Internecine Democratic battle playing out in choice for attorney general

Yet with this summer’s racial unrest at risk of flaring up again, liberal Democrats, particularly black liberal Democrats, are pushing Biden to pick someone who will champion criminal justice reform within the Department of Justice.

And they don’t seem to think Garland is their man.

Garland, 68, was Obama’s nominee to succeed conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia after Scalia’s death in 2016. Obama selected Garland, in part, because his judicial record was palatable to some Senate Republicans. Then-Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch once even called him a “consensus nominee,” with Garland erring more conservative in his rulings regarding states rights and police authority.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to schedule a hearing or vote given it was an election year and he held the gavel. It’s a precedent McConnell broke this cycle for Justice Amy Coney Barrett following Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. And Democrats trashed McConnell on both occasions for “stealing” a seat on the bench.

Biden choosing Garland would return the onetime Supreme Court clerk and corporate litigator to the DOJ.

The DOJ is where Garland once helped lead the investigations and prosecutions of the 1995 Oklahoma City and the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing perpetrators, as well as Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber.” And where he eventually rose to be Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick’s right-hand man in 1994.

Yet Garland’s DOJ experience has been overlooked by detractors advocating for Jones or their own preferences.

Current and former prosecutors have suggested the DOJ needs an attorney general who understands the department and can review its cases to determine whether there were matters that should have been pursued under President Trump or not.

Two-term Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler agreed in an interview with the Washington Examiner.

“The Department of Justice is a massive, massive organization that does an enormous amount of work,” he said. “And the attorney general, his or herself, needs to be somebody who can manage that, who can run the office,” he said.

Gansler, who emphasized the importance of depoliticizing the DOJ, added it “should not be a surprise to anybody” that Biden was considering a centrist given his own ideology.

“But when a person of color is shot in the back by a police officer, you don’t have to be a moderate, a right-wing republican, or a left-wing Democrat to know that that’s wrong,” he said.

Merrick’s rise as Biden ruminates on his attorney general, though, may have caused some liberal Democrats to rethink their initial coolness toward Jones.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson and Rev. Al Sharpton, for instance, have lobbied hard for a black attorney general. Perhaps sensing defeat, they’ve also pressed for a person with a civil rights background and a separate civil rights “czar.”

Johnson’s and Sharpton’s sentiments have been echoed by other stakeholders.

“Merrick Garland v. Doug Jones for AG? I have great respect for Judge Garland & he was wrongly deprived of a SCOTUS seat by McConnell & cronies but we must have an AG with a strong civil rights record,” ex-federal prosecutor Shanlon Wu urged.

Garland’s other baggage? Tapping him for the DOJ would vacate his seat on the United State Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, of which he was the chief judge from 2013 to 2020. And if Senate Democrats don’t eke out twin wins in the Jan. 5 Georgia runoffs for a 50-50 seat tie in the chamber next Congress, McConnell has proven he will block replacement nominations.

Besides Jones and Garland, Trump-fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates is reportedly another name in Biden’s attorney general mix. Yates was dismissed 10 days into the Trump administration for refusing to defend the president’s 2017 travel ban from places where terrorists are endemic.

Senate Republicans have intimated they’re against Yates returning to the DOJ, rankling some liberals too.

“The same senators who refused to allow Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee say they would give a ‘thumbs-up’ to Garland as AG because they’re scared to death of Sally Yates. Don’t give in to this. Don’t give them your power,” implored Sherrilyn Ifill, NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund president and director-counsel.

Biden first warned reporters this month to expect his attorney general announcement before Christmas. Yet incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki signaled during a transition briefing on Friday there could be a delay.

“I would expect there could be more next week, but certainly more following, it just depends on decisions over the coming days,” she said.