Some of the first cases deriving from the January 6 riot at the US Capitol were put to bed last week and, in the process, demonstrated to the world that this is an exercise in partisan scalp-taking rather than anything approaching justice. Democrat apparatchik Tanya Chutkan, who LARPs as a federal district judge, handed out a two-week jail sentence to one defendant who had been in the US Capitol for less than ten minutes. Two others who had been in the Capitol for less than a half-hour drew 45-day sentences, a 50% increase over the abusive sentence the prosecution had requested.
Chutkan, you’ll recall, was so profoundly conflicted that the US Court for the District of Columbia removed her from handling the legal case between Devin Nunes’ House Intelligence Committee in their fight to make FusionGPS comply with Congressional subpoenas on the Russia Hoax after she did not voluntarily recuse herself (see BREAKING. The Judge in the Fusion GPS Case has Been Booted).
What is taking place is outside the norms of American legal tradition that no less a personality the Attorney General Merrick Garland, has expressed grave concerns about what is taking place.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has told other Justice Department officials he is concerned that jailing rioters who weren’t hard-core extremists for extensive periods could further radicalize them, according to people familiar with the matter, a concern he has expressed more broadly about defendants entering the criminal justice system. But he has left recommending sentences to the prosecutors directly involved, who have been making decisions based on nine factors, court documents indicate.
Prosecutors “are making determinations in every case about what charge fits the offense, what charge fits the law,” Mr. Garland said, speaking at the New Yorker Festival last week. “I am quite aware that there are people who are criticizing us for not prosecuting sufficiently and others who are complaining that we are prosecuting too harshly. This is, you know, part of the territory for any prosecutor in any case.”
My personal view is that Garland should be much more concerned about the millions of Americans who are appalled at this atrocity unspooling before our eyes and what that means for civilian cooperation with federal law enforcement in the future, rather than hypothesizing about the future actions of the 600 or so people imprisoned and actually tortured (see Judge Holds Authorities in Contempt for Violating Civil Rights of January 6 Defendant) to appease the progressive gods.
The left responded much as we’d expect. For a while, the hashtag #FireMerrickGarland trended among the mouth-breathing, leftwing Twitter accounts, as they were weaving conspiracies as only the left can weave them.
You’d expect that kind of counterfactual nonsense on the fringes, but with MSNBC and Joy Reid, the fringe become the mainstream nearly instantaneously. So here, she (or whatever her preferred pronouns are) put her unique spin on the events. In this clip from her show, she talks with Congressman Bennie Thompson, who chairs the grotesque January 6 “commission.” A “commission” that probably has already written its findings and is now making up evidence to support those findings.
REID: Can you imagine a scenario, sir, of anybody in Mississippi. Let`s make a theoretical case. Black Lives Matter protesters in your home state saying we`ve been subpoenaed, we ain`t coming. Can you imagine any other situation in the criminal justice system where a prosecutor would say in advance, we don`t want to be too hard on them because of their associations with Black Lives Matter? So we fear that that might radicalize them. Can you imagine that being said about anyone other than Trump supporters?
Because we know how the Biden bunch has handled anyone associated with Trump with kid gloves, right? And one wonders what amoeba is eating away at Reid’s brain to lead her to conclude that Black Lives Matter demonstrators did not have a Get Out of Jail Free card when they rampaged through American cities during the summer of 2020?
Same show, the guest is now former Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and majority counsel for President Trump’s House kangaroo court indictment.
There is a pattern here where if you support Donald Trump, or if Donald Trump is involved, this attorney general doesn`t take a whole lot of action.
Sarah Kendzior, she tweeted a pretty brutal thread about Merrick Garland late last night. And she listed some of the things that he has done or failed to do. He defended Donald Trump in a personal lawsuit against E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape. He asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit against William Barr relating to the beating and gassing of protesters in Lafayette Square, a terrible ;precedent. He refused to release the OLC memo that William Barr used to clear Trump of obstructing justice. He appealed the ruling the Dems had won, seeking to exposed corruption at the Trump Hotel. He wants to implement a 50-year delay, 50 years, on when courts can consider releasing materials from federal grand juries.
At what point does Merrick Garland go from protecting the presidency to looking like he is just simply defending Donald Trump because he thinks that going after Donald Trump in any way will make his supporters sad and will make them mad and might make them violent when they`re already violent?
Was Joy Reid not such a lackwit she might be thankful that Garland seems to have retained at least a vestigial sense of obedience to the law. The actions Garland has taken that Reid objects to will protect an ex-president Joe Biden and even an ex-attorney general Merrick Garland from congressional and legal scrutiny they will want to avoid.
Now, all of this Sturm und Drang over Garland expressing the opinion that people held in custody for over six months on what amounts to a jaywalking charge might come away from the experience a bit miffed is just stupid. The fact that Garland is one man in the Biden Justice Department who can see the whirlwind being sown is something that should be celebrated. Garland will not be fired so long as he leaves Hunter Biden free to sell art and chase hookers.
What the left has lost sight of, at least, in this case, is that their grasp on power is fleeting. They are going to lose the House and the Senate next year. The House, in particular, they are going to lose in a landslide. When that happens, the principles being sacrificed in the pursuit of President Trump are not going to be available to protect either Biden or his successor. When this happens, many on my side…including myself…are going to demand that Biden and all his principal cabinet officials (I’d expand the list to include any DOJ attorney who even looked at a single one of the January 6 cases) get the same treatment they dished out to President Trump.