Mike Lee is right: Trump should make Merrick Garland the next FBI director

The White House has been crowdsourcing Capitol Hill to help find a new FBI director, and on Thursday Lee tweeted that President Trump “should nominate Merrick Garland to replace James Comey.”

More than idle talk, a Lee spokesman tells the Washington Examiner that making Garland the next leader of the G-men is “a serious suggestion.” The Utah Republican has already been in touch with the White House and been making his Senate colleagues aware of the idea. They’d be wise to consider it.

Even those who don’t endorse the actions of former FBI Director James Comey must admit that his dismissal looked bad. As demands continue for a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election, the timing made the Comey firing look like a hatchet job. Eager to score points, liberals have been more than happy to make Comey a martyr.

But by nominating Garland, Trump could at once restore confidence in both his administration and the FBI while muting that criticism. In short, it’d be a good pick for all the right reasons.

The Hoover building needs a hard-nosed, independent leader at the helm. Those agents could use a leader free from any hints of political impropriety and that’s what they’d get from Garland. As Democrats loved to remind Republicans during their Supreme Court standoff, both sides already agree that Garland is a straight arrow.

When President Bill Clinton nominated Garland to a seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, he was confirmed 76-23 with the support of the majority of Republicans. Senators like John McCain of Arizona, Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Susan Collins of Maine voted for him to become a judge. They’d be hard pressed not to vote for him to become FBI director.

Already one Democrat seems to have signed onto the idea. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., chimed in on Twitter, writing that “Former prosecutor Merrick Garland for FBI Director is a great idea.”

A quick response, Klobuchar’s tweet suggests that Garland could survive the upper chamber. It’s another question whether Garland could stare down organized crime.

While Garland might not be quick with a piece, the judge is more than qualified to fight Trump’s war on crime. As a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department during the Clinton administration, Garland led the investigation into the Oklahoma City bombings.

“We asked him to do that job, and he volunteered to do it because we wanted a perfect investigation, a flawless prosecution,” former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick told NPR. “We wanted no one to have any question about the way in which justice was handled in that case.”

It was Garland, she explains, who sorted through the rubble of the bomb site “and from the chaos of an investigation that had a thousand agents, six U.S. attorneys’ offices and state and local first responders and others.”

Because of the leadership of the soft-spoken lawyer, we learned the name of terrorist Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 civilians. A workhorse who regularly clocked 18 hour days, Garland represented the government in pretrial hearings. And, according to the New York Times, he was preparing to lead the prosecution until summoned back to the Justice Department.

That sort of devotion, bravery, and integrity are qualities in short supply at the moment. In addition to investigating politicians, as my colleague Jason Russell recently pointed out, the FBI needs a leader who will help them return to the business chasing down terrorists, cybercriminals, and organized crime syndicates.

Though more William J. Brennan than J. Edgar Hoover, Garland seems up for the job. It’s time for Trump to nominate him and put on the FBI windbreaker.

Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.