Merrick Garland for FBI Director?

Merrick Garland for FBI Director?

Okay, I’ll admit this is a good bit of trolling, but I can’t help myself this morning.

You remember Merrick Garland? He’s the guy Obama nominated for the Scalia seat, but who never got a vote. That was like an injection of hot sauce into the veins of Democrats.

Senator Mike Lee recently floated the idea of Trump nominating Garland to replace James Comey as FBI Director. Lee did it in a very Trumpian way – on Twitter:

Politico reported that Lee had raised the issue with the White House.

When I first saw it, I thought: NO, NO, NO.

But it’s an idea some Republicans seem to be getting behind:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s former chief of staff, Josh Holmes, on Sunday declared his old boss’s strong support for the potential nomination of Merrick Garland as FBI director.

“I think the Senate majority leader thinks that’s a fantastic idea,” Holmes said during a panel discussion on “Fox News Sunday.” He was reacting to Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, floating the idea last week. “It’s somebody who obviously Democrats have significant trust and respect for, they’ve articulated that over the last year, and someone who can do the job impartially and I think he is going to be prepared to make that suggestion,” he added.

Merrick Garland as FBI director would avert what could be a long national nightmare. Trump should propose. Dems should insist.

— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) May 12, 2017

While I think it’s unlikely to happen, Dave Weigel at WaPo smells a Court of Appeals rat in Lee’s proposal, The ‘Merrick Garland for FBI’ scheme shows why liberals lose:

We live in a golden age of political stupidity, but I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this: The idea of pulling Judge Merrick Garland off the D.C. Circuit federal appeals court and into the FBI is one of the silliest ideas I’ve seen anyone in Washington fall for. It’s like Wile E. Coyote putting down a nest made of dynamite and writing “NOT A TRAP” on a whiteboard next to it. It’s also an incredibly telling chapter in the book that’s been written since the Republican National Convention — the story of how Republicans who are uncomfortable with the Trump presidency gritting their teeth as they use it to lock in control of the courts….

The reasons to object were quickly explained by reporters and by liