Merrick Garland has proved himself unfit for Supreme Court — but he shouldn’t be AG either

Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama died on base when Republicans refused to take it up. The seat was instead filled by now-Justice Neil Gorsuch. Garland’s consolation prize: becoming President Joe Biden’s attorney general. Yet in nine short months, he’s proved not only unfit to sit on the court but unfit to serve as attorney general. Indeed, his behavior suggests he’s not qualified for any federal position.

Garland’s nomination to the court was always iffy. Libertarians thought his track record was dangerously authoritarian. The trustees of the estate of the late Justice William Brennan, for whom Garland had clerked, inexplicably sealed records having to do with Garland’s time working at the court. And though Garland was touted as a “moderate,” a straight-shooter who could cruise to an easy confirmation, he satisfied neither the Democratic left nor the Republican center.

But what Garland has demonstrated as AG is a different kind of deficit, a deficit of character and integrity. As Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said to Garland in hearings this week, “Thank God you are not on the Supreme Court.”

Those hearings involved Garland’s inexplicable decision to target federal law-enforcement resources at parents who speak against critical race theory and unpopular transgender policies at school-board meetings. In response to a letter from the left-leaning National School Boards Association, which described those meetings with lurid language but scant evidence of any real threats, Garland ordered the FBI and the Department of Justice into action.

There was no justification for Garland’s move, which was political thuggery at its worst. The disorder at these meetings mostly involved people shouting and talking out of turn, with the occasional scuffle. (One arrest, at a meeting of the now-notorious Loudoun County, Va., school board, involved the father of a girl raped in a bathroom by a boy in a skirt — a rape the school board attempted to cover up. The boy has since been convicted.)

None of the supposed threats raised a federal issue, despite the now-familiar claims of “domestic terrorism,” which in today’s Democratic Party lexicon simply means “opposition to our policies.” And if there were to be any violence, there’s no reason to think that local law enforcement couldn’t handle it.

But enforcing federal laws wasn’t the point. Intimidating political opponents was. It didn’t work, partly because the politicized Justice Department and FBI have become national laughingstocks due to their behavior of the past few years.

Parents around the country continue to resist the dangerous and unpopular policies on race and gender being pushed by leftist activists, and even the NSBA faced such backlash that it had to back down. With state and local school boards across the nation canceling their memberships in the association, the group publicly retracted its letter.

Garland, however, did not retract his statement, though in the hearings he pretended to care about people’s First Amendment rights. Unimpressed, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called for Garland’s resignation. Said Hawley: “You have weaponized the FBI and the Department of Justice. It is wrong. It is unprecedented to...

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