Opinion: Merrick Garland's integrity saved the DOJ only to doom it again

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

49% : But so much for Garland's achievement: Trump, saved by his election from having to answer for Jan. 6 or for a separate federal indictment for filching classified documents, will be back in power next week, more emboldened than before and backed by appointees willing to do his vengeful bidding at the Justice Department and the FBI.
44% : A man who could have been a truly supreme justice -- but for then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's unprecedented Republican blockade -- instead became a seemingly ineffectual attorney general, at least regarding the defining challenge of his tenure: holding Donald Trump accountable for trying to steal the 2020 presidential election.
36% : Yet in a nation based on the rule of law, the case against Trump needed to be pursued.
36% : Even if Garland had moved aggressively, there's a good argument that all the delays available to Trump would've made a trial and verdict before the election unlikely.
34% : Yet to point fingers solely at Garland for letting Trump off the hook shifts blame from those even more deserving of it.
33% : The 72-year-old attorney general soon leaves office having angered all sides -- Republicans for going after Trump at all, Democrats for not going after him fast and hard enough.
31% : Prosecutors insisted they were chasing leads involving Trump and close allies, while sorting out the legal complexities of trying a former occupant of the Oval Office.
27% : So intent was Garland on restoring the department's independence and integrity -- after Trump, in his first term, openly sought to weaponize it against his enemies -- that the attorney general initially shied from investigating and prosecuting Trump for his role in the postelection subversions culminating on Jan. 6, 2021.
27% : California Sen. Adam B. Schiff, formerly a member of the House Jan. 6 committee, was among the first Democrats to publicly blame the Justice Department, at least partially, for letting Trump avoid trial before the 2024 election, complaining on CNN that the department had focused too long on "the foot soldiers" who attacked the Capitol "and refrained from looking at ... the inciters.
26% : And this fact remains: The ultimate jury -- voters -- had more than enough incriminating facts available to decide Trump was unfit to be president again.
23% : As fast as Smith seemed to work, it wasn't until August 2023 -- two and a half years after the insurrection -- that Trump was criminally indicted.
23% : Months of legal challenges from the Trump team followed, delaying everything and putting forward what seemed like a crazy claim, that Trump should have presidential immunity.
9% : McConnell, for instance, who engineered Trump's Senate acquittal in February 2021 after his impeachment for inciting the insurrection; conviction could have been paired with a vote banning Trump from seeking federal office.
8% : Of course Trump, the master of projection, was going to, and did, accuse the attorney general of the very thing that Trump himself was guilty of: weaponizing the Justice Department.

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