The Washington Post has an in depth profile of President Biden’s administration. Apparently, Biden regrets selecting Merrick Garland as Attorney General, and would have preferred former Alabama Senator Doug Jones.
In private, Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as attorney general, complaining about the Justice Department’s slowness under Garland in prosecuting Trump, and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Biden’s son Hunter, according to people familiar with his comments.
During the 2020 presidential transition, Biden’s attorney general selection pitted some of his closest aides against each other. Former senator Ted Kaufman (D-Delaware) and Mark Gitenstein, both longtime friends of Biden, advocated for the president naming then-Sen. Doug Jones (D-Alabama) as attorney general, arguing that as a politician he would be better able to navigate the bitterly partisan moment.
But Ron Klain, Biden’s incoming chief of staff, pushed for Garland. He stressed that Garland — a federal judge with a sterling reputation for independence and fairness — would show Americans that Biden was rebuilding a department badly shaken by Trump’s political attacks.
Biden was persuaded, and some Democrats believe the decision had devastating results. Had the Justice Department moved faster to prosecute Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents, they say, the former president might have faced a politically damaging trial before the election. (Others blame the Supreme Court and a Trump-appointed judge in Florida for repeatedly siding with the former president and delaying the cases; the Justice Department declined to comment.)
This episode demonstrates that this notion of the Department of Justice as “independent” has always been a ruse. The Attorney General works for the President. Garland’s efforts to make the institution separate from the President backfired, in a way that left no one happy. Moreover, Biden expressly viewed the criminal prosecution of Trump as a way to harm his primary political opponent. The stuff about protecting democracy was just a veneer, as evidenced by the silence about insurrection and fascism in the lead-up to January 6, 2025.
By the way, when is Garland going to resign? Garland should have stepped down when Biden criticized him for the Hunter Biden prosecution, but didn’t. Attorney General Loretta Lynch stayed on until January 20, 2017. Will Garland continue to ride this out till the bitter end?
