There’s No Good Way to Protect the Presidency Anymore
When President Joe Biden announced in the weeks before his inauguration that he was committed to reestablishing an independent Justice Department, he didn’t say that it was going to be easy. During the first few months of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s tenure, the department has sparked ire among its critics on the left—and prompted annoyed statements from the White House—by taking a series of positions that seem, to some, uncomfortably close to the aggressive approaches staked out by the Trump administration. It has fought not to release a document that might cast light on Attorney General Bill Barr’s effort to spin the findings of the Mueller report in then-President Donald Trump’s favor. It’s successfully asked a court to dismiss lawsuits against both Trump and Barr over the tear-gassing of protesters in Lafayette Square. It’s kept up its defense of Trump in a defamation lawsuit filed by a woman who accused him of raping her.
In each of these cases, the Justice Department presents itself as protecting the power of the presidency as an institution, whatever the politics of the person who happens to be sitting in
