 So I want to take some time to examine some headlines because when you look at all of these headlines in total I think it tells us a really important story that a lot of folks particularly on the left are missing So this is back from February. It was published in Politico It reads by the administration backs Divos and fight over testifying about loan forgiveness The Justice Department joined with Divos to fight a subpoena as part of a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of some 160,000 former for-profit college students and More recently Biden DOJ will defend excluding Puerto Ricans from disability payments And finally the grand finale Biden Justice Department defends Trump in suit over rape denial The new administration is pressing on with a controversial stance in a defamation case brought by writer E Jean Carroll Yeah, that's gonna be a big yikes from me now you can argue That it's a long-standing practice It's basically a tradition for administrations to defend the Constitutionality of federal laws even if that administration doesn't necessarily agree with the federal law that they're defending They're just doing this because this is what they've always done This is basically the reasoning that Biden's administration gave for why they're defending legally the exclusion of Puerto Ricans from disability payments But this isn't always the case There have been times where president has broken with tradition for example We've seen countless times Donald Trump refused to defend the Affordable Care Act from multiple right-wing legal challenges We've seen Obama refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court So there have been times where administrations have broken with tradition But if there's any time where you definitely want to break with tradition, you'd think it'd be here Where Biden's administration wouldn't want to defend Trump Over allegations of rape But they're choosing to defend Trump when they don't have to so the question is why Why is Joe Biden's administration doing this? What's the justification that they're giving for this because it seems like this is really Unjustifiable well politico breaks it down in the filing with the New York based Second US court of appeals the Justice Department insisted that it was not endorsing Trump's conduct toward writer E. Jean Carroll Even as it argued that a law governing suits against federal officials Justified the government's move to take over the former president's defense in the case Boynton was the acting head of the DOJ's civil division by the way also adhered to the stance the Justice Department adopted in the case last September that Trump was acting in the course of his official duties as president when he denied Carol's rape allegations from more than two decades ago Doesn't really make it any better so in essence what they're saying is that there is a level of immunity that courts grant to government officials and The DOJ is simply granting that same luxury to Donald Trump here Even if you know the accusations are egregious even if Donald Trump is Very clearly a fraud and there are numerous allegations of sexual misconduct against him Well, like other government officials, he also gets the same privilege as Biden or Obama or Bush would get Now This is a bad argument just to put it mildly But we're not even scratching the surface because if you're shocked at this here Then if you just dig a little bit, you'll see how terrible The Department of Justice has been under the leadership of Merrick Garland who was appointed by Joe Biden This is all part of a larger trend that speaks to how terrible Merrick Garland is the New Republic reports on several key matters Garland's DOJ has concealed the full extent of Trump's wrongdoing It has kept thousands of immigrants from obtaining green cards while flooding the immigration system with Trump selected judges Expanded the scope of police power insured oil and gas profits for decades to come and Explicitly protected one of Trump's most hated cabinet secretaries from accountability Indeed Garland has quietly emerged as Donald Trump's unwitting hatchet man doing almost everything in his power to protect the lawless former president's legacy Late last month the Justice Department urged a federal judge to dismiss lawsuits against Trump and former Attorney General Bill Over their decision to tear gas black lives matter protesters near the White House last summer so that the president would be able to take a photo Near a church holding the Bible upside down while Garland repeated throughout his confirmation process They had prioritized tackling white supremacy almost six months into the administration No part of the federal government has a plan for rooting out white supremacists who serve in federal law enforcement roles Garland's DOJ is actively defending a new oil project in Alaska that was cleared under Trump's shams of environmental tests And may generate new oil for 30 years and it's filing the DOJ explicitly said that the Trump administration adequately considered the new sites effect on wildlife and greenhouse gas emissions Garland is also maintaining support for a new oil Pipeline in New Jersey and isn't rescinding Trump era briefs that made it harder for states to sue big oil over downplaying the risks of climate change Oh and Garland still shielding Trump's tax returns from Congress Why is Garland doing all of this to be clear? He is not secretly a devout Trumpist who's wiggled his way into the highest levels of the Democratic Party Rather Garland is doing exactly what his most ardent supporters said he would upon his nomination Leading the Department of Justice the way he remembers it from his first DOJ stint in the 1990s so basically the reason why Merrick Garland is so terrible in a nutshell is because It's tradition for an administration to maintain all of the same legal positions as their predecessor It doesn't matter that the last president used the DOJ as his own personal wing of government to defend himself from allegations of corruption Fraud and alleged sex crimes. I mean the last administration did all of these things So we have to maintain tradition and do exactly what they did You see this is why nothing changes and gets done in America and this is why each administration continues to get worse and worse Why we see the president being built upon when it comes to you know spying on Americans Warrantless wiretapping and other violations of civil rights and civil liberties. It's because well the last administration did it So let's let's do that same thing This is also basically the ratchet effect in action because even if Donald Trump more often than I think other presidents You could argue was willing to you know shun traditions to benefit himself Well Democrats they adopt all of the terrible legal positions that the Trump administration took and they're gonna do that going forward and the next Republican administration is probably gonna adopt some pretty terrible legal positions and then the next Democratic administration Subsequently will adopt those terrible legal positions and then slowly but surely we keep gradually shifting to the right It's just it's deeply frustrating But this explains why Merrick Garland is so goddamn terrible and it's frustrating because There's no reason for Biden to Even nominate someone like Merrick Garland in the first place, but the reason why he was nominated I think is because well this individual was nominated by Obama to be a Supreme Court nominee and Republicans stole that seat. So this is his kind of like gotcha to Republicans No, you know, you rejected Merrick Garland but we're gonna find a position for him in our cabinet and you know, it's based off of That I guess I mean, that's probably an overly simplified reading of the situation but Long story short Merrick Garland is absolute trash and Individuals who try to follow this like really rigid traditionalist view of the American legal system. All they're doing is Moving us backwards