RUTHFULLY YOURS

Illustrating yet again that Democrats haven’t come to grips with why they lost the election and what Americans think of their politicization of law enforcement, here’s Biden attorney general Merrick Garland today, emoting on the fifth anniversary of the Capitol riot:

On this day, four years ago, police officers were brutally assaulted while bravely defending the United States Capitol. They were punched, tackled, tased, and attacked with chemical agents that burned their eyes and skin. Today, I am thinking of the officers who still bear the scars of that day as well as the loved ones of the five officers who lost their lives in the line of duty as a result of what happened to them on January 6, 2021.

Let’s stipulate that Garland is quite right to castigate all who punched, tackled, tased, chemically attacked, or otherwise assaulted police officers. There is chatter in the air about pardons of the rioters; I don’t know what President-elect Trump plans to do upon taking office, but it would be a profound mistake — one his administration would come to regret — if he grants clemency to people convicted of assaulting cops (or, for that matter, damaging property). As we’ve covered here extensively for five years, it was ridiculous for the Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people on misdemeanor charges of parading and the like — the kind of charges DOJ would ordinarily never file but that the Biden Justice Department, under Garland’s leadership, prosecuted in a patently political effort to inflate the Capitol riot (aka “The Insurrection”), condemnable as it was on its own terms, as if it were a 9/11-scale terrorist attack.

To repeat for the umpteenth time, no police officers died in the line of duty during the Capitol riot. The fact that Garland, federal bureaucrats, and police officials have tried to exaggerate the perils of the riot, and in so doing – and occasionally in grappling with insurance claims involving loved ones of cops who tragically committed suicide after the riot – have claimed police were killed due to the events of that day, does not make it so.

We all know this; but don’t take my word for it.

It is a serious felony violation of federal law to murder a federal officer in the line of duty. It is punishable by death or life imprisonment. Federal laws that the Justice Department enforces also severely punish conspiracies and attempts to murder federal officers who were carrying out their official duties. By a recent count, Garland’s Department of Justice filed charges against nearly 1,600 people in connection with the events of January 6, 2021. Not a single charge of murder of a federal officer, nor conspiracy or attempt to murder a federal officer, was alleged by DOJ.

By contrast, when it comes to assaults on federal officers of the kind that Garland described in his remarks, prosecutors justifiably brought many cases, and judges imposed stiff sentences. That’s why I say what I said above about rumored pardons — please don’t do it.

The closest connection between the crimes of the Capitol riot and the death of a police officer relates to Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick. To repeat what I said in the above-linked column:

Brian Sicknick, whose death we have covered extensively at NR, perished the day after the riot from natural causes — he had two strokes, according to the medical examiner. Like scores of other police on duty January 6, he is known to have been subjected by the rioters to assault, including toxic-aerosol spraying, but he appeared to be in good condition back at his headquarters afterward. Though prosecutors have charged two rioters with assaulting him, the charges do not even mention his death, much less allege that the defendants caused it. While it was initially claimed in media reports (and in the House Democrats’ impeachment pleadings) that Sicknick was killed by blunt-force trauma, this was a false allegation. It is far from inconceivable, of course, that the riot could have contributed in some way to bringing on his strokes, but that has never been established.

As AG Garland knows, the government bears the burden of establishing that criminal acts brought about a murder. That is the reason his Justice Department never charged Officer Sicknick’s death as a killing in the line of duty. There is no doubt — and it is entirely appropriate — that prosecutors badly wanted to bring such cases if there was sufficient evidence to bring them. There wasn’t . . . so they didn’t.

It is one thing for members of Congress, such as those on the highly partisan, rabidly anti-Trump House January 6 Committee, to allege that officers lost their lives in the line of duty due to the riot. It’s shameful to demagogue in that way, but we all know they’re partisan pols, and that’s what partisan pols do.

It is quite another thing for the nation’s chief federal law-enforcement official to continue making allegations tantamount to murder that are false and that he didn’t charge because he knows he couldn’t prove them. That is a disgrace.

When President Biden nominated Garland, I said he was the best appointee that those of us who were politically and ideologically opposed to Biden and progressive Democrats could hope for. I was expecting to disagree with Garland a great deal on law-enforcement priorities. And I had no illusions: He is a left-leaning Democrat — appointed to the D.C. Circuit by President Clinton and nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama. He would have been a reliable progressive vote on the Supreme Court had he been confirmed. But based on my experience interacting with him on terrorism prosecutions in the Nineties when he was a Main Justice official in the Clinton Justice Department, and based on his reputation, I believed that he would be an institutionalist regarding DOJ, that he would do his best to shield DOJ from politics and not sully its public legitimacy by making grave allegations he knew were untrue or couldn’t be proved, and by putting DOJ’s awesome powers in the service of partisan political narratives.

How wrong I was.