Holding back tears speaking at Ellis Island today hundreds of refugees taking the oath of office for U.S. citizenship, 70-year-old Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland welcomed the newcomers to America. “We must not allow the fractures between us to fracture our democracy,” Garland said, introducing Washington’s contentious atmosphere especially between political parties. Newcomers to America aren’t into the rough-and-tumble of American politics, reflected in the Aug. 8 raid of former President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago residence. Garland’s been pushed by his party’s left wing to find ground to prosecute the former president, hoping it prevents him from running for president in 2024. Garland reflected on his own small family, including his grandmother, that made it from Belarus, only three escaping the Holocaust. Garlands steeped away from politics, to reflect on his grandmother.
Garland said all his European family, except three, were massacred in the Holocaust, only three making it to America. “If not for America, there is little doubt that the same would have happened to my grandmother,” Garland said, choking back tears. “But this country took her in. And under protection of our laws, she was able to live without fear of persecution. “That protection,” Garland said. “Is what distinguishes America from so many other countries,” not mentioning names but certainly referring to authoritarian regimes in Russia and China. Garland told newcomers that the law protects everyone, not just the privileged. “The rule of law means that the law treats each of us alike,” Garland said. “There is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule of the powerful, another for the powerless, one rule for the rich, another for the poor; or different rules depending on one’s race or ethnicity or country of origin.”
Garlands statements raise some inescapable questions for the Justice Department, who, in 2016, decided to persecute 76-year-old former President Donald Trump. Garland knows all about what the DOJ, FBI, CIA and National Security Agency [NSA] did to Trump during in campaign and four years in office. Garland says there’s no rule of law for “foes,” clearly not the case for Trump. Garland knows you can’t have former Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch approving the DOJ’s covert effort to coordinate with the FBI, CIA and NSA to sabotage Trump’s 2016 campaign, all for the purpose to getting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton elected president. Garland must accept the misdeeds of his colleagues, not get sucked into the Obama deep-staters who, like Deputy Atty. Gen. Lisa Monaco, want to prosecute Trump to the fullest extent of the law for possessing classified docs at Mar-a-Lago.
Garland knows that his Deputy Atty. Gen. Monaco was closely involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Trump with 62-yar-old former FBI Director James Comey, both claimed Trump had close ties to the Kremlin. Monaco and Comey got their probable cause from Hillary opposition research AKA the Steele dossier, a completely fabricated document designed to sabotage Trump campaign. Garland has done nothing so far to reconcile the criminal conduct of certain DOJ officials under Lynch. None of the main conspirators, including former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden, have ever answered for what the DOJ, FBI, CIA and NSA did to Trump during the 2016 campaign and his time in office. Garland must decide now if enough-is-enough in persecuting the former president over boxes of White House documents found in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago basement.
If Garland has any sense of integrity, he’d think carefully about the inappropriate political pressure in the DOJ to prosecute Trump. With the Jan. 6 Select Committee making all kinds of wild accusations about Trump, there are plenty of Democrats that want Trump charged with a crime. Garland can’t shed tears for his grandmother and ignore what’s happened in the DOJ under Obama and Lynch. Trump was prosecuting by Comey for only one reason: To stop him from becoming president. Using Hillary’s fake dossier as probable cause was an outrage to any ethical prosecutor who knows there was nothing in it but fake accusations. If Garland wants to pledge his fidelity to the rule of law, he needs to end the madness that has Lisa Monaco and the DOJ building a fake case against Trump. Even if there were inadvertent violations of U.S. records’ laws, Garland should let it go.
Garland has a lot to clean up at the DOJ, knowing what his predecessors did to former President Trump. Letting Monaco or any other former Obama deep-stater to push Garland to prosecute Trump would send the exact wrong message to the some 200 newcomers taking their citizenship oath at Ellis Island. Garland said the rule of law must be applied without prejudice. But if you have deep prejudice against Trump at the DOJ, FBI, CIA and NSA, Garland must make his stand, even if it means his early retirement. Everyone knows that79-year-old President Joe Biden and 57-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris despise Trump, so Garland must resist the political pressure to charge Trump with a crime. Garland’s predecessor, 72-year-old former Atty. Gen. Bill Barr tried to go after the DOJ but failed. Garland must do everything possible to preserve the Constitution’s rule of law.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
