The Nation: DOJ Lawyers Are Cowards if They Don't Indict Trump
Elie Mystal
12/19/2022 5:00 pm ET
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Regardless of what, if anything, the DOJ does with the Select Committee’s referrals, we know that the Justice Department has been conducting an independent, parallel investigation into the deadly Capitol attack, and we have to assume that investigation includes looking into all potential crimes committed by the former president. As so often happens, we’ve seen prosecutors use their discretion to charge the easy cases—such as the white supremacist foot soldiers in Trump’s attempted coup. But DOJ defenders might say that charging Trump—whether through their own investigation or the select committee’s referrals—is a much harder case.
That’s not really true. If the law did operate in a robotic fashion, Trump committed his crimes so publicly and brutishly that it’s not really hard to make out a case against him. If Trump escapes charges, it won’t be because the case against him was too hard to make. It will be because the DOJ used its discretion to be cowards.
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Congressman Jamie Raskin said: “Ours is not a system of justice where the foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass.” But he’s wrong. That’s exactly what our system of justice does all the time. The people who make the system of justice work that way are prosecutors, cowardly prosecutors who would rather bury a low-level, poorly represented criminal in a trucker hat under the jail than risk tangling with a well-funded, politically connected, openly guilty white man in a suit.
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The January 6 committee has taken this as far as a political body could possibly go. Now we wait to see if the Department of Justice will use their discretion to prosecute a criminal, or if punching down is all they’re prepared to do.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/january-6-hearing-doj-lawyers/
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