Attorney general pick says Capitol riot top priority
WASHINGTON — Merrick Garland, President Biden’s nominee to be the next attorney general, told Congress on Monday that the investigation into the attack last month on the U.S. Capitol would be his top priority if confirmed to become the nation’s top law enforcement official.
“This was the most heinous attack on the democratic processes that I’ve ever seen, and one that I never expected to see in my lifetime,” Garland testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying he intended to give agents and prosecutors “all the resources they could possibly require to do this” investigation.
The 68yearold nominee spoke carefully, pledging to run the Justice Department independently of the White House. He testified that he believed Biden when the president vowed to stay out of Justice Department investigations and as attorney general would not tolerate interference from the White House.
Former President Donald Trump frequently pressed his attorneys general to open investigations into political rivals while urging them to go easy on his associates. The Justice Department took actions in several cases involving Trump’s associates that raised questions about the Justice Department’s autonomy.
“I am not the president’s lawyer,” Garland testified. “I am the United States’ lawyer, and I will do everything in my power, which I believe is considerable, to fend off any effort by anyone to make prosecutions or investigations partisan or political in any way.”
The committee could vote on the nomination as early as next Monday, and a vote on the Senate floor would follow soon thereafter. Garland is expected to win easy confirmation.
Democrats, who frequently complained about the Trump administration’s stonewalling of congressional investigations, also won a commitment from Garland to cooperate with their inquiries into the Justice Department.
Sen. Richard Durbin, DIll., the panel’s chairman, asked Garland if he would cooperate with his committee’s probe into the former administration’s policy of separating children from undocumented parents caught by authorities.
“I think that the policy was shameful,” Garland testified. “I can’t imagine anything worse than separating caring parents from their children.”
Among his highest priorities, Garland testified, would be beefing up enforcement of civil rights and voting rights laws.
“Communities of color and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system,” he testified, adding that such groups also “bear the brunt of harm caused by pandemic, pollution, and climate change.”
Garland is not expected to get much of a honeymoon if confirmed. He will immediately be tasked with supervising the prosecutions of people who are alleged to have attacked the Capitol and implementing the Biden administration’s progressive policies. The Justice Department has charged more than 250 individuals in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, an attack by a proTrump mob that put the lives of lawmakers, staffers, the public, reporters and police officers at risk. Five people, including a police officer, died during the siege.
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Garland joined the Justice Department in the 1980s. He helped supervise the investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing, the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. More than 165 people died in the 1995 explosion.
Garland left the Justice Department in 1997 when he won confirmation to become a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Republicans blocked his nomination to the Supreme Court five years ago.