Garland is becoming a disappointment at DOJ

Just in the past week, the Biden White House has felt compelled to publicly distance itself from Attorney General MERRICK GARLAND three separate times.

“[T]he issuing of subpoenas for the records of reporters in leak investigations is not consistent with the President’s policy direction to the Department,” press secretary JEN PSAKI said Friday, after news broke that the Biden Justice Department had continued pursuing Trump-era demands for New York Times’ reporters emails. (DoJ later relented.)

“This provision is inconsistent with my Administration’s policies and values,” Biden said as the DoJ filed a brief Monday arguing that it would violate the law to grant Puerto Rican citizens eligibility for Social Security payments.

And when the DoJ decided Monday to continue defending former President DONALD TRUMP in a defamation lawsuit brought by E. JEAN CARROLL, a writer who accused him of raping her in the 1990s, White House spokesperson ANDREW BATES said that “the White House was not consulted by DoJ on the decision to file this brief or its contents.” The president and his team have “utterly different standards from their predecessors for what qualify as acceptable statements,” Bates added.

[...]

Other cases on the horizon are poised to potentially further the divide.

On Monday, a top Justice Department attorney urged a federal appeals court to block a California state law seeking to end the use of private prisons in the state — even though Biden promised during the campaign to stop relying on private jails and issued an executive order in January to end such contracts for criminal detention.

[...]

A spokesperson for California Gov. GAVIN NEWSOM, a Democrat, said they would not back down from a fight with the Biden Justice Department. “These for-profit prisons do not reflect our values and the state will continue to defend AB 32 to phase out their use,” the spokesperson said in an email.

[...]

Garland and the White House have had stand-offs over senior positions at the Justice Department, with Garland pushing to install many of his own former clerks. The two sides have also not issued their promised memos that govern which WH-DoJ contacts are permissible — and which are off limits.

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.