June 15, 2021

BuzzFlash:“Making Good Trouble Since May of 2000”

By Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash Short Takes

On Sunday, I wrote about my disappointment with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to have the DOJ continue with an appeal to have the DOJ represent Trump in a lawsuit calling out his salacious history and current personal vindictiveness. The recollection of our growing up in the same community and schools, which threaded the essay together, was read widely.

However, I wanted to make it clear that to understand all the evidence of corruption of the DOJ under Trump, Barr and Sessions, it was important to focus on one slice of the infested pit at a time. I chose to investigate the stunning decision to continue appealing a Barr-Trump case to save Trump from discovery and genetic testing. Barr also thought this insidious action would save Trump from being potentially found guilty because, if he had succeeded, Carroll could not sue the government, i.e. Trump, for defamation.

With a book coming out in 2019, E. Jean Carroll, a New York-based journalist was discussing its contents in New York Magazine, mentioning that Donald Trump had allegedly sexually attacked her in the mid-90s.

Trump, as president, responded (clearly “not within the scope of his duties”) with a virulent verbal assault on Carroll. Carroll filed a November, 2019 civil lawsuit that Trump slandered her in his response to her charge about the alleged sexual assault.

As further evidence that Trump’s DOJ defense was outside of its purview, it was not until the fall of 2020, just shy of a year, that Barr filed a brief in the federal court (even though Carroll was seeking damages in the New York state courts) asserting control of the case in lieu of Trump’s personal attorneys. Indeed, just shortly before Barr notified the federal court that the DOJ was wresting Carroll’s case from Trump’s attorneys, Barr was facing a discovery process ruling by New York State Supreme Court Judge, Verna L. Saunders, that Trump would need to submit to a DNA test, which he wanted to avoid at all costs.

He lost the initial decision with a resounding scolding, but then filed an appeal, which is where Merrick Garland comes in.

As Joe Matthis wrote in a June 14 The Week article, “Why is the DOJ still defending Trump?”:

Or, as Garland put it during a Senate hearing last week: "The essence of the rule of law ... is that like cases be treated alike, that there not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, that there not be one rule for friends and another for foes."

However, the Garland DOJ’s continuing to back the errant appeal has betrayed the law by legitimatizing protecting the “executive privilege” of a president when engaging in scurrilous conduct. It appears to be an improvised “rule” that Garland would not likely apply to a friend, but not wanting to be seen as “biased” against Trump, he let his department proceed with a deplorable appeal that Barr had dropped in his lap.

When will a Democrat learn that the Republicans are going to cry foul and attack a Dem administration no matter how cravenly Dems try to “prove” their impartiality? Sometimes there is a fine line between a noble gesture and being a sucker.

A stunned E. Jean Carroll wrote in her June 9 Substack column:

Trump is gone. Barr is gone. Biden is President. Biden appoints Saint Merrick as his Attorney General. And all is well. Robbie, Joshua, I, and about 132 million women in America are waiting for the Biden DOJ to do the right thing and confess that its original position was wrong. Our ultimate plan is to proceed with discovery and meet Trump in court—an occasion for which, I need hardly tell, you, Reader, I have already selected my outfit.

But Nooooooooooooooo.

Merrick Garland’s DOJ files a reply brief two nights ago, June 7th, that—incredibly, unbelievably—defends Trump. They argue that Trump was doing his job when he repeatedly slandered me and told the world that I was too ugly for him to rape.

Mr. Garland, why did it take a year for a transparent perversion of justice to become “DOJ policy”? What precedent exists for this circumstance? We’re all ears.

Carroll, in her Substack column, also points out that three women have played central roles in her legal case, including judges, and that is part of Trump and Barr’s flagrant misuse of an executive privilege immunity. She suggests that misogyny may have been a factor in the genesis of the action to have taxpayers defend Trump.

That would not be surprising for the Trump DOJ. However, it would be an astonishing development that the Biden administration would become a willing accomplice.

I personally feel sympathy for Garland. He has spent more than 30 years in the Department of Justice under Clinton and then beginning in 1967, until he was nominated to the AG position, sitting on the second most important court in the US, the DC Court of Appeals. He served as chief judge from 2013 to 2020.

In short, he has lived a life largely insulated from the daily sharp elbows of the political world, although he did serve a stint as a DOJ prosecutor. He is brilliant, but the only battle you do in as an elite judge is largely respectable debates over decisions and dissents. (Unless you’re a brawler like Brett Kavanaugh.)

Now, Garland is the Attorney General and looks besieged with the reality that all the expectations he and Biden had that the Department of Justice would be a shining City on the Hill ignores that it is one of the most contextually political executive branch departments.

AG Garland, treat the law as if it is equal to justice, and drop the appeal to protect Trump from E. Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit. Hold Trump accountable for words that have nothing remotely to do with the presidency except to shame it. Do not legitimize an ad hoc hustle of a DOJ effort to extricate Trump from a scandal of his own making. If it continues, you are codifying corrupt Trump-Barr muscled-through cons.

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