A reporter at the Department of Justice on Friday asked Attorney General Merrick Garland the question that’s been on many minds of late: Why hasn’t former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows been formally charged with criminal contempt of Congress?

On December 14 the full House of Representatives sent DOJ a contempt of Congress referral for Meadows. Since that time even more damning information has been reported by the press.

The attorney general was not just unwilling to give a direct answer, he was unwilling to even confirm there was a referral sent to DOJ, a commonly-known fact that is also in the official Congressional Record.

"Four months is a gracious plenty of time to make a decision about whether to prosecute Meadows, especially since SCOTUS has mostly resolved the executive privilege argument,” former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance noted on Twitter.