Will Bunch of the Philly Inquirer nails it. The biggest and most tragic mistake by Joe Biden was his pick of Merrick Garland for Attorney General--.

Was there a "deal" to not prosecute Trump to get him to leave the White House & allow a transition, which Trump himself blew up? Will Bunch gives me a reason to think my theory is plausible.

Thanks to Will Bunch we now know why President Biden picked Merrick Garland and so regrets his decision. Former White House Chief Of Staff Ron Klain led the faction which pushed Garland. This is according to his commentary based upon a Washington Post report detailing Biden's extreme regret over his choice.

https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/merrick-garland-jimmy-carter-trump-20241231.html?cx_testId=13&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=1&cx_experienceId=EXTE1CRHS6Q4&cx_experienceActionId=automated_for_you_hp&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0M1ATkoGd0XQEd5g9CVrN2xaDw7n41C9IGH5SUMqsAtCrH9qhEh66KmVc_aem_vmOBg11ywr8gUdqeEIseyQ#cxrecs_s

Not mentioned by Bunch about Klain is that he's the tag team partner of corrupt corporate centrist Biden advisor Anita Dunn, who sabotaged his presidency and campaign by abandoning progressives and traditional Democratic constituencies in favor of appeals to "moderate MAGAs" from the white suburbs. Dunn had top down control over the campaign press shop and messaging, and did everything possible to prevent Biden from attacking Trump, or even using his name. He was advised to call him "the other guy," and tripped all over himself trying to distinguish between the misnamed "regular" MAGA, and "Ultra-MAGA," which he described as "semi-fascist."

Here's a question which has had me stumped since childhood; does semi-boneless ham have a bone in it or not? And if it does, why do they call it "semi?" And how does the Ham feel about it all?

The Dunn-Klain combo was the source of the awful triangulation strategy which infected many aspects of the administration, costing the President whole chunks of his program (in conjunction with fellow Democratic corporate centrists Manchin and Sinema with whom they worked) and large drops in his approval ratings among youth, black and Muslim minorities, Latinos, and progressives of all stripes. This is the actual reason why the so-called "Blue Wall" collapsed in November, and we now have a full clown-car of escaped mental patients being given the keys to the government to go joyriding around in for four or more years.

Also not mentioned by Bunch was that Klain and Dunn were exposed as the pair who sabotaged Biden's debate prep which contributed to sinking his candidacy, the reason FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden and son Hunter demanded the President fire them both immediately after the disaster when they all met at Camp David. (which he wouldn't)

I suspected that the reasoning behind Garland's appointment was a futile and deluded plan to seek bipartisanship with MAGA, which included a "hands off or go slow" approach to prosecuting Trump's crimes, so as to not overly antagonize Trump's Congressional allies and base. Maybe a great idea on paper, but they were always going to be "antagonized" over everything. They incited and assisted a violent mob attack our Capitol, and the White House hoped for civilty and cooperation with Nazis who organized a coup against them? Seriously?

Bunch's background commentary on the Garland appointment seems to point in the same direction, raising similar questions, and is sounding an alarm to prevent similar failures in judgment.

I'm going to state publicly what I have suspected all along but have not yet divulged until now. This is my personal speculation, but I believe that a deal was made by Biden to get Trump to leave the White House and relinquish power in 2021, provided he would not be prosecuted aggressively. This, in my mind, is the only thing which solves the mystery of why did Trump even leave, and why did he agree to a transition? And I should state for the record that while I always remained critical in a principled way, I have been a strong and vocal defender of Joe Biden since he launched his candidacy in 2017, and I am not writing this to bash him. In a way, if a deal was made I understand it and his motives.

That said, all indications were that Trump would make some desperate effort at a last stand, because he stood to lose his Presidential legal shield and go to jail if he didn't. He even tried to get Netanyahu's help in launching a war with Iran at the end to fabricate a national emergency and void the election. General Milley actually called it Trump's "Reichstag Fire" and blocked it. Despite his desperation, Trump relented, and it has always been puzzling to me as to why. If there were a deal, that would explain it. We know that everything with Trump is a transaction, devoid of any motive other than self-preservation. I am certainly open to discussion if others have thoughts on it, because it is just my opinion and nothing more.

So, on our timeline, Biden came in, pledged bipartisanship and healing in his inaugural, appointed Garland under pressure from Dunns's flunky Klain. He was a former DOJ prosecutor and federal judge, a plodding GOP bureaucrat and proceduralist, guaranteed to not do anything which could remotely be considered "political" in order to protect the DOJ from charges of "weaponizing Justice. Therefore when it came to not antagonizing MAGA, he was right on board with Klain's and Dunn's program.

Remember also that this was the guy who prosecuted the Oklahoma City bombers McVeigh and Nichols, but the religious cult and militia networks (the neo-Nazi "Christian Identity," and the Michigan militia) which housed them and actively supported their anti-government plot were let off the hook. There was a network, not just two guys, and Garland chose to not go after all of them for sedition conspiracy, only the two mentioned for the crime of the bombing. (It should be mentioned that the same Michigan militia networks that supported them were caught plotting a "citizen's arrest" of Governor Gretchen Whitmer 26 years later, which was in fact a plot to kidnap her and her cabinet, conduct mock trials and summary executions for treason, right after they were incited by Trump to storm the Michigan Capitol in Lansing to oppose covid lockdown)

Garland, once sworn in after the usual obstruction in the Senate by McConnell, (the second go-round for him after he was Obama's failed nominee for SCOTUS) did nothing for month after month about the stolen documents or J-6. Instead of going after the planners and the ringleaders, he was preoccupied with rounding up and prosecuting the thousand or so zombies used as cannon-fodder for the riot, which was just cover for the actual coup plot of Trump's Congressional allies voiding Biden's electors. Not Trump, Meadows, Bannon, Stone, especially not Ginni Thomas. No, it was more important to nail the “horny” QAnon guy than the people who were responsible for bringing the mob to DC which left five dead cops and hundreds more injured.

