On Merrick Garland

 Merrick Garland granted an interview to Lester Holt in which he admitted to having fired James Comey for... oh, wait.  Scratch that.  Here's what happened.  If you don't want to use the word, "lie," then fine.  Say, "dissemble."  Garland is not, under any circumstances, going to prosecute Donald Trump.  More news has broken that the Department of Justice has had its hand forced to initiate some formal investigations that in some way relate to Donald Trump, himself, but there will be no indictment or prosecution at the federal level.  Garland simply cannot admit that, but it is July 27, 2022.  If the DoJ is just now, finally, getting around to maybe kinda thinking about thinking about looking at Trump personally, then someone has been stopping them from looking at him.  His name is Merrick Garland.

There are two ways such a thing could happen.  The good way and the bad way.  This is happening the bad way.

The good way would be as follows.  A good prosecutor doesn't bring charges when the probability of conviction is absolute zero, and the probability of conviction is absolute zero.  Why?  Because something close to half the country is part of a creepy Trump cult, and you cannot keep every single Trump cultist off the jury.  Evidence doesn't matter when you have jurists who worship the defendant as their living god.  Probability of conviction = 0, and nothing can ever change that.  Indict and try him, and the inevitable acquittal will do nothing but feed into his bullshit, self-pitying victimization blubbering.  You know, tough guy stuff.

Does that mean there should be no DoJ investigation?  No.  It means you use the full force of the DoJ, then an info-dump and say, point blank, you can't convict because half the country is just brainwashed into a cult of personality, but anyone else?  They'd get locked away and you'd throw away the room.  Just fuckin' say it straight.

That is not what Garland is doing.  He has been... obstructing.  Why?

It would be "political!"

What a bullshit word.  Anything related to politics is "political."  When Garland told Holt that no one is above the law and he'd follow the law and yadda-yadda?  Liar.  The fact that Trump is an ex-president with a cult of personality and all-but-announced candidate?  That is exactly what is guiding Garland's decision-making.  He doesn't want to be seen as "political!"  Yeah, too fuckin' bad.

Indict/don't indict.  That's a binary choice.  Neither is definitionally apolitical.  There are bullshit models out there that reject the concept of neutrality as a concept, and you should reject those models, but what neutrality-- blind justice-- would be is as follows.  Truly ignore that Trump is who he is.

That is very much not what Garland is doing.

Would factoring in the probability of conviction constitute a violation of "blind justice" or merely an acknowledgement of the fact that justice is not blind?  Which... it ain't.  I'm going with the latter.

You cannot convict Trump.  That is not a moral entreaty.  That is a statement of fact.  It wouldn't work, and it would backfire.  Given that, be a prosecutor.  Indicting when you can't convict?  That's not the smart play.

But Garland isn't approaching the matter that way.  He is just protecting Trump.  And lying about it.

He'd sort of have to, wouldn't he?