Republicans, Merrick Garland is not the attorney general of Hunter Biden
You might be under the misimpression that Merrick Garland is Attorney General of the United States. Judging from the performance of Republicans at the House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, that impression would indeed be wrong.
Garland, it seems, is Attorney General of Hunter Biden.
And only Hunter Biden. Not crime. Not the border or the fentanyl crisis. Not domestic extremists or Chinese spies or gun violence.
No, the president’s son was virtually the sole focus of the committee Republicans who converted their oversight authority into an opportunity to pummel Garland — save for a few brief jabs at the supposed outrages of special counsel Jack Smith.
No matter that Hunter Biden is, in fact, being prosecuted on gun charges that almost certainly would not have been brought were his last name Jones. No matter that he seems likely to be indicted on tax charges on which prosecutors had earlier agreed to accept a plea to two misdemeanors.
No matter that the prosecution is being conducted by David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, who was appointed to that post by President Donald Trump and kept on during the Biden administration specifically in order to preempt concerns about political interference.
No matter that Garland, again precisely in order to preempt accusations of politicization, has said he was leaving the conduct of the Hunter Biden probe to Weiss.
No matter that Senate Republicans pressed Garland to make that commitment — which he duly made — when he was up for confirmation as attorney general. Imagine the uproar that would have ensued if he hadn’t.
No matter that Garland said he’d give Weiss whatever authorities he needed, to bring cases wherever he deemed necessary. Imagine the uproar that would have ensued if he hadn’t.
No matter that when Weiss asked to be named special counsel in the Biden case last month, Garland promptly agreed. Weiss “reached the stage of the investigation where he thought that appropriate,” Garland testified. Imagine the uproar that would have ensued if he hadn’t.
No matter. Nothing matters — certainly not facts — to these Judiciary Committee Republicans. Certainly not to their chairman, Jim Jordan (Ohio), who confuses volume with persuasion, facts be damned and no slur left unslung.
“The fix is in,” Jordan declared in his opening statement — and indeed it was: to smear Garland as a political hack and elevate the handling of Hunter Biden’s case to Watergate-level proportions.
“Who does the attorney general pick?” Jordan later asked, referring to the choice of Weiss as special counsel. “He could have selected anyone. … But he picks the one guy, the one guy he knows will protect Joe Biden.”
Ah yes, the grand conspiracy to set up Weiss as Hunter Biden’s protector.
In reality, as Rep. Ken Buck (Colo.), perhaps the only clear-eyed Republican present, observed that Garland, at every step in the investigation, “would have been criticized either way, whether you acted or did not act in that situation. Far from slow-walking … your hands were tied.”
Garland is not the first attorney general to be treated like a piñata; lawmakers of both parties have not been shy about using congressional testimony to score political points.
But this was a new low. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) suggested that Garland was “in contempt of Congress when you refuse to answer” questions about pending investigations — and Massie then one-upped himself. “I think you may have just perjured yourself,” he warned Garland, when the attorney general said he had not dodged anything.
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), assailing Garland’s choices of Smith and Weiss as special counsels, said, “That leads me to only two explanations: either corruption or incompetence. Which is it?”
“Those are the kind of questions that judges would rule out of order,” Garland responded, with a mere raise of the eyebrows.
Garland seemed to lose his cool only once — and for good reason — when Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) pressed him about anti-Catholic bias in the FBI. “The idea that someone with my family background would discriminate against any religion is so outrageous, so absurd,” Garland said, his voice rising. And good for him. As Garland recalled in his opening statement, his family fled Eastern Europe because of political persecution and two of his grandmother’s siblings perished in the Holocaust. “There is little doubt that, but for America, the same thing would have happened to my grandmother,” Garland said.
It’s no mystery what’s going on here. The more Republicans smear Garland and the rest of the Justice Department, the more some people believe them. Then, they use the results as a self-fulfilling prophecy, lecturing Garland about declining trust in the Justice Department.
All of this is in service, of course, to just one man. “Mr. Jordan hopes to camouflage his assault on the rule of law by falsely claiming that Donald Trump is the victim of unequal justice and Hunter Biden its beneficiary,” said committee member Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.). “It is a claim as transparently political as it is devoid of any factual basis.”
And that, come to think of it, is a pretty good summary of what passed for an oversight hearing.
Opinion by Ruth Marcus
