text=September%2015%2C%201972%3A%20Hunt%2C,Liddy%20and%20James20W.pl

[dwayneb]

13. Agreed

This stuff is just common sense. And Biden is handling this as he should. Unlike Trump he is being above board and cooperative, my guess is he knew nothing about these documents, but time will tell.

[gab13by13]

17. Garland is mistaken if he thinks he is appeasing the coverup committee,

when no charges are brought against President Biden the Magats are going to attack Garland with a fury.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

21. Garland likely doesn't care what the GOP thinks.

I'm confident he genuinely thinks a special counsel is warranted in this case.

[DET]

19. The Collective Wail of a Million Jim Jordans

Was it warranted? No. Was it necessary? Probably - for the pretense of impartiality. I don’t like it, but the appointment had to be made for all the wrong reasons.

[Prairie_Seagull]

20. Warranted due to the totality of evidence known now. I would say no.

Warranted due to optics, an undeniable yes.

I would think the outcome of this is going to be a slap on the wrist for POTUS due to the lack of intent. After which tfg is going to have a melt down, which may be accompanied by a coronary. Regardless I believe it may actually help Merrick Garlands appearance of impartiality. To the point that whatever happens to tfg looks more evenhanded.

Of course even then he will try to say, see they are out to get me. However we will appear to the rest of the world that we are in fact a rule of law country

That is something.

I am praying for the coronary. I am psychically sending out a buck-o-chicken to you know who. I know, to low in fat.

[Scrivener7]

22. The sad thing is that the document case was the most easily proven case against tfg.

These papers and the reaction of the DOJ are important in their effect on public perception.

The media will equate tfg's and Biden's document breaches.

And tfg will get off for the crime of selling some of our most dangerous national secrets.

This is his get out of jail card on this issue.

He's going to skate again.

As always.

[Sneederbunk]

24. +100

[LAS14]

36. "The media will equate tfg's and Biden's document breaches." Not the media I watch.

Mostly PBS and CNN and MSNBC, and listen to NPR. As far as I've heard they've uniformly prefaced their stories with the observation that the Biden and Trump cases are factually not comparable, citing things like the immediate turnover to the Archives, and go on to talk about the purely political ramifications, which are undoubtedly there.

Of course I don't watch Fox and whatever others they are.

The point is that I think they have actually learned something since they trashed Hillary with both-and-ism.

[Fiendish Thingy]

26. Documents that belonged in the archives were found out of the archives

And they were connected to a sitting president.

I can’t make it any clearer than that.

If some other Democrat was the current president, and Biden was enjoying retirement, then there likely would not be a special prosecutor, but there would still be an investigation.

[Maru Kitteh]

30. Why do you say a different Dem with classified docs would not have a special prosecutor?

I don't follow.

[Fiendish Thingy]

32. I didn't say that

I said if a different Dem were president, there wouldn’t be a special counsel because Garland wouldn’t be investigating his boss, he would be investigating Joe Biden, private citizen.

[Maru Kitteh]

37. Oh! Okay. Yeah I didn't understand what you were communicating.

got it.

[ForgedCrank]

27. I think

everyone should just relax.
I personally believe Garland is doing this just for the sake of the right, so they can't say he wasn't fair.
It's going nowhere and Garland knows that, but there is a long game to play and that's what he appears to be doing.
Imagine the outrage from the right if he did nothing. At least in the eyes of the GOP, he would have treated Biden differently than Trump. Yea, we can't have that hanging around, so this is the answer and I think it's a smart move to support Democrats going forward.
We already know there is nothing to find, and so does Garland.

[triron]

34. Appeasement pure and simple. Classic Neville chamberlain.

Huge mistake.

[ForgedCrank]

38. It's not

ideal, but it totally disarms the right and their BS.
Joe Biden shouldn't be treated this way and it's hard to sit still and watch it happen, but this is the way we beat them.

[Kingofalldems]

28. Ahhh clever.

[Paladin]

33. No. (nt)

[LAS14]

35. Yes. nt

[Karma13612]

41. The operative phrase:

Criminal activity.

What if the docs were planted to frame Biden.

The investigation might just uncover that.