The disrespect that Senate Republicans accorded Judge Merrick Garland four years ago, when they refused even to give his Supreme Court nomination a hearing, will not be repeated when Garland comes before the Senate in the coming days to be confirmed as the next Attorney General of the United States, and head of the Department of Justice.
During the Donald J. Trump presidency, the DOJ grabbed a lot of headlines. But that hasn’t done much for the advancement of those cherished aspirational American values of indivisibility, and liberty, and justice for all.
Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first Attorney General, was sworn in after Trump’s executive order calling for a Muslim ban, but the newly-minted AG did go on to promote draconian enforcement of immigration laws by clamping down on self-proclaimed Sanctuary Cities and allowing a zero-tolerance policy that separated parents and children at the southern border.
Even so, Sessions was forced out two years later for not doing enough to promote the President’s personal agenda.
He was replaced by William Barr, who enabled Trump’s repeated efforts to push against the accepted limits of presidential power. It was Barr who stepped out in front of the release of the Mueller report, falsely claiming that the report exonerated Trump, and publicly muddling the report’s damning conclusions regarding Russian connections to Trump’s presidential campaign. It was Barr who blocked Congress from reviewing the unredacted report.
Likewise, the Attorney General undermined his own Department’s ongoing prosecutions against the President’s crooked cronies such as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, and meddled in their sentencing. Barr even moved to install DOJ lawyers in place of Trump’s personal legal team in a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who alleged Trump had sexually assaulted her before he became President.
Building Back Better:
The Department of Justice
by Barbara Lloyd McMichael