AG Merrick Garland To Speak On DOJ Efforts To Prosecute January 6 Insurrectionists

Attorney General Merrick Garland will give a speech Wednesday about the Justice Department’s efforts to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Attorney general Garland plans speech on Jan. 6 investigation for Wednesday:

In the address, scheduled for the day before the anniversary of the attack, Garland will not speak about specific people or charges, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the speech had not yet been officially announced.

I’m sorry, but Garland must reassure Americans that there is, in fact, an open investigation into the coup plotters, planners and financial backers for seditious conspiracy, 18 U.S. Code § 2384, and rebellion or insurrection, 18 U.S. Code § 2383, as well as corrupt obstruction of governmental proceedings, 18 U.S. Code § 1505.

The public has been left to wonder for a year now whether the DOJ is doing anything to investigate those actually responsible for the MAGA/QAnon vioent insurrection on January 6, and not just pursuing the low hanging fruit of the rubes who responded to Trump’s incitement to insurrection and violently stormed the Capitol on January 6.

Rather, Garland, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, will offer broad remarks about “the department’s solemn duty to uphold the Constitution, follow the facts and the law and pursue equal justice under law without fear or favor.”

He will stress the department’s “unwavering commitment to defend Americans and American democracy from violence and threats of violence,” a Justice Department official said.

So just speaking in broad generalities and platitudes, not really telling us anything of value. Just a pep talk for the DOJ? He had better offer us more than this.

The remarks will be directed at Justice Department employees and the public, the official said. They come as the agency has been under growing pressure — especially from the political left — to hold former president Donald Trump and others in his orbit criminally responsible for efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Federal prosecutors in D.C. announced last week that they have charged more than 725 people with crimes in connection with the events of Jan. 6, including charging 225 with assault or resisting arrest and about 640 people with entering a restricted federal building or its grounds.

These are just the rubes who are the low hanging fruit. Not those at the top who are responsible for January 6.

About 165 people have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges, the U.S. attorney’s office said. A Washington Post review of court records late last year found that the vast majority of those charged federally were not part of far-right groups or premeditated conspiracies to attack the Capitol.

The Justice Department’s investigation is running parallel to a House committee probe of the Capitol breach and efforts to nullify Joe Biden’s victory at the polls.

The House January 6 Committee is at least focused on the people at the top, the coup plotters, planners and financial backers of Trump’s failed coup d’etat, and members of Congress who were co-conspirators or aided and abetted the coup plot. There has been no public facing evidence that the DOJ is conducting a parallel investigation.

Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post expresses the public frustration, When Jan. 6 ringleaders escape consequences, our democracy pays the price:

A year later, no consequences. None. Zip. Zilch.

Exactly one year after the attempted coup on Jan. 6, the most senior people responsible have yet to be held accountable. Some of the low-level rioters have been charged and sentenced, often without much or any prison time. That’s still far more punitive than anything experienced by their political ringleaders, including former president Donald Trump, the White House aides and outside advisers who coordinated his attempt to overturn the will of the voters and the 147 GOP lawmakers who voted against certifying the election’s legitimate results.

Arguably the worst punishment any of them has faced so far has been banishment from Twitter.

Not incarceration; not removal from office; not official censure; not even a fine. Just getting booted from social media platforms.

The public image of the political party they lead [the Sedition Party] hasn’t suffered, either. Instead, “There is no lasting stain on the Republican brand” from Jan. 6, reports Morning Consult.

As of mid-December, according to a Morning Consult-Politico survey, 34 percent of voters said the Republican Party is “going in the right direction.” That’s 10 percentage points higher than the share saying this immediately after the attack last January.

While being affirmed by a third of voters may not seem like a ringing endorsement, note that this figure is exactly equal to the share of voters who say the Democratic Party is headed in the right direction.

Got that? A party that now explicitly stands for subverting democracy is as likely to be seen as being on the “right track” as a party that is (quaintly!) working to protect the franchise. Voters are somehow looking at the pro-democracy party and the anti-democracy party and concluding, “Meh, they seem about equal.”

[L]ikewise, the GOP has not been punished where it might really matter: its campaign war chest.

Immediately after the insurrection, dozens of high-profile corporations and lobbyists condemned the violence; declared their unwavering support for a peaceful transition of power; and announced that they were halting contributions to politicians who voted against election certification or were pausing political donations altogether.

But these pledges to honor their democratic values with their wallets proved short-lived. Many resumed their regular donation activity within months, including with big gifts to 2020 election objectors.

How did this happen? How did the public forget the trauma that was the attack on our sacred seat of government?

In the initial hours and days after the attempted coup, a relatively broad group of Republicans rebuked Trump for his role in spreading the “big lie,” encouraging his followers to march upon the Capitol, and then ignoring pleas to intercede as he watched the resulting violence and destruction on TV. Even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) acknowledged early on that Trump “bears responsibility” for the “attack on Congress by mob rioters,” and floated the idea of a censure resolution.

But in a sequence that will be familiar to those who remember the “Access Hollywood” tape story, Trump sloughed off the criticism. The base stood by him. And in no time, high-level Republican officials such as McCarthy decided it was politically safer to get back on side.

