To everyone out there who thought Attorney General Merrick Garland and his “Justice” Department couldn’t get any scummier, any sleazier, any slipperier than to raid the home of a former U.S. president: Think again.

Merrick and his merry men have since hopped into bed and started swapping spit with the Trump-hating hacks at The Washington Post, thereby to execute a death-by-a-thousand-leaks strategy against the former (and perhaps future) president, Donald Trump. As Power Line’s John Hinderaker writes:

The Biden Department of Justice follows a contemptible practice: when questioned by reporters, it declines to comment, and then leaks its preferred spin to friendly news outlets. DOJ/FBI is up to its old tricks with the latest leak to its mouthpiece, the Washington Post. DOJ is fighting a propaganda war over its raid on Donald Trump’s house, and so far it has not obviously been winning.

Hinderaker goes on to speculate that “Trump and Biden are collaborating in what both want — the elevation of a faux controversy over a few boxes of White House files into an election-defining battle.”

That’s some serious 4-D chess there. And we’re not sure we buy it. Trump doesn’t relish being indicted. He relishes being able to run again, and to do so by contrasting his undeniably excellent record of accomplishments against Joe Biden’s undeniable record of miserable failures.

Think about it: Trump achieved arguably the most stunning electoral victory in American history, singlehandedly whipping the Clinton machine, the Obama machine, the Bush machine, and the Democrat and Republican establishments. Trump then undid Barack Obama’s freedom-crushing regulatory state, lowered our taxes, got our economy roaring, kept inflation down, kept gas prices low, secured our southern border, kept us out of war, rebuilt our military, kept Russia from invading Ukraine, made us energy independent, took on China, checked Iran, obliterated ISIS, forged the Abraham Accords, moved our embassy to Jerusalem, kept our NATO allies from freeloading, promoted American exceptionalism, became the most pro-life president in American history, handed conservatives us a 6-3 Supreme Court majority, and laid the groundwork for overturning Roe v. Wade. All for a salary of $1 per year. Oh, and he sent some mean tweets along the way, usually to folks who deserved ‘em.

And Biden’s accomplishments? We’ll wait.

Now then, back to the leaks: “Material on foreign nation’s nuclear capabilities seized at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago,” blared the headline of the Post’s latest journalistic shiv. “Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them,” the Post’s DNC mouthpieces continued. “Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive details of an ongoing investigation.”

Those people “familiar with the search,” eh? Might those be the same people who rifled through Trump’s papers there at Mar-a-Lago and painstakingly laid out the most salacious ones for a quick photo shoot of “Top Secret” stuff?

What kind of Justice Department does this? What kind of Justice Department redacts 90% of a search-warrant affidavit because the information contained therein might compromise its investigation, but then leaks pictures and details of ostensibly super-sensitive documents to a Trump-hating media?

“Since I became attorney general,” Garland told us last month after the unprecedented Mar-a-Lago raid, “I have made clear that the Department of Justice will speak through its court filings and its work.”

Uh-huh.

Since that time, it’s been one leak after another.

“Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy,” Garland continued. “Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor. Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing. All Americans are entitled to the evenhanded application of the law, to due process of the law, and to the presumption of innocence. Much of our work is by necessity conducted out of the public eye. We do that to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans and to protect the integrity of our investigations.”

Does anyone really believe this stuff? Does anyone really believe that Merrick Garland gives a rip about “rule of law”? About “applying the law evenly” to Donald Trump? About affording him the same “presumption of innocence” that, say, Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden have been getting? What does our current president have to say about all this? Didn’t he preach “unity” and say his “whole soul” was in it? Didn’t he promise to “fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did”?

Joe Biden isn’t about to rein in his rogue attorney general. But as for these leaks, the New York Post editorial board sums up their newsworthiness this way: “It’s impossible to take seriously the lecturing on how incredibly dangerous and unprecedented the Mar-a-Lago stash is when its details are given out anonymously to select members of the press.”

Leaks are a vile thing, especially when our elected and appointed officials are behind them. And, ultimately, they tend to say more about the leakers themselves than the things being leaked.