Just saw Chuck Rosen on MSNBC, and he said that Hur actually did have the responsibility to report in his confidential Special Council report all the reasons for his recommended decision not to bring charges, including:
- How Hur thought Biden might come across to a jury.
- Why Hur came to his conclusion.
So, appointing Hur and what Hur wrote was not the biggest whopping error Garland made in this instance.
The biggest whopping error by Garland was in releasing the confidential Special Council report in FULL, because Garland did not have to release the report in FULL. Garland could have chosen one of two other paths. He could have:
- Released his own one sentence statement simply saying that the Special Council’s recommendation was “not to indict.”
- Released his own statement with in part, quoted sections from Hur’s report, such as the clearly delineated differences between Biden and Trump, and kept all of Hur’s ageist observations out of his statement.
There is no requirement to release a Special Counsel’s report in full — none. So, the question is: Why did Garland choose to release Hur’s confidential Special Council’s report in FULL?
Possibilities:
- Garland agrees with Hur’s ageist slurs
- He didn’t read it bc reasons
- He wants Trump to win and put his thumb on the scale to help him
- He was afraid he’d look bad to Republicans, if he didn’t release in full, and be accused of cherry picking or hiding stuff
- He was afraid his DOJ would leak the full report and he would be attacked for holding back on the ageist slurs
- He’d pre-decided to release it in FULL to protect himself from Republican attacks and so, he just went with that decision — not withstanding the possible loss of our Democracy
- He had no idea how the ageist slurs would be the headlines and the gift they’d be to TFG
- He’s more afraid about how Republican’s might attack him and attack his precious reputation for being fair & impartial & transparent than he is about being fair to Biden and about protecting our democracy.
- Garland ignorantly didn’t know that it was his prerogative to release in Full, in Part, or even not at all Hur’s report — Garland stupidly thought he was obliged to just put the whole thing out there.
- Garland is fundamentally a coward and decided to hide behind the word transparency and let the chips fall on Hur, Biden, and ALL of US!
- Garland thinks President Joe Biden is an old, doddering danger to the country and he wanted Hur’s words out there on front pages to warn us all.
- Other possibilities? A combo of some? What think you all?
I have been seriously concerned by a few of Garland’s action, to date, but this chills me to the bone. The Comey Press Conference about Hillary Clinton keeps flashing into my mind like a blinking Danger Sign. Frankly, I think Jack Smith — or someone of his ilk — would have been a better AG choice for this point in history. I am downright furious, and terrified, with Garland’s choice to make public all of Hur’s editorial, opinion vs fact based comments within the report, but I am not certain WHY he made the choice. Regardless of motivation, I think he made a mistake, of potentially immense consequence for our country! and, I’m curious to know his motivation. I’m also very interested in this community’s thoughts & feelings on the matter at hand.
Full disclosure & personal thoughts re aging: IANAL and I am a Senior, so I may have neither the expertise nor the unbiased basis for judging Garland’s choice, in this case. However, as a Senior, I can give a bit of insight into how older folk’s brains do change/ transition at this stage in life, both from personal experience and talking with friends who are also going through it.
Reason being is that I’ve always been personally & professionally very curious about transitional, life stage kind of changes.
I taught Middle School for nearly 2 decades, so I have a lot of observational experience, and interest in, how the mind changes at different life stages. I loved watching the process happen with my kids as they went from concrete to abstract thinkers! So, I’ve been probing friends to share their experiences and thoughts about what up, and out, in their minds, reading what’s out there, and noticing what’s happening within my own skull.
Within my own 64 yo mind, I’ve begun noticing that I don’t remember a lot of past events in my life in detail and/or sometimes not at all. Even when someone describes the event in some detail, while I experience a sense that it truly happened, it is definitely no longer “there” in my memory as a stored personal memory that pops up when prompted. It’s gone — wiped clean/ discarded. It puzzles me, and kind of amuses me, when it happens, so I’m sure I get a confused look on my face. This probably reinforces the doddering ole fool must be losing it, bless her heart, cliche. LOL Whereas, it’s interesting how clearly I still remember all sorts of detailed knowledge related content eg The Periodic Table, how to balance chemical equations and historical events.
