Special to WorldTribune.com, February 28, 2021

Corporate WATCH

Commentary by Joe Schaeffer

The cheerleading for “anti-Trump insurrectionist” attack dog Merrick Garland does not bode well.

At his Senate confirmation hearing on Feb. 22, Joe Biden’s choice to be attorney general transparently sought to equate former President Donald Trump and his America First movement with Timothy McVeigh and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing:

From 1995 to 1997, I supervised the prosecution of the perpetrators of the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, who sought to spark a revolution that would topple the federal government. If confirmed, I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on January 6 – a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy.

Garland promised senators that if confirmed, investigating the actions of that day would immediately become his Justice Department’s “first priority and my first briefing.”

This is the rhetoric that makes Garland the toast of the Trump-hating Left. Unstated yet readily apparent is the salute to a return to Janet Reno, the bloodstained Bill Clinton attorney general who presided over a Justice Department that covered up the FBI murders of a young mother holding a baby in her arms and a 14-year-old boy at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992 and actively slaughtered 76 Branch Davidians at Waco one year later.

It is rather astonishing that given Garland’s public vow to aggressively treat Trump supporters as domestic terrorists more attention isn’t given to his prominent role serving Reno. Garland was Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General to Jamie Gorelick, Reno’s Deputy AG.

Reno referred to Gorelick as her Justice Department’s “chief operating officer” and Gorelick has described Garland as her “wingman.”

So that would make it:

1. Janet Reno
2. Jamie Gorelick
3. Merrick Garland

This was the hierarchy of a Justice Department that burned American citizens to death in the name of fighting “domestic terror.”

It’s understandable why Democrats and their big-box media enablers want to ignore this unseemly association hovering all around Garland today. And in doing so, they play right into the hands of the One Percent they so vociferously claim to oppose. To its credit, a few voices on the Left have done some good reporting on this matter.

The key to tracking this toxic spider web would be Jamie Gorelick.

A Feb. 23 article at The Intercept warns of the sway Swamp power player Gorelick will hold over a Merrick Garland Justice Department. It merits quoting at length (bold added throughout this column):

Garland’s most concerning connection is Jamie Gorelick, who, despite being unlikely to get a formal role within the department, is positioning herself as a fixer with Washington’s most direct line to Garland’s office and unique power to influence the Biden Department of Justice. Currently a partner at the powerful firm WilmerHale, Gorelick was the former No. 2 ranking member in the Clinton Justice Department, where Garland served as her top deputy. Gorelick helped Garland secure his judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and since Biden’s announcement of Garland’s nomination, she has been advertising her proximity to Garland and their lengthy friendship. Gorelick and Garland went to college together, and in a recent interview, she referred to Garland as her “wingman.”

That’s particularly concerning given Gorelick’s recent history. Gorelick is a notorious wheeler and dealer inside Washington, known for using her connections to ward off penalties for corporate offenders. Gorelick was hired to help Google beat a burgeoning antitrust case during the Obama years, successfully pressuring the White House and Justice Department to put the brakes on a criminal investigation into the firm. In a separate case against Google, Gorelick also helped shut down a U.S. attorney, to the point that the Justice Department even apologized to the company. Gorelick was rumored to have arranged the apology.

The article notes that Gorelick currently sits on the Board of Directors for online retail goliath Amazon, which is currently being pilloried by the Left for its attempts to ruthlessly squash the formation of a union for its workers at its Bessemer, Alabama warehouse.

A Feb. 12 article at the leftist Revolving Door Project relates how WilmerHale, the powerhouse D.C. law firm that has Gorelick as a partner, is renowned for its anti-union activities. The firm even publicly states that it “that it trains workers on ‘union awareness and avoidance,’” the article reads. “The contrast is stark in light of President Biden’s promise to the AFL-CIO saying ‘If I’m in the Oval Office, guess who’s gonna be there with me? Unions,’” Revolving Door Project observes.

In an interview with the leftist website Jacobin, the article’s authors Elias Alsbergas and Max Moran draw the correct conclusions about what is going on here:

What this means is that there is going to be a shadow advisor, with a deep personal relationship to the next attorney general, who is one step away from Amazon, a company which is facing deep scrutiny due to antitrust monopoly issues, not to mention its anti-union and anti-worker issues.

On top of being very close personal friends, Garland owes some of his career to Gorelick. For Garland’s first job at the Department of Justice (DOJ), he was hired by Gorelick as an assistant underneath her when she was the deputy attorney general. She often tells the story about how he chose to dispatch himself to investigate the Oklahoma City bombings during the Clinton years.

You don’t have to agree with these people’s progressive views to welcome the attention given to this alarming Gorelick connection should Garland become attorney general. Indeed the two have remained extremely tight long after their Janet Reno salad days. Here’s Gorelick in an interview with Stanford Law School in 2006 (page 15 of pdf):

“Merrick Garland, who was two years behind me in college and law school and is one of my closest friends – he worked with me at the Justice Department and is now on the DC Circuit.”

Beyond the boon for Amazon and other corporate giants, there looms the specter of severe persecution aimed against the populist right. As Garland vows to go after Trump supporters, recall that it was Jamie Gorelick who helped the FBI get away with murder at Ruby Ridge. Gorelick was responsible for the ludicrously weak disciplinary measures taken against acting Deputy FBI Director Larry Potts and other FBI officials for the grotesquely heavy-handed militaristic measures they took against Randy Weaver and his family, which directly led to the deaths of three people.

