Garland acts like Trump never happened
After days of tumult following revelations that the Trump administration deployed warrants to investigate news reporters and members of Congress in leak investigations, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a tepid response on Monday.
“There are important questions that must be resolved in connection with an effort by the [Justice Department] to obtain records related to Members of Congress and Congressional staff,” he said in a statement. “I have accordingly directed that the matter be referred to the Inspector General and have full confidence that he will conduct a thorough and independent investigation. If at any time as the investigation proceeds action related to the matter in question is warranted, I will not hesitate to move swiftly.” He also directed Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who he noted is “already working on surfacing potentially problematic matters deserving high-level review,” to evaluate existing policies for obtaining congressional records.
Meanwhile, John Demers, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and the most senior carry-over from the previous administration, announced he would be stepping down. The New York Times noted: “While it is common for the Justice Department to try to find out who shared classified information with the media, it is highly unusual to secretly gather records from the press and lawmakers. The prosecutors also prevented the lawyers and executives of The Times and CNN from disclosing that records had been taken, even to their newsroom leaders, another highly aggressive step.
“Such moves require signoff by the attorney general. But Mr. Demers and his top counter intelligence deputies in the division would typically be briefed and updated on those efforts.”
Former Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr, as well as former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, deny knowledge of the subpoenas. Mr. Demers’ departure was reportedly planned and unrelated to the controversy, but the Times reports that “Justice Department officials say that all appropriate approvals were given for those orders, meaning that the attorney general at the time, not Mr. Demers, signed off.”
Last week, the inspector general announced he would be looking into the matter. As former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade writes for MSNBC: “The grand jury subpoenas were used to obtain records of members of Congress whom Trump directly criticized — Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both of them Democrats from California who were vocal critics of Trump. Subpoenas were also used to obtain records of media outlets that Trump has criticized. On their face, these facts create the impression that Trump was simply going after a sort of enemies list.”
Ms. McQuade raises doubt that Justice Department policies were followed. In any case, she writes, “the receipt of such sensitive information should have immediately triggered a briefing to Justice Department leadership. No government leader wants to learn about such potentially explosive news from a reporter.”
Mr. Garland’s Monday remarks were the first we have heard of a high-level review to be conducted by Ms. Monaco. Mr. Garland’s revelation raises a number of questions:
• Does this cover conduct by former attorneys general?
• Does this go beyond subpoenas?
• Is the department reviewing professional violations and sanctionable conduct (e.g., misrepresentations to courts) by those who assisted Mr. Barr in hyperpoliticization of the department?
• Is she looking at issues such as obstruction of justice?
• Is she examining the circumstances surrounding pardons?
These questions and a host of others remain because Mr. Garland entered office without a clear commitment to investigate all problematic conduct in the prior administration. As a result, hope has evaporated that he would clean house and fire attorneys whose conduct was not in keeping with internal and ethical guidelines.
He has also never indicated as to whether, now that former President Donald Trump is out of office, the department would follow up on alleged illegal conduct examined by special counsel Robert Mueller (e.g., obstruction of justice, perjury, witness tampering). Is he relying on the premise that Mr. Trump cannot be prosecuted for any conduct in office — even incitement to insurrection?
Mr. Garland seems to be operating as though we had not undergone four years of the Justice Department running afoul of ethical standards and department policy — or worse, of the law. Are we simply to ignore the department’s meddling in the prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Mr. Barr’s ignoring of potential illegality in connection with the former president’s attempt to extort Ukraine, or Mr. Barr’s fanning doubt about mail-in ballots? And I suppose we are expected to forget signs that Mr. Barr tried to politicize election fraud investigations?
Mr. Garland has adopted his predecessors’ positions in many cases (e.g., withholding release of all the internal memos relating to the Mueller report; the Justice Department standing in Mr. Trump’s shoes in a defamation case against a rape victim). And it seems the attorney general has done so apparently without thoroughly examining whether these positions were part of a broader pattern of illegality, corruption or unethical conduct.
