Merrick Garland

Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department and the FBI carried out a raid of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate this week.

Trust in federal law-enforcement is at rock-bottom for at least half the nation, for good reason. The House hearings are a national TV ad to that end. So Attorney General Merrick Garland has a clear duty to address the nation and explain Monday’s unprecedented FBI raid on a former president’s home.

Attorney General Merrick Garland's handling of Donald Trump will reflect on Biden and congressional Democrats regardless of what they have to say.

The Justice Department should apply the law to the facts and determine whether there’s enough evidence to bring a credible case. By executing the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Garland has put himself on the clock to charge Trump. If Garland is focused solely on recovering classified documents, the raid is both overkill and political malpractice. Politicization at the Department of Justice is an ongoing national blight. USA TODAY Network Tennessee Columnist Cameron Smith is a Memphis-born, Brentwood-raised recovering political attorney raising three boys in Nolensville, Tennessee, with his particularly patient wife, Justine. Direct outrage or agreement to [email protected] or @DCameronSmith on Twitter. Agree or disagree? President Joe Biden rightly vowed to address the issue. Good prosecutors take time to build their case. Democrats should be praying that Eric Trump isn’t getting the full picture. The FBI’s raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence should sound familiar. There wasn’t a raid to retrieve it. Reality is rarely as simple as knee-jerk reactions. - The Justice Department should apply the law to the facts.

A special prosecutor must be appointed immediately, or the Biden Justice Department will have squandered the trustworthiness crucial to upholding the rule ...

Legal ethics rules require every prosecutor to be a " minister of justice." But when the former president is an all-but-certain political opponent of the president, then the Attorney General must recuse himself and appoint a special prosecutor. And this happened despite the fact the search warrant affidavit had not (and still has not) been made public. In a clash of coincidence apropos to our times, it was the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Scalia's death in 2016 that Merrick Garland fancied for himself. Indeed, since nearly all federal investigations involve taking evidence before a grand jury that operates in secrecy, releasing anything from that chain is likely illegal. Let me be clear: If there is solid evidence that any former president has committed a serious crime, he must be held to account.

An early indictment may not on its own be enough to derail Trump's efforts once more to seize the helm of this great land. But it must be done.

Merrick Garland should not wait for Trump to announce another run for the White House. He should indict him as soon as possible and no later than Labor Day. Trump is expected formally to announce in September that he is once again running for the presidency. Yet it is critical that Garland accelerate his investigation and indict Trump. The former president is dropping increasingly heavy hints that he intends to run for his former office in 2024. Well before January 6, I wrote in The National Interest that Trump was the most dangerous man ever to reside in the White House. Dick Cheney, no liberal and no RINO, has gone even further. He also served as the DoD’s civilian coordinator for Afghan reconstruction from 2002–2004. He serves on the Advisory Board of The National Interest. Moreover, an early indictment would certainly embolden his Republican rivals—and there are many—to challenge him for the nomination. It was slow to arm Ukraine with HIMARS rockets and other high technology systems, with the result that Kyiv lost more territory to Russia than might otherwise have been the case. It was slow to recognize that its “Build Back Better” domestic plan had absolutely no prospect of ever getting through the Senate. The cost of the far more realistic plan that actually did pass into law involved just over 20 percent that of its original version. Garland’s exceedingly deliberate approach appears to mirror that of the administration as a whole. On any given day, those unfortunate enough to be on Trump’s mailing list might be asked to vote in polls such as “who would you have as your next president, President Trump or Joe Biden?”—the latter not being accorded the title to which he was elected. It is indeed puzzling why Garland has yet to act after nineteen months of having his Justice Department investigate what happened on that January day. Attorney General Merrick Garland has been accused of moving too slowly to indict Trump. There is considerable merit to the accusation.

Around 7 p.m. Monday night, the tweets starting flying. The FBI had “raided” Donald Trump's home in Palm Beach, Florida. Or so he said.

A rain of joy, and of memes, and of hopes. He’s not protected by the office anymore, he’s not protected by the banks anymore, he’s not protected by his father anymore” and this put him in the position to be subject to a search warrant. All of that plus the books and articles and court decisions and reports. A pressure cooker of infinite details and theories. Even my recent book on white collar crime called Big Dirty Money devotes space to his pre-election predation, concluding that had he been held accountable for his many bad deeds before he first ran for president, he would have spent time in federal prison and not the Oval Office. A mind and office shelves and drawers jam-packed with information. Bribery. Seeking help from Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election. Seeking Russia’s help to interfere in the 2016 election. And he and a judge were convinced there was probable cause of a federal crime. As Mary noted, after Monday night, we learned that the playing field is a little more level than it was before. The agents remained several hours to execute the search warrant that sought top-secret documents apparently pilfered by the former president on his way out of the White House in late January of 2021. And, trusted journalists who have access to the platforms that he still covets, said he said.

The attorney general has not commented on the search at Donald J. Trump's home in Florida, and the former president and his allies are filling the void with ...

In a statement on Monday night about the Mar-a-Lago search, Mr. Trump repurposed that line of criticism. Doing so will give you access to the work of over 1,700 journalists whose mission is to cover the world and make sure you have accurate and impartial information on the most important topics of the day. When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.” I’d like to thank you for reading The Times and encourage you to support journalism like this by becoming a subscriber. “I understand that this may not be the answer some are looking for,” he said during a speech marking the first anniversary of the Capitol attack. Mr. Garland enjoys a significant advantage over Mr. Mueller as he heads into battle. Mr. Trump’s broadsides helped define the Russia investigation as a partisan attack, despite the fact that Mr. Mueller was a Republican. But it comes with its own peril — ceding control of the public narrative to Mr. Trump and his allies, who are not constrained by law, or even fact, in fighting back. But people close to Mr. Garland say that while his team respects Mr. Mueller, they have learned from his mistakes. The Mar-a-Lago search warrant was requested by the Justice Department’s national security division, whose head, Matthew G. Olsen, served under Mr. Mueller when he was the F.B.I. director. The Justice Department would not acknowledge the execution of a search warrant at Mr. Trump’s home on Monday, nor would Mr. Garland’s aides confirm his involvement in the decision or even whether he knew about the search before it was conducted. “Under Justice Department policy, we were not allowed to take on those criticisms,” Mr. Weissmann added.