Skip to main content

The Loud Silence of Garland’s DOJ

Given the recent fire hose of news, I’ve decided to be a little more short-winded this week, weighing in briefly on not one, but three subjects, none of which is Ukraine. Yes, I still believe Putin is enjoying an elaborate bluff, but I’m resisting the urge to write anything today that might make me look silly tomorrow. So let’s instead start with the rumblings of impatience about Merrick Garland’s DOJ, which are as persistent as they are misguided.

 

Patience Isn’t My Thing, Either

I get it. We’d all love to have seen our favorite villains in prison by now. And who can blame us for assuming no news is bad news?

But when it comes to the Department of Justice, we should never mistake silence for inaction. And I think we might just be missing what this silence is telling us.

Consider that there hasn’t been a single significant leak from Garland’s department. Not one. All those prosecutors, all those investigators, all those people in the field — and no leaks. The same department under Bill Barr was, by comparison, a water main break.

Remember, DOJ is still a traumatized agency. It’s still in recovery from the abuses of Barr and the mob lawyers he brought in to ride herd over the career attorneys. Many, if not most, of those attorneys were appalled at the things they saw, the things they were asked to do, and the things they were forced in good conscience to refuse to do. For four years, their professionalism was at odds with their ethics. There can be no doubt that many of them are still fuming.

If any of these people were truly upset with the path their department is taking under Garland, do you really think they’d be so quiet? If any of them were currently disgruntled — with how fast things are moving, with which cases are getting priority, with who is or isn’t being targeted — don’t you think at least one would reach out to a reporter?

There are excellent reasons for DOJ’s silence. There are hundreds of targets — actual or potential — either in their pipeline or on their radar. From the dimmest Oath Keepers, to the Roger Stones and Rudy Giulianis, to the entire Trump family and beyond, this could be the biggest caseload in history. Many of these targets will have high-priced white-collar attorneys representing them.

With that in mind, do we really want them comparing notes on their cases? Trading defense strategies? Getting their stories straight? 

Do we want them knowing who said what about whom? Who flipped on whom? Who might flip with the right incentive? There will doubtless be get-out-of-jail cards on the table for those who flip early. Do we really want DOJ tipping its hand? 

We need these cases to be as airtight as a prosecutor can make them. Which means, as much as I hate it, staying patient.

DOJ speaks exclusively through its court filings — through hearings, indictments, motions, pleadings — and every filing will tell us exactly what we’re meant to know. We’ll hear about them exactly when the defendants do, and not before.

Maybe we can’t see the progress. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

 

Sandy Hook and the Win-Win-Win-Win

There’s a lot to be excited about in the Sandy Hook settlement. If it didn’t come in the context of heinously murdered school children, we might even be tempted to celebrate. But it did, so we won’t.

But this settlement against what’s left of Remington is truly a win-win-win-win — four wins for anyone who wants to see the gun industry answer for at least some of the carnage it so wantonly promotes.

The first win, and the biggest, is the brilliant new legal strategy that goes after the company’s marketing practices. Some really clever lawyers tapped the rich, century-old vein of false advertising law, and used it to draw blood. They built a killer civil case, one that sets a big juicy precedent for what will hopefully be a flood of copycat lawsuits to come.

(The settlement doesn’t even scratch the surface of the gun industry’s most atrocious marketing practices. Please take thirty seconds to watch this commercial, which is only tangentially related, but eloquently makes its point. It’s called “My First Rifle” and it’s not a parody. The Crickett rifle has long been marketed to pre-teen kids, and still is.)

The second big win is the capture of internal Remington documents, which will no doubt send shivers down the spines of other gun manufacturers. Some of the industry’s dirtiest laundry will be hung out there for all to see — and smell. For a generation of young investigative reporters and plaintiffs’ lawyers, this will be the promised land, something to build a career on. It’s a story that will only get deeper, more sordid, and more newsworthy over time.

The third win is the $73 million cash settlement. This was never the goal of the families who brought the lawsuit, but the financial pain inflicted on their adversaries is satisfying to us, if not them. Some of that award money will no doubt be invested in further suits against the industry. More power to them.

The fourth win has been somewhat under the radar. We’re not seeing much about the four insurance companies that were left holding the bag in this lawsuit, but it’s significant. Remington had long since gone bankrupt, so the cash award is on the insurers to pay out. 

This is sure to ripple through the insurance industry. Yes, they’ll continue to underwrite gun companies, but this will force them to deal with new liability risks. Any new policies they write will come with sharply higher premiums, and with a litany of onerous terms and conditions. The price of guns will almost certainly go up, as will the price of marketing missteps.

