The last time Merrick Garland was nominated by the White House for a post, the Republicans didn’t even meet him.
Now, the previously rejected Supreme Court choice will finally reach the Senate, this time as president Joe Bidenchoice of the attorney general. Garland, a judge at the appeals court, is due to go through his confirmation process, which starts Monday before the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee, with bipartisan support.
“Judge Garland’s vast legal experience makes him suitable for leading the Department of Justice, and I appreciate his commitment to keeping politics out of the Department of Justice,” Senator. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said in a statement. “Unless I hear something new, I hope to support your nomination before the entire Senate.”
Biden’s choice of Garland reflects the president’s goal of restoring the department’s reputation as an independent body. During his four years as president, Donald Trump insisted that the attorney general should be loyal to him personally, a position that has shaken the department’s reputation. Garland’s appointment to the upper court by the President Barack Obama in 2016 he died because the Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold a hearing.
Garland will inherit a Justice Department that went through a tumultuous period under Trump’s command – fraught with political drama and controversial decisions – and much criticism from Democrats about what they saw as the politicization of the country’s top law enforcement agencies.
The department’s priorities and messages are expected to change dramatically in the Biden administration, focusing more on the issue of civil rights, criminal justice reviews and policing policies in the wake of national protests about the death of black Americans at the hands of the authorities.
Garland plans to tell senators that the department must ensure that laws are “applied fairly and faithfully” and the rights of all Americans are protected, while reaffirming adherence to policies to protect their political independence, with the attorney General acting as an attorney for the American people, not for the president. The Justice Department released a copy of Garland’s opening statement late on Saturday.
Garland will also face some immediate challenges, including the criminal tax investigation of Biden’s son Hunter, and calls from some Democrats to investigate Trump, especially after thousands of pro-Trump protesters stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, while the Congress met to certify Biden’s electoral victory. Garland, in his prepared comments to the Senate committee, calls the insurrection “a heinous attack that sought to distrust a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”
An investigation by a special lawyer initiated by William Barr, while he was Attorney General, the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation also remain open. It will be up to Garland to decide what to make public from this report,
Garland had been at the center of a political storm for five years, as part of a Republican gamble that ended up shaping the future of the Supreme Court. As Obama’s candidate to replace the late judge Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly in February 2016, Garland was a moderate choice and was generally well liked by senators.
But the majority leader Mitch McConnell he said hours after Scalia’s death that he would not consider any Obama candidate – and that voters should decide by choosing a new president in November. All of McConnell’s caucus went together. Many refused to even meet with Garland, although some questioned the strategy in particular.
It was a great political risk. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton he was ahead in most polls and could easily have nominated someone more liberal than Garland if he had won the White House. But she didn’t, Trump did and Republicans were elated to vote to confirm Neil Gorsuch as a judge a year later. The bet later yielded unexpected returns, as the Senate remained in the hands of the Republicans for the next four years and Trump had the opportunity to appoint two additional conservative judges, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, reshaping the court’s political balance.
Prior to the Supreme Court drama, Garland was repeatedly praised by some Republicans as exactly the kind of moderate nominee they could support.
The criticism, so to speak, came from liberals, who expected Obama to choose someone more progressive, or more diverse, than Garland. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, then seeking the 2016 nomination against Clinton, said he would not have chosen Garland. Groups of liberal activists were weak in their support.
Sen. Lindsay Graham, the Republican of South Carolina, was one of the few senators who met with Garland, but he did not change his position that a president should not choose a Supreme Court nominee in an election year. Graham reversed the course when his party got the chance, forcing Coney Barrett to nominate in record time during a global pandemic that the party lost a few weeks before the 2020 election.
Graham said in a tweet that Garland would be a “right choice” to lead the Justice Department. “He is a man of great character, integrity and tremendous competence in the law.”
Garland is a white man, but two other members of the Justice Department leadership, Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke, are women with significant civil rights experience. His choices seemed intended to allay any concerns about Biden’s choice as attorney general and served as a sign that progressive causes would be prioritized in the new administration.
Garland is an experienced judge who held senior positions in the Justice Department decades ago, including as a supervisor in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing charge. But he is set to return to a department that is radically different from the one he left. His experience in prosecuting domestic terrorism cases can be exceptionally useful now.
Garland is likely to face pressure from civil rights groups to end the federal death penalty after an unprecedented series of death sentences during the Trump administration. Thirteen federal executions were carried out in six months, and they became super-popular during the coronavirus pandemic.
There may also be doubts about how the department is handling a federal criminal and civil rights investigation that examines whether members of the New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s government intentionally manipulated data on coronavirus deaths in nursing homes.
The new chairman of the Senate committee responsible for the nomination, Senator Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, said Garland deserved the job.
“And in light of his previous United States Senate treatment, his day before the microphones should have passed,” said Durbin.
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Republished with permission from The Associated Press.
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