So, why bring it now?
Trying to guess at the internal machinations for how a bureaucracy sets priorities and budgets is a bit of a fools errand though
That is a deeply cynical view on the nature of politics.
> So, why bring it now?
Why help anyone else if you can't score political points off the back of it? Possibly because it's the right thing to do and ideologically motivated people actually do successfully exist in government.
How? If the bid for re-election is lost, they leave office Jan 20th. That's not cynical. That's being able to read a calendar.
If you think a new administration, specifically the one that would be coming in, will not immediately reverse a lot of things, then you just have not been paying attention.
The incoming challenger is riding on a "populist" base. These polices are legitimate "populist" policies. The strategy here is obvious.
In theory.
Should we build a road is a classic political choice because people disagree even if it’s generally a net positive. Should we prosecute a murderer may qualify if there’s some twist (ex stand your ground) but not in the general case.
What laws get passed/repealed are decided on by people elected to office. Policies and priorities for departments are decided upon by political appointees. Decisions on cases though? Those are generally delegated to the civil service.
Now, from a practical standpoint, there's obviously ways you can muck with policies and priorities that can impact a particular case, just like there are ways that you can change the laws to muck with a particular case (you may recall when Florida went after Disney, they had to bend over backwards to draw up the law such that they could claim they weren't explicitly going after one company), but that's exactly the kind of stuff that draws criticism (and there are rules against it). There is absolutely a principle of independence & impartiality of the DOJ that's been the norm, even if recently that norm has been eroded.
"No!"
Fires leadership
"I want you to make sure this case goes nowhere, can you do that?"
"You got it!"
Hires
There certainly is some of this every administrative change over.
POTUS: Mr Attorney General, it is this administrations agenda to no longer pursue these specific cases: anything with me as the defendant.
AG: Understood Mr POTUS, we'll back burner everything that cannot just be stopped or dropped.
<end scene>
What leads you to believe it would most likely be dropped?
Okay, buddy.
Regardless of your political leanings, Biden himself extended a deeply reviled policy on handling border refugees. I think the “cooler” view is that they’re just figureheads.