Greg Olear: Merrick Garland and the democracy-killing sound of silence. [View all]

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Greg Olear
@gregolear
"This is an information war. The good guys are losing. The sooner the Attorney General understands this, the more swiftly justice will come. Democracy dies not in darkness, but in silence."

A Quiet Place: DOJ
Merrick Garland and the democracy-killing sound of silence.
gregolear.substack.com
3:14 AM · Jun 15, 2021

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/a-quiet-place-doj


I CAN ONLY IMAGINE what a mess Bill Barr made of the Justice Department. How much damage he did. How much of the infrastructure of that hallowed institution needs to be repaired before full function can resume. I can only imagine it, because no one working there has told me. On this topic, and almost every other, Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, has been silent.

In our discussion on the PREVAIL podcast, Glenn Kirschner, the longtime former federal prosecutor who worked with Robert Mueller, sang Garland’s praises, describing him as a “quiet killer.” That may well be true—but so far, we’ve only seen the “quiet” part. And quiet, at this stage of the game, is a killer. Once again, we are saddled with a supposed bringer of justice who leaves us in the dark.

If it feels like we’ve seen this movie before, that’s because we have. A couple of times.

It began with FBI Director James Comey, back in 2016. The Bureau knew that there were active investigations into both of the presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton, for using a private server to send some classified emails, and Donald John Trump, for working with the Russians to ratfuck the election.

Comey should have either told us about both investigations or followed the Bureau’s “Glomar” policy—We can neither confirm nor deny—and spoken of neither. Instead, he chose to notify Congress about only the first investigation. He did not hip anyone to the fact that Trump’s campaign was coordinating election strategy with the Kremlin, because—and this was stupid at the time and looks even more idiotic in hindsight—he felt that doing so would have jeopardized the investigation. In other words, to protect the FBI’s sacred detective work, he clammed up as a known Russian asset and inveterate tool of organized crime took the White House.

*snip*