WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd March, 2021) The US Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday advanced the nomination of President Joe Biden's pick for Attorney General, Merrick Garland.
The committee advanced Garland's nomination with a 15-7 vote, sending it to the Senate floor for consideration.
Garland also said Biden in their discussions about him taking the job had made clear that the attorney general would have full, independent discretion about whom to investigate and prosecute for alleged crimes and that the president had never raised the issue of whether his own son Hunter Biden should or should not be investigated.
Garland, who successfully prosecuted white supremacist Timothy McVeigh for blowing up a Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people including 19 children, said that since then he had developed strong concerns about the use and abuse of the death penalty in the United States. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection in 2001.
In 2016, Garland was nominated by then-President Barack Obama for the Supreme Court but the Republican majority controlling the Senate refused to let his nomination be discussed until Obama left office.
