The United States Senate confirms Merrick Garland as the attorney general of the Biden Administration

Merrick Garland, in a file image.POOL / Reuters

The United States Senate confirmed this Wednesday with a strong bipartisan vote (70-30) Merrick Garland as attorney general chosen by President Joe Biden to restore the reputation of independence damaged by the Department of Justice during the Donald Trump Administration.

Many Republican senators declared that Garland's track record and temperament was what America needed right now.

Garland, a veteran federal appeals judge, saw in 2016 how the possibility of being one of the nine Supreme Court justices slipped from his hands in the final months of Barack Obama's term after the famous Republican rejection, which he did not even want to consider the nomination because they indicated that there was not enough time for its confirmation.

"America can breathe a sigh of relief that it is finally going to have someone like Merrick Garland leading the Justice Department," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared before the vote.

"Someone with integrity, independence, respect for the law and credibility on both political sides," continued the senator from New York, to conclude that the federal judge was a person who understood that "the job of the attorney general was to apply the law, unlike previous prosecutors under President Trump. "

Garland inherits a Justice Department beset by the turbulent years of the Trump era, who insisted that the attorney general be loyal to him, which has damaged the prestige of the Department.

During Trump's last month as president, William Barr resigned after denying the president's false accusations that he insisted that there had been electoral fraud in the elections that separated him from the White House.

Born in Illinois 68 years ago, Garland, a law graduate from Harvard University, is the grandson of immigrants who came to the United States to escape persecution in Europe, according to the biography provided by the White House.

Before former President Bill Clinton appointed him a federal judge in 1997, Garland oversaw investigations of the 1996 Olympics bomb attack in Atlanta, which left two dead and more than 100 injured, as well as the Oklahoma City massacre, which left more than 160 dead and hundreds injured in 1995.

One of the greatest challenges facing the new attorney general, in addition to the depoliticization of the Justice Department, is to face the threat of violent domestic extremists such as those who carried out the assault on the Capitol on January 6.

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