US Attorney General Nominee Merrick Garland Faces Confirmation Hearing

U.S. Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland, nominated by President Joe Biden as the country’s top law enforcement official, plans to tell senators at his confirmation hearing Monday that he is committed to fighting discrimination and extremist attacks against the government.

The 68-year-old Garland, currently a federal appellate court judge in Washington and in 2016 a Supreme Court nominee whom Senate Republicans refused to consider in a presidential election year, is one of Biden’s most important Cabinet nominees.

If confirmed by the Senate, he would head the Department of Justice amid its ongoing investigation of hundreds of supporters of President Donald Trump, many of them with anti-government views, who stormed into the U.S. Capitol last month to confront lawmakers as they were certifying that Biden defeated Trump in last November’s election.

In addition, Garland could oversee contentious racial disputes involving law enforcement abuses of minorities in criminal cases that led to massive street demonstrations in recent months.

And John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas issued a statement January 25 saying he expected to support Garland’s nomination.

“Judge Garland’s extensive legal experience makes him well-suited to lead the Department of Justice, and I appreciated his commitment to keep politics out of the Justice Department,” Cornyn’s statement added.

Garland has been a federal appeals court judge in Washington for the past two decades. Early in his career, Garland was best known for overseeing the investigation and prosecution of Timothy McVeigh, the man who detonated a bomb outside a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people. McVeigh was convicted, sentenced to death and executed in 2001.

Now, Garland says that experience will put him in good stead in the investigation of the attack on the Capitol.

“If confirmed, I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on January 6 — a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government,” he says in his prepared remarks.

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