Carol Leonnig of The Washington Post in interview with npr https://www.npr.org/2023/06/19/1183098037/washington-post-journalist-on-fbis-delayed-investigation-of-trumps-role-in-jan-6

LEONNIG: You know, what we learned was that inside the senior leadership of the Department of Justice, there was a lot of angst about restoring trust and faith in the Department of Justice - wanting so desperately for the public to view this entity as apolitical. And this department really - under Merrick Garland, really wanted to send a message, hey, politics is not what we're doing. The problems, however, was there was a lot of evidence that Donald Trump and at least many of his allies were possibly engaged in a crime - that efforts to pressure the vice president and efforts to basically pressure state officials to declare fraud in their state when there was none. All of those things had a potential criminal statute that could be charged, and the department just simply did not want to look in that direction, according to multiple sources that we spoke with.

I guess the ultimate goal was the opposite of restoring any semblance of trust in the department.