Have A Merrick New Year

For all the sturn und drang, 20 Republican senators voted to confirm Merrick Garland as the next Attorney General.

The Senate has confirmed President Joe Biden’s pick for attorney general, Judge Merrick Garland, by a vote of 70-30.

The victory for Garland, 68, came almost five years after his failed nomination to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama in 2016. The Senate, then under Republican control, denied Garland a hearing or vote.

Garland, who has been a judge on the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals since 1997, received the support of every Democrat and 20 Republicans. Several potential GOP presidential hopefuls voted against Garland’s confirmation, including Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

Garland encountered little resistance at his confirmation hearing last month, although Republicans pressed him to promise that he would not interfere with an ongoing special counsel investigation into the origins of the FBI probe of alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Garland said he saw no reason to disturb former Attorney General William Barr’s appointment of longtime federal prosecutor John Durham to oversee that review, but the nominee declined to explicitly commit to allowing Durham to complete his work. Republicans also urged Garland to ensure no political intervention in an ongoing inquiry that the U.S. attorney in Delaware is conducting into the tax and business affairs of Biden’s son, Hunter.

While Republicans were generally friendly to Garland at his hearing and insisted their resistance to his confirmation to the Supreme Court was based on concerns unrelated to him personally, some later indicated that he had been too vague and evasive in his answers.

On immigration policy, for instance, Garland was essentially mum. He said he wasn’t familiar with questions about whether illegal border-crossing should remain a crime, even though it was an issue debated at some length during last year’s Democratic presidential primary.

Despite some GOP skepticism, Garland won support from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.

 

Yep. Even Mitch voted for him after denying even a vote for his Supreme Court nomination.  After all, Garland will only stick around for several years, not a lifetime on SCOTUS. Mitch got his win. He can afford to give Garland the silver medal here, just to remind everyone who's really in charge of Washington right now as long as the filibuster remains.