Jonathan Turley has penned an extensive op-ed detailing why AG Merrick Garland’s tenure has been an abject failure, and there’s a lot to agree with. In it, the former prosecutor, who has become a trusted legal voice on the right, lays out why Garland’s tenure has devolved into yet another indictment on the DOJ’s rank partisanship.

But while I think the broad strokes are correct, I also think Turley missed the mark a bit. Let’s start with the introduction.

Merrick Garland began his tenure as attorney general with the stated intention of restoring faith in the Justice Department and the rule of law. By that standard, Garland has been a failure.

In fact, if anything, the crisis of faith surrounding his department has only deepened on his watch, and he bears some of the blame.

From the jump, I think Turley is being too kind. Garland is not responsible for “some of the blame.” He’s responsible for all of it. Yes, there are obviously pre-existing partisan forces at work throughout all levels of the DOJ, and yes, the White House has delivered the necessary winks and nods to those people.

The buck stops with Garland, though, and the continued sidestepping of his responsibility for his own department is part of a larger issue in Washington. Namely, people tie themselves into knots to excuse failure by insisting it’s always someone else’s fault because they were subverted somehow. Being subverted is a choice when you sit atop a power structure, though. Garland had a chance to come in and clean house. Instead, he promoted some of the worst actors in the DOJ and formed a clearly politically-charged relationship with Joe Biden. That’s on him.

But lest you think I’m being too pedantic about a four-word phrase by Turley, he continues with this.

When Biden gave the nod to Garland, I thought it was a brilliant move. Garland had been an affable, principled and moderate judge. Many of us criticized the Senate’s refusal to give him a vote after his nomination to the Supreme Court. I now believe that he would have made a great justice for all the reasons he has proven to be a poor attorney general.

He is affable but not influential or effective in changing the department. He is the very symbol for maintaining a status quo that the public rejects.

Again, I have to profusely disagree with Turley. Garland’s problem isn’t that he’s just too affable and principled. It’s that he’s a partisan hack. To suggest that he’d have still made a “great justice” due to his supposed moderation is a mistake. It’s staring the facade in the face and still insisting it’s reality. Garland has continually told you who he is with both his words and actions as AG. People should believe him.

Garland has had multiple chances to show he’s truly a principled actor. Instead, he turned a blind eye to left-wing violence and law-breaking during the battle over the Dobbs decision and allowed his own department to target parents as terrorists. Further, he told Congress that the DOJ did not interfere with the law enforcement response at the homes of the conservative Supreme Court Justices. Later, a whistleblower leaked presentation slides showing the order to not enforce the law came from the top. You can do the math on what that means.

Those are just a few examples, and Turley lists more of them throughout his article.

Garland could have taken steps to assure the public that there is not a two-tiered system of justice but repeatedly refused to do so. For example, Garland has continued to refuse to appoint a special counsel in the investigation of Hunter Biden. By doing so, Garland has removed the president’s greatest threat in the form of a report that would detail the scope of the Biden family’s alleged influence peddling and foreign contacts.

Here’s my issue with Turley’s conclusion. He seems to believe that Garland is just getting rolled in an attempt to remain as hands-off as possible. I don’t think that’s the case. Instead, I see Garland as a willing participant in the Biden administration’s further destruction of the DOJ.

In order for someone to be a failure, you have to ascertain what their original goal was. In my calculation, Garland’s original goal was not to restore unbiased integrity to the DOJ. Rather, it was to do the bidding of Joe Biden, the man who saved his career after a failed nomination to the Supreme Court.

So has Garland been a failure? On the contrary, he’s wildly succeeded at what he set out to do.