Will Merrick Garland Defend Democracy?

Eric Holder, the former frontline prosecutor and local judge who served as Barack Obama’s first attorney general, was never a fan of Donald Trump, but he responded cautiously in 2019 when asked whether Trump should face prosecution even after he left office. “I think there is a potential cost to the nation by putting on trial a former president, and that ought to at least be a part of the calculus that goes into the determination that has to be made by the next attorney general,” Holder told David Axelrod in a CNN interview. But in the wake of the January 6 riot and related investigations, Holder’s view appears to have significantly hardened. Appearing in early May on CBS News’ Face the Nation, Holder offered a tougher assessment: “At some point, people at the Justice Department, perhaps that prosecutor in Atlanta, are going to have to make a determination about whether or not they want to indict Donald Trump.” Asked by interviewer Margaret Brennan if he would issue such a criminal indictment, Holder said he thought available evidence would justify that. “My initial thought was not to indict the former president out of concern of what—how divisive it would be. But given what we have learned, I think that he probably has to be held accountable.”

Many Trump opponents, including key Democratic politicians, have for months been calling for the Justice Department, under the leadership of Attorney General and former federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland, not only to file harsher charges against a wider range of alleged January 6 riot participants but to prosecute reputed riot organizers. Possible targets range, Trump critics and some legal experts say, from internet activist Ali Alexander and veteran Republican operative Roger Stone to right-wing law professor John Eastman, author of the infamous memo laying out how Republicans could overturn the presidential election results, to Trump White House aides to, most notably, Trump himself. Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is of particular interest. Some witnesses are known to have testified to the House committee investigating the January 6 riot that he was directly warned about possible violence. Cassidy Hutchinson, a Trump White House assistant, said that in early January 2021 “there were concerns brought forward to Mr. Meadows” indicating “that there could be violence,” but added that it was unclear to her if Meadows “perceived them as genuine concerns.” Rolling Stone reported that two anonymous sources told its reporter about how they had participated in “dozens” of briefings in the days before pro-Trump rioters attacked the Capitol. One source told the magazine that Meadows was totally clued in on such discussions. “Meadows was 100 percent made aware of what was going on,” the source said.