So Garland spent 4 years prosecuting the low hanging fruit for Jan 6th

[bigtree]

26. false

...

begin with this truth that most people who criticize Garland ignore:

Mr. Garland said he would place no restrictions on their work, even if the “evidence leads to Trump,” according to people with knowledge of several conversations held over his first months in office.

“Follow the connective tissue upward,” said Mr. Garland, adding a directive that would eventually lead to a dead end: “Follow the money.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/us/politics/trump-jan-6-merrick-garland.html

...and they did just that:



...it took a long time, not because Garland dithered in gathering evidence, but because the evidence he was gathering from principle WH perps was repeatedly challenged by them on grounds of privilege.

The resulting hearings dates for each of those perps challenges were set by JUDGES in COURTS, not by Garland, whose team fought each and every one of them successfully.

That doesn't happen by just going into court and presenting what most critics describe as something we all saw, presumably on teevee.

That ultimately successful effort by Garland's team in often successive courts to knock down appeals and challenges and make evidence they gathered as early as the Fall of 2021 available to them for any prosecution, and the arrests and charging of rioters - many who served as cooperators, took over a year and more in many cases as the appeals moved through successive courts, many Trump appointees who were all too obliging of the perps to set court dates well into the future.

receipts:


https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/11/politics/jack-smith-special-counsel-high-profile-moves-trump-criminal-investigations/index.html

May 2021:

Prosecutors took 18 electronic devices from Rudy Giuliani’s home and office in April raid
As part of the same investigation, agents last month also executed a search warrant at the home of Victoria Toensing, a lawyer and Giuliani ally.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/20/politics/rudy-giuliani-raid/index.html

Jeffrey Clark's electronic devices were seized by federal agents in June 2021 "in connection with an investigation into violations of 18 U.S.C. 1001, which relates to false statements, 18 U.S.C. 371, which relates to conspiracy, and 18 U.S.C. 1512, which relates to obstruction of justice". The agents were looking for evidence of crimes of making false statements, criminal conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The raid took place at Clark's house in Northern Virginia, and his electronic devices were seized.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/jeffrey-clark-trump-considered-ag-phone-seized-obstruction-probe-rcna47923


April 14, 2022

Giuliani helps feds unlock devices as charging decision looms
Giuliani unlocked several devices, or gave investigators possible passwords.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/giuliani-helps-unlock-electronic-devices-feds-decision-looms/story?id=84081611


...emptywheel on the evidence seized early on and the challenges brought by the perps:

In Rudy Giuliani’s case, a privilege review of his phone content took nine months (though that review incorporated content relating to January 6, so it has been done since January 2022). In Enrique Tarrio’s case (largely due the security he used on his phone), it took over a year to access the content on his phone. In Scott Perry’s case, prosecutors are still working on it seven months later. In James O’Keefe’s unrelated case, Project Veritas still has one more chance to prevent prosecutors from getting evidence the FBI seized in November 2021, almost 17 months ago. You can’t skip privilege reviews, because if you do, key evidence will get thrown out during prosecution, rendering any downstream evidence useless as well.

In cases of privilege, DOJ first gets grand jury testimony where the witness invokes privilege, and then afterwards makes a case that the needs of the investigation overcome any privilege claim. DOJ first started pursuing privileged testimony regarding events involving Mike Pence with grand jury testimony from Pence aides Greg Jacob and Marc Short last July, then with testimony from the two Pats, Cipollone and Philbin, in August. It got privilege-waived testimony from Pence’s aides in October and from the two Pats on December 2. That process undoubtedly laid the groundwork for this week’s DC Circuit ruling that people like Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino must likewise testify to the grand jury.

By the time DOJ first overtly subpoenaed material in the fake electors plot last May, it had done the work to obtain cloud content from John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark. If DOJ had obtained warrants for the already seized phone content from Rudy — which is likely given the prominence of Victoria Toensing from the start of the fake elector subpoenas — then it would have built on content it obtained a year earlier in another investigation.

