Just me, but if I had a job, basically guaranteed for life, I would be hard pressed to accept a political appointment that has an end point.
A question does come to mind.
Garland, right now, has the age (68) and the years on the bench (24) that he could take Senior Status – in effect retirement-at full pay. Would he have to resign and forfeit that pay, or could he take Senior Status and then take the post as AG without resigning? Maybe take the position without its pay?
I don’t know, but either way, and again, just me, why would I want the headache of the AG position as compared to what he’s doing now?
Leaving political partisanship out, I’d tell any President-politely-to stuff it.
Joe Biden taps Merrick Garland as attorney general nominee
President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Judge Merrick Garland as his attorney general.
Biden is picking Garland over former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama and former deputy attorney general Sally Yates, who were also considered front-runners for the post.
Garland, a federal appeals court judge, was nominated by former President Barack Obama in March 2016 as his choice to fill the vacancy on the US Supreme Court following Antonin Scalia’s death.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow his nomination to be considered.
The president-elect is expected to formally announce his selection of Garland, who previously held positions in the Justice Department, on Thursday.
At the same time, he is expected to announce former Homeland Security adviser Lisa Monaco as deputy attorney general and former Justice Department civil rights chief Vanita Gupta as associate attorney general.
Kristen Clarke, who founded the advocacy group Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, will be named assistant attorney general for civil rights.
The Associated Press reported that Biden tapped Garland because he has experience in the Justice Department serving under two presidents – George H.W.
Bush and Bill Clinton and the president-elect is looking to restore integrity to the office.
During his stints at the Justice Department Garland was involved in prosecuting the cases against Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma City bombings, the Atlanta Olympics bombings and Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber.”
Garland’s nomination will require the Senate, which snubbed him in 2016, to confirm him as attorney general.
President Trump eventually filled Scalia’s position with Neil Gorsuch.
McConnell’s brush-off of Garland became fodder for Democratic outrage over Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to serve on the Supreme Court following Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in September 2020.
Trump nominated her to the high court weeks before the 2020 presidential election, drawing howls from Democrats who pushed back because it came in an election year, and raising comparisons to McConnell’s comments about Garland, that the winner of the upcoming election should be able to make the pick.
But McConnell and Republicans dismissed that contention, arguing that if the situation were reversed and a Democratic president nominated a Supreme Court candidate, a Democratic-majority Senate would push that nominee through.
Barrett was confirmed along party lines – 52-48 – and became, along with Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s third justice on the court.