WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday presented his election as the nation’s top police chief, turning to experienced Judge Merrick Garland to help depoliticize the Justice Department and restore the rule of law afterwards of what would come president described as four years of illegality under President Donald Trump.
Biden also called the pro-Trump crowd that stormed the Capitol Wednesday “national terrorists” and stormed the Republican president for inciting the siege.
“For the past four years we have had a president who has made clear his contempt for our democracy, our Constitution, the rule of law in everything he has done,” Biden said, promising a dramatic change in his administration. . “More than anything, we need to restore the honor, integrity and independence of the Justice Department that has been so damaged.”
If confirmed by the Senate, which is likely, Garland would take over as U.S. attorney general at a critical time for the country and the agency. He would inherit urgent police and civil rights-related challenges, an ongoing tax investigation into Biden’s son, Hunter, and Democrats calls for him to criminally investigate Trump after he leaves office.
Beyond these problems, Garland would be tasked with repairing the wider distrust of the American people in the Justice Department, fostered for four tumultuous years under Trump’s leadership. The Republican president regularly got involved in the department and fired FBI Director James Comey while his agency investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Biden promised that Garland’s loyalty would not fall to the president, but to the law and the Constitution.
“You don’t work for me,” Biden charged as he introduced Garland.
In front of the public for the first time alongside Biden, Garland vowed to restore an equal commitment to law and order and integrity to the nation’s top police agency, noting Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol as a result of no do it.
“As everyone who saw yesterday’s events in Washington understands, if they didn’t understand it before, the rule of law is not just the turn of some lawyers, it’s the very foundation of our democracy.” said Garland.
Garland may be a name known to political observers.
Senate Republicans rejected him four years ago, refusing to even hold hearings when President Barack Obama proposed him to the Supreme Court. His prospects for confirmation as Attorney General were almost assured when Democrats gained control of the Senate majority by winning both seats in the Georgia Senate.
Biden also on Thursday introduced three other senior Justice Department executives, including Obama administration national security adviser Lisa Monaco as deputy prosecutor and Justice Department civil rights chief Vanita Gupta. as deputy attorney general, official number 3. He also appointed an adjunct civil rights prosecutor, Kristen Clarke, now chair of the Civil Rights Lawyers Committee under the law, a defense group.
Garland was selected among other finalists, including former Sen. Doug Jones, D-Wing., And former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.
The department is expected to change course drastically under new leadership, including through a different approach to civil rights issues and national policing policies following the racial accounting caused by the continued death of black Americans at the hands of the forces. of order.
Defenders of blacks and Latinos wanted a black attorney general or someone with experience in civil rights cases and criminal justice reform. Groups such as the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund had defended the Garland Supreme Court nomination, but the extent of minority group support for the attorney general’s job was not immediately clear.
Although Garland is white, the selection of Gupta and Clarke, two women with significant experience in civil rights, seemed designed to tarnish any concerns and served as a signal that progressive causes would be prioritized in the new administration. Gupta is the daughter of immigrants from India and Clarke’s parents are from Jamaica.
Kamala Harris, elected vice president, addressed racial justice disparities during Thursday’s event, connecting them to this week’s Capitol storm.
He said setting the conditions that led to Washington’s violence would require the new administration to understand “how to reform, how to transform, a justice system that doesn’t work the same for everyone, a justice system that experiences differently depending on whether it is white or black “.
“We witnessed two justice systems when we saw one that allowed extremists to storm the U.S. Capitol and another that released tear gas at peaceful protesters last summer,” Harris added. “We know we should be better.”
Having worked in the Justice Department decades ago, Garland would return to an agency radically different from the one he left. The proliferation of aggressive cyber threats and counterintelligence by foreign adversaries have made countries such as China, Russia and North Korea the top priorities for enforcing federal law.
Monaco, in particular, brings to the department an important experience of national security, including cybersecurity, a particularly urgent issue, as the U.S. government faces devastating hacking of federal agencies that officials have linked to Russia.
Some of Garland’s first-stage problems in the department persist.
The FBI has faced increasing violence from anti-government and racist extremists. Garland, as a senior Justice Department official, helped manage the federal government’s response to the 1995 bombing of a government building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. The terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, was later executed.
Garland has described the work as “the most important thing I’ve ever done” and was known to keep a framed photo of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in his court office in Washington.
Garland has been on the Washington federal appeals court since 1997. He had previously worked in the private practice, in addition to a federal prosecutor, a senior official in the criminal division of the Justice Department and as an assistant prosecutor main deputy general.
___
AP writer Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed.