Garland, Biden, Harris, and Trump

Should Merrick Garland have jailed Trump before the election? Could he? The legal experts say no, not without breaking the law. The Roberts Court, aka Taney Court II, put up a roadblock. Marcy Wheeler:

You can spend the next few weeks laying the groundwork for making a big stink about the fact that the aspiring FBI Director tried to help Trump steal classified documents. Or you can spend it clinging to false claims about Merrick Garland so you can blame him for the fact that Trump won reelection rather than blaming the guy directly responsible for preventing a trial (and the guy who’ll remain responsible for Trump’s license going forward), John Roberts, to say nothing of the failed Democratic consultants and voters themselves.

Which leads to the question. Should he have broken the law? I say, not without support from the rest of the Biden administration. Without that, Garland and Smith breaking the law would tear the Justice Department apart internally, as the appointment of the corrupt Pamela Jo Bondi is likely to do.

What could Biden have done, to go against the Supreme Court? Lincoln did, during the Civil War. He went against the original Taney Court, suspending habeas corpus and arresting Maryland state legislators who supported the Confederacy. He had to; if Maryland supported the Confederacy, the District of Columbia would have been surrounded. “The Constitution,” goes the saying, “is not a suicide pact.” But that was after the secession, with the War of the Rebellion on-going. Biden, if he acted, would have done so after an insurrection which had been put down. Ought he have done so? Perhaps, perhaps. Historians will be debating that question for centuries to come. Biden’s entire career has been based on consensus building and he is an old man; he did not choose to escalate the conflict.

What might Biden have done, had he decided to act? Perhaps resign in favor of Kamala Harris, who has been a prosecutor and would be capable of pursing Trump. It would have been an escalation, and who knows how the conflict would have ended.

The conflict escalates tomorrow at noon. May the United States do better than in the last Gilded Age.