Garland Won’t Prosecute Himself for Exact Crime That Sent Navarro, Bannon to Jail

 In a surprise departure from his normal insistence that the Justice Department applies the law equally, without fear or favor and regardless of politics, Attorney General Merrick Garland has let himself off the hook for the very crime against which he previously prosecuted two top advisers to former President Donald Trump.

Garland was cited for contempt of Congress in a 216-207 party-line vote by the House on Wednesday because his refusal to turn over audio of President Joe Biden's interview in his classified documents case as part of the ongoing House impeachment investigation.

The attorney general's surrogates at the Justice Department, under his direct supervision, claim that the refusal to comply with the congressional subpoena "Did not constitute a crime." In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Justice Department official brazenly cited the department's longstanding policy not to prosecute for contempt of Congress officials who don't comply with subpoenas because of a president's claim of executive privilege.

On the last day to comply with the Republicans' subpoena for the audio, the White House blocked the release by invoking executive privilege based on the moonshot legal theory that the audio might be manipulated using artificial intelligence.

A coalition of media outlets has also sued to obtain the audio recordings under the Freedom of Information Act, further undermining the spurious basis for the White House claim that its lack of transparency served anything but its own political imperative.

Garland has vocally complained about the oversight efforts claiming he is the victim of persecution, despite ample evidence that he himself has weaponized the Justice Department against his political adversaries at every level-even going so far as to designate Trump supporters as their own special terrorist group at the FBI. Bannon is expected to report to jail at the end of the month, while Navarro began serving a four-month sentence in March.

Asked recently about the distinction between the contempt charge for Garland and those that Democrats waged against their political adversaries, Johnson highlighted several key points of distinction, including the fact that the Jan. 6 committee has been exposed for efforts to cherry-pick information in order to reach partisan conclusions while concealing the actual truth from the public. 

https://headlineusa.com/garland-wont-prosecute-himself/?utm_source=HUSA_EMAIL_NSP1700&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HUSAemail