Trump’s allies began to argue that it was too soon to figure out who was truly accountable for the misinformation and incitement to violence, that more evidence needed to be gathered; now, a year later, after evidence has been gathered, they suggest too much time has passed to continue dwelling on these divisive events. It’s all ancient history!

The public, alas, seems to largely agree. Support for the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 has been sliding, according to Morning Consult. As my colleague Margaret Sullivan has written persuasively, many of us in the media have also struggled with how to center the story of a democracy still under siege, especially amid the other, less abstract crises befalling our nation.

Meanwhile, Republican officeholders have gotten more sophisticated about how to subvert the will of the voters.

Next time, no Viking-horned, pelted buffoons will be necessary; nor any attacks on brave Capitol Police officers; nor any crass congressional fist pumpsto the rioters; nor, possibly, any difficult votes from federal lawmakers. Thanks to a raft of anti-democratic bills moving through GOP-controlled state legislatures, the franchise can be restricted, and both local election officials and ballots tossed, long before official vote tallies make their way to Washington.

These are the consequences of imposing no consequences.

Rampell’s colleague at The Post, Eugene Robinson adds, If we are to save our democracy, there must be a reckoning for the Jan. 6 attack:

One year ago, ours was a nation on the brink. We must never forget. [Never forgive.]

The first week of 2021 brought an unprecedented rupture in the democratic process that Americans have taken for granted since the election of John Adams in 1796. A sitting president, Donald Trump, was trying desperately to remain in office despite his defeat in a free and fair election. He summoned a mob to Washington as an intimidating show of force, and that violent mob — whipped into a frenzy by Trump and his cronies — stormed the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Trump’s loss.

Much has happened since, both domestically and in foreign affairs. Now, as then, the biggest factor in most Americans’ day-to-day lives is the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic. And the leadership of the Republican Party dearly wants us to forget that the Jan. 6 insurrection ever took place.

But the nation cannot just “move on” from such an attack on our constitutional order. Not since 1814, when British soldiers marched into Washington, had the Capitol been overrun and pillaged. Not even during the Civil War was the orderly transfer of presidential power disrupted. Never had a defeated presidential candidate — much less a defeated incumbent who had sworn to defend the Constitution — refused to accept the result of an election.

We need to know everything that is knowable about these events. And those who inspired, organized and committed the insurrection need to be brought to justice.

President Biden and Vice President Harris intend to deliver remarks Thursday to mark the anniversary of the failed putsch. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has planned a series of events, beginning with prayer and a moment of silence in the House chamber, where so many of her colleagues sheltered in terror on Jan. 6 as a crush of thugs and zealots tried to smash their way inside.

And because Democrats are in charge of the White House and Congress, most Republicans will do their best to pretend that the commemoration is more about politics than nationhood. Trump is also expected to speak Thursday, and he will surely repeat his lies and gibberish about the election somehow being “stolen” from him and his supporters. He and the GOP — his GOP, make no mistake — have been trying to make the insurrection into a partisan issue. Don’t let them.

The mob threatened to “hang” Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, after Pence announced that he would do his constitutional duty and certify Biden’s electoral victory. The senators, House members, staff aides and other Capitol workers forced to flee for their lives or shelter in terror belonged to both parties. And if you surveyed the political beliefs of the scores of police officers who were clubbed, beaten, doused with bear spray and abused with racist slurs by the mob, I wager you’d find as many conservatives as progressives.

What happened last Jan. 6 was much bigger and more important than politics. And holding accountable the perpetrators of this attack on our democracy must take precedence over any political concerns. This is bigger than who wins the midterm elections or who runs for president in 2024. This project of reckoning is about the continuation of the American experiment.

Actually, there are three simultaneous accountability projects whose success the American people must demand.

The House select committee investigating the attack (appointed by Pelosi only after Republicans refused to form a proper blue-ribbon commission) appears to be doing an admirable job of collecting new information, including about Trump’s actions that day. The committee must not let stonewalling by Trump and his inner circle cause delay — a full year has already passed. It is good that the committee plans to issue an interim report this summer but, in the meantime, it should hold public hearings and release as much information as possible. Their work is not just important but also urgent.

Simultaneously, Congress as a whole must shore up the weaknesses in our transfer-of-power process exposed by the insurrection. The mob’s aim was to halt the official counting of electoral votes — and the mob succeeded, at least for several hours. Even the libertarian Cato Institute agrees that the 1876 Electoral Count Act is “a mess of ambiguities and contradictions” and needs to be reformed. Legislation to do so should begin making its way toward Biden’s desk.

But see, Politico: Efforts to Trump-proof presidential certification crash into congressional realities: “Despite scholars’ entreaties that Congress try for an Electoral Count Act overhaul regardless of political constraints, it’s far from clear that anything could pass Congress before the 2024 election.”

Meanwhile, the Justice Department must continue to press criminal charges against the insurrectionists. It is not enough to prosecute and sentence those who participated bodily in the assault. The puppet masters who assembled the crowd and sent it off to sack the Capitol must be held to account as well.

And no one, including Trump, can be considered above the law.