And yet Garland’s behavior to date has left me apprehensive. Conversations I have had with folks inside DOJ have not eased those concerns. There, frustration with Garland begins with his management style (which insiders liken to that of a judge running his chambers in which his office is a kind of bubble apart from the department and staffed by a small team akin to the clerks he had when he was in the judiciary).

It extends to concerns that he will err too far in the name of caution and a desire not to be perceived as political. This too is a hold-over from his court days and ignores that A) he is a political appointee, B) the issues he is dealing with are hyper-politicized and c) there is no way to prosecute politicians for crimes committed in the name of partisanship without appearing political…

What is certain is this: Time is running out. There is every reason to fear that Trump and the coup plotters will not be held accountable in any meaningful way. If they are not, they will see the inaction of our justice system as a license to continue their attacks on our system of government. What is more, absent an effective Department of Justice effort, those attacks are that much more likely to succeed and to be compounded by even greater abuses. And at that point, all the institutionalists in the world will not be able to put our Humpty Dumpty of a democracy back together again.