Merrick Garland's Impossible Job
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2021
⏱️ 21 minutes
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Summary
Merrick Garland made his legal reputation as a temperate moderate dedicated to keeping politics out of the justice system. Yet in the past few years, he has found himself at the center of two of the most fiercely partisan episodes in recent history. First, his nomination to the Supreme Court was blocked by obstructionist Republicans. And now, as Attorney General, he has to craft a legal response to the excesses of the Trump Administration. He has already become a target for conservatives, who are portraying him as Joe Biden’s lackey, and progressives, who view him as insufficiently tough on the former President. David Rohde, an executive editor of NewYorker.com, joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the minefield that Garland is navigating, and how his decisions will affect the country in the coming months and years.
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| 0:44.0 | Things people love. |
| 0:48.0 | This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests about politics. |
| 0:54.3 | It's Thursday, June 17th. |
| 0:56.7 | I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of The New Yorker. |
| 1:00.9 | During Attorney General Merrick Garland's confirmation hearings earlier this year, |
| 1:06.2 | he spoke passionately about his commitment to keeping the Justice Department nonpartisan. |
| 1:11.7 | I do not regard myself as anything other than the lawyer for the people of the United States. |
| 1:19.0 | And I am not the president's lawyer. I am the United States lawyer. And I will do everything |
| 1:26.7 | in my power, which I believe is considerable, |
| 1:31.3 | to fend off any effort by anyone to make prosecutions or investigations partisan or political in any way. |
| 1:40.8 | My job is to protect the Department of Justice on its employees in going about |
| 1:45.5 | their job and doing the right thing according to the facts and the law. |
| 1:50.5 | Garland is a centrist. |
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