General Discussion

I'm asking this not in defense of Garland, but because I am wondering whether the eventual result - the Supreme Court's immunity decision - wouldn't have just come sooner as well, and would still have prevented a trial before the election? Say the Trump indictments had come out a year earlier, starting in August of 2022 instead of August of 2023. Presumably Trump would have moved to dismiss the indictment in December of 2022, and the case would have made its way to SCOTUS on about the same timeline, but a year sooner, at the end of the 2023 term. At this point the case would have gone back to the district court for Judge Chutkan to decide which counts of the indictment should be dismissed according to SCOTUS' decision. Smith (if he had been handling the case, or another team if no special prosecutor had been appointed) would likely have filed a superseding indictment, just as he did in 2024. And that new indictment would have been challenged as well, and appealed for as long as possible - maybe all the way back to SCOTUS, and maybe long enough to prevent a trial from occurring before November of 2024. Smith didn't get much farther than the superseding indictment, dated July 27, 2024, which gave him only about 4 months to get the case prepared and tried - an impossible task. If he could have started over a year sooner, would there have been a trial, or would he still be stuck in the appellate process by November of 2024?

Maybe if Garland had started the process a year earlier (I'm not sure the investigation could have been completed much before then), Trump could have been tried and possibly, though not certainly, convicted before the election, although appeals would continue and it's doubtful he'd have ever gone to prison, regardless. We might never know why Garland didn't move more expeditiously. But given the glacial pace of the appellate process I'm not sure the eventual outcome would have been different. So I would agree that at least some of the blame can be laid at Roberts' feet. SCOTUS' decision might prove to be their most democracy-destroying act since Citizens United.