President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Judge Merrick Garland, 68, to head the influential US Department of Justice, several media reported on Wednesday.
To read also: "We will never concede this defeat", launches Donald Trump in front of a crowd of supporters
The announcement of his long-awaited appointment comes the day after two by-elections in Georgia which are expected to give Democrats control of the Upper House, responsible for confirming the appointments.
This choice signals a revenge for the Democrats: Merrick Garland had been Barack Obama's candidate for the Supreme Court in 2016, but his nomination was blocked by the Republicans, who had argued for the approaching presidential election.
A law graduate from the prestigious Harvard University, considered a moderate progressive, he is currently head of the Federal Capital's Court of Appeal, a body renowned for the importance of the cases that pass there.
Merrick Garland, will replace Bill Barr whom the Democratic opposition had renamed "
Donald Trump's lawyer
" because of his multiple interventions in favor of the outgoing president or his relatives.
But Bill Barr had finally refused to follow the president in his post-election crusade claiming, in early December, to have found no "
fraud on a scale likely to change the outcome of the
presidential
election
".
He was then replaced by his number two, Jeffrey Rosen.
The first project for Merrick Garland will be the fight against violence and racism in the various police services, a subject placed at the heart of the electoral campaign after the death of George Floyd, an African-American asphyxiated under the knee of a police officer white end of May.
Joe Biden, who was one of the architects of a very repressive 1994 criminal law, also promised to develop alternatives to imprisonment, especially for drug users.
