Biden's Achilles Heel

His name is Merrick Garland.

When President Biden was selecting his Cabinet, the chief candidates were former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who had stood against Trump at the beginning of his first presidential term, and Doug Jones, the half-term Alabama Democratic senator who lost his bid for a full six-year term to the insufferable Tommy Tuberville.  But Biden chose Garland in part because he had a reputation for being even-handed, fair-minded, and many other hyphenated adjectives, I'm sure, which made Garland the perfect man to restore integrity to the Justice Department.  Also, since Garland was a federal judge, making him U.S. Attorney General meant that Biden could replace him with a young woman of color on the bench.  (Garland's replacement on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Ketanji Brown Jackson, would be elevated to the Supreme Court only a year after taking Garland's place; that seat is now occupied by another woman, Taiwanese-American Judge Florence Pan.) 

But Biden chose Garland for an additional reason; President Obama had nominated Garland to a vacancy on the Supreme Court, only to see Mitch McConnell deny Garland a hearing and hold the seat open until a Republican - Trump - was elected to fill the seat.  This was Biden's way of sticking it to Senate Republicans who had denied Judge Garland a seat on the Supreme Court five years earlier.  No one - not even President Biden - could have known how badly he had misjudged his man.  Having taken office so soon after the January 6 insurrection, Attorney General Garland began investigating the foot soldiers of the insurrection - the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and other rabble-rousers on the verge of being pardoned.  Ominously absent from Garland's cross-hairs was the Chief Insurrectionist himself, Donald J. Trump. 

Garland explained his method as starting at the bottom and working his way up, but this obvious presumption of innocence toward Trump flew in the face of what Americans clearly saw and heard on their television screens on that day of congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election. Trump was clearly responsible for the insurrection, and the January 6 committee in the House clearly confirmed this in their hearings.  But because Garland didn't seek to have Trump investigated for January 6, he took his sweet time and waited until the hearings concluded.  Then all of those classified documents were found at Mar-a-Lago.  

Not until late 2022 did Garland finally move to appoint Jack Smith to investigate Trump for both the insurrection and the classified documents; by then, it was too late.  Trump and his lawyers took advantage of every opportunity, no matter how contrived, to delay the January 6 case (Judge Aileen Cannon helped delay the classified-documents case before dismissing it altogether on a technicality) to the point where it (like the classified-documents case) would never, ever go to trial.  All we get as a consolation prize is Smith's report on the insurrection case.

So Garland, by moving too slowly to prosecute Trump to avoid the appearance of being political and to restore the integrity of the Justice Department,  let politics take precedence over the rule of law and set up the Justice Department for a further erosion of integrity.  And President Biden was stuck with him.  He couldn't fire Garland because it would look . . . political. 

Especially when President Biden himself was investigated for having classified documents in his possession and when Hunter Biden was also investigated - both by Garland. 

Oh yeah, President Biden calls Garland his biggest regret.  As far as I'm concerned, he should have, if he wanted to name a black woman as his running mate, made Val Demings his vice presidential candidate and appointed Kamala Harris Attorney General.

As a result of Biden's personnel choices, Garland is going to go down in history as the worst Attorney General since John Mitchell - and Mitchell  went to prison for breaking the letter and the spirit of the law, whereas Garland ironically undistinguished himself by going by the book.  And, two black women in the Democratic Party are now hasbeens.