By Sadie Gurman and Aruna Viswanatha
WASHINGTON -- Judge Merrick Garland, President Biden's pick for
attorney general, promised to combat the rising threat of domestic
extremism, saying that a sprawling federal investigation into the
Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol would be his first priority if
confirmed for the job.
"I think 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, " Judge Garland told the Senate Judiciary Committee
on Monday. He added that the current investigation into the riot --
which has led around 250 people to face criminal charges to date --
appeared to be "extremely aggressive and perfectly
appropriate."
Judge Garland, a 1997 Clinton appointee to the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, received a warm
welcome as his confirmation hearing opened. Republicans and
Democrats hailed the nominee, who spearheaded domestic terrorism
investigations in the 1990s, as qualified both to fight the threat
of extremist violence and to steady a Justice Department roiled by
political storms during the Trump administration.
"I can think of few people better suited" to lead the
department, said Sen. Richard Durbin (D., Ill.), the Judiciary
Committee chairman. The top two Republicans on the panel, Chuck
Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina both
described the judge as a "good pick."
While the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack is expected to
largely go on unchanged, Judge Garland, if confirmed, is expected
to oversee a dramatic shift in the agency's approach to a series of
other issues, from civil-rights enforcement and police reform to
the use of the federal death penalty and the level of discretion
prosecutors have in charging crimes.
"My grandparents fled anti-Semitism and persecution. The country
took us in and protected us," Judge Garland said, choking back
tears as he recounted his family's arrival in the U.S. "I feel an
obligation to the country to pay back. This is the highest, best
use of my own set of skills to pay back," he said.
Several senators pressed the judge on how he would handle
politically sensitive investigations and potential pressure from
the White House, after Democrats repeatedly criticized former
President Donald Trump for what they viewed as his efforts to
insert himself in the Justice Department's traditionally
independent affairs.
"I do not plan to be interfered with by anyone. I expect the
Justice Department will make its own decisions in this regard,"
Judge Garland said.
"I would not have taken this job if I thought the politics would
have any influence over prosecutions and investigations," he
said.
Republicans in particular pressed Mr. Garland on how he would
handle a criminal tax investigation into Mr. Biden's son, Hunter,
and a special-counsel probe examining the origins of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation's 2016 Russia probe being overseen by
Connecticut federal prosecutor John Durham.
Judge Garland said he planned to be briefed on Mr. Durham's
investigation as one of his first acts on the job, and said he
approved of keeping Mr. Durham at the department to complete his
inquiry.
He also said he never discussed the investigation into the
younger Mr. Biden with the president, and said he agreed to be
nominated because Mr. Biden had said that decisions about
investigations and prosecutions would be left to the Justice
Department.
That Judge Garland was taking questions from senators who will
vote on his confirmation was a dramatic turnabout from 2016, when
Senate Republicans, then in the majority, refused to grant Judge
Garland a hearing after President Barack Obama nominated him for
the Supreme Court.
Judge Garland also told senators he would also pursue strong
enforcement of civil-rights laws, citing the Justice Department's
original mission to enforce amendments to the Constitution that
provide broader rights and protections for Black Americans that
grew out of the Civil War. Democrats want him to make racial
justice a focus of the department's work after last summer's
protests over police killings and abuse of Black people.
Under questioning from Democrats, he said the Justice Department
in some cases should wield its civil-rights authority to pursue
far-ranging civil-rights investigations, known as
pattern-and-practice probes, into police departments, which
sometimes end in court-enforceable improvement plans. The Trump
administration had sharply curtailed those investigations,
believing it was unfair for the federal government to impose costly
changes on cities.
"It is an important tool the department has for ensuring
accountability, " Judge Garland said. But he said he agreed with
Mr. Biden that police departments shouldn't be stripped of their
funds, which some liberal activists had suggested in response to
high-profile police shootings this summer.
"We saw how difficult the lives of police officers were in the
body-cam videos we saw when they were defending the Capitol," he
said.
On the federal death penalty, which the Trump administration
restarted after a nearly 20-year-hiatus, Judge Garland said he is
concerned about "a large number of exonerations," the "increasing
randomness, almost arbitrariness of its application" and
"enormously disparate impact on Black Americans and other
communities of color." The policy would ultimately be decided by
Mr. Biden, who is also opposed to capital punishment.
Several Republicans also pressed the judge on how he would
address rising violent-crime rates around the country, and the
violence that followed some Black Lives Matter protests last
summer. Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), asked whether he viewed
"assaults on federal courthouses or other federal properties acts
of...domestic terrorism," referring to related damage during
nighttime unrest in Portland, Ore. Judge Garland said he viewed any
attack on government property as a crime, but would view it as a
domestic extremist attack if demonstrators were specifically
seeking to halt federal operations. "Both are criminal, but one is
a core attack on our democratic institutions," he said.
Judge Garland would supervise, as well, the antitrust case
against Alphabet Inc.'s Google -- the biggest such lawsuit in
decades -- filed by the department in the fall, alleging the tech
giant used anticompetitive tactics to maintain a monopoly position
in search and search advertising. Google denies the
allegations.
The judge, who described antitrust issues as his "first love in
law school," said he would take antitrust enforcement seriously,
but didn't address specific cases. "The Supreme Court has
repeatedly referred to the antitrust laws as the charter of
American economic liberty, and I deeply believe that," he said.
Judge Garland's allies portrayed him as uniquely equipped for
the task of running the agency in the post-Trump era, likening the
judge's potential tenure to that of Edward Levi, President Gerald
Ford's attorney general, who is widely credited for restoring
public trust in the Justice Department after the Watergate scandal.
On Monday morning, two of Mr. Levi's sons released letters in
support of the judge's nomination.
Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com and Aruna
Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 22, 2021 14:06 ET (19:06 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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