Why Garland's DOJ is siding with the Trump administration in several cases

Attorney General Merrick Garland is facing some criticism from Democrats because his Justice Department has sided with the Trump administration on several matters in court, including the fact that it announced this week it will continue to defend Trump in a defamation suit filed by E. Jean Carroll, who has also alleged he raped her.

The progressive watchdog group Revolving Door Project is tracking the lawsuits against the Trump administration that the Biden Justice Department has inherited and found that the latter is backing the former in at least a dozen. Revolving Door Project's founder, Jeff Hauser, told The Hill why he thinks that is.

"Garland's approach seems to be to minimize as much as possible any discontinuity in position after the election," he said. "He wants to make the transition from Trump to Biden as small as possible in the Justice Department. And so across an extremely wide array of issue areas, the Garland Justice Department is reaching legal conclusions which are incongruous for the Biden administration and for where the vast majority of center-left and progressive lawyers and legal scholars are."

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What Hauser is less sure of is where Garland might draw the line. "The question I have for Garland is what would we have to learn about [former Attorneys General] Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr for them to lose the benefit of the doubt with you?" he told The Hill. Read more at The Hill.