“She finds everybody did everything wrong under the supervision of Potts, who is going to be the No. 2 man in the FBI, but the result is nobody is prosecuted and nobody goes to jail,″ [Randy Weaver attorney Gerry] Spence said in a telephone interview. “It is very frightening if the FBI can get away with killing by decree, and that’s what’s being glossed over here.″

That quote comes from a 1995 Associated Press report, which detailed that:

“Like [FBI Director Louis J.] Freeh, Gorelick concluded that FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi acted under the FBI’s longstanding deadly force policy rather than under the questionable rules of engagement when he shot Weaver, [Kevin] Harris and Mrs. Weaver.”

Gorelick played a major role in getting Reno installed at Justice in the first place. A 2016 NPR article explains how Gorelick helped shepherd “unexpected pick” Reno – “Clinton wanted a woman” – through her Senate confirmation process:

Jamie Gorelick, who would later become deputy attorney general, was assigned to prep Reno for her confirmation hearing. “She was the least air-brushed candidate we have ever had for a Cabinet-level position,” says Gorelick. “She was herself, and she didn’t change herself for Washington.”

Reno arrived at the Justice Department knowing no one, and was immediately plunged into the siege at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas.

Gorelick also helped destroy Fannie Mae, the federal mortgage loan company, during her disastrous tenure as an exec there from 1997-2003. A 2008 Slate article spotlights how she helped trigger the housing market crisis that caused the 2008 recession – and earned $26 million doing it:

Although Gorelick had no background in finance, she joined Fannie Mae in 1997 as vice chair and departed in 2003. For her trouble, Gorelick collected a staggering $26.4 million in total compensation, including bonuses. Federal investigators (PDF) would later say that “Fannie Mae’s management directed employees to manipulate accounting and earnings to trigger maximum bonuses for senior executives from 1998 to 2003.” The New York Times would call the manipulations an “$11 billion accounting scandal.” Gorelick, it should be noted, has never been charged with any wrongdoing.

Let’s take a quick off-ramp away from Gorelick for a moment to further demonstrate how cozy a place the Swamp can be, starring Merrick Garland. How’s this for a tangled web? From failed Obama Supreme Court nominee Garland to current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in two steps.

Beth Wilkinson was the prosecutor working under Garland who got Timothy McVeigh the death penalty. They were so close that Garland performed the wedding ceremony when she married former NBC News “Meet the Press” host David Gregory in 2000.

Wilkinson was Kavanaugh’s attorney during his contentious Supreme Court Senate confirmation hearings in 2018.

Gregory and Kavanaugh traveled in the same circles:

“The two men knew each other; their daughters played together on the middle-school basketball circuit, and they had had dinners at the home of their mutual friend Miguel Estrada.”

Unsurprisingly, Wilkinson today vociferously backs Garland’s repulsive comparisons of Jan. 6 with the Oklahoma City bombing:

Well, of course, I’m not privy to the investigation, so I don’t know all of that. But the general grievances, I think, are similar – a lot of anger towards, you know, the federal government and dissatisfaction with certain citizens in their, you know, current status. That is something, unfortunately, that is often tinged with, you know, racial attitudes that are contrary to our values and principles of our country. The general dissatisfaction and the belief that somehow some type of violence would change the governance of the country seems to be what was similar and was what was so disturbing in Oklahoma City and was disturbing on January 6.

Gregory appeared on CNN last week boosting Garland in his role as a “political commentator” for the network:

And now he’s called on to do a couple of things to send a message about civil rights in this country and the importance that will be placed upon civil rights independence from the White House after the Trump years and of course, dealing with January 6th, and the larger issue of domestic terrorism.

And, you know, Judge Garland is someone who’s uniquely qualified in that regard, overseeing the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, and both trials, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, he’ll be very important so there’ll be news me they’re going to want to know his views.

Did he even bother to disclose that Garland performed the ceremony when he married Garland’s former DOJ employee? This is Swamp Incest at full throttle.

We’ll end with more on Gorelick:

She served as Jared Kushner’s lawyer when he entered the Trump White House. That certainly explains a lot.

Her official bio at WilmerHale states that she is “a member of the Council on Foreign Relations [and] the Trilateral Commission.”

Russia Probe special investigator Robert Mueller is also a partner at Wilmer Hale, by the way.

Do you know who else happens to be a member of the David Rockefeller-founded Trilateral Commission? Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference.

The Munich Security Conference is the annual globalist gathering where Joe Biden just swore loyalty to internationalism in his official role as President of the United States on Feb. 19.

It is the organization that considers borders to be a sign of nationalist extremism and white Christian nationalist “terrorists” the biggest internal threat to The West today.

How strange that these were the exact sentiments eerily echoed by Garland at his Feb. 22 nomination hearing: I don’t care about borders, I’m going after white nationalist domestic terrorists.

It’s almost as if there were an elaborate and inter-connected agenda at work here.

Joe Schaeffer is the former Managing Editor of The Washington Times National Weekly Edition. His columns appear at WorldTribune.com and FreePressInternational.org.

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  In Merrick Garland, the Left toasts a Swamp elitist who served as Bloody Janet Reno’s henchman, WorldTribune.com