Then the J-6 committee did such a thorough job documenting Trump's coup attempt, that Garland was literally forced to abort the "hands off" policy and start a grand jury. And once it was finally underway, all of his foot-dragging led to his "cover your ass" move of appointing a special prosecutor, Jack Smith.

Then there were shocking revelations that Trump's stolen documents included nuclear secrets which he was showing off to guests and donors at his golf club, and Biden's national security team raised the roof to convince him to pressure Garland to go after them. Garland started another investigation he didn't want in order to force Trump to give the documents up. Trump said to Garland (and Biden), in effect, "f__k you," ordered his lawyers to lie to the FBI, he was allowed to stall, hide some of what he had, possibly sell some of it, so Garland was forced to get a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago and start a second grand jury (which again he never wanted) and Biden went along with him on all of it.

And to top it off, Garland incredibly insisted that Smith convene the grand jury and try the stolen documents case in Ron DeSantis' fascist hellscape of Florida, not Washington DC where the judges are more balanced than Florida's Republican hack federal appointees. No credible reason for Garland to insist Smith go to trial in Florida was ever given, aside from the fact the documents were there, and two of Trump’s co-defendents who were never going to rat him out. Trump personally oversaw packing everything up in Washington, and had no immunity the moment Biden was sworn in. It would have been a slam dunk in DC, without all of the delays enabled by Cannon.

The only possible explanation is that bringing the case in Trump's home state was a sop, a buy-off to mitigate the rage and retribution factor from the Congressional MAGAts. Remember that after the Mar-aLago FBI search warrant was executed, a Trump supporter assassinated an FBI agent in Cincinnati, and there was a pattern of threats against their offices nationwide. Therefore Florida is what they went with, and almost predictibly a Trump appointed "fan-girl" known as Aileen "Loose Cannon" got jurisdiction, stalled, delayed, and after the SCOTUS immunity ruling threw out the case entirely.

This bought Trump the time he needed to let the SCOTUS step in and give him his blank check to cancel all of his cases and start making plans to deploy Seal Team Six to assassinate his political opponents. All of the cases were then pronounced DOA, including the state criminal charges in Georgia.

As a consequence of Garland's malfeasance and incompetence, we now have a Führer, not a President, coming in with list in hand of his targets for bloody retribution, a person with the mental map and personality disorders of the movie character Patrick Bateman from the bloody horror novel "American Psycho." And the worst thing is that some of us wanted to believe the same thing President Biden believed, that this collection of vengeance-seeking bloodthirsty fascists who belong to a violent cult led by a psychopath could be bargained with. Or, for that matter cared even a whit about the national interest, and were really just normal good people who would come around when we got some bills passed that would mean job security and putting money in the pockets of their voters.

It is beyond me that someone with Joe's battle-tested life experiences and history of political wars in the Senate and as VP could actually have believed this. He once told Putin to his face that he had no soul. Did he really think he could horse-trade with people who were bought or sold, or had their lives threatened? Did he really believe that Trump would honor his side of any deal that was made, if one was made? I believe in redemption, but I don't cry over Hallmark movie happy endings which I know to not be real,

The intention, in my view, was never to prosecute or jail Trump, despite Jack Smith's committment to do just that. It was to use the prosecutions as leverage to contain Trump and force him to eventually drop out of the campaign. And instead he turned around and did the exact opposite. And Biden went along with the deal and Garland's do-nothingism because his "Rasputin" Anita Dunn was in his ear telling him that if Trump went on trial he would lose the "moderate MAGA" vote and therefore the whole election, and our democracy along with it.

Biden never realized how tragic his error was until Garland went after his son, then after him personally on his decade old collection of useless memorabilia in his garage, and Garland's choice for Special Prosecutor, Republican hack prosecutor Robert Hur (approved of by Gym Jordan and James Comer) wrote a long report on how there was no crime, but Biden seemed senile. All this of course to prove himself fair and non-partisan when it came time to testify in Jordan's committee to grovel for budget crumbs and defend his turf. Joe never saw it coming, like a character in a Shakespeare tragedy.

That is my reading from the outside, fwiw. Like I said it is speculation. And the tragedy regardless is that Biden's awful pragmatic decision born of a 50 year long career of centrist dealmaking with Republicans came back to haunt him because Garland offered up his son Hunter as a sacrifice to the MAGA carnivores, hoping that would "balance things out" for his Trump cases, (which again, I believe he never wanted) and prove his department was apolitical in order to keep them out of his business running the DOJ. Well...how did that all work out?

That is what I believe actually happened. At some point I think more will come out that points toward this scenario as being likely.

So, one mystery solved, which is why Biden picked Garland. Another one still remains open, which is why did Trump leave the White House in 2021, a decision he has said he regretted all along.

Whatever the case, we will pay the price for President Biden's unfortunate decisions reminiscent of Shakespeare's King Lear. He only found out at the tragic end who his real friends were, and who were his enemies, because he saw what he wanted to see and placed his trust in the wrong people at the worst possible time. He wanted to believe that McConnell and Lindsey Graham were still his friends and that they would work with him. He didn't want to see how they and others were broken by Trump. And he didn't want to see how his closest advisors were working both sides in order to survive in the corporate world even if Trump did manage to get back in.

We have no room left for more such tragic, pragmatic, and myopic decisions. We are approaching 20 days now until this "thing" called Trump returns to power. Such blindness in the months ahead could be fatal if we let it.

(Note--This article by Bunch is paywalled, but they give you a few freebies first. Make this one of them.)