Garland: Capitol riot probe to be top priority
Judge Merrick Garland on Monday said the United States faces “a more dangerous period” from domestic extremists than it faced at the time of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and praised the early stages of the investigation into the “white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol” on Jan. 6 as appropriately aggressive.
“I can assure you that this would be my first priority and my first briefing when I return to the department if I am confirmed,” Garland told the Senate Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearing to be attorney general.
Garland, 68, who led the Justice Department’s investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing, also vowed to uphold the independence of a Justice Department that had suffered deep politicization under the Trump administration.
“I do not plan to be interfered with by anyone,” Garland said. Should he be confirmed, he said that he would uphold the principle that “the attorney general represents the public interest.”
Former President Donald Trump spent his term treating federal prosecutors as either enemies to be crushed or players to be used to attack his political opponents, and Sen. Richard Durbin, Dill. and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in his opening remarks that Garland would need to “restore the faith of the American people and the rule of law and equal justice.”
Here is where Garland stood on some other key issues of the hearing:
Hunter Biden, John Durham and Trump-era investigations
The ranking Republican, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, pressed Garland on two politically charged investigations from the Trump era, asking whether he had discussed with President Joe Biden what he would do with a federal tax investigation into Biden’s son, Hunter, and whether he would let John Durham, a special counsel investigating the Trumprussia inquiry, finish his work and then make any Durham report public.
Garland said he had not discussed the case with the president and expected that “decisions about investigations and prosecutions will be left to the Justice Department.”
He demurred about the Durham investigation, saying that while he was committed to transparency, he had not yet been briefed about its status and findings.
“I don’t have any reason — from what I know now, which is really very little — to make any determination on that ground. I don’t have any reason to think that he should not remain in place,” he said of Durham. About the disclosure of any report, he added, “I would have to talk with Durham and understand the nature of what he has been doing and the nature of the report.”
Immigration and family separation
Garland also pledged that he would cooperate with the committee’s investigation into the actions of the Trump-era Justice Department on immigration and its “zero tolerance policy” that led to large numbers of parents being separated from their children.
“The policy was shameful,” he said. “I can’t imagine anything worse than separating parents from their children. And we will provide all of the cooperation that we possibly can.”
Civil rights
Garland said that he would reinvigorate the department’s civil rights division, which atrophied as the Trump administration curbed protections for transgender people and minorities, and barred policies intended to combat systemic discrimination.
“Communities of color and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment and the criminal justice system,” Garland said.
Progressives who have decried police killings and assaults on Black people have pushed local governments to “defund” police departments. Garland said that, like Biden, he does not “support defunding the police.”