As a result, Mr. Garland seems fated to play catch-up as these issues pop up one by one. Perhaps he needs to appoint a special counsel to conduct a topto-bottom review of what went wrong and who did what (or didn’t do what was expected) in the past four years. Without a thorough review, there can be no accountability for past Justice officials or the president; without accountability the department cannot implement appropriate reforms and deter future misconduct.
The attorney general is chief prosecutor for the American people. When he walked into Main Justice, he may have entered a crime scene — or at least a scene of corruption and misconduct. He has had ample reason to look at the full gamut of behavior that proceeded him. Unfortunately, the problem with selecting a judge as attorney general is that judges want to avoid looking political at all costs. And worse: They only consider cases before them.
What we need in the postTrump years is someone to uncover wrongdoing, make tough prosecutorial decisions and restore confidence that the current stable of Justice Department lawyers is ethical and competent.
For a long time, inflation has been the phantom of the American economy: often expected but never seen. But the latest Consumer Price Index, which showed that prices rose by 5% from May of last year to May of this year, raises fears that it is breaking down the front door and taking over the guest room.
The price jump was the biggest one-month increase since 2008. It appears to support the warning of former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who wrote in February that President Joe Biden’s budget binge could “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell charged last month that the administration has already produced “raging inflation.”
For anyone who lived through the turbulence of the 1970s, when the CPI climbed year after year, peaking at a rate of more than 13%, the specter of inflation is enough to induce night terrors. One of the great governmental marvels of the past 40 years was the Federal Reserve’s complete conquest of this malady. To let it return would be a grievous setback.
There are reasons to think that could happen. The Fed has pumped huge sums of money into the economy to offset the effects of the pandemic, and the Biden administration got Congress to approve a huge economic relief package. Americans saved a lot over the past year, and if they decide to burn through all that cash, they could push prices still higher.
At this point, though, watchful concern is a more appropriate attitude than outright alarm. For now, I’m not worried — not very worried, anyway — about inflation.
Why not? One reason is that a spike in prices is not inflation any more than a stretch of rain is Noah’s flood. It’s no surprise that prices in May were appreciably higher than a year earlier — when much of the economy was shut down because of the pandemic.
Prices will keep going up as life continues to return to normal and Americans rush to spend money on all the things they missed because of COVID-19. Lingering supply chain snarls will put additional pressure on prices. But this should be a one-time phenomenon. Inflation is not inflation unless it persists over months and years.
Another reason for optimism is that even when it was trying to raise the inflation rate, during and after the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve found it remained stubbornly low. The central bank’s monetary expansion should have brought about the higher inflation it sought. But it didn’t — suggesting that something has changed about the connection between the money supply and consumer prices.
Back then, conservative critics forecast an outbreak of inflation caused by easy money and excessive federal spending. In 2009, economist Arthur Laffer wrote, “We can expect rapidly rising prices and much, much higher interest rates over the next four or five years.” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Americans should be “prepared to carry money to the grocery store in a wheelbarrow.”
Let’s hope their hallucinations have subsided. If those policies didn’t cause inflation then, they may not cause it now. Stable prices have become the intractable norm over the past quartercentury, for reasons we don’t fully understand. Loose fiscal and monetary policies don’t seem to matter the way they once did.
One danger is that the recent price increases will fuel inflationary expectations, prompting businesses to raise prices and workers to demand higher wages, setting off a self-perpetuating upward spiral. But what inflationary expectations are we talking about?
Data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis indicate that, as of June 10, the expected inflation rate over the next five years is just 2.23%. Interest rates on 30-year mortgages have fallen below 3%, compared with nearly 5% in 2018.
Given their performance over the past 13 years, it’s not unreasonable to believe that the Federal Reserve officials who set monetary policy actually know what they’re doing. When the pandemic hit, the economy was well into the longest peacetime expansion ever — and inflation was still subdued.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues have earned the benefit of the doubt. They haven’t forgotten the trauma of the 1970s, and they don’t want to go down in history as the people who brought it back.
When prices jump, vigilance against inflation is entirely justified. But we should also watch out for false alarms.