Glenn Kirschner: Merrick Garland failed us but Justice still matters!

The fight continues!!

Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner and I have been talking on my show for years about the urgent need for Merrick Garland to swiftly hold Donald Trump accountable for his Jan. 6 related crimes.  In late 2021, we even discussed holding a press conference outside DOJ along with others to demand action by Garland against Trump.

But as we later learned from The Washington Post’s reporting in 2023, Garland had made a conscious decision to not pursue Trump because of a fear of looking “political.”  Rather the focus were the “boots” of the Jan 6 attack, not the “suits”--as Kirschner often put it.

I spoke to Kirschner for the first time since the election—who hosts the very popular YouTube channel “Justice Matters”—about “Does justice still in fact matter?!”  Kirschner made it clear that it very much does. But the typically fired up Kirschner was noticeably lower key than usual.

The MSNBC legal analyst explained, “It's not necessarily the rule of law that has failed. It's the people who administer the rule of law that failed. They didn't meet the moment the urgency of the moment.” He added, “I don't know what accounts for that. It doesn't make any sense.”

Kirschner continued, “The States have indicted some of those folks who were part of the command structure of the insurrection. But the Feds never did.” Growing more animated, the former prosecutor added, “That is inexplicable, inexcusable, an abdication of their responsibility to protect the rule of law and American democracy.”

I couldn’t agree more. In January 2022 on the one year anniversary of Jan 6, I wrote an article for MSNBC.com vocally urging Garland to file charges versus Trump. My article concluded with the line that if Garland didn’t move swiftly to hold Trump accountable, “I believe historians will count it among the key mistakes that ultimately led to the end of the United States as a democratic republic.”

This is where we are today. But harping on Garland’s historic failure to keep our nation safe won’t protect us going forward. However, Trump escaping accountability has broken the spirits of some.

As Kirschner noted, many people who are followers of his work were despondent, telling him, “You see, Glenn, justice doesn't matter.” But Kirschner rejected that notion. The failing of Garland does not mean we should give up the rule of law which is the backbone of Republic. Instead, Kirschner told those people and others who shared that sentiment, “You see that you are experiencing that you feel strongly about proves that justice does matter. It's just that we haven't achieved anything that approaches justice. That's why we're all so angry.”

Kirschner—who served in the US Army as a lawyer in JAG corps—called on us to “hold fast because justice still matters, even when it happens to be failing at this moment in American history.”  And as opposed to others who have bent a knee to Trump, Kirschner declared, “I will go down swinging. Let me be clear on that. I will not run. I will not hide. I will not stop criticizing lawlessness.”

Many on our side are checking out right now. But knowing my fellow Democrats, as soon as Trump implements policies that causes pain—be it mass deportations to attempting to cut funding for special need students to gutting programs that help the most vulnerable Americans—most, if not all, will be back in the fight.

As I have long said: Being a Democrat means caring about people we have not met—and will likely never meet. But we still care. This is who we are as Democrats.

You can watch my full interview with Glenn below:

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