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AG Merrick Garland 'feels pressure from White House to go after Trump for January 6': Biden complained to inner circle that ex-president is a 'threat to democracy' who should be 'prosecuted'

  President   Joe Biden   is privately concerned that Attorney General Merrick Garland is not moving 'decisively' enough in the Just...

 President Joe Biden is privately concerned that Attorney General Merrick Garland is not moving 'decisively' enough in the Justice Department's ongoing investigation into last year's attack on the US Capitol, a new report suggested on Saturday.

Biden reportedly complained about the fact that Donald Trump in particular has not been prosecuted, people close to the president told the New York Times.


They said he denounced his Republican predecessor as a 'threat to democracy' in comments made as recently as late last year.

Biden had 'said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6,' the report stated.

However it notes that he never expressed that specific sentiment to Garland himself, and has also frequently praised the top Cabinet official for his impartiality. 

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said on Sunday that he's never heard Biden 'advocate the prosecution of any person' when asked about the explosive report.

'Look, one reason why Joe Biden got elected is he promised to take the decision of who got prosecuted and why away from the White House and put it in the Justice Department,' Klain told ABC's This Week. 

The president's apparent impatience with his Justice Department's slow and meticulous approach is a vastly different picture to the hands-off role he's sought to portray in the ongoing investigation. 

But he's not the only one frustrated by Garland's painstaking caution.

More than 750 of the former president's supporters already face charges for storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in a bid to overturn Biden's 2020 electoral victory.

ttorney General Merrick Garland has reportedly frustrated elected Democrats including the president himself with the slow pace of the Justice Department's January 6 investigation
Biden is also allegedly 'aghast' that so many members of Trump's orbit feel they can flaunt Congressional subpoenas

Attorney General Merrick Garland (left) has reportedly frustrated elected Democrats including the president himself with the slow pace of the Justice Department's January 6 investigation, the New York Times suggested on Saturday

But when it comes to more high-profile indictments, particularly members of Trump's orbit, lawmakers on the committee investigating the insurrection are growing impatient. 

The panel -- which could face a massive shakeup and even dissolution if Republicans take back the majority in Congress at the end of this year -- has ramped-up its release of information to the public in an apparent bid to pressure Garland to pick up his pace.

They've warned that a failure to fully punish people responsible for the insurrection could set a dangerous standard and cause irreparable harm to American democracy.

The attorney general has almost religiously tried to avoid any appearance of political motivations in the case, now the largest in DOJ history.   

'Attorney General Garland, do your job so we can do ours,' Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) said during a hearing where the committee voted to advance contempt charges for Trump social media manager Dan Scavino and economic adviser Peter Navarro -- both of whom have resisted Congressional subpoenas. 

At the same hearing, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said: 'Without enforcement of congressional subpoenas, there is no oversight, and without oversight, no accountability -- for the former president, or any other president, past, present, or future. Without enforcement of its lawful process, Congress ceases to be a co-equal branch of government.'

Early last week a federal judge said Trump 'corruptly attempted to obstruct' Congress last year

Early last week a federal judge said Trump 'corruptly attempted to obstruct' Congress last year 

According to Saturday's report, Biden is 'aghast' at the level of defiance of Trump's allies in fighting subpoenas from Congress.  

After an initial burst of momentum that saw former Trump aide Steve Bannon charged with one count of contempt of Congress, the DOJ has seemingly paused on its enforcement of the Jan. 6 committee's subpoenas. 

The House voted to hold ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in contempt late last year for refusing to cooperate with his subpoena, but to date no action has been taken by Garland's prosecutors.

Since then, a bombshell report revealed that Meadows had been on the receiving end of a pressure campaign by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife Virginia, who had been trying to convince him to overturn Biden's presidential win by pushing baseless QAnon conspiracy theories.


The Jan. 6 committee also sat down with Trump's son-in-law and ex-White House adviser Jared Kushner on Friday.  

That same day, Garland held a press conference in which he rebuffed the public pressure campaign -- and would not say whether prosecuting Trump himself was on the table.

'The only pressure I feel, and the only pressure that our line prosecutors feel, is to do the right thing,' Garland defiantly told reporters on Friday. 

Earlier last week, a federal judge who ordered pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman to hand a vast number of documents to the House committee also claimed the ex-president 'corruptly attempted to obstruct' Congress on January 6.

Biden, speaking to reporters around the same time, dismissed the notion he would get involved in the investigation in any way.

'I told you, I would not tell the Justice Department what position to take or not take, and I’m not going to instruct the Congress,' the president said on Monday.

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