A Tale of Two Justice Departments

On a Friday evening in October 2021, the Justice Department scrambled to manage a delicate situation. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and other senior officials held an emergency conference call to address what they considered inappropriate remarks from President Joe Biden.

Steve Bannon, a former advisor to Donald Trump, had refused to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating January 6th. Committee members debated whether to refer Bannon to the Justice Department for prosecution.White House press Secretary Jen Psaki avoided direct comment, stating, “That woudl be up to the Department of Justice, and it would be their purview to determine,” emphasizing their independence. Though, when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Biden if those who ignored subpoenas should face contempt charges, he responded unequivocally: “I do, yes.”

As Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis detail in their new book, “Injustice,” these three words deeply concerned Garland and his team, prompting them to issue a statement effectively rebuking the President. Just fifty-one minutes after Biden’s comments, the department’s chief spokesman, Anthony Coley, released a deliberately firm statement: “the Department of Justice will make its own self-reliant decisions in all prosecutions based solely on the facts and the law.Period. Full stop.”

Contrast this with the response from another Justice Department,four years later,on another fall Friday,to a Presidential directive that was far more explicit. “Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “All arrows,” he wrote, “are pointing to the Democrats.”

This time, the Attorney General did not offer a similar rebuke.