Attorney General Merrick Garland, head of the Department of Justice (DOJ), is scheduled to testify before lawmakers of the 118th Congress for the first time on March 1.
Judiciary Committee Chairman and Majority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced that Garland will testify at 10 a.m. ET at a Senate hearing titled “Oversight of the Department of Justice.” Durbin will preside over the hearing. The hearing’s live stream will be available for the public to view here.
Republicans sitting on the Judiciary Committee will likely rain down scrutiny on Garland.
Potential questions include Garland’s oversight of investigations of parents who attend school board meetings, the FBI’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, the FBI’s prosecution of pro-life activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, and the FBI’s raids on the Mar-a-Lago property of former President Donald Trump, home of former VP Mike Pence, and President Joe Biden’s Delaware beach house. Republicans allege that some of the DOJ’s actions are acts of government weaponization.
Garland most recently testified before the committee in October 2021, when lawmakers questioned the FBI and DOJ’s handling of the Nassar investigation, the Durham probe, and concerns regarding Chinese espionage investigations, among others.
Since then, lawmakers such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) have demanded that Garland testify before the upper chamber’s Judiciary Committee on a variety of issues.
In July 2022, Cruz asked Garland to testify before the Judiciary Committee and explain why the DOJ did not prosecute pro-abortion protesters who Cruz said sought to harass conservative-leaning Supreme Court justices, after the highest court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.
“Unfortunately, despite clear evidence that federal law was violated by mobs of protesters at the Justices’ homes, the head of the Department of Justice, and chief law enforcement officer of the United States, flatly refused to enforce federal law,” Cruz wrote in the July 11 letter.
“I want to know from Merrick Garland directly why Biden’s DOJ is arresting Catholic protestors like terrorists—complete with SWAT-style tactics—while letting actual terrorist acts like firebombings go unpunished,” Hawley said in a statement in September 2022, referring to the FBI’s arrest of Mark Houck, a pro-life person who protested in front of an abortion clinic and whose home was raided by reportedly 20 to 25 FBI agents.
Houck pushed a Planned Parenthood escort in what he contends was an act to defend his 12-year-old son from harassment. Houck was acquitted in January 2023.
As recent as Wednesday, the DOJ has indicted eight people under the FACE Act.
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