“Slippery, Bootlicking A.G.”? The Media Goes Silent As Garland Adopts Previously Denounced Positions Of Barr

“…When Joe Biden nominated Merrick Garland to be attorney general, many — including me — heralded Garland as an honorable, apolitical judge who would follow the law. He was not, the Washington Post editors insisted, “a lackey who will serve as the president’s personal attorney” like Donald Trump‘s AGs. Garland has indeed followed the law, but some are not thrilled by where it has taken him.

President Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has adopted some of the same positions taken by the Trump administration that a host of legal and media experts once denounced. This week, the DOJ sought to replace itself as the defendant in a lawsuit against Trump brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who alleges that Trump raped her. The week before, it sought to dismiss a Black Lives Matter lawsuit over the clearing of Lafayette Park during a June 2020 protest.

This time last year, both positions were cited by legal and media experts as grotesque examples of then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s political bias. Now, those same experts are silent as Garland takes the same positions Barr took in federal court.

Garland is free, of course, to reject prior legal positions of Barr, but he has reached the same conclusion as his predecessor on several points of law thus far. In yet another adherence to Trump-era policy, the DOJ will defend opposing the ability of Puerto Ricans to receive social security disability benefits before the Supreme Court. Likewise, Garland agreed with Barr that a DOJ memo finding no legal basis for an obstruction charge against Trump should not be released to the public in its entirety.

Is Garland a Trumpist mole, part of some “deep state” resistance to his own president? Or is the more likely alternative that some in the media and many others in politics or the law knowingly distorted past legal controversies to use those as political fodder against Trump?…”