US Attorney General Merrick Garland is no stranger to high-profile investigations and is a soft-spoken person who does not want to get enmeshed in politics.
It is also expected that he will keep his personal interests out if and when he decides to prosecute former US president Donald Trump on the request of the House panel which wants him prosecuted for his role in inciting the mob outside Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.
The January 6 House probe panel wants Trump to be prosecuted on charges of inciting an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and obstruction of an official proceeding.
The filing of criminal charges will be a long and complex process and the US’ top law enforcement official will have to sign off on these charges which are likely to have enormous legal and political fallout as no president of the United States has ever been prosecuted.
Yes, former US president Richard Nixon did come close, following his involvement in the 1972 Watergate scandal, leading to his impeachment and resignation in 1974, but his successor Gerald Ford pardoned him.
“We have not prosecuted a former president. And there are all kinds of political fallout from that. There are practical fallouts from that and there are legal fallouts from it. So it’s a very complex and very interesting and very historic event,” John Dean, who served as White House legal counsel to president Richard Nixon, was quoted as saying by CNN and AFP.
Trump is already the target of two probes and Merrick Garland has already appointed a special counsel to oversee them.
The first probe focuses on the former president’s activities surrounding the 2020 election and the second probe is focused on the cache of classified government documents seized in an FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in August.
The decision to indict will come from special counsel Jack Smith. However, the final call will be made by Garland.
Mississippi lawmaker Bennie Thompson told the AFP that he remains confident that the Justice Department will charge Trump. Thompson said no one, even the former president, is above the law.
Denied a Supreme Court Seat
The 70-year-old Garland was denied a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court when Trump took over as president of the United States.
Former president Barack Obama nominated Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016 but the Republican majority in the Senate declined to hold a vote on his nomination allowing Trump to appoint a Conservative judge.
The graduate of Harvard Law School led the probe into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by far-right extremists which killed at least 168 people and also prosecuted Ted Kaczynski, aka the “Unabomber.”
He served as the chief judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
(with inputs from AFP)
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