But let’s not get carried away. There will never be meaningful gun legislation as long as Republican obstruction dominates the political landscape. But using civil law to put gun companies on the hook for billions has got to be the next best thing.

 

Four Flags and a Michigan Suburb

One of my regular routes around my Detroit suburb takes me past one particular house that has a flagpole on its lawn, and a history of Trumpishness that has long been on ostentatious display.

In the past, this house has flown two flags on that pole: “Old Glory” above, “Trump/MAGA” below.

In recent months, the old Trump/MAGA flag has been replaced with a new “Let’s Go Brandon” flag. (For those who don’t know, “Let’s Go Brandon” is wingnut code for “Fuck You Biden”). This Brandon flag looks exactly like the “classic” blue Trump/MAGA flag, but drops the word “Trump.” This is the only such flag I’ve seen in the area.

But just the other day, as I drove by that house, I almost ran off the road. The Brandon flag was still flying, giving the finger to all who drove past. But instead of Old Glory, instead of the American flag to which this lawn supposedly pledges allegiance, there was now — wait for it — the maple leaf of Canada.

In other words, this home’s owner — why do I think it’s a guy? — is declaring his solidarity with a Canada that exists only in the fevered minds of Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and all the other Republican buffoons who profess “support” for those Trump-addled Canadians who forced Michigan auto workers off their shifts, who aggravated an already-snarled Michigan supply chain, and who blew another hole in an already-shaky Michigan economy.

Not that Michigan was hurt more or less than anyone else by Canada’s truck blockade, just that Michigan is the very state this fool lives in, and it’s the very economy that supports his seditionist lifestyle.

It's bad enough that we seem to have exported some of our most idiotic ideas to Canada, a country that neither deserves nor wants them. But now, apparently, we’re importing them back again.


Comments

  1. Re the DOJ: That all sounds well and good, and as a veteran LEO, I agree. However, their due diligence HAS to be balanced with the clock they're running against. If the GQP regains control in 22 and god forbid, 24, they will kill these investigations deader than disco.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. True, but we're all assuming they can't keep track of time. Plus, DOJ doesn't change hands even if GOP wins in 22.

      Delete
  2. All very true..... but I think Canada (which I love so dearly) has its share of native-grown wing nuts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What's sad is the *expletives deleted* oligarch in America funding the reich wing nut jobs here are now taking their act on the road. It's not a coincidence we're seeing this crap sprouting up in democracies all over the world.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This Election is All About the Women

  As you probably know, I publish this blog on Tuesdays, so I’ve written this piece with no knowledge of today’s election outcome. Under the circumstances, I had to think more than usual about what I wanted to write.  With everyone’s anxiety levels turned up to eleven, I’m quite sure I have neither illumination nor comfort to offer at this late date, least of all to myself. So I’ve decided to talk about the heroes of the election, win or lose: women. If the American Experiment is to be extended for at least another four more years, it will largely be because women willed it to happen. Yes, the Dobbs decision made it easy for them to turn rage into votes. And yes, the rise of Kamala Harris made it easy for them to fall in love with a candidate. But I like to think they’d have stepped up anyway. It was only two weeks ago, though it seems much longer, when Harris dared to appear on Fox for an interview with Brett Baier . Remember? Nobody expected her to ...

Anybody See Any Bright Sides?

Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies. The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please. —    Andrew Coyne , Globe and Mail   Leave it to a Canadian columnist to give voice to my utter disgust. Canadians, of course, had no say in our election, but they’ll be hugely affected by it, and not in a good way. The same goes for Mexico, most of Europe, Ukraine, and — come to think of it — just about every country in the world. We just told most of them to go to hell. Shame o...

How Two Montana Democrats Wish They Hadn't Spent Election Day

Late afternoon on Election Day, before the dismal returns began coming in, I was copied on an email from a friend of a friend, a guy I’ve never met in person, but who has been a reader of this blog for several years. John’s story was terrifying when I first read it, but as that unhappy evening wore on, it grew into a sort of metaphor for what was happening to the rest of us. Trust me, John’s night was worse than ours. He and his wife Julie spent it in fear for their lives. They had been living their dream retirement in the wilderness of Western Montana, on a mountainous property four miles from town, but two miles from their own mailbox. To them, this was an idyllic lifestyle, a home in the woods, exactly what they wanted. But in recent months, it had all turned dark, and the blame is entirely Trump’s. As long as a year ago, John had written privately to several friends, including me, about the extreme Trumpy-ness of his adopted region. There was trepidation,...