Was Merrick Garland's Approach Correct All Along? [View all]

[Joinfortmill]

https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/was-merrick-garlands-approach-correct?utm_source=substack&utm_medium

Ok, people, take a deep breath and hear the man out. This article has been so thoughtfully articulated, it is difficult to reduce it and maintain it's clarity and coherence, so please take a few minutes to read it.(my words)

'I’m going to say something that might make me a bit unpopular...Attorney General Merrick Garland has taken a logical and reasonable legal path...It comes down to how Garland and the Justice Department...methodically laid a legal pathway for charges against Trump to land, rather than get thrown out of court or held in doubt till the end, where they might be far more vulnerable on appeal...

The first set of defendants...Garland took office in March of 2021, and by May 13...just two months later, the Washington Post reported that 411 suspects had been swept up “in what federal officials have called an unprecedented domestic attack on a branch of the U.S. government.” That’s a lot of arrests, but notice the wording, which was no accident: The attack was “unprecedented,” and it was “on a branch of the U.S. government.”

The Obstruction of an Official Proceeding statute...The statute that 195 defendant rioters had been charged with is 18 U.S.C. 1512(c). That part of the obstruction laws deals with “corruptly” interfering with an “official proceeding... otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,” and carries with it a hefty penalty of up to 20 years in prison...What does “corruptly” mean here?...What does “otherwise” include here?...The Justice Department didn’t have a clear answer to any of these questions from the courts back in 2021. So proceeding early with this statute against someone like Trump would have been a very dicey proposition had prosecutors not first laid a solid legal foundation....And that’s exactly what the Justice Department has been doing over the past two years, appearing before multiple district courts in the D.C. Circuit and before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals....And its work is very nearly done.'