Ironically, some of us would have empathized with Biden if we'd been allowed to hear this at the time.

It's the coverup that really hurts.

The scandal is MUCH worse than the Biden WH not releasing the tape. The so-called “independent” Merrick Garland crooked Justice Dept was SUBPOENAED by Congress to release it, he defied that subpoena after jailing Steve Bannon for defying one, then DOJ refused to jail Garland. https://t.co/TLzzdrosZf

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) May 16, 2025

"I think it's very simple. Look, if you protested peacefully on January 6th, and you've had Merrick Garland's Department of Justice treat you like a gang member..."

"... you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously, you shouldn't be pardoned. And there's a little bit of a gray area there. We're very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law, and there are a lot of people, we think, in the wake of January 6th, who were prosecuted unfairly. We need to rectify that."

Said JD Vance.

On X, there are quite a few people objecting to this line-drawing and saying that every January 6th protester should be pardoned. 

Live argument in the TikTok case is about to begin.

You can stream it here.

LII has a good, easy-to-read summary of the arguments here. 

ADDED: The NYT live blogged it, here, wherethe headline is now: "Supreme Court Seems Poised to Uphold Law That Could Shut Down TikTok" (free access link). From the conclusion:

Even as several justices expressed concerns that the law was in tension with the First Amendment, a majority appeared satisfied that it was aimed at TikTok’s ownership rather than its speech.

The government offered two rationales for the law: combating covert disinformation from China and barring it from harvesting private information from Americans. The court was divided over whether the first justification was sufficient to justify it. But several justices seemed troubled by the possibility that China could use data culled from the app for espionage or blackmail....

Arguing on behalf of the government: Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the solicitor general, countered that the act does not violate the First Amendment. “All of the same speech that’s happening on TikTok could happen post-divestiture,” she said, adding, “All the act is doing is trying to surgically remove the ability of foreign adversary nation to get our data and to be able to exercise control over the platform.” ...

"In a bid to polish up Biden’s rusted image, The Washington Post on Sunday reported on the president’s private complaints that Garland should have been faster to prosecute Trump..."

"... so that he could have staged a 'politically damaging trial before the election.' Funny, as I recall Trump had a lot of trials before the election — and they all seemed to drive his approval levels up, not down. In any case, this seems like an admission, as law professor Ann Althouse observed, that 'Biden intended to use the Justice Department to destroy his political adversary!' Indeed. That now seems to have been Garland’s role throughout this administration, which — in the name of 'protecting democracy' and our institutions — has only undermined our democracy and corrupted our institutions. That’s Biden’s sorry legacy. And Merrick Garland’s, too."

Writes Glenn Reynolds, in "Merrick Garland corrupted the Justice Department with political persecutions" (NY Post).

Here's my blog post about the WaPo article.

"In private, Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as attorney general..."

"... complaining about the Justice Department’s slowness under Garland in prosecuting Trump, and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Biden’s son Hunter, according to people familiar with his comments.... Had the Justice Department moved faster to prosecute Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents, they say, the former president might have faced a politically damaging trial before the election.... Biden has often looked to Franklin D. Roosevelt as a model, while governing in an age dominated by pop culture figures like podcast host Joe Rogan, tech billionaire Elon Musk and Trump himself.... Substantively, few analysts deny Biden’s accomplishments. He mobilized the government to vaccinate Americans against covid-19, bringing the country out of a devastating pandemic. He avoided a recession that many economists had considered inevitable. He rebuilt the transatlantic alliance, rallying the world to help Ukraine battle Russia’s invasion.... But Biden’s critics fault him for failing to grasp that his record itself was not enough, that he needed to tell a story that would resonate in a tribal America...."

Writes Tyler Pager, in "Joe Biden’s lonely battle to sell his vision of American democracy/In his presidency’s final chapter, Biden has mused about whether he should have handled some decisions differently" (WaPo)(free-access link).

This feels like an effort to puff up Biden. Few analysts deny Biden’s accomplishments?! Maybe the trick is to ascribe special meaning to the word "analysts" — if you don't think this is an impressive accomplishment, you're not an analyst. Or maybe the idea is that any accomplishment is an accomplishment, so what's to deny?

But look how clearly the article states that Biden intended to use the Justice Department to destroy his political adversary!

"Currently, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are barred from using compulsory legal processes, like subpoenas and search warrants, to go after reporters’ information..."

"... including by asking third parties, like phone and email companies, to turn over their data, or to force them to testify about their sources. But that limit is in a rule issued by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. Should Mr. Trump’s attorney general rescind that regulation, the F.B.I. would be freed to go after reporters’ information. Internal guidelines also flatly ban investigating someone on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment. And there are strict limits around opening investigations into members of Congress or reporters. But an F.B.I. director, especially if there is a like-minded attorney general, could interpret those limits so narrowly as to make them meaningless, or even throw them out. Mr. Patel has also called for using the Justice Department more aggressively to uncover who in the government is providing information to news reporters, and said that leakers should be prosecuted. He wrote in his book that all federal employees should be forced to submit to monthly scans of their devices 'to determine who has improperly transferred classified information, including to the press.'..."

