Merrick Garland was Biden’s consensus pick. Now everyone hates him.
Merrick Garland has staked his career at the Department of Justice on being an independent attorney general.
He has tapped three special counsels to investigate President Joe Biden — the man who nominated him — his son Hunter Biden and former President Donald Trump. He has charged more than 1,200 Jan. 6 defendants. He even navigated the discovery of classified documents at the home of former Vice President Mike Pence, for which he opted not to appoint a prosecutor, and ultimately decided to file no charges.
But rather than being revered as a straight shooter, Garland has become reviled. He is a man alone on an island in Washington, taking unyielding blowback from the right and left. On Capitol Hill Tuesday, he seemed to have finally had enough.
“I will not be intimidated. And the Justice Department will not be intimidated,” Garland told Republican members of the House Oversight Committee as he set out to defend himself and the department against Republicans’ attacks.
At a moment when Trump is calling the criminal justice system into question following his conviction by a Manhattan jury, Garland’s insistence that the system is on the level was particularly striking. And he made no bones about the severity with which he viewed Republicans’ attacks.
“We will continue to do our jobs free from political influence. And we will not back down from defending democracy,” Garland said in his remarks.
Garland’s tenure has earned him a bipartisan reputation as one of the most loathed men in Washington and the butt of jokes for late night television hosts: Bill Maher called him “Attorney General Barney Fife” and said “when we needed a pit bull, we got a purse dog.”
But Doug Jones, the former Democratic senator and a Biden ally who was considered by the president as an attorney general pick before Garland’s selection, defended the man who got the job.
“The nature of the beast, the nature of that job, is that you often have to take tough decisions, make tough decisions and move in certain directions that are not going to be popular with somebody, and it will be a target,” Jones said.
Garland has defenders beyond Jones, including from within D.C.’s extensive legal circles and among DOJ alumni. But he has not been a skilled political player. And the blowback he has endured has come from the left, the right and everywhere in between.
Even Biden and his closest advisers have criticized him; not just for failing to rein in special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into his handling of classified documents — resulting in Biden suffering political blowback over whether his memory was faltering — but for dragging his feet in the DOJ’s investigation into whether Trump interfered in the 2020 election. Democrats have gone so far as to call Garland’s appointment a “mistake,” and suggested he is “Biden’s worst appointee by an order of magnitude.”
On Tuesday, Republicans targeted him for not releasing Hur’s interview recordings, which Democrats fear will be used to attack the president. (Garland has defended the DOJ, saying they have released transcripts.) They also attacked him over Trump’s criminal hush money prosecution even though that case was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and had no connection to the Justice Department.
Garland called it a “conspiracy theory” that the Justice Department “somehow controlled” Bragg’s case. But that did little to mollify his GOP critics.
“Of course he is corrupt,” Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) told POLITICO. “The whole Democratic Party over there is corrupt right now … Well, look at what they’ve done to President Trump. … They’re all in the same boat and row in the same direction, and it is corruption.”
Republicans criticized Garland from the beginning of his annual hearing. “Justice is no longer blind in America. Today it’s driven by politics. Example number one, President Trump,” Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) said during his opening statement.
Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told POLITICO that “100 percent” Garland is corrupt. “It’s just so unbelievable … I never thought I’d see the day, where in United States of America, a political party was trying to jail their opposition. But here we are.”
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), chair of the Republican Main Street Caucus would not go as far as calling Garland corrupt, but he emphasized the DOJ chief needs to turn over the interview recordings. “I’m a little surprised he hasn’t. This is not an unreasonable request. The transcripts are already public. This is the kind of thing that counsel asks for all the time and gets access to. I for the life of me don’t understand why the Attorney General isn’t willing to cooperate.”
In his feisty testimony, Garland defended himself and his department. “Certain members of this committee and the Oversight Committee are seeking contempt as a means of obtaining — for no legitimate purpose — sensitive law enforcement information that could harm the integrity of future investigations,” Garland said.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For Biden, Garland’s efforts to maintain independence cut both ways. He announced his nomination following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. “Your loyalty is not to me,” Biden said. “You won’t work for me. You are not the president or the vice president’s lawyer.”
Biden’s comments at the time represented what some saw as a rebuke to Trump, who leaned on his attorneys general Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr to side in his favor.
Jones said Garland has delivered.
“That is exactly what I think that the Biden administration was looking for: someone that would be careful, judicious, deliberate, professional and non-political,” Jones said. “And I think he has certainly fit that bill. And today was a time for him to come to the defense of the Department of Justice in a very forceful way. And today’s testimony, from what I saw, was a forceful defense of the Department of Justice and its employees and democracy and the rule of law.”
Olivia Beavers contributed to this story.
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