The Facts About Merrick Garland

Just the facts; free from outrage and unmotivated by profit.

The goal of this post is to put all the facts about the investigation into the top of the coup in one place so that you can make up you own mind about Attorney General Merrick Garland. These facts seem to be conspicuously missing from public discourse and the media in favor of rage baiting for clicks and eyes. As much money as I could make by joining in the Garland bashing, that’s never been my motive. I defend facts and institutions, not a bottom line. If I’ve learned anything in the past 30 years of working - the number one lesson is that in the long run, profit should never be what drives your mission or vision. Ever.

So here’s the facts:

First, the Department of Justice Inspector General began investigating Jeffrey Clark and his role in the fraudulent elector scheme in January 2021 - less than two weeks after the insurrection.

JP Cooney, who would go on to work in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office, wanted to begin investigating the ties between the White House and the Willard War Room in February, 2021, before Merrick Garland even got to the Department of Justice. He was interested in ties between the president and extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

But two trump allies at the FBI and DoJ, namely Mike Sherwin (the acting US Attorney in DC) and Steven D’antuono (second in charge of the Washington DC FBI Field Office) did not want the investigation to go forward.

Here’s some background on Mike Sherwin. At one point, Jessie Liu was the DC US Attorney, and Trump didn’t like her because she wasn’t playing ball with him to indict Andrew McCabe. Trump and Barr had to trick her out of her job - which they did by offering her a position at the Treasury, then rescinding the offer after she resigned as US Attorney. Barr then installed Tim Shea.

TIm Shea let Mike Flynn and Roger Stone off the hook, which caused a bunch of DoJ career prosecutors to resign in protest. Per the vacancy act, Tim Shea could only be in the job for 120 days. If he wanted to stay longer, he would need the DC District Court’s approval - and after what he did with the Stone and Flynn cases - there’s no way he would get that approval. So Trump and Barr circumvented career prosecutors and installed Mike Sherwin. To quote Douglas Adams - this made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

GOP appointee and president of the DC Bar said Barr's "packing" of close associates into senior positions at DoJ undermined the independence of the USAO DC. Gerson, a Barr aide and GOP appointee said the move amounted to a "political coup". Sherwin Backed Barr in his bid to dismiss Flynn's guilty plea. Assistant US Attorneys complained they lost credibility and could't secure plea deals because trump installed this ally.

Mike Sherwin was a trump installed ally as part of a political coup. Put a pin in that.

Sherwin approved and communicated to prosecutors the decision to give Flynn’s defense internal FBI records cited in Barr's motion to dismiss Flynn's case. After 1/6, Sherwin went on TV and discussed potential charges in the OPEN and ONGOING Oath Keepers case, violating DoJ policy. He was referred to the DoJ's Office of Professional Responsibility for that major fuck up, and Judge Mehta called an emergency conference about with the attorneys for the Oath Keepers to tell them all he would not tolerate Sherwin's bullshit. I’m paraphrasing.

"I called this hearing this afternoon to make clear to everyone that this case will not be tried in the media. If there are further public comments or stories of the kind that we've seen in the last 48 hours, I will not hesitate to consider a gag order. Let me just say at the outset that I was surprised — and I'm being restrained in my terminology — surprised to say the least to see Mr. Sherwin sitting for an interview about a pending case about an ongoing investigation. Whether his interview violated Justice Department policy is really not for me to say, but it is something I hope the Justice Department is looking into."

The next day, Sherwin resigned to avoid being sanctioned for his behavior.

Let’s talk about Steven D’antuono, who worked with Sherwin to block search warrants for the Oath Keepers Stewart Rhodes and the Willard War Room, among other things. According to D’antuono’s testimony to congress, the DoJ wanted the FBI to immediately issue a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago after the National Archives formally referred the matter to the DoJ in the spring of 2022. D’antuono blocked Garland. “DOJ wants stuff. We were pushing back. That’s the beauty of our system, right. It’s like, that’s the judicial system in a sense.”

Even more interesting, D’antuono was brought in by Jim Jordan to the House Judiciary and told them that the FBI had plants at the Capitol on January 6th. Naturally, that was highly misleading because these were Confidential Human Sources at the insurrection of their own volition. Remember, CHSs are not always the best people, but that didn’t stop Jim Jordan from running with his “FBI was in on it” narrative - bolstered by his friend D’antuono’s testimony.

Jim Jordan is also using D’antuono testimony to make the allegation that the FBI doesn’t think Mar-a-Lago should have been “raided”, and Trump himself is using his testimony in his motions to dismiss the documents case against him. So that’s D’antuono.

Sherwin and D’antuono worked together to stop JP Cooney from pitching his trump coup investigation ideas to Merrick Garland, and actively blocked him from a high level meeting during Garland’s first week. We’ve known that for a while - since Carol Loennig reported it in the Washington Post last year. But we recently learned from sources familiar, that Garland had another high level meeting, likely without the trump allies there, and ordered the investigation into ties between trump and the Willard War Room go forward. He said that he was aware this could lead to Trump, and he was fine with that. He gave the green light to a small handful of people to prevent the existence of the Trump investigation from becoming public. That was March, 2021. The week Garland arrived at DoJ.

