The nomination of D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland to be U.S. Attorney General has been hailed as a moderate pick for the incoming Biden Administration. However, as Hans von Spakovsky pointed out in a Fox News op-ed this past weekend, Garland may have his work cut out for him maintaining the nonpartisan ideals of the Department considering the other individuals that Joe Biden intends to nominate to join him at the Department — specifically, Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke.
Vanita Gupta will be nominated to be associate attorney general. As von Spakovsky noted:
Gupta is a former American Civil Liberties Union and NAACP lawyer who is currently the head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. She headed the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department in an acting capacity during the Obama administration from 2014 to 2017, arguably in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
Rather than enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws on a race-neutral, non-political basis, Gupta acted as if the Civil Rights Division was simply the in-house counsel of the Democratic National Committee and its political ally, the NAACP. She used the division to attack voter ID laws and opposes other election reforms, such as maintaining accurate voter rolls intended to improve the integrity and security of the election process.
During her tenure, the division’s own website shows Gupta didn’t file a single case against any of the numerous colleges and universities that are blatantly discriminating on the basis of race in their student admissions in explicit violation of federal civil rights laws. Apparently, she believes that racial discrimination is perfectly acceptable as long as it is carried out against whites and Asians and benefits blacks and Hispanics.
Gupta was listed on a Supreme Court short list released by leftist dark money group Demand Justice in 2019 that Judicial Crisis Network's Carrie Severino called "too extreme even for Obama."
Kristen Clarke, currently of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, will be nominated to head the Department's Civil Rights Division. Von Spakovsky continued:
Clarke opposes reforms intended to safeguard the security and integrity of elections. Her organization has filed numerous lawsuits, as outlined on its website, challenging voter ID and other election reforms. She does not believe in the race-neutral enforcement of federal discrimination laws, which were intended to protect all Americans from discrimination.
Testifying in 2010 before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Christopher Coates, the former head of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, said that Clarke met with division officials in 2008 to demand that the Justice Department dismiss its first-ever case against a Black official for violating the Voting Rights Act — despite the fact that a federal district court had already found him liable for engaging in flagrant discrimination.
Why? Because Clarke apparently doesn’t believe the Voting Rights Act protects all voters or should be enforced in a race-neutral manner.
On Monday night, Tucker Carlson highlighted previous statements made by Clarke so controversial that he noted: "[I]n a sane country, someone like Kristen Clarke would be under investigation by the Civil Rights Division, not running it."
Exclusive: shocking statements by Biden's DOJ civil rights pick. pic.twitter.com/5CzhwPa3WH
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 12, 2021
Biden's nomination of Garland represents another attempt by the Left to hide their true objectives by making their decisions look moderate on the surface. It will be nearly impossible for Garland to maintain the integrity of the Department with left-wing appointees like Gupta and Clarke in powerful positions.