From "Kash Patel Has Plan to Remake the F.B.I. Into a Tool of Trump/President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I. has called for firing the agency’s top officials, shutting down its Washington headquarters and prosecuting journalists" (NYT).

"The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case grilled special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors Friday on how closely Attorney General Merrick Garland oversees their work."

"Under persistent questioning from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the prosecutors declined to divulge details and seemed caught off-guard by the inquiries. At one point, Smith deputy James Pearce said he was 'not authorized' to discuss the level of communication that occurred between the attorney general and the special counsel. 'I don’t want to make it seem like I’m hiding something,' Pearce then said."

Politico reports.

The degree of Smith's independence is crucially at issue. If he's too independent — that is, if he's not an "inferior" officer within the meaning of the Constitution — he needs to have been appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. He was not.

The judge’s intense dive into an issue that has been brushed aside by most other courts has caused head-scratching in the legal community and drawn renewed criticism of her handling of the sensitive case.

Head-scratching, eh? It's a perfectly comprehensible issue to anyone who's been through the first semester of Constitutional Law in law school. If anyone in that category is looking puzzled, I think they're engaging in mime. Don't be conned.

And Pearce does look like he's hiding something. And that's not a mimed argument. That's a slip that he feels bad about. How cornered was he to have blurted out "I don’t want to make it seem like I’m hiding something"?

"The theory largely rests on the fact that former top Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo joined the investigation in 2022."

"But Colangelo had previously worked alongside Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg(D) in the New York attorney general’s office, where he had worked on Trump-related investigations before. It’s about as circumstantial and speculative as you can get. Attorney General Merrick Garland last week firmly denied, under oath, that he had sent Colangelo to Manhattan. He denied any contact with Colangelo since he joined the D.A’s office.... [F]ormer Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina, who worked on Trump’s defense early in the Manhattan prosecution [said]... 'Joe Biden or anyone from his Justice Department has absolutely zero to do with the Manhattan district attorney’s office... People who say that... it’s scary that they really don’t know the law or what they’re talking about.'"

Writes Aaron Blake, in "GOP overwhelmingly supports a Trump conspiracy theory, yet again/There remains no evidence that Biden was behind the Manhattan prosecution of the former president, but 80 percent of Republicans say otherwise" (WaPo).

"Time will tell whether Mr. Garland and Ms. Monaco made the right calls in the period before they turned the investigation over to Mr. Smith..."

"... who within eight months brought not only the election-case indictment but the separate charges against Mr. Trump for mishandling classified documents. But like many before them, Mr. Garland and his team appear to have underestimated Mr. Trump’s capacity for reinvention and disruption, in this case through delay...."

I'm reading this long NYT article by Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman, "Inside Garland’s Effort to Prosecute Trump/In trying to avoid even the smallest mistakes, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland might have made one big one: ending up in a race against the clock."

That's a free-access link. I only get 10 of them a month, and I'm selecting this one so you can do your own reading and help me answer the questions I had when I saw this as the top news article on the front page of the Times today. What are they trying to do with this article and why now? It feels like a pre-post-mortem to me.

"Being evangelical once suggested regular church attendance, a focus on salvation and conversion and strongly held views on specific issues such as abortion."

"Today, it is as often used to describe a cultural and political identity: one in which Christians are considered a persecuted minority, traditional institutions are viewed skeptically and Mr. Trump looms large.... At a recent rally in Waterloo, Iowa, Mr. Trump cast Christians as a broadly persecuted group facing down a government weaponized against them. Catholics are the current target of 'the communists, Marxists and fascists,' he said, citing a recent controversy about a retracted F.B.I. memo, and adding that 'evangelicals will not be far behind.'... As ties to church communities have weakened, the church leaders who once rallied the faithful behind causes and candidates have lost influence. A new class of thought leaders has filled the gap: social media personalities and podcasters, once-fringe prophetic preachers and politicians...."

From "Trump Is Connecting With a Different Type of Evangelical Voter/They are not just the churchgoing, conservative activists who once dominated the G.O.P." (NYT).

"A month ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center declared Moms for Liberty an 'extremist group' devoted to spreading “messages of anti-inclusion and hate...."

"The 'extremist' label is justified, said Esther Prins, a professor at Penn State University who has studied the intersection of education advocacy and Christian nationalism in America. Prins said the activities of Moms for Liberty chapters — especially efforts to remove books nationwide, many of which are led by group members and which overwhelmingly target people of color and LGBTQ+ authors, a Post analysis found — are consistent with groups that promote a hierarchical social order in which 'men are over women, straight people over LGBTQ people.' Prins said, 'That’s why they don’t want children learning about racism or about the existence of people who are not straight or the existence of families that aren’t the heterosexual nuclear family.'..."

