President Joe Biden reportedly wanted the Department of Justice to target then-former President Donald Trump for prosecution far sooner and more aggressively than it did, and regrets naming Merrick Garland as Attorney General.
The report, published in the Washington Post on Saturday, echoes reporting nearly three years ago by the New York Times, which suggested in 2022 that Biden was frustrated with the slow pace of Garland, a “ponderous judge.”
The Post noted:
In private, Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as attorney general, complaining about the Justice Department’s slowness under Garland in prosecuting Trump, and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Biden’s son Hunter, according to people familiar with his comments.
…Ron Klain, Biden’s incoming chief of staff, pushed for Garland. He stressed that Garland — a federal judge with a sterling reputation for independence and fairness — would show Americans that Biden was rebuilding a department badly shaken by Trump’s political attacks.
Biden was persuaded, and some Democrats believe the decision had devastating results. Had the Justice Department moved faster to prosecute Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents, they say, the former president might have faced a politically damaging trial before the election. (Others blame the Supreme Court and a Trump-appointed judge in Florida for repeatedly siding with the former president and delaying the cases; the Justice Department declined to comment.)
The Biden White House claimed throughout his presidency that it was not politicizing the Department of Justice, and was in fact depoliticizing it. Democrats claimed that the department had been politicized by then-Attorney General William Barr, who refused to release grand jury materials related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into so-called “Russia collusion.” Barr noted that it was against the law for him to release grand jury materials.
The Post omits one of the other reasons Garland was picked: he had been blocked from confirmation to the Supreme Court by Republicans in 2016, and his appointment was seen as a consolation prize, as well as a strike at the GOP.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
