A non-profit legal group founded to combat the rise of corporate money in politics issued a statement late last week calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to resign his post.

The group says that while Garland has had an admirable career as both a federal prosecutor and judge, the time has come for him to step down over his failure to hold Donald Trump and his associates accountable for the litany of crimes and unethical acts leading up to and including “attempting to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021.”

“DOJ’s inaction—Garland’s inaction—endangers the rule of law,” the group said, before pointing out just some of the offenses that Trump has thus far paid no price for:

• Extorting the President of Ukraine
• Deliberately sabotaging the US Postal Service
• Illegally pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” enough votes to produce a win for him in the 2020 election

The group also pointed out that the extensive breaches in legal behavior during the earlier part of his presidency were not prosecuted because of actual DOJ policy — first Jeff Sessions, then Bill Barr both declared that a sitting president could not be prosecuted.

But those protections, they said, expired for Donald Trump on January 20 at 12 PM, when Joe Biden was sworn in as the new President of the United States. There is no legal reason that Trump cannot be pursued.

And, the group said, Garland hasn’t merely failed to go after Trump. The DOJ has also resisted pursuing accountability for any of the members of Congress who were known to have taken part in planning and coordination leading up to the riot at the Capitol on January 6.

What’s more, Garland has “defended or continued many Trump-era DOJ policies” that were created during Trump’s tenure in the White House specifically to shield him from accountability for illegal acts during his presidency.

It’s not entirely likely that Merrick Garland will consider the non-binding opinion of a non-profit group as impetus enough to resign from the Department of Justice. But hopefully, he will at least consider doing some of the things he’s failed to do that led them to the recommendation.

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