Biden Regrets Hiring Merrick Garland Because He Didn’t Prosecute Trump Enough: REPORT

President Joe Biden regrets tapping Merrick Garland to be attorney general as he privately complains the Department of Justice didn’t do enough t0 prosecute President-elect Donald Trump, people familiar with his comments told The Washington Post.

As Trump is preparing to enter the White House in less than a month, the criminal cases against him have dissolved. Special counsel Jack Smith’s two federal cases against the president-elect will not proceed, and at the state level, two cases are also likely to be dismissed. Biden, in private, has complained that Garland’s DOJ was too slow in its prosecutions of Trump and too aggressive in its prosecutions of his son, Hunter Biden, people familiar with his comments told WaPo.

Biden’s first chief of staff, Ron Klain, pushed for the president to pick Garland as his attorney general during the 2020 transition, the outlet reported. Klain argued that Garland would help restore trust in the DOJ following Trump’s administration, but Democrats have voiced complaints that the pick has had “devastating results,” WaPo reported.

Within the party, Democrats wonder if the DOJ had moved faster on its prosecution of Trump, could he have faced more damning trials and charges ahead of the 2024 election, sources told WaPo.

Garland appointed special counsel David Weiss in August 2023 to investigate Hunter Biden and a month later the special counsel brought charges against the president’s son. Weiss alleged that the president’s son knowingly possessed the Colt Cobra while addicted to drugs and made false statements about his drug use on the purchase form.

A Delaware jury then convicted Hunter on the charges and after months of insisting he would not pardon his son, the president cleared his son of his crimes. (RELATED: KJP Takes Verbal Flogging From Reporters After Biden Pardons Hunter)

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough,” the president wrote in his announcement that he was pardoning his son.

US President Joe Biden (2nd L) walks with son Hunter Biden (R), grandson Beau and daughter-in-law Melissa Cohen Biden after having lunch in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on November 29, 2024. Biden and family are in Nantucket, Massachusetts, for the Thanksgiving holiday.  (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

The president, alongside some of his aides, also believe he shouldn’t have dropped out of the presidential race, WaPo reported. Biden and his aides have told others that they believe the now 82-year-old could have defeated Trump but the president is careful to not pin the blame for the loss on Vice President Kamala Harris, people familiar with their comments told WaPo.

Though Biden is withholding blame from Harris, many within the Democratic Party blame the president for not dropping out earlier and leaving the vice president just a few months to try to defeat Trump, WaPo reported. Others, according to the outlet, blame Biden’s messaging.

“Biden ran on the promise that he was going to be a transitional president, and in effect, have one term before handing it off to another generation,” Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal told the outlet. “I think his running again broke that concept — the conceptual underpinning of the theory that he would end the Trump appeal, he would defeat Trumpism and enable a new era.”