“Those norms require that like cases be treated alike—that there not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, or different rules depending upon one’s race or ethnicity,” he continued.
Garland’s aim of depoliticizing the Justice Department is a laudable one. Garland had little choice but to try to rebuild trust and an air of nonpartisanship. But during his tenure, Garland’s noble goals have, again and again, rendered him overly passive to the threat posed by the right. Perhaps fearing backlash, the attorney general slow-walked the investigation into Donald Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection, only appointing Jack Smith as special counsel in late-November of 2022, after Trump formally declared his bid for the presidency. With Hur, Garland appears to be back-footed about the threat posed by a Republican-aligned special counsel. And when Hur presented his lengthy report, which was full of irrelevant information about Biden’s cognitive faculties, he did nothing—again, perhaps because he feared that stepping in would make him seem political.
But stepping is exactly what Garland should have done. Hur’s report deviated from Justice Department norms in many key ways. It is not standard for lengthy reports to be written in cases where criminal charges aren’t being sought. Hur’s report goes to great lengths, however, to weaponized one five-hour interview, taking several drive-by attacks on Biden’s mental state, calling him “an elderly man with a poor memory,” among other things. The report may have ended one Republican attack, but it provided ammunition for another even more potent one.