Two months later, June 2021, Garland was growing frustrated with the slow pace of the investigation. The FBI trump allies were refusing to execute search warrants, so Merrick garland called a meeting and set up a task force to investigate Trump called the “investigations unit”. But they didn’t yet have Biden’s DC US Attorney to assist and provide resources. The agency was still filled with Trump holdovers and Jim Jordan allies, so the amount of people investigating was relegated to a small group of people Garland could trust. What was taking the Senate so long to confirm the new DC US Attorney?

Keep in mind we had a 50/50 senate, and Mitch McConnell was slow-walking the power sharing agreement. Additionally, Senators Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Tommy Tuberville, Rick Scott, and Mike Lee sent a letter to Merrick Garland informing him that they would be blocking Biden’s DC USAO nominee unless and until Garland started treating the Black Lives Matter protestors the same way he was treating the insurrectionists.

Can you think of any reason why Lee, Cruz, Johnson, Scott, and Tuberville would want to delay the full investigation of the attack on the Capitol?

So that all happened in June 2021. Garland stood up the “investigations” unit in June, and traitorous senators that participated in January 6th were blocking the new DC US Attorney’s confirmation.

November, the US Attorney for DC was finally confirmed, and Windom - who also works now with Cooney in the Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office. But D’antuno was still blocking search warrants and subpoenas. He refused to subpoena the Willard. So Windom went to the Inspector General and even the postal cops to get his search warrents executed. Meanwhile, Garland was trying to figure out a way to get around these trump allied roadblocks, and eventually was able to install a friendly Chief of Staff to Christopher Wray (since he really can’t fire the head of the FBI - the guy who refused to investigate 1400 sexual assault tips on Kavanaugh and somehow didn’t see January 6th coming.)

That’s when the floodgates opened, and here’s a non-exhaustive list of what Merrick Garland was able to get done once the trump allies were neutralized.

Seized John Eastman's phone

Seized Jeffrey Clark's phone

Seized Scott Perry's emails

Seized Eastman's emails

Seized Epshteyn's phone

Seized Mike Lindell's phone

Seized Mike Roman's phone

Seized Scott Perry's phone

Got Kash Patel's testimony

Appointed Windom

Appointed Cooney

Subpoenaed the fraudulent electors

Subpoenaed 7 state's election officials

Subpoenaed Sidney's PAC

Subpoenaed Rudy

Opened IG probe into Clark

Opened IG probe into DoJ response to 1/6

Negotiated subpoena for Meadows

Battled the 11th circuit for classified docs

Subpoenaed trump for classified docs

Subpoenaed trump for surveillance video

Executed a search warrant on trump

Convicted Bannon of contempt

Indicted Navarro for contempt

Subpoenaed the speakers from 1/6

Subpoenaed the organizers of 1/6

Secured seditious conspiracy convictions

Subpoenaed records for any member of congress involved in 1/6

Subpoenaed info on Jenna Ellis

Secured testimony from Mark Short

Secured testimony from Jacob Engel

Secured testimony from Philbin

Secured testimony from Cippollone

Subpoenaed info on trump's PACs

Won privilege battles for Short, Engel, and the Pats

Negotiated for Pence's subpoena

Seized the phone records of Meadows

Secured the 1/6 committee transcripts

Subpoenaed 7 secretaries of state

D’antuono would not resign until December, 2022 - almost a year after the new Wray Chief of Staff was installed to overcome obstacles at the FBI.

Now, are there things Merrick Garland has done that I disagree with? Absolutely. But this post is about the coup investigation and the obstacles he had to overcome. I disagree with his appointment of Robert Hur, and Andy McCabe and I discussed that on the Jack podcast the week he was appointed. I disagreed with Merrick Garland carrying the Barr arguments for DoJ representing Trump in the E Jean Carroll Case. He eventually did the right thing. I disagreed with Garland fighting to keep the Barr Mueller Obstruction memo under seal. He lost that battle, but he also didn’t fight it very hard. He could have used new and better arguments, but he stuck with the weak Barr arguments.

But as far as the coup investigation goes, he did not wait two years, or 18 months, or even six months. He began investigating trump when he got there. It’s also untrue that he wanted a bottom up investigation. That was an incorrect assumption the media made. It’s also untrue that he didn’t do anything until Jack Smith was appointed - as evidenced by my non-exhaustive list above. That list was off the top of my head so I’m certain there’s more. It’s also incorrect that the January 6th committee “shamed” Garland into investigating - as evidenced by the timeline of events. In fact, the committee delayed the DoJ investigation by refusing to hand over their materials in a timely manner.

If knowing these facts, you still think Merrick Garland is an ineffective Attorney General, that’s totally fair. But I thought you should know the facts.

PS: Sally Yates would have likely recused from an investigation into Trump if she were named the Attorney General