It has long been an article of faith on the right that Attorney General Merrick Garland is prosecuting Donald Trump because President Biden wants him to. Even the Trump-skeptical corners of the conservative media casually assert, without bothering to supply any evidence for the charge, that Biden is behind the DOJ investigations.
“Biden Justice Department officials and Democratic prosecutors are currently trying to put the other side’s leading contender for the White House in jail … The vapors over Trump saying he’s going to target his enemies,” argues National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry, “is rich coming from people who have targeted their enemy by any means necessary for years now.”
“Meantime, a Justice Department special counsel has filed trumped-up charges against Mr. Trump for allegedly defrauding the U.S. … writes Wall Street Journal columnist Allysia Finley, “Abuse executive power. Ignore the law. Run roughshod over individual liberties. Retaliate against political opponents. Mr. Biden and his allies have done exactly what they warn Mr. Trump will do if he returns to the White House.”
You’d think those conservatives might be questioning this assumption, now that Garland’s Justice Department is prosecuting Joe Biden’s son for tax evasion. But no, they’re just pretending it isn’t happening.
There was never any basis for the charge that Garland is working at Biden’s behest. Garland is well-respected by legal types in both parties — that’s why Barack Obama thought he was the only Supreme Court nominee who stood any chance of confirmation by a Republican Senate in 2016 — and received 70 votes for his confirmation.
Unlike Trump, who repeatedly demanded his attorneys general prosecute his enemies and let his criminal buddies go free, and made these demands privately with even more corrupt intent, there is zero public evidence or reporting to suggest Biden has improperly tried to influence Garland’s decisions.
What’s more, the two Justice Department cases against Trump both flow directly from publicly identifiable sources. Trump is being charged in the documents case because the National Archive asked him to return government property, he refused, and then covered up his crimes when the FBI came looking. The January 6 case comes directly out of an investigation by a House committee that turned up damning evidence.
I would agree that Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump relies on strained legal reasoning. But it seems extremely strange to argue that Biden must be secretly colluding with the Manhattan district attorney but not the attorney general.
Of course, the most obvious evidence that Biden is not directing Garland’s decisions is that Garland is charging his beloved last surviving son with felonies that could carry a prison sentence of up to 17 years. It seems safe to assume this is not a choice Joe Biden would make.
Indeed, the president is angry with his attorney general. “Biden’s relationship with Garland — which was already tense — has become more frigid amid Biden’s frustration at the lengthy criminal investigation and now prosecution of Hunter by the Justice Department,” reports Alex Thompson, “People close to Biden also have fumed at Garland for appointing a special counsel in August.” Thompson also reports, “One person close to the president unflatteringly compared Garland to the former FBI director James Comey, claiming they both have been obsessed with the appearance of having integrity rather than just trying to make the right decision.”
Biden is not pressuring Garland to pull the charges against his son, nor is he threatening to fire him. He is, by all accounts, respecting the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence that Trump smashed to pieces.
Notably, Garland’s failure to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden was one of the major pieces of evidence that he was supposedly loading the dice. “Somehow, he got a special counsel for the Trump cases, where he could use political insulation from charges against Biden’s probable opponent next year, and hasn’t appointed one on the Biden case,” complained Lowry in July.
The National Review treated the absence of a special counsel as proof of Garland’s corruption. “If Garland does not quickly appoint a special counsel, he will be opening himself up to the charge that the DOJ is protecting President Biden,” wrote Johns Yoo, “Garland would also give Congress the grounds to believe that genuinely investigating and prosecuting Hunter would have revealed that President Biden and/or his family members either committed or knew of serious wrongdoing.”
Shortly after, Garland did appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden the next month. So the National Review then admitted that Garland actually was acting independently.
I’m joking, of course. They just dropped the subject.
To the anti-anti-Trump right, it is absolutely necessary to believe Biden is corrupting the Justice Department. Conservatives who can’t defend certain Trump actions rely on the belief that Biden is just as bad. A huge portion of anti-anti-Trump commentary is simply reverse engineering all the bad things Trump did as accusations against his Democratic rivals. If they have no evidence for this view, they’ll just say it anyway.
