The Untold Truth Of US Attorney General Merrick Garland

Publish date: 2024-05-09

In 1993, Merrick Garland joined the Department of Justice under the Clinton administration, as deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division, according to NPR. Within a year, he was the top aide to the department's number two authority, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. In that capacity, Garland was put to work supervising investigations into bombings by domestic terrorists. Among the cases under his purview was that of the Unabomber, later proved to be Ted Kaczynski.

Garland also supervised the investigation into the bombing of Oklahoma City in 1995. As reported by The Washington Post, he lobbied for the job, even asking Gorelick to dispatch him to the site after seeing footage of first responders retrieving the dead and wounded from the rubble. Besides supervising the investigation, Garland also assembled the prosecution team that would ultimately try Timothy McVeigh, the domestic terrorist behind the bombing. He successfully lobbied for media access to McVeigh's initial proceeding to counter an anticipated complaint about being denied an open hearing, and he urged his team to demonstrate the integrity and clarity of the American legal system. "Do not bury the crime in the clutter," he cautioned.

Those who worked with Garland on the bombing investigations say that it left a deep mark on him. "He knew and felt the weight of the individual lives lost," his former clerk Clare Huntington told the Post. Garland himself named the investigations as his most consequential work.

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