[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 45 (Wednesday, March 10, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1441-S1442]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Nomination of Merrick Brian Garland

  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on Judge 
Merrick Garland's nomination to be Attorney General of the United 
States. I will oppose this nomination. I was open-minded at first about 
Judge Garland's nomination. He has long had a reputation as a fair-
minded judge. But since being nominated, my confidence in Judge Garland 
has been undermined--first, by his evasive, haughty refusal to answer 
some of the most basic questions we would expect from an Attorney 
General, the kind of evasion he would never allow in his own courtroom, 
so why should we allow it in the U.S. Senate? And, second, when he did 
answer questions, he sounded more like a liberal ideologue who had 
embraced the radical agenda of the Democratic Party's far-left base.
  If confirmed, I am afraid that he will enable extremists in the 
Department of Justice to undermine our police, our Constitution, and 
our rule of law. This weak-on-crime nominee will fan the flames of our 
Nation's drug crisis, border crisis, and violent crime crisis. And he 
has made clear that on the greatest challenges facing the Department, 
he will cede the reins to the radical, far-left culture warriors that 
President Biden has nominated to be some of his top deputies. Our 
Nation simply cannot afford Judge Garland as our Attorney General.
  In the last 12 months on record, over 83,000 Americans died from drug 
overdoses, more than any year in history. Drug overdoses killed more 
Americans in a single year than the Vietnam war and the War on Terror 
combined. Yet Judge Garland plans to reduce prison sentences for drug 
dealers, traffickers, and gang members.
  Judge Garland appears to believe that these merchants of misery 
engage in a victimless trade, but virtually every family and community 
in our Nation bears the scars that prove otherwise. Whether it is the 
disabled child, addicted parent, suffering sibling, recovering 
neighbor, or deceased friend, the victims of drug crime are everywhere 
we look. Drug traffickers are hardly engaged in a nonviolent offense. 
Their practice is intimidation; their product is poison; and their 
customer service is the barrel of a gun. With Judge Garland as Attorney 
General, these criminals will go free. Their business will boom, and 
the violence and death in our streets will continue.
  It is not just fentanyl and heroin driving this crisis anymore. In 
the wake of weakening our drug trafficking laws under ill-advised laws 
like the First Step Act, drug overdose deaths are linked to other drugs 
as well, like cocaine, which is sharply increasing. Cocaine is now 
outpacing heroin as a leading cause of drug overdoses, and meth is 
outpacing both. Judge Garland will release these criminals back onto 
the streets in the middle of the worst drug epidemic in our Nation's 
history. These pain profiteers don't deserve leniency and should be 
kept far away from the communities they have victimized. Many should, 
frankly, count themselves lucky that they are not charged with murder.
  And while Judge Garland endorses President Biden's call for racial 
equity--not equality, but equity--Judge Garland's agenda will hurt 
vulnerable minority communities most of all. Drug overdose deaths 
disproportionately affect minority communities, as does violent crime. 
Judge Garland's confirmation, like the confirmation of some of his top 
deputies, would be a gift to the cartels, street gangs, and drug 
trafficking networks that perpetuate violence and the destruction we 
see in our streets. And even those who want the government to go easier 
on drug dealers and drug traffickers should be concerned about Judge 
Garland's stated plan to dismantle mandatory minimum sentences for drug 
traffickers. In addition to deterrence, one important justification for 
creating sentence ranges was to reduce racial disparities in how 
minority drug traffickers were sentenced.

  But Judge Garland doesn't stop there. He also supports President 
Biden's extreme open borders amnesty agenda. At Judge Garland's 
confirmation hearing, he was asked if entering the country illegally 
should be a crime. You would think that would be a very simple 
question. But Judge Garland responded that he hadn't ``thought about'' 
it--hadn't ``thought about'' it. It stretches the bounds of belief that 
a Federal judge who has been on the bench for almost a quarter century 
hadn't thought about that question--or that any American with common 
sense who believes in our borders and believes in our sovereignty 
hadn't thought whether it should be a crime to cross our border 
illegally. But, to give him the benefit of the doubt, I asked, in a 
written question after the hearing--had nearly a week to think about 
it; it seems like it is a pretty easy research question: Should 
illegally entering our country be a crime? And he said, conveniently, 
even then, that he hadn't thought about it. Judge Garland also refused 
to say whether illegal alien gang members or illegal aliens who have 
assaulted U.S. citizens should be deported if a judge orders it.
  Judge Garland's silence shows that he will, at best, meekly abide by 
the

