He’s gonna hand it off….
The Trump/Barr stuff has already got him on a political tightrope of trying untangle Trump/Barr stuff , while protecting the Office of the President, and not destroying his departments staff morale with internal weeding under a different political admin….
Garland may want to get away from politics….
But his action just confirms how deep it affects the countries lawyers jobs….He’s already had Biden overrule one of his actions concerning the media and the department…
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland backed away on Tuesday from doing a broad review of Justice Department politicization during the Trump administration, noting that the department’s independent inspector general was already investigating related issues, including aggressive leak hunts and attempts to overturn the election.
Democrats and some former Justice Department employees have pressed Mr. Garland to uncover any efforts by former President Donald J. Trump to wield the power of federal law enforcement to advance his personal agenda. Their calls for a full investigation grew louder after recent revelations that Mr. Trump pushed department officials to help him undo his election loss and that prosecutors took aggressive steps to root out leakers.
Answering questions from reporters at the Justice Department on Tuesday, Mr. Garland said that reviewing the previous administration’s actions was “a complicated question.” He noted that managers typically sought to understand what previous leaders had done.
“We always look at what happened before,” he said. But he stopped short of saying that he would undertake a comprehensive review of Trump era Justice Department officials and their actions, in part to keep career employees from concluding that their work would be judged through changing political views….
Note…
Garland is deferring to the Justice Dept. Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz to do internal reviews….
Horowitz has been at his job since 2012 under Obama, Trump and now Biden….