WASHINGTON — Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden’s attorney general nominee, is expected to face questions Monday about how he plans to navigate some daunting challenges, including an investigation of the president’s son and the actions of the former president and his close advisers.
During a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Garland will likely stress his goal of protecting the independence of the Justice Department from White House political interference in law enforcement investigations, after William Barr was frequently accused, including by federal judges, of putting Donald Trump’s interests ahead of the department’s.
When his nomination was announced last month, he said he will strive to see that “like cases are treated alike, that there not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, one rule for friends, the other for foes.”
Senators will seek assurances that he will not allow politics to influence a tax investigation, begun under Barr, of Biden’s son, Hunter, or of former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s dealings with the Ukrainian government. He’ll also face questions about Special Counsel John Durham, appointed by Barr to examine the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
Democrats may press him to explain how he’ll evaluate allegations that remarks by Trump and Giuliani incited the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Senate voted not to convict the former president, but Republican leader Mitch McConnell said: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.”
Garland and his deputies will face the task of managing the federal investigation of the riot, with more 250 individuals charged so far and more than 550 investigations now open. In his prepared remarks for the hearing, he called it “a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”
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He will confront an even bigger challenge in deciding whether and how federal law should be changed to give the FBI more latitude to investigate domestic terrorism, without violating the right of free expression. Matthew Schneider, who as U.S. Attorney in Detroit charged members of an extremist group with plotting to kidnap Michigan’s governor, said it’s one of the biggest questions facing law enforcement.
“Any time there is a significant event in U.S. history, there has been a change in the law,” he said. “There was organized crime in the 70’s, they passed RICO [the federal racketeering law]. Credit card fraud in the 80’s, they passed ID statutes. After 9/11 they passed the Patriot Act. So the question is, do you believe after January 6 we need a new domestic terrorism law?”
If confirmed — as seems likely, with Democrats controlling the Senate — Garland will return to the department he left 24 years ago to become a federal appeals court judge in Washington. He first came to public attention in 1995: after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, Garland was appointed to oversee the government’s handling of the case.
President Bill Clinton put him on the appeals court, and in 2016 Barack Obama nominated Garland to succeed Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court. But Republicans blocked the nomination, and Garland never even had a hearing.
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Garland’s prepared remarks said the mission to uphold civil rights remains urgent. “We do not yet have equal justice. Communities of color and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system,” he said.
A bipartisan group of more than 150 former Justice Department officials signed a letter supporting Garland’s current nomination, including four former attorneys general — Democrats Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, and Republicans Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey.
In announcing his choice of Garland for attorney general, Biden said: “You won’t work for me. You are not the president or the vice-president’s lawyer. Your loyalty is not to be. It’s to the law, the Constitution, the people of this nation.”
On Monday, Garland will answer hours of questions about how he’ll put that goal into practice.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
