Carol Leonnig

And she's wondering, is this a conspiracy?

Is this a crime?

She goes to a prosecutor that she knows from a previous briefing named J.P.

Cooney.

And he says, sorry, sorry, I've been busy.

I'll connect you with one of my team.

And the prosecutor underneath J.P.

Cooney tells her.

Well, Leska McClellan, you know, this just doesn't seem like something that we would pursue.

Of course, that office of prosecutors in DC are completely slammed with what?

Investigating the violent attack on the Capitol and pursuing hundreds of people who were engaged in either breaching the Capitol and also violence, violent acts against police officers that day.

They're swamped, and they basically turn her down and tell her maybe she should pursue this with some state investigators.

Merrick Garland was an extremely respected jurist for his many years, I believe 24 years on the federal bench, had a wealth of experience in the law, was fastidious and methodical.

But as Attorney General, even the people who really admired him and worked for him, some of them told us they were concerned about how allergic he seemed to even the whiff of looking like anything he did was political.

And he said this publicly.

I'm paraphrasing him a little, but he said, you know, it's not enough to be apolitical.

We also have to be sure people believe and that we appear to be above politics.

That guided everything in that first year.

Garland believed that looking directly at Trump or Trump allies would create that improper whiff.

He wanted to go back to a playbook created in the wake of Watergate, in which the Department of Justice siloed itself from the White House, siloed itself from politics, and tried to have this incredibly pristine, almost priestly independence.