I'm reading "Moms for Liberty didn’t exist 3 years ago. Now it’s a GOP kingmaker. Five GOP presidential candidates attended the group’s Philadelphia convention this weekend" (WaPo).

The post title is the first sentence of the article, and the next part I quoted is very far down in the article. The SPLC's designation takes prominence over any explanation of what this group is and why it deserves denouncement, and the explanation isn't convincing at all. These are the parents who object to sex-and-gender-themed books in schools? The article says "efforts to remove books nationwide"... remove books from where? Schools? Or more? 

"Ultimately, Hunter Biden will himself be called to testify before the House. Maybe he'll refuse to say anything."

"That may be best for him. But for his president father, running for re-election, having his son come across like Vito Genovese taking the Fifth dozens of times before questions about shell companies and payments to himself and his dad isn't a great look. When Hunter Biden agreed to his plea deal last week, his lawyer said he did so with the understanding the investigation was resolved. Perhaps that part is. But for Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, it's only just begun."

Writes William McGurn in "Joe Biden's 'Malarkey' Defense" (Wall Street Journal).

"Trump is said to have told some allies that the idea of a special counsel infuriated him, given his experience with the length of the Mueller investigation."

"He believes it could hang over him for months. Nonetheless, it might make a prosecution more distant."

Writes Maggie Haberman, in "Live Updates: Garland Names Special Counsel for Trump Inquiries/The attorney general announced his decision to name Jack Smith, the former head of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, to to job just days after former President Donald J. Trump announced that he would seek the White House again in 2024" (NYT).

ADDED: Let me connect that with this WaPo piece from 4 days ago: 

""[I]n whipping up his supporters, moving closer to QAnon, and claiming that the American people wouldn’t stand for an indictment, Trump is..."

"... reminding Attorney General Merrick Garland and his colleagues that the stakes are very high. And that, even if some of the candidates he has endorsed in the midterms are lagging in the polls, and even though there reportedly were many empty seats at his Youngstown rally, he still has a mass movement that is fanatically loyal to him, and which has already demonstrated, on January 6, 2021, that it contains elements willing to resort to violence on his behalf. He doesn’t have to say all this out loud. It is self-evident. Garland has repeatedly stated that no one is above the law.... In the coming months, Trump, his desperation growing, will likely seek to test the system to the point of breakage, just as he did after November, 2020. Defenders of democracy and the rule of law, regardless of their political affiliation, had better be prepared."

Writes John Cassidy, in "Why Is Trump Openly Embracing QAnon Now? The former President is likely signalling to prosecutors that he won’t go quietly, so they had better beware" (The New Yorker).

Cassidy is responding to a recent statement by Trump about what would happen if he were indicted: "I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.... I think they’d have big problems, big problems. I just don’t think they’d stand for it. They will not, they will not sit still and stand for this ultimate of hoaxes."

"Most judges would be a tad annoyed by the contradiction as the government continues to frame the public debate with its own selective leaks while using secrecy to bar other disclosures."

"That includes sections of the affidavit that detail the communications with the Trump team, information that is already known to the target. Someone is clearly lying. The Trump Team said that it was cooperating and would have given access to the government if it raised further objections. The Justice Department has clearly indicated that time was of the essence to justify this unprecedented raid on the home of a former president. Yet, Attorney General Merrick Garland reportedly waited for weeks to sign off on the application for a warrant and the FBI then waited a weekend to execute that warrant. It is difficult to understand why such communications could not be released in a redacted affidavit while protecting more sensitive sections. The latest leak to to the New York Times offers details on what was gathered from Mar-a-Lago...."

Writes Jonathan Turley.

Here's the NYT article he's talking about: "Trump Had More Than 300 Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago/The National Archives found more than 150 sensitive documents when it got a first batch of material from the former president in January, helping to explain the Justice Department’s urgent response."

Turley: "It is litigation by leak where the government prevents others (including the target) from seeing key representations made to the court while releasing selective facts to its own advantage. It shows utter contempt for the court and the public."

"There can't be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans. So the question 'What about her emails?' is an appropriate one."

"Mocking it is no answer. Neither is the cliche 'two wrongs do not make a right.' A second wrong doesn't justify or excuse the first, but unequal treatment of two comparable wrongs should raise concerns about fairness and equality. Unequal treatment of two equal wrongs is a third wrong. The 'whataboutism' argument applies as well to the manner in which Trump loyalists such as Peter Navarro, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort were arrested. In comparable cases involving similar charges, the defendants weren't handcuffed, shackled or subjected to restraints generally reserved for those who pose a risk of violence or flight.... It is often argued that presidents aren't above the law, but neither are they beneath deserving fair treatment, as Bill Clinton can attest.... Just as [Hillary's] actions don't excuse Mr. Trump's, his don't excuse hers.... [U]ntil Mr. Garland fully and specifically answers the hard questions about what appears to be unequal application of rules and practices, 'what about her emails?' will be a pertinent question."

