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President Biden nominated Merrick Garland to be attorney general only hours after rioters ransacked the U.S. Capitol three years ago. Now, that violent episode and the people responsible for it will help define Garland’s tenure at the Justice Department. NPR’s Carrie Johnson explores Garland’s challenges and his legacy.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: On January 7, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden described his choice to lead the Justice Department as a man who embodies character and decency.
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PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: For attorney general of the United States, I nominate a man of impeccable integrity – Judge Merrick Garland.
JOHNSON: Garland pledged to uphold the rule of law and restore the Justice Department’s independence from the White House. He promised to be a lawyer for the people and not the president. Paul Butler’s a former public corruption prosecutor.
PAUL BUTLER: After Donald Trump’s attorneys general were criticized for being biased in favor of Trump, it was important for the legitimacy of the Justice Department for President Biden to appoint a leader who was above reproach.
JOHNSON: More than three years later, the way Garland drew the line between politics and law has somehow alienated both Biden and Trump and their supporters. Alex Aronson is a former Justice Department lawyer and Senate aide who’s watched Garland and his work.
ALEX ARONSON: He’s really the consummate institutionalist. I think he came into his tenure as attorney general very much with that good-faith intention to preserve those institutionalist values.
JOHNSON: But Aronson says Trump and some of his followers pose an ongoing threat – one that Biden and Garland misunderstood.
ARONSON: I think like a lot of leading Democrats – establishment Democrats, he sort of tried to wave a magic wand and bring back these norms of the pre-Trump era, and that’s just not a realistic approach after what happened during Trump. And that’s not how norms work when one party decides to abide by them. Norms don’t work that way.
MELISSA MURRAY: You know, I heard lots of people complaining about, you know, the problem with Merrick Garland is that he’s too deliberative. He’s too judicious. I’m like, well, he was a judge. Like, that’s what they do.
JOHNSON: That’s Melissa Murray. She’s a law professor at New York University.
MURRAY: He was put in that role for a particular reason and given the mandate and the directive to make clear a separation between the office and the presidency. I think he did that.
JOHNSON: Biden and his team selected Garland, a respected federal appeals court judge with a 40-year track record, precisely because of his distance from politics. Peter Keisler is a longtime appellate lawyer who once served as acting attorney general in the George W. Bush years. He says Garland has been the perfect person to serve now because of his smarts, judgment and commitment to public service.
PETER KEISLER: Any attorney general is going to be called upon to make some very tough decisions on very controversial issues. That’s the nature of the job.
JOHNSON: But the sheer number of legal problems that landed on Garland’s desk is remarkable – the biggest federal criminal investigation in history…
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UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #1: We’re going to try and get compliance, but this is now effectively a riot.
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER #2: 1349 hours, declaring it a riot.
JOHNSON: …What turned out to be 1,500 cases against rioters who stormed the Capitol and extremists who engaged in seditious conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power…
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NORAH O’DONNELL: Enrique Tarrio, once the top leader of the far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys, was just sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for…
JOHNSON: …An investigation of President Biden, after classified documents were found in his home and office…
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GEOFF BENNETT: The special counsel who said President Biden’s age and memory factored into his decision not to charge the President for his retention of classified documents testified on Capitol Hill today.
JOHNSON: …Indictments and convictions of Biden’s son, Hunter, for gun and tax crimes, and two indictments against Donald Trump – first for allegedly hoarding classified papers at his Florida resort and another for trying to cling to power in 2020 after he lost to Biden.
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JOHN DICKERSON: The federal grand jury has voted to indict the former president for his attempt to overturn the results of an election he lost.
JOHNSON: Those cases against Trump represent the first time a former president has been charged with federal crimes, though conservative courts have narrowed and constrained the actions against him. It’s a major test for prosecutors, the courts and the country. Neither case against the former president will go to trial before the November election, even though the attorney general once said this about the January 6 probe.
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MERRICK GARLAND: This is the most urgent investigation in the history of the Justice Department.
JOHNSON: The investigation marched along, focused mostly on the boots on the ground rather than the higher-ups – until Garland’s decision to appoint a special counsel in November 2022. That pace drew withering criticism. Tim Heaphy served as chief investigative counsel to the House committee that investigated Trump’s effort to cling to power.
TIM HEAPHY: There were several pretty significant witnesses or witnesses who emerged as really central to our investigations that had not been interviewed prior to the time that we reached out.
JOHNSON: Chuck Rosenberg is a former U.S. attorney. He says prosecutors face a much higher burden of proof than lawmakers do.
CHUCK ROSENBERG: The fact that DOJ works more slowly is both important and necessary and not at all surprising.
JOHNSON: Keisler, the appellate lawyer, says investigators had to take their time to search for possible financial ties among militia groups and people in Trump’s inner circle, even if those allegations produced no charges.
KEISLER: So it’s easy to say, once all the work is done, that you could have and should have done it more quickly by not spending time chasing down things that didn’t pan out. But you can’t know what you’ll find and won’t find until you first conduct a thorough investigation.
JOHNSON: In the end, the conservative Supreme Court waited months to review the January 6 case against Trump and then granted him substantial immunity from prosecution. If that case survives the election, it may not go to trial until 2026. Kristy Parker prosecuted civil rights cases at the DOJ for 19 years. Parker says people may be asking too much of the justice system and the Justice Department.
KRISTY PARKER: We can’t rely on criminal investigations and prosecutions to do more than what they do, which is, you know, seek accountability for specific violations of law. You know, they can’t be relied on to address larger political problems.
JOHNSON: As for Merrick Garland, his time in the administration may be drawing to a close. He’s hardly embraced the public speaking part of his job, but he made an exception this month when he delivered a major speech about protecting DOJ investigations from political interference. Garland’s voice broke with emotion as he defended the Department and its people.
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GARLAND: Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this department to be used as a political weapon. And our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.
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JOHNSON: It’s now up to voters to decide whether to return former President Trump to the White House and, by extension, what happens to these fundamental norms that Garland has embraced.
Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
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