ADVERTISEMENT

Restoring the DOJ's reputation

watu05

I.T.S. Senior
Mar 19, 2021
1,260
210
63
This excerpt from a Eugene Robinson opinion piece makes a lot of sense to me. It has to do with Merrick Garlands's continuing to support some of the DOJ actions under the Trump administration that appeared to undermine the DOJ's claim to be apolitical. Garland is not abandoning them just because he was nominated by Biden. Garland has also said he is going after the IRS tax return leakers is a high priority. It will be hard to reverse the damage that Barr did.

"As frustrating and galling as it may be to see President Biden’s administration make anything less than a clean break with its predecessors, Attorney General Merrick Garland is right not to peremptorily reverse positions taken by the Justice Department during the Trump era. And his caution is appropriate even if those positions, such as continuing to represent a certain Mar-a-Lago resident in a defamation case, are clearly wrong.

The Justice Department never should have tried to defend Donald Trump in a civil lawsuit filed by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who says that Trump, back in his real estate mogul days, raped her in a department store dressing room. When Carroll made her rape allegation public, then-President Trump called her a liar. Carroll responded by suing Trump for defamation, seeking damages.
Trump was initially represented by private counsel. But his Justice Department intervened to have the case moved to U.S. District Court and argued that it should have been dismissed, saying that Trump was a government “employee” acting within “the scope of his employment” when he verbally attacked Carroll, and thus enjoyed immunity for his defamatory words.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled against those claims in October and ordered that Carroll’s lawsuit be allowed to proceed. But Garland’s Justice Department is continuing to defend Trump, even though Kaplan determined that the case should be seen as a private matter between two individuals.
I hope the Justice Department ultimately loses the case and Carroll gets her day in court. But Garland, by staying the course, is sending a powerful message: The Justice Department doesn’t “belong” to Trump or Joe Biden or any one president. The meaning of the law does not change depending on who is in power. We should all swallow hard and accept Garland’s general commitment to some measure of continuity, because the alternative can be much worse......

........My point is that ......we do not want the United States to become a nation where the default assumption is that justice is always political. We don’t want to be a place where culpability and liability depend on who happens to be president. So if Garland believes there are plausible reasons for the government to keep defending Trump in Carroll’s defamation suit, I’m glad he’s doing so. His job is to follow the law as he sees it — even when I think he’s dead wrong."
 
I agree as well. I constantly argue "precedent" on this board. It's one thing to support a certain decision or action because one supports the politics behind the same. However, we must first and foremost look at the precedent it sets in our decision whether to support a certain action. The immediate action will occur and likely fade. The precedent will not.
 
I agree as well. I constantly argue "precedent" on this board. It's one thing to support a certain decision or action because one supports the politics behind the same. However, we must first and foremost look at the precedent it sets in our decision whether to support a certain action. The immediate action will occur and likely fade. The precedent will not.
And the opposite of course as well. By that I mean the estoppel problem. Justice gets great deference from the Article III courts as a separate branch. If they start stopping and starting things on a whim, or because of optics and not evidence, courts are going to be more willing to step in and attempt to assert control over their discretionary decision making in the name of maintaining public confidence in the proceedings. We saw that play out lately with Flynn.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: watu05
organized crime , the mafia, owned the fbi, local law enforcement, politician.
today its the democrats aided by msm
 
I would argue we’ve lived in a pseudo police state for quite some time. Look at the FBI’s FISA abuses. Look at the expansion of the Patriot act. The DOJ gathering phone records while deplorable isn’t the real threat here. It’s powerful people using the likes of the FBI to bypass normal judicial process in obtaining wire taps and other surveillance on US citizens.
 
Dean has no credibility. He designed a series of felonies for Nixon to backstop guilt, and when caught, tried to finger people, including Nixon for crimes they did not commit to get his own immunity deal. They went on to commit crimes anyway. He was perfectly happy to continue committing crimes from within the White House as long as it aided his unquenchable ambition for power and influence.

Similarly, law enforcement, especially the Justice Department is filled with people who have been vetted to narrow the cadre down to the highest motivated individuals they can retain. Law enforcement is one of the most competitive enterprises out there. Wait a few weeks, and I’m sure you’ll see articles quoting emails and memos that demonstrate that this whole thing was hatched and executed within DOJ guidelines by career officials ambivalent to Trump but mostly personally against him. Never assume political conspiracy where non-partisan greed and ambition can explain the behavior. Nobody inside DOJ was going to break rules for Donald Trump. Nearly all of them would do it for themselves.
 
I'm just waiting to see if anything comes out of McGahn's testimony.
 
Dean has no credibility. He designed a series of felonies for Nixon to backstop guilt, and when caught, tried to finger people, including Nixon for crimes they did not commit to get his own immunity deal. They went on to commit crimes anyway. He was perfectly happy to continue committing crimes from within the White House as long as it aided his unquenchable ambition for power and influence.

Similarly, law enforcement, especially the Justice Department is filled with people who have been vetted to narrow the cadre down to the highest motivated individuals they can retain. Law enforcement is one of the most competitive enterprises out there. Wait a few weeks, and I’m sure you’ll see articles quoting emails and memos that demonstrate that this whole thing was hatched and executed within DOJ guidelines by career officials ambivalent to Trump but mostly personally against him. Never assume political conspiracy where non-partisan greed and ambition can explain the behavior. Nobody inside DOJ was going to break rules for Donald Trump. Nearly all of them would do it for themselves.
Well, it will be interesting to find out.
Trump clearly thought the DOJ should be and was political as his firings and repeated warnings by staff/cabinet that some of his orders in many areas were illegal. His time in office was a search for staff that didn’t care about legality.
 
Last edited:
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest posts

ADVERTISEMENT