Some of this undoubtedly benefited from the January 6 Committee’s work. I would be shocked, for example, if DOJ didn’t piggyback on Judge David Carter’s March 28, 2022 decision ruling some of John Eastman’s communications to be crime-fraud excepted. As NYT reported in August, in May 2022, DOJ similarly piggybacked on J6C’s earlier subpoenas to the National Archives (and in so doing avoided any need to alert Joe Biden to the criminal, as opposed to congressional, investigation); this is consistent with some of what Mueller did in the Russian investigation. Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, obtained via trust earned by Liz Cheney, has undoubtedly been critical. But the January 6 Committee also likely created recent delays in the January 6 and Georgia investigation, thanks to the delayed release of transcripts showing potentially exculpatory testimony.

But much of it preceded the January 6 Committee. I’ve shown, for example, that DOJ had a focus on Epshteyn before J6C first publicly mentioned his role in the fake electors plot. Toensing’s involvement came entirely via the DOJ track.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/04/06/the-testimony-jack-smith-gets-this-week-builds-on-work-from-over-a-year-ago/


We can see that evidence was tied up in challenges to warrants and claims of privilege, as well as outright recalcitrance by perps, sometimes for years.

Understanding that the charging decisions aren't made by Garland, but rather, approved by him after the process of prosecutors presenting evidence to a grand jury, what evidence are critics claiming Garland had which assured a conviction in his first year?

Not knowing the actual nature or state of evidence they had in their possession at the time, and not just because most of that is secret except for what the targets reveal and filing and testimony and statements in court, what position do you think critics are in to make that determination, over and above the judgments of the over 20 prosecutors Garland had on the case?

receipts for '20 prosecutors' :


https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/11/politics/jack-smith-special-counsel-high-profile-moves-trump-criminal-investigations/index.html

...Smith obviously didn't believe the teevee clips we all saw were enough to convict because, he made clear in his latest filing that he was seeking to use “forensic evidence” from Trump’s iPhone to corroborate his assertions Trump instigated the riot.

Not just clips from teevee, which the DOJ team of career prosecutors obviously didn't believe would suffice (like critics want us to believe), but through corroborated evidence.

...always bemused by internet justice officials in the fantasy prosecution game who propose Garland and his prosecutors should have left evidence on the floor and rushed into court like all that mattered was something incriminating they'd found and wouldn't be blindsided by either contradictory testimony, of perps shaping their subsequent statements to fit the paltry amount of virtually unusable evidence tied up in appeals.

NONE of these critics could be trusted to prosecute the former president because they don't understand what constitutes a prosecution, and most believe what they saw on teevee is sufficient to ball together in their minds and come up with a conviction - one that would stop Trump from assuming office.

No matter to them that neither charges or a conviction is legally enough to keep Trump or anyone from running, being elected, or assuming office, even from jail. Or that voters just now elected a convicted felon/adjudicated rapist.

What did they think was going to happen? These high profile cases regularly take two to three years in appeals to completely resolve (after conviction), minimum.


This is the hush money case, arguably less complex than the federal ones"

How long could this appeals process take?

It’s hard to say exactly, but the first layer of the appeal, which is just to the First Department, I would expect to take about a year. If that appeal is unsuccessful, then after about a year, he would have an opportunity to file what’s called a leave application with the New York Court of Appeals, which is confusingly the name of New York’s highest court. The lowest court was where Trump was just convicted and is called the Supreme Court. The middle layer court is called the Appellate Division.

Since the Court of Appeals is the highest court, they don’t take cases as of right—so after Trump’s first layer of appeal, he may not get another appeal. He would have to ask the New York Court of Appeals to allow him to appeal, and if they grant his leave application, only then can he actually file an appellate briefing, saying, “I was denied my constitutional rights under either the New York Constitution or the U.S. Constitution.” He can also say there was some sort of failure to follow criminal procedure. The Court of Appeals would typically decide the leave application after three to five months, and if granted, then the appeal could take probably another year, maybe a little less. And if the Court of Appeals’ decision is adverse to Trump, he could then file a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, and the basis for that would have to be limited to the U.S. Constitution, rather than New York law or the New York Constitution.


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/donald-trump-whats-next-jail-prison-appeals-process-explainer.html