General Discussion

He's gone on record that it's not meet and proper for the AG to examine his predecessor's activities too closely, except to say that he probably wouldn't conduct his office the way Sessions and Barr did. In a way, I get that; you don't want to hamstring your own time as AG. Getting involved in the shenanigans of the former guy's Justice Department would open the door for all kinds of Republican carping, nit-picking, and lying about the respective records. Of course, the Republicans are going to do that anyway, regardless of what Garland does. It's a lesson that Garland may have to learn for himself.

It might be more useful to approach Garland's reticence from the other direction: Okay, DOJ has to be able to subpoena records as it sees fit. Does that extend to ALL matters, civil and criminal? No, just some matters? What degree of severity are we looking at, then? DOJ looking into a company's fraudulent activities might require grand jury subpoenas for phone records, but does a baseless hunt for leakers of classified information - as we have here - a good reason? If a congressional subpoena to the executive not honored because of some separation-of-powers argument, is an executive branch subpoena for a congressman's records legitimate? If it's a legitimate exercise of executive authority, why should a gag order on the very existence of the subpoena be put in place?

I got questions.