'Overly cautious' Garland made investigators wait 'months' to issue subpoenas in Trump probes

A new book by MSNBC investigative correspondent Carol Leonnig and Washington Post reporter Aaron C. Davis reveals Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department did indeed slow-walk investigations into President Donald Trump’s theft of classified documents and his role in the January 2020 attempt to overthrow a U.S. election.

“FBI and Justice Department officials chose to move cautiously and slowly over concerns about the implications of investigating a former and possibly future president, taking pains to insulate the probes from even the appearance of politics,” reports MSNBC, which got an early release of the book, “Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department.”

The book depicts one example after another of Garland’s department slow-walking the cases, according to MSNBC.

“For instance, it took more than a year after Trump was defeated for the Justice Department to convene a grand jury to hear evidence in the alleged criminal scheme by Trump to use fake electors to overturn the results of the 2020 election,” said MSNBC. “And even after that grand jury was launched in January 2022, the FBI debated another 10 weeks before approving a memo formally opening that investigation, further delaying the gathering of evidence. After much ‘hand wringing’ by FBI Director Chris Wray’s leadership team, the memo named the Trump campaign, but not Trump, as a subject of the investigation, the book says.”

And then, in 2022, just ahead of the midterm elections, Garland opted to freeze both the classified documents and election investigations because of what some officials believed was his “overly cautious reading of a DOJ policy not to take any public action close to an election.”

Trump was not even on the ballot and had not yet declared his presidential candidacy for 2024, but Garland nonetheless imposed the freeze, authors report.

“For months, investigators would have to wait to issue subpoenas or interview witnesses to gather new information,” the authors wrote, adding that Garland “had chosen to impose a very conservative interpretation of what DOJ officials called the 60-day rule,” urging prosecutors to avoid taking public investigative steps within two months of Election Day that involve candidates in that election.

Additionally, special counsel Jack Smith underestimated Florida federal District Judge Aileen Cannon’s loyalty to Trump over the law and made the blunder of moving the classified documents case to her Florida turf.

Leonnig and Davis write that Smith chose to bring the classified documents case to Florida in part because he believed more of the alleged criminal conduct happened in Florida. Smith did not envision Cannon, a Trump appointee, grinding the law to protect Trump — despite Cannon issuing a series of unusual rulings favorable to Trump in connection with the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, authors wrote.

Even after learning the odds of Cannon drawing the case were slim, Smith and his team stuck with their decision to indict Trump in Florida.

“Cannon eventually got the case, setting in motion a chain of events that led her to later dismiss it on what many legal experts say were highly questionable grounds,” MSNBC reports.