“No person is above the law in this country.”
When Mitch McConnell blocked Merrick Garland as a candidate for the Supreme Court in 2016, who could have imagined, ever, that this calling lay ahead.
If you’ll remember, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, summa cum laude from Harvard College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law, to serve as a justice of the Supreme Court in March 2016 to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. However, the Republican senate led by majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a hearing or vote on his nomination. The unprecedented refusal was highly controversial. Garland’s nomination lasted 293 days, the longest to date by far, expiring on January 3, 2017, at the end of the 114th Congress.
President Biden nominated Garland as attorney general in January 2021. He was confirmed by the Senate and took office in March.
Ahhh, the irony:
The most significant effort to strengthen penalties for misconduct came from a Republican Congress and was signed into law by Trump himself: The FISA reauthorization act of 2017, which made mishandling classified information a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The law seemed to be aimed at former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, whose use of a private email server was a central part of Republican attacks that helped to elect Trump in 2016. Now, along with the Presidential Records Act, it may be one of the most useful tools the government has to hold the former president accountable.
I remember the anger and helplessness this evoked, but maybe this was Judge Garland’s destiny. It’s not funny but . . . the last laugh?