 Writes Alan Dershowitz, in "'But Her Emails'? A Defense of 'Whataboutism'"/Mrs. Clinton should take her hat off. Treating like cases alike is crucial to the equal protection of the law" (Wall Street Journal).

"Attorney General Merrick Garland deliberated for weeks over whether to approve the application for a warrant to search former President Donald Trump’s Florida home..."

"... people familiar with the matter said....  The decision had been the subject of weeks of meetings between senior Justice Department and FBI officials, the people said.... The decision whether to pursue criminal charges promises to be a defining one for Mr. Garland, a former federal judge who, as a Justice Department staffer in the late 1970s, helped codify changes intended to restore trust in the institution and address presidential abuses of power. 'He’s both extremely careful and he understands the critical role of an attorney general in these circumstances,' said former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, who was Mr. Garland’s boss when they served under President Bill Clinton. 'He appreciates the context in which this is occurring. I don’t think he considers politics at all, but I do think he recognizes the seriousness of actions against a former president.'... 'The only pressure I feel, and the only pressure that our line prosecutors feel, is to do the right thing,' Mr. Garland said earlier this year. ...  Inside the Justice Department, Mr. Garland is known by colleagues as a contemplative, by-the-book leader who, after roughly a year-and-a-half at the helm of the agency, has slowly begun to shed the cautious and consensus-based approach he followed as a federal judge for the more decisive posture expected of a law-enforcement officer...."

 
From "Merrick Garland Weighed Search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago for Weeks/Attorney general took his signature deliberative approach to the move; Justice Department asks judge not to unseal affidavit that provided basis for search" (Wall Street Journal).

"The country is on fire. What can I do to reduce the heat?"

That was the message Trump conveyed to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, just before Garland made his public statement that he personally authorized the Mar-a-Lago raid and characterized it as a last resort.

Reported in "Trump Lawyer Told Justice Dept. That Classified Material Had Been Returned/The lawyer signed a statement in June that all documents marked as classified and held in boxes in storage at Mar-a-Lago had been given back. The search at the former president’s home on Monday turned up more" (NYT).

"Mr. Garland’s decision to make a public appearance came at an extraordinary moment in the [Justice] department’s 152-year history..."

"... as the sprawling investigation of a former president who remains a powerful political force gains momentum, with prosecutors from an array of the department’s divisions and regional offices taking new actions, seemingly every day. Mr. Garland, a laconic former judge, had come under increasing pressure this week to provide more public information about why the Justice Department decided that a search was necessary and who approved it — or at least to offer an explanation of the legal processes undertaken by his subordinates. But he seemed, even on Thursday, to do so with considerable reluctance, and reiterated his often-stated commitment to conducting the inquiry within the confines of the legal system rather than in public.... Mr. Garland did not say how, or when, it became clear to his team that the 15 boxes of material turned over by Mr. Trump earlier this year was insufficient. But he cast his decision to approve the warrant as an exigent necessity. 'The department does not take such a decision lightly,” he said. “Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.'... Mr. Garland and his inner circle are eager to avoid the approach adopted by James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, whose public statements about investigations into Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign were seen as a political and legal disaster. "

From "Garland moves to make public the warrant and supporting documents used in the search of Mar-a-Lago" (NYT).

"For all its posturing as a rule-of-law pillar, the Biden Justice Department, like the Biden administration broadly, is cowed by the Democrats’ hard-left base..."

"... the same radicals who snapped their fingers and had Attorney General Merrick Garland ordering the FBI to investigate parents who dared protest against woke-progressivism in America’s schools. The Democratic base’s most cherished desire is the prosecution of Donald Trump and those who collaborated in his quest to retain power. Most of the country isn’t watching the slick made-for-TV docudrama being presented by the Jan. 6 committee (whose 'hearings' have no cross-examination or perspectives that vary from anti-Trump obsession), but the Democratic base is watching intently.... Obviously, the riot was a disgrace. Unfortunately, it has also become DOJ’s prism for evaluating both forcible attacks and nonviolent legal brainstorming. Garland must know the two must be separated.... Garland knows that prosecuting Trump and such underlings as Eastman and Clark on flimsy grounds would rip the country apart. He’s also worried, however, that Biden’s left flank is poised for mutiny if there is no indictment."

Writes Andrew C. McCarthy in "Democrats are pressuring Merrick Garland to make an anti-Trump case he doesn’t have" (NY Post).