US President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Merrick Garland — a centrist judge that Republicans denied a seat on the Supreme Court five years ago — to be US attorney general, US media reported Wednesday.
Garland, a judge on the Washington federal appeals court, has a record as a moderate liberal and is not aligned with either political party.
But Senate Republicans blocked his nomination to the high court by then president Barack Obama for eight months in 2016, which allowed President Donald Trump to fill the vacant seat with a conservative-leaning justice the next year.
Garland, 68, has had a long career as a private sector lawyer and a federal prosecutor.
In 1993, he was named deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice, handling important national security cases including the Oklahoma City and Atlanta Olympics bombings.
In 1997, president Bill Clinton named him to the Washington appeals court, and he received broad support from Democratic and Republican senators in his confirmation.
He became chief judge of that court in 2013 and, in March 2016, was picked by Obama to fill a seat on the Supreme Court after Antonin Scalia passed away.
In a break with tradition, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell refused to put Garland’s nomination to a vote, gambling that a Republican could win the presidency in the November election and a conservative could then be nominated.
That set the stage for Trump’s landmark choice of three justices for the high court over the past four years, tilting it decidedly to the right.
Garland stepped down as chief of the appeals court a year ago but stayed on as a judge.
His nomination as attorney general is likely to easily pass the Senate, which is expected to come under narrow Democratic Party control. He is likely to garner Republican support as well.
Biden is also reportedly planning to name former Obama administration homeland security advisor and veteran prosecutor Lisa Monaco as deputy attorney general.
In addition, media reports say Biden will name Brett McGurk, the former US envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, to the White House National Security Council as Middle East and Africa director.
