Biden expected to nominate Merrick Garland for attorney general

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Politico and the Associated Press are reporting that President-elect Joe Biden will name Merrick Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C., as attorney general. Garland was former President Barack Obama’s foiled nominee for the Supreme Court, the nomination that Mitch McConnell used to break the Senate into pieces by blockading it.

AP sources say that Biden is expected make the official announcement on Thursday. Garland served in senior positions in the Justice Department under former President Bill Clinton, and supervised the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and prosecution of Timothy McVeigh as well as leading the investigations of the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. So his experience with combatting domestic terrorists is good.

Biden is expected to round out leadership in Justice, AP reports, with “former homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco as deputy attorney general and former Justice Department civil rights chief Vanita Gupta as associate attorney general. He will also name an assistant attorney general for civil rights, Kristen Clarke, the founder of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, an advocacy group.” These are more than solid picks for both combatting domestic terrorism and protecting civil rights. As a brand new lawyer with the NAACP, Gupta worked to uncover a massive police corruption case involving a racist former rodeo cowboy whose false testimony sent dozens of Black Texans to prison. Monaco served in Obama’s administration as homeland security adviser and as his chief counterterrorism adviser, working on cybersecurity as well as the Ebola crisis. Right now, Clarke is taking on the Proud Boys, suing them for their attack on two Black historic churches in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.

This opens up a seat on the D.C. Circuit, the second most important court in the country, and Biden is reportedly considering elevating Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is currently a judge on that court. Brown, a 50-year-old Black woman, was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in 2013. Serving as the chief judge in this position would put her at the top of the list of potential Supreme Court nominees.