Turns Out It Was Bill Barr and Not Merrick Garland Who Decided Not to Prosecute Ross

Here’s a face I’m sure you are displeased to see again. But apparently his perfidy is still impacting us today.

In a turn of events that would have gotten the AP attacked had they done it TO the Trump administration, they issued a correction to their story that laid the decision not to prosecute Wilbur Ross for his contempt of Congress on AG Merrick Garland, but it was actually the decision of…

Yeah, you guessed it, the Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, who was – as you might recall – installed against regular order for the purposes of using the DOJ as Trump mob boss enforcer rather than a “Justice” Department.

This makes a LOT more sense, but the arguments presented by this writer on Monday stand as there have been other decisions by the Garland DOJ (e.g., defending Trump against E.J. Carroll, a private citizen, for actions that had nothing to do with Trump’s “job”) that look a lot more like rugsweeping than the necessary harsh correction needed to at least give the appearance of the law applying to all.

The correction is at the bottom of the original source and reads: “After publication of this story, the Justice Department and Commerce Department inspector general revealed additional information to indicate the declination to prosecute took place during the Trump administration. This story has been corrected to note this information.”

In the original reporting, the Justice Department didn’t respond to the question presented by the Government Executive writer as to why they declined prosecution. It did dovetail with what seems to be an unfortunate trend at the Garland DOJ and the discussion had yesterday in my editorial stands.

Here’s hoping the Biden DOJ will uphold the law as it pertains to former Trump administration officials going forward.

You will not see this sort of correction of the original reporting getting the same knuckle whacking that it would have under Trump, and not just from the President, but from journalists, tech companies, and the general culture. The self-censorship everyone imposed under Trump (a common reaction to authoritarians) has loosened, and that’s a good thing — but it’s wrong to allow falsehoods to stand against anyone.

My apologies to Merrick Garland and the readers for unknowingly passing on this bad information that had, at the time, been confirmed by two highly respected sources (AP and Government Executive).

It is unclear why AG Garland could not go around Barr’s decision.

We are forever stained by the absolute lawlessness and partisan hackery of Bill Barr. His “legend” continues to haunt us, and in no way does Garland deserve to be smeared with Barr’s relentless attacks on justice. Garland inherited an absolute swamp of corruption from Barr.

Perhaps it does the soul a little bit of good to learn that real law and order for everyone might be in the cards for us yet.