America dodged a bullet when Sens. Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley blocked Merrick Garland from becoming a Supreme Court justice.
Now-Attorney General Garland has made it clear he is a partisan operative and has no interest in justice. He would have been a disaster on the Supreme Court. But instead of a permanent appointment to the court, Garland is inflicting lasting damage to the Justice Department.
Conservative lawmakers have been demanding Garland appoint a special counsel in the Hunter Biden probe for months now, but he has ignored their pleas. Instead, Garland appointed Jack Smith as a special counsel to investigate his boss’s top political opponent: Donald Trump.
Garland has Smith looking into the non-crimes of objecting to the results of a presidential election and keeping personal copies of presidential records. Both are expressly permitted by federal statutes and have been done by Democrats in years past. If Trump is in hot water for objecting to one election, then Democrats would have him beaten fourfold — see years 1969, 2001, 2005, and 2017, all years Democrats objected to the results of a presidential election. If Trump is in trouble for taking personal copies of his presidential records, then Bill Clinton would have gone to jail for stuffing in his sock drawer eight years of highly classified recordings of his presidency.
The situation is not only chilling but dangerous when the Justice Department opens a broad criminal probe into a leading presidential candidate for objecting to an election. It’s a clear First Amendment violation to punish those who dare question election results, and this fishing expedition is oppositional to our constitutional values of liberty and justice. They are looking for any past infraction instead of seeking justice by solving an actual crime. The emphasis, in this case, is the person, Trump, instead of any alleged crime. It is only a crime to object to presidential elections in Third World hellholes.
There are very real and violent crimes on which Garland and the Department of Justice should focus their attention. Our cities are experiencing violence and turmoil as stores are looted and carjackings run rampant — all thanks mostly to the leadership of Garland’s allies within the Democrat Party.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee recently released a shocking report detailing the mishandling of the FBI under the leadership of Chris Wray and Garland. It notes that “in addition to anti-life extremists targeting Supreme Court justices, anti-life fanatics have targeted, destroyed, or vandalized nearly 70 pro-life facilities, groups, and churches to further their political cause.”
“Despite this harassment and violence aimed at the Court and pro-life facilities, the Biden Administration has declined to enforce the law to protect Supreme Court justices and their families,” House Republicans wrote.
Furthermore, under Garland and Wray, the FBI and DOJ aren’t just refusing to prosecute people who carry out attacks on pro-life institutions; they are actively using the federal government to persecute pro-life individuals.
Garland’s choice of Smith as special counsel is also a troubling one. Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and a former attorney for the House Oversight Committee, tweeted that “Jack Smith is well known and liked in leftist circles because of his role in the IRS scandal, working with Lois Lerner to illicitly target conservative groups.”
Indeed, Smith was the subject of a 2014 letter by top House Republicans that noted Smith “was closely involved in engaging with the IRS in the wake of Citizens United and political pressure from prominent Democrats to address perceived problems with the decision.”
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s report on the Lois Lerner scandal noted that Smith wanted the IRS to probe nonprofits based on an article in The New York Times.
Smith also has experience using the legal system to take out prominent Republicans. In 2010, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder picked Smith to run the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section. Smith proceeded to take out Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell as a potential Republican presidential candidate on bogus corruption charges.
The Supreme Court unanimously overturned McDonnell’s conviction. Even the liberals on the court believed the charges brought by Smith were a bridge too far. Imagine what he is willing to concoct against former President Trump.
Garland’s appointment of Smith will surely erode the American people’s belief that justice is fairly applied to everyone. Unlike keeping personal copies of presidential records, being an unregistered foreign agent is a crime. So is a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And tax evasion. Experts have noted that Hunter Biden’s influence peddling for foreign officials amounts to a crime as the president’s son never registered under FARA. And there is smoking-gun evidence President Biden himself was in on Hunter’s racket.
This appointment amounts to election interference by targeting a Republican presidential candidate days after his announcement. The special counsel doesn’t even have to indict and imprison former President Trump to affect his campaign’s chances. Garland is many things, but he is not dumb. Garland knows very well that, like the Mueller probe, a special counsel investigation will unnecessarily drag on — and leave a dark political cloud over Trump while he’s running for president over the next two years.
The people running the government who insist they are concerned about “protecting our institutions” appear to be even more dedicated to destroying them from within. Congressional Republicans must investigate and hold Garland and the special counsel accountable. They must cut-off funding to Garland and Smith’s illegitimate political investigation of their boss’s political opponent.