Merrick Garland
September 21, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Miranda Devine reviews Attorney General Merrick Garland’s performance before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday in the New York Post column “Ignorant, pathetic Merrick Garland wilts on the hot seat before Congress.” Garland added the twist of a Mafia don to his usual protestations of rectitude. He don’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’. And your question is a personal insult. I would have missed the deconstruction of what has become the stupid
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September 20, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The politicizing of the Department of Justice has been underway for quite a while. It reached a sort of apotheosis when Eric Holder declared himself Barack Obama’s “wing man,” and Holder didn’t mind being held in contempt of Congress as he pursued his higher duty to the Democratic Party. Now we have Merrick Garland as Attorney General, if anything a worse political hack than Holder. He testified today before the
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July 12, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I have collected notes on the latest developments in the shambolic investigation of Hunter Biden: prosecutor David Weiss’s letter to Senator Lindsey Graham (“To clarify an apparent misperception and to avoid future confusion, I wish to make one point clear: in this case, I have not requested Special Counsel designation pursuant to” the statute for appointing a special counsel) and the IRS whistleblowers’ response to same (“Once again: U.S. Attorney
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June 28, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
I admit it. I hate Attorney General Merrick Garland so much I can barely stand to hear him speak. But there’s a reason for my strong feelings. We can’t trust a word he says. And on Tuesday, The New York Times confirmed it. Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee released the transcribed interviews of two IRS whistleblowers who worked on the Hunter Biden case. The testimonies of IRS
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June 25, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The corruption of the U.S. government is exemplified by the Biden administration. The corruption of the Biden administration is exemplified by its Department of Justice. And the corruption of the Department of Justice is presided over by Attorney General Merrick Garland. But that isn’t the worst of it. Corruption of the Department of Justice goes to the heart of American democracy. It makes a mockery of the rule of law.
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June 25, 2023 — Scott Johnson
There was really only one story in American politics last week. It came with the release of the IRS whistleblower transcripts on Thursday on Thursday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith. I wrote about Smith’s press conference in “Is the cover-up unraveling?” and noted the availability of the whistleblower transcripts online. They are posted here (Gary Shapley) and here (witness name redacted, supplemental submission here). These materials
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April 21, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
The First Family is taking on water – lots and lots of it. Given that the GOP has now held the House majority for 100 days, many on the right were unimpressed with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s revelation on Monday that six additional members of the Biden clan may have benefited financially from the family’s overseas business dealings. But considering the Treasury Department’s months-long refusal to hand over
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January 12, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I want to add these notes to those I posted early this morning in “The Biden docs, round 2.” • Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed Robert Hur as Special Counsel to investigate President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents — what I referred to in my post this morning as “the Biden matter.” Garland’s statement appointing Hur is posted online here. Hur is the former United States Attorney for the
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August 16, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday, Donald Trump announced that during the Mar-a-Lago raid, FBI agents “stole” his three passports, one of which was expired. The Department of Justice initially tried to deny this claim, or at least weasel out of it. Via RedState: NEW: According to a DOJ official, the FBI is NOT in possession of former President Trump's passports. Trump had accused the FBI of stealing his three passports during the search of
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August 14, 2022 — Scott Johnson
In his fatuous four-minute public statement on Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke up to defend the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago. The Department of Justice has posted the transcript of Garland’s remarks here. At NRO, John Yoo and Robert Delahunty respond in the column “Why the Public Is Skeptical of Garland’s Mar-a-Lago Story.” They offer “four legitimate reasons Americans think something crassly political has just transpired.” They speak from experience
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August 12, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday Merrick Garland delivered a brief press statement, apparently feeling heat with regard to DOJ’s Mar-a-Lago raid. Garland’s unimpressive performance did nothing to quell concerns about apparent political overreach by the DOJ and the FBI, so the Biden administration tried to invest the raid with seriousness by leaking to its favorite media outlets that the raid resulted from concerns about “nuclear documents.” This upped the ante somewhat from prior leaks
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August 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
There is much to be said about the FBI’s raid on Donald Trump’s home. I won’t try to say it all here. These are a few observations, based on what we know currently: * To get a search warrant, you have to identify a crime that has been committed, and explain how evidence you are looking for is relevant to that crime. At this point, we don’t know what purported
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August 10, 2022 — Scott Johnson
What do we know? Law enforcement leaks and confirmation from the Trump side indicate that the FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence indicate that the search was focused on presidential records and the possible violation of the Presidential Records Act. In her inside account of the raid, Miranda Devine puts it this way: “The Post has learned that the search warrant used by the FBI to enter the palatial Palm
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August 9, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The White House leaked to its media adjunct that Biden and his aides didn’t know about the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago until they read about it on Twitter: Senior White House officials found out about the FBI’s Mar a Lago raid on Twitter, had no notice, per source familiar — Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) August 8, 2022 This claim is laughable. There is no way that Merrick Garland authorized a raid
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May 12, 2022 — John Hinderaker
You all remember the story: the Biden Department of Justice coordinated with the National School Boards Association to arrange for FBI investigations of parents who are unhappy about their local schools teaching racism and anti-Americanism (Critical Race Theory) and gender confusion, and requiring masks. The episode was so sordid that many state school board associations dropped their affiliation with NSBA, and most people doubted that the FBI would be craven
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December 24, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The U.S. Justice Department announced this week that thousands of federal prison inmates who were sent home due to the pandemic will not be required to return to prison to serve their sentences. The DOJ reversed an opinion by the Trump administration’s Department of Legal Counsel stating that the Bureau of Prisons “must recall prisoners in home confinement to correctional facilities” if they do not meet the normal home-arrest criteria.
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December 16, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Department of Justice sent out a press release yesterday afternoon on the Chauvin plea deal following the hearing before Judge Magnuson yesterday morning. It is posted online here. The release fabricates this quote for Attorney General Garland: “Defendant Chauvin has pleaded guilty to two federal civil rights violations, one of which led to the tragic loss of George Floyd’s life,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “While recognizing that
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