Instead, my mind seems to be moving in the direction of looking for and formulating patterns across all the momentous & minutia in my life. It seems like my brain is constantly churning through all the bits & pieces of knowledge and personal experiences to come up with conclusions & summaries that could succinctly answer questions like:
- So, what did you learn on this journey?
- What was it all about?
- Why are people the way they are?
Questions that I never really had the luxury of time or energy, or the wealth of knowledge & experience, to focus on and ponder with during the working — parenting period in my life. It may be why our elders were once seen as sources of wisdom, and not just the wrinkled, stumbling, babbling idiots we seem inclined to decry, today. Because, yes wrinkles aren’t that pretty, our skeletons do wear out, and many of us do get puzzled looks on our face when we’re surprised that we can’t remember specific things about stuff like dates & names that mattered in our own lives!
Having given this some thought, and having lived through a portion of this transition, I think this may be more related to a life stage shift than it is to just old people lose their brains, period, because becoming empty nesters and retirement are huge life changes that free the brain from the need for the immediate focus, multi-tasking, must remember everything lest disaster happen nature of the working-parenting adult stage of life. Everything is not AS annd certainly not equally important, so I think our brains start sorting through and cleaning out all the bits and pieces, looking for the important patterns and themes to take forward. For example:
Without the need to be able to hyper focus on & attend to immediate details while simultaneously doing multiple things while remember multiple specific appointments (date & time) that involve others … eg keeping a constant eye & ear out for what a toddler is doing everywhere & every second in order to keep them safe, while making up a grocery list for a family for a week, thinking through diverse menus across the week, for breakfast, lunches and dinners, what everyone likes and/or mentioned they are tired of, while remembering about a child’s dr appt and another’s baseball game and recalling where it will be played, and the route I drove to get there last time & time required — must leave by x o’clock while musing about 10 possible lesson plans for Monday through Friday to select 5 that best fit with the needs of this group of kids this year vs previous years while remembering that the car needs an oil change — whew! Rinse Repeat for 40+ years … the kind of thinking and attention to detail and specific memory capacity we all need for our working-parenting years of our lives.
Sans the requirements needed for the demands during these wonderful but occasionally overwhelming decades, the brain relaxes hold of both all the details and the sense of urgency to —- not forget ANYTHING and the simultaneous sense of immediacy to get EVERYTHING done, within often externally determined time schedules. Why wouldn’t our brains be designed to let go, once freed of a lifestyle that is gone, a thing of the past? Frankly, it seems like it would be the smart thing to do.
Within myself, it’s like I can almost feel my brain “de-cluttering.” 😁 It’s holding on to big picture, life themes, making sense of the hustle-n-bustle, looking for patterns in human nature across the thousands and thousands of folks I’ve known and interacted with, over 60+ decades. I have time to sit still, now, for more than a second, and just Be. And, sometimes, I watch and listen to my Son, or a younger friend, not infrequently frantically juggling their adult lives to the point of near exhaustion & desperation, sometimes getting overwhelmed, and I occasionally share with them what might be the important thing to keep in mind/ hold on to, a helpful insight about “the jerk at work” who has them in a tizzy, lest a dear one start to drown in the daily demands and minutia in their adult lives. Because, this Senior mind of mine seems to be getting clearer & clearer about things like THAT, even as it loses sight of specifics re time, or names. And, these shared moments with my Son and friends seem helpful to them — to be able to step back, put things in perspective, to prioritize, breathe, to learn, smile … love a bit better, and laugh a lot more. I’m sharing this, now, to perhaps provide some helpful context, and a bit of push back, regarding Hur’s ageist commentary/ slurs about this Senior President that I think we may be blessed, not cursed to have. Just a thought.
However, the BIG important question still remains — Why did Garland choose to release Hur’s Special Council Report in FULL?
Love to hear this community’s thoughts on ^that^
… and any thoughts of your own about aging minds, as you feel the need, desire, and interest to share.