[Politics] Democrats Are Already Buzzing About a Merrick Garland Successor

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he contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remains up for grabs, but one thing seems clear regardless of who wins in November: This is likely Merrick Garland’s last year as attorney general.

That outcome is obvious if Trump wins, but as Democrats contemplate a potential Harris presidency, the party’s political-legal establishment is already buzzing about who might replace Garland if Harris wins — and how that person should steer a post-Garland Department of Justice in new ways.

I found an interest in change at DOJ to be a key takeaway from speaking with about a half-dozen prominent Democrats at the Democratic convention and elsewhere in recent weeks, people who have served in the Justice Department, on Capitol Hill and at the White House. Most were granted anonymity in order to candidly discuss the performance of the sitting attorney general and some of the contenders who might plausibly replace him.

“My assumption is that members of the cabinet and sub-cabinet will move on and that, if Kamala is elected, she will want to put in her own team,” said former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, who has known Garland since they attended college together and brought him in as a senior official to the Clinton Justice Department. She praised Garland for restoring “the integrity and morale of the department” and for being “staunch and successful” on fighting crime and protecting national security.

Others in the party have far less charitable assessments of Garland’s tenure. They point to a series of perceived missteps that include the appointment of special counsel Robert Hur to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents; the indulgence of special counsel David Weiss and his dubious criminal cases against Biden’s son Hunter; and, most controversial of all, the delay in seriously investigating and ultimately prosecuting Donald Trump over his alleged effort to steal the 2020 election.

It is a remarkable turn for a man who was once hailed as something of a hero and martyr by Democrats after Senate Republicans blocked his appointment to the Supreme Court, and who was largely welcomed as Biden’s attorney general.

The Justice Department declined to comment on whether Garland intends to stay on if Harris takes the White House. If he were to remain, he’d be following in the rare footsteps of Dick Thornburgh, who was appointed attorney general by President Ronald Reagan late in Reagan’s second term and kept on by President George H.W. Bush.

So, who might succeed Garland? My conversations make clear there are plenty of names of potential Democrats in the mix — some of which have been previously reported and others that have not.

They include people like Tony West, Harris’ brother-in-law and a former high-ranking official in the Obama Justice Department, whose name has already shown up in some early reports. Other possible contenders who have thus far largely flown under the radar include North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who previously worked as the state’s attorney general and introduced Harris at the Democratic convention, and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, another former state attorney general and convention speaker.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/08/28/kamala-harris-attorney-general-pick-00176544