When President Joe Biden nominated Merrick Garland in 2021, the intent was clear: restore confidence, depoliticize the Justice Department, and return integrity to a bruised institution.
Instead, four years later, the Garland era stands as a case study in how bureaucratic caution, selective enforcement, and misplaced faith in neutrality can destroy public trust in the rule of law.
Once seen as a symbol of judicial integrity, Garland’s Justice Department has become the embodiment of drift — hesitant, inconsistent, and politically tone-deaf. The nation needed an Attorney General capable of moral courage; instead, it got a technocrat trapped in process.
Timid Leadership in a Time of Crisis
The hallmark of Garland’s leadership has been his paralysis in the face of urgency. From the sluggish January 6 investigations to the ambiguous handling of the Hunter Biden probe, his DOJ too often moved at a glacial pace when clarity and conviction were required.
Garland’s defenders say his caution was meant to protect the department’s independence. But in practice, his silence created a vacuum — one that fueled suspicion, mistrust, and partisanship on both sides.
The result is a Justice Department that appears afraid to enforce justice when politics are involved.
Selective Justice, Lost Credibility
If Garland’s goal was neutrality, the outcome was the opposite.
His DOJ has been accused of both overreach and apathy, depending on the target. Raiding Mar-a-Lago while dragging its feet on similar classified-document cases involving Biden and others reinforced a narrative of double standards.
His approach to civil liberties was equally inconsistent: vigorous prosecution of protesters, hesitant police-reform efforts, and defense of expanded surveillance powers — all under the banner of balance.
At the end of the day, Garland’s DOJ satisfied no one. To conservatives, he symbolized partisan lawfare. To progressives, he embodied institutional cowardice. To the American public, he represented a justice system that answers to politics rather than principles.
The Cost of Avoiding Accountability
The most dangerous consequence of Garland’s leadership is not scandal, but erosion. Erosion of public faith, erosion of deterrence, erosion of accountability.
The Justice Department’s credibility is its currency. Under Garland, that currency has been spent recklessly.
Even career prosecutors and federal agents describe an internal culture of fear, indecision, and optics management rather than the pursuit of truth.
Why History Will Not Be Kind
Merrick Garland’s story will not be written as one of corruption or partisanship — but of failure to rise to the moment.
He was the right man for a courtroom, not for a constitutional crossroads.
America needed a leader willing to challenge the political establishment; Garland chose to appease it.
Historians may one day summarize his tenure with one line: he tried to save the Department of Justice by standing above politics — and in doing so, allowed politics to consume it.
The Takeaway
The Justice Department doesn’t need neutrality; it needs courage.
In times of national division, silence is not balance — it’s surrender. Merrick Garland’s term reminds us that justice delayed is justice denied, and leadership without conviction is indistinguishable from failure.
As America stares down the next chapter of political turmoil, the lesson of Garland’s DOJ is clear:
When those entrusted to uphold the law fear the consequences of enforcing it, democracy itself is in jeopardy.
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-- By James W. Thomas
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