Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Senate confirms Garland as attorney general
He receives support of Republicans; Boozman, Cotton are not among them
WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed Merrick Garland on Wednesday as the next U.S. attorney general with a strong bipartisan vote, placing the widely respected, veteran judge in the post as President Joe Biden has vowed to restore the Justice Department’s reputation for independence.
Democrats have praised Garland, a federal appeals court judge who was snubbed by Republicans for a seat on the Supreme Court in 2016, as a highly qualified and honorable jurist who is uniquely qualified to lead the department after four years under former President Donald Trump. Many Republicans praised Garland as well, saying he has the right record and temperament for the moment. He was confirmed 70-30.
Arkansas’ two U.S. senators, Republicans John Boozman and Tom Cotton, voted against Garland’s confirmation.
In a floor speech Wednesday ahead of the vote, Cotton said his confidence in Garland had been undermined by Garland’s “evasive, haughty refusal to answer some of the most basic questions we would expect from an attorney general.”
More than 250 times, Garland had failed to provide substantive answers to questions on a broad range of topics, Cotton said.
The answers Garland did
supply made him sound “like a liberal ideologue who would embrace the radical agenda of the Democratic Party’s far left base,” Cotton said.
“If confirmed, I’m afraid that he’ll enable extremists in the Department of Justice to undermine our police, our Constitution, and our rule of law,” the lawmaker from Little Rock said.
“This weak-on-crime nominee will fan the flames of our nation’s drug crisis, border crisis, violent crime crisis. And he’s made clear that on the greatest challenges facing the department, he’ll cede the reins to the radical, far left cultural warriors, that President Biden has nominated to be some of his top deputies,” Cotton said.
Boozman spokesman Matt Wester on Wednesday evening declined to comment on Boozman’s vote, saying the lawmaker from Rogers had not yet publicly addressed his opposition to the nominee.
At his confirmation hearing, Garland, 68, said becoming attorney general would “be the culmination of a career I have dedicated to ensuring that the laws of our country are fairly and faithfully enforced, and the rights of all Americans are protected.”
Garland will now inherit a Justice Department embattled by a turbulent four years under Trump, who insisted that the attorney general and the department be loyal to him personally, battering the department’s reputation. In the last month of Trump’s presidency, Attorney General William Barr resigned after rebutting Trump’s claims that widespread electoral fraud had led to his defeat.
Trump’s pressure on officials, particularly on Barr and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the department’s probe into his campaign’s ties to Russia, prompted abundant criticism from Democrats over what they saw as the politicizing of the nation’s top law enforcement agencies.
“After Donald Trump spent four years — four long years — subverting the powers of the Justice Department for his own political benefit, treating the attorney general like his own personal defense lawyer, America can breathe a sigh of relief that we’re going to have someone like Merrick Garland leading the Justice Department,” said Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., ahead of the vote.
“Someone with integrity, independence, respect for the rule of law and credibility on both sides of the aisle.”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell — who prevented Garland from becoming a Supreme Court justice in 2016 when he blocked Garland’s nomination — said he was voting to confirm Garland because of “his long reputation as a straight shooter and a legal expert” and that his “left-of-center perspective” was still within the legal mainstream.
“Let’s hope our incoming attorney general applies that no-nonsense approach to the serious challenges facing the Department of Justice and our nation,” McConnell said.
HIGH COURT BLOCK
Garland’s nomination was widely seen as a redemption. McConnell had blocked his Supreme Court nomination, taking a political gamble after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia by saying that the next president should pick Scalia’s successor, not outgoing President Barack Obama. Garland’s nomination floundered for nine months, and he never got a hearing.
“We can never erase the sad memory of what happened to Judge Merrick Garland five years ago in the United States Senate, but we can give this remarkable man an opportunity to write a new chapter of public service in his life,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., just before the vote.
As he sat before the Judiciary panel in February, Garland sought to assure lawmakers that the Justice Department would remain politically independent on his watch. He said his first priority would be to combat extremist violence with an initial focus on the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, promising lawmakers that he would provide prosecutors with whatever resources they need to file charges over the attack.
Garland also will inherit immediate political challenges, including an ongoing criminal tax investigation into Biden’s son, Hunter, and a federal probe into the overseas and business dealings of the former New York City mayor and Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, which stalled last year over a dispute about investigative tactics as Trump sought reelection.
His confirmation also comes as calls arise from many Democrats to pursue inquiries into Trump.
Separately, Garland will be responsible for overseeing a special counsel investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, which shadowed Trump’s presidency for more than two years. Garland will have to decide how to handle it and what to make public.
An experienced judge, Garland held senior positions at the Justice Department decades ago, including as a supervisor in the prosecution of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which led to the execution of Timothy McVeigh.
During his confirmation hearing, Garland said he would rely on his experience leading the department’s investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing to help again combat domestic extremism.
“I supervised the prosecution of the perpetrators of the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, who sought to spark a revolution that would topple the federal government,” he said. “I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”
During the Clinton administration, he was chosen by Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general, to serve as her top deputy. After the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, he went on to supervise other high-profile cases that included the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, and the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
The investigations helped cement Garland’s reputation as a fair-minded centrist.
The department’s priorities and messaging are expected to shift drastically in the Biden administration, with a focus more on civil rights issues, criminal justice overhauls and policing policies in the wake of nationwide protests over the death of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement.
At his confirmation hearing, Garland emphasized his commitment to combating racial discrimination in policing, telling senators that America doesn’t “yet have equal justice.” He also said he’d prioritize confronting the rise in extremist violence and domestic terror threats.
At one point in the hearing, he held back tears when speaking about his grandparents, who fled Russia for the U.S. amid antisemitism and persecution.
“The country took us in, and protected us, and I feel an obligation to the country to pay back, and this is the highest, best use of my own set of skills to pay back,” Garland said. “So I very much want to be the kind of attorney general that you’re saying I could become, and I’ll do my best to become that kind of attorney general.”
Information for this article was contributed by Michael Balsamo, Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro of The Associated Press; by Katie Benner of The New York Times; and by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.