WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah spent his March 14 column lashing out at Attorney General Merrick Garland over the possibility that he might be named FBI director, dredging up some golden-oldie conspiracy theories in the process in order to label him “the fascist-fixer for the Deep State”:
Garland has always been a loyal and radical Democrat – one with close ties to former Deputy Attorney General Jaime Gorelick under Bill Clinton. Does anyone remember Gorelick? She was the mastermind of the policy that created a wall between the FBI and other intelligence agencies on terrorist threats – one of the reasons no one connected the dots leading up to the catastrophe of 9/11. To ensure she never got the blame, Gorelick was then appointed to co-author the report of the 9/11 Commission.
In fact, what Garland is most well-known for is the investigation he led into the other big terrorist attack – the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. It was Gorelick, his college buddy, who appointed him to that task. It was Garland who rushed Timothy McVeigh to be executed even though there was ample evidence of other conspirators and suspects.
In an Atlantic article in 2016, McVeigh’s attorney. Stephen Jones, had this to say about that key decision: “I think some of the decisions (by Garland) made later on boiled down to a pragmatic approach” not to pursue other accomplices.
“Pragmatic” decisions not to pursue other accomplices?
Does that sound like the kind of person who should be the next FBI director, let alone attorney general?
We remember Jamie Gorelick — and how right-wingers like Farah falsely accused her of erecting that “wall” between the FBI and other intelligence agencies. As we documented way back in 2004, Gorelick explained that the “wall” was actually erected in 1978, and the 1995 memo she wrote that has been described as erecting the wall actually loosened from what was the norm.
Further, why should anyone take the word of the lawyer for a mass murderer for anything, like Farah is doing for McVeigh’s lawyer? Farah also conveniently ignores that Jones also said Garland is “a top-notch professional, fair, reasonable, objective, discreet and reticent” and has the potential to be a great attorney general. The context of the “pragmatic approach” statement, by the way, came within even more Jones praise of Garland and appears to refer to the choice not to spend resources chasing down right-wing conspiracy theories of accomplices like the imaginary “John Doe No. 2.”
Farah went on to tout “the work of intrepid reporter Jayna Davis, author of ‘The Third Terrorist,'” without mentioning that WND published her book (it’s listed as a Thomas Nelson title because all WND Books published under the deal with Thomas Nelson stayed with it after their publishing deal ended). WND apparently no longer gets money from those books and it’s out of print anyway, but still, it’s a disclosure Farah should have made.
Farah went on to rant about Garland prosecuting participants in the Capitol riot:
Most Democrats call it an “insurrection.”
But it was a tempest in a teapot – or really an admission of what they had done to the scourge of Donald Trump and the American people. They had to use such fiery words to justify what they had done – rigged an election.
“We are not avoiding cases that are political or cases that are controversial or sensitive,” the attorney general said in an exclusive interview with NPR. “What we are avoiding is making decisions on a political basis, on a partisan basis.”
Garland was in a celebratory mood. He got the convictions of the first two Jan. 6 defendants, Guy Reffitt, a Texas oil worker, on charges of seditious conspiracy, and an Alabama man, also convicted on seditious conspiracy.
Farah forgot to mention that Reffitt’s own son testified against him because his father threatened him with death if he turned him in by stating that “traitors get shot.”
Farah also falsely claimed that Garland was “finding concerned parents whom he calls ‘domestic terrorists'” over school issues.
So Farah continues to lie and smear — and he still wonders why WND is slowly going out of business.