“A one-day hearing like you are proposing the day before a former president’s impeachment trial is insufficient,” Graham (RS.C.) said in a letter to Durbin. “Democrats fail to score political points in an unprecedented act of political theater on the one hand, while also trying to claim the mantle of good government on the other.”
The dispute over Garland’s confirmation hearing is the Senate’s last 50-50 complication. While Democrats control the Senate, party leaders have yet to finalize an organizational resolution that will determine committees for the upper house. Until the organizing resolution is passed, Republicans like Graham still hold the hammers of the previous Congressional committees.
As soon as the Senate adopts the organizing resolution, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) will take over as the main Republican on the Judiciary Committee.
In his letter, Durbin wrote that his committee’s team has been working with Republican colleagues to schedule Garland’s hearing, but now they have encountered “obstacles that needlessly delay” his confirmation. Durbin added that he was “prepared to take further steps to speed up the Senate’s consideration of the appointment of Judge Garland, if his hearing does not advance on February 8” in the absence of cooperation from the Republican Party.
Biden told the committee’s staff on January 6 that he planned to appoint Garland as attorney general. Garland is the former chief judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He was also chosen by President Barack Obama for the Supreme Court in 2016, but his appointment was blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate.
The Senate Judiciary Committee received Garland’s paperwork last week. Typically, the committee has 28 days between receipt of the candidate’s paperwork and the confirmation hearing.
But in his letter on Monday, Durbin argued that a February 8 hearing “gives enough time to review Judge Garland’s record” and added that it would be 13 days after the Committee received the paperwork, “the same period of time between then Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s receipt [committee questionnaire] and its appointment to the Supreme Court. ”
Graham replied that Garland’s situation is different from Barrett’s because she was most recently confirmed by the Senate for the Circuit’s Seventh Court of Appeals. He added that the previous five attorney generals had two-day hearings. Usually, the nominee testifies on the first day of the hearing and outside experts testify on the second.
“Judge Barrett did not receive a free pass at a routine four-day hearing during his confirmation at the Supreme Court, and Judge Garland should also not receive one,” wrote Graham. “The reason we can’t give Judge Garland two days next week is, of course, that Senate Democrats voted in favor
proceed with the impeachment trial of former President Trump on February 9. “