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Merrick Garland will finally face the Senate: Attorney general confirmation hearings start Monday

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Judge Merrick Garland, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to be U.S. Attorney General, speaks as Biden listens while announcing his Justice Department nominees at his transition headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, January 7, 2021.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Merrick Garland is finally getting his day before the Senate.

Garland, President Joe Biden’s pick to be attorney general, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday for the first day of his confirmation hearings, scheduled to continue through the week.

The hearings were delayed amid some partisan squabbling while Democrats and Republicans struggled to come to a power-sharing agreement in the evenly divided Senate.

Those delays came after Garland was denied any hearings at all in 2016, when former President Barack Obama nominated the centrist judge to the Supreme Court following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the conservative stalwart.

The federal appeals court judge is expected to be confirmed swiftly — likely by the start of March — though he may face some uncomfortable grilling, primarily from the panel’s Republicans.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the judiciary committee’s ranking Republican, has indicated that Garland will be quizzed about how he will handle the federal probe into Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, related to the younger Biden’s finances. Hunter Biden has disclosed that federal prosecutors are examining his “tax affairs.”

All-in-all, though, the hearings are likely to be low-drama. In a statement, Democratic Committee Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois called Garland “a consensus pick who should be confirmed swiftly on his merits.”

Question of independence

Garland has been a judge on the D.C Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals since 1997 and served as the chief judge on the court, considered the most important except the Supreme Court, from 2013 until 2020.

The 68-year-old, if confirmed, will lead the Department of Justice, which will be crucial to Biden’s agenda for criminal justice reform. Biden has also said that he hopes that, by choosing Garland, he will be able to demonstrate a contrast from President Donald Trump’s use of the department for self-serving aims.

“We need to restore the honor, the integrity, the independence of the DOJ of this nation that has been so badly damaged,” Biden said during a January speech introducing Garland.

“I want to be clear to those who lead this department who you will serve: You won’t work for me. You are not the president’s or the vice president’s lawyer,” Biden added. “Your loyalty is not to me. It’s to the law, the Constitution, the people of this nation.”

Trump’s four-year tenure was marked by controversy in the Justice Department.

His first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was ultimately forced to resign in 2018 after Trump attacked him for months over his decision to recuse himself from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

William Barr, Trump’s final attorney general, was accused of tampering in the prosecutions of Trump allies Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, and of issuing misleading statements related to Mueller’s final report.

Garland has pledged to maintain his independence.

“The essence of the rule of law is that like cases are treated alike: That there not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, one rule for friends, another for foes, one rule for the powerful, and another for the powerless,” he said last month.

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Scoop Sky is a blog with all the enjoyable information on many subjects, including fitness and health, technology, fashion, entertainment, dating and relationships, beauty and make-up, sports and many more.

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