How Merrick Garland Acts Like Donald Trump's Lawyer [View all]

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/merrick-garland-joe-biden-donald-trump-policies-doj-court-cases/


How Merrick Garland Acts Like Donald Trump’s Lawyer
The Justice Department wants to defend the executive branch. That means defending Trump.
Dan Friedman


Under President Joe Biden, the Justice Department is defending many of the polices and prerogatives of former President Donald Trump. Six months after Trump left office, lawsuits on matters ranging from the Trump-Russia scandal to a rape allegation against the former president are still winding through courts, and DOJ is siding with the former president in some cases, and fighting Congress to keep Trump-era records secret in others.

The Justice Department appears to be doing this because it is run by lawyers eager to preserve executive branch power against legislators, and because Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to avoid “re-litigating” Trump-era controversies, according to aides.

DOJ, in other words, has decided to defend Trump to help Biden. But to Trump’s critics, this stance amounts to a feckless stymying of accountability for a president and aides whose conduct was unprecedented in its lawlessness.

Here is a run-down of matters where the Justice Department is, at least in part, siding with or protecting Trump.

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Guns

In May, 87 former federal prosecutors asked Garland to abandon a Trump administration policy of charging gun crimes that occur in the District of Columbia in federal court. The prosecutors say that due to stiff mandatory federal penalties for gun arrests, the policy disproportionately affected Black residents. Average sentences for gun crimes are about twice as high in the federal court system, the Washington Post has reported. But DOJ has so far indicated no plan to change course.

Immigration policies

While Biden has broken with many of Trump’s draconian immigration policies, the Justice Department is quietly defending some Trump-era rules and their architects in court, the New York Times recently reported. DOJ lawyers have argued to keep in place a policy that bars immigrants with temporary protected status from gaining green cards with the support of their employer. They have also agreed to defend former members of the Trump administration, including Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller, in lawsuits seeking damages for harm caused by the family-separation policy they advocated. This is a traditional step for DOJ to take. But Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told the Times that the department should reconsider due to the historically heinous conduct it is now defending. “For the Biden DOJ to choose to represent the people who did the family-separation practice is deeply troubling,” he said.