Tom Cotton schools Biden's Deputy Attorney General

Lisa Monaco is the Biden administration’s Deputy Attorney General. On Wednesday, she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Tom Cotton grilled Monaco about the Biden DOJ’s double standard when it comes to prosecuting those who obstruct official proceedings. (You can watch the grilling here, and I’ve embedded it below.) As I discussed in this post, the DOJ is prosecuting many January 6, 2021 protesters under a statute that criminalizes “obstructing an official proceeding”

The statute, passed because of the Enron fiasco, was intended to reach those who destroy documents sought by investigators. But it can be interpreted more broadly to reach January 6 protesters if they acted “corruptly.” In fact, it has been so interpreted by a divided panel of D.C. Circuit.

Sen. Cotton asked Monaco whether whether leftists who obstruct official proceedings are being investigated for violating the “obstructing an official proceeding” statute. He asked specifically about three sets of protesters: (1) the mob in New York that tried to block Rep. Jim Jordan’s congressional hearing about the prosecution of Donald Trump, (2) the far left activists, including two state legislators, who obstructed the proceedings of the Tennessee House, and (3) the leftists who have tried to intimidate certain U.S. Supreme Court Justices by protesting outside their homes.

Monaco’s answers were pathetic. On the New York mob, Cotton asked whether “the Southern District of New York has stood up a task force to investigate all these people who corruptly influenced and obstructed a proceeding of the House Judiciary Committee.” Monaco had no response other than to praise "the incredible work” of “the men and women of the Justice Department that have been pursuing and bringing the cases [about] the events that occurred in the Capitol.” This was no response at all.

As to the Tennessee obstruction, Monaco said “I’m not aware of any such investigation.” She offered no explanation for why the DOJ isn’t investigating and no reason why it shouldn’t do so.

Cotton went on to point out that there hasn’t been a single prosecution, or even an arrest, of those who tried to intimidate Supreme Court Justices with whom they disagree on abortion.

The explanation for this double standard is obvious. The Biden administration doesn’t want to prosecute its left-wing shock troops. It likes what they do. As Cotton put it:

In case after case after case, the [Biden Justice] Department enforces the law against its political opponents and does not enforce the law against favored interest groups.

Cotton made it clear that he wasn’t concerned about the prosecution of violent or destructive January 6, 2021 protesters. “I’m not talking here about persons who committed violent acts against law enforcement officers and destroyed property,” he explained. There are plenty of ordinary criminal statutes that apply to them.

Cotton’s concern is with the prosecution of individuals who “in some cases, were merely present on the Capitol grounds” under an obstruction statute that wasn’t intended to cover political protests and which isn’t used by the Biden DOJ when its political allies violate the same law in the same basic way. In other words, he’s concerned about a double standard under criminal law.

This isn’t Cotton’s concern alone. One of the few things that conservatives and liberals agree about is that America has a two-tiered justice system. Conservatives and liberals would cite different practices to support this view, but that doesn’t diminish the danger of such widespread, toxic cynicism about American justice,

Under Merrick Garland, a dishonest, hyper-partisan ideologue, there is more reason than ever for such cynicism.