[[Page S1442]]

administration's irrational immigration agenda. He will help transform 
zero tolerance into total tolerance of crime, and his inaction will 
only further advance the administration's recruit-and-release policies 
at our border, where we don't just allow illegal aliens into our 
country after catching them at the border; we go back and find them in 
Mexico and invite them to return to the border and then release them 
into the country.
  This will attract an ever-growing surge of illegal migration and will 
result in more drugs and criminal aliens entering our country, as we 
see with the Biden border crisis growing worse every day.
  Of course, the vast majority of meth, heroin, and cocaine--and a 
large quantity of fentanyl--is smuggled across the southern border each 
year. As our border facilities and personnel are overwhelmed by the 
Biden border surge, our security will falter and even more drugs will 
pour into our Nation.
  Hardened criminals will accompany the flood of drugs from the Rio 
Grande. Thousands of confirmed and suspected gang members cross the 
southern border into our country, and even more will exploit the open 
border policies that Judge Garland will have a hand in creating. This 
will fuel skyrocketing violence in our Nation.
  Last year, we experienced the largest single increase in murder in 
American history--the largest single increase in murders in our 
country's history. Preliminary data from the FBI indicates that there 
was a 20-percent increase--20-percent increase--in murder nationwide. 
In big cities, it was even worse. Murders rose in Atlanta by 60 
percent; in Chicago, by 50 percent; in New York City, by 45 percent; 
and in Washington, DC, by 40 percent. There were also, I would add, 
over 500 violent riots last year that injured over 2,000 law 
enforcement officers.
  Our police need our support more than ever before, but they wouldn't 
get it from a Garland Department of Justice. Personnel is policy, and 
Judge Garland has allowed two leftwing radicals to be selected as his 
chief lieutenants in the Department of Justice. Vanita Gupta and 
Kristen Clarke both support defunding, disarming, and defaming our 
police. They stand with the perpetrators of crime, not with the victims 
of it. There is little doubt that Judge Garland would empower these 
leftwing radicals embedded inside the Department.
  In response to written questions from the Judiciary Committee, Judge 
Garland also responded with some variation of ``I don't know''; ``I 
haven't studied the issue''; ``I am not familiar''; ``I haven't thought 
about it''; ``I am not aware of,'' or refused to comment altogether 
over 250 times. Again, this is a sitting Federal judge of almost a 
quarter century with a vast retinue of the country's best lawyers at 
his disposal for a week to answer written questions, and over 250 times 
he couldn't answer the question. That was more than one-third of the 
colleagues--or more than one-third of the questions that I and my 
colleagues asked him.
  Judge Garland may not have thought about these questions or thought 
about how to run the Justice Department, but I bet Ms. Gupta and Ms. 
Clarke have, and they will gladly fill this void of purpose with their 
radical ideology. The Garland Justice Department will make America less 
safe.
  At the same time, Judge Garland would work to weaken our Second 
Amendment. At his hearing, he repeatedly refused to explain how he 
would deal with the Second Amendment. While he acknowledged accurately 
that it would be tough to overturn the Supreme Court's ruling in 
Washington, DC, v. Heller, which affirmed Americans' constitutional 
right to keep and bear arms, he said that he ``can't promise''--he 
``can't promise''--that he won't try to overturn it. He also said he 
just doesn't know whether President Biden has the authority to ban 
certain semiautomatic rifles, some of the most popular sporting 
firearms today. He doesn't know if President Biden has the authority to 
ban them by Executive order. He has also said he is just not familiar 
with whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives--
which would report to him if he is confirmed, I would remind everyone--
would have the authority to indefinitely delay approving gun sales to 
Americans who have not had any flags show up in their background 
checks. Once again, Judge Garland demonstrated through his evasion that 
he would bow to the radical left to the detriment of normal law-abiding 
American citizens.
  I urge every Senator who believes in the Second Amendment and the 
rule of law and who cares about stopping crime in our streets to reject 
Judge Merrick Garland's nomination for Attorney General.
  Now is not the time for weakness, evasion, and obfuscation from our 
Nation's foremost law enforcement officer. We need strength, resolve, 
and certainty. Our Nation needs and deserves a better nominee for 
Attorney General. I will oppose his nomination.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.