The Politics of the Apolitical
General Garland thinks he can depoliticize the multiple criminal investigations into 45’s administration.
He may be wrong.
And that ain’t right.
Perhaps the single ‘most political act’ an appointed law enforcement lawyer can do is to appoint another to bring criminal charges against a political opponent.
In this case, consider Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Jack Smith (1) as independent Special Counsel for two Trump criminal inquiries — Trump’s retention at Mar-a-Lago of classified documents and Trump’s efforts to incite an insurrection on January 6.
The legal pas de deux appears to be apolitical, eschewing any probability of influence in determining and assembling evidence of criminality. And yet in presupposing absence of influence, consider the outcome — freed of ‘influence,’ the Special Counsel can proceed to dictate process and presentation of applying the law. As Horace Greeley one wrote about the “political” Supreme Court, who’s kidding whom: appointing another to perform prescribed public tasks is about as ‘political’ as one can imagine. (2)
Former President Trump writes to his fan club recently (3) to exactly this point: when ‘all is said and done,’ the issue is not influence but presence. Because his name presumably was not mentioned in the Fulton County Grand Jury Report Trump claims he is thereby exonerated of all criminal charges. That his followers conformed to an agenda of echoing his delegitimizing an election outcome somehow removes his potential criminal liability.
His claiming the election ‘fraudulent’ removes him from intended disruption of a mandated voting procedure. What’s said in the public sphere is — accurate or not — protected by the First Amendment.
And exploring the limits of this argument is, to boil it all down, “the American Way.”
Or so some would propose. (4)
What’s galling and potentially destructive to upholding the law is to presuppose otherwise, and here is where Attorney General Merrick Garland is portrayed as “wrong.”
And that ain’t right.
Few modern societies operate as constitutional democracies. And to ‘democratically’ mandate so is particularly challenging: witness Chile. (5). In America, as its President likes to observe , “democracy hangs by a thread.” Add to this observation the challenge of not suborning the Constitution and one appreciates the Garland “dilemma:” how to bring accountability for violations of the Constitution when the alleged perpetrators demand protection by the Constitution?
Even the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution did not wipe away the illegality of maintaining a social system where some human beings are chattel.
And America is pretending to abide the Constitution?
The appearance of trying to navigate a political and public narrative — what the purported mission of a Special Counsel is — was recently exposed by a jury forewoman in Fulton County, Georgia.
During an interview by MSNBC correspondent Blaine Alexander with the forewoman of a Grand Jury inquiry into alleged conspiracy to upturn the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election in Georgia, Alexander’s interviewee revealed that she didn’t vote in any past Georgia elections.
Now was her attempt at public approbation. She, of little public stature — the term she shared was ‘little people,’ — was proud to do ‘her part to uphold democracy… and that’s cool.’
She was voted in unanimously as forewoman by her peers.
February 23
Notes
1-Wiki profile
2-DeMott quote
3-Truth Social tweet, February 21
4-book on First Amendment
5-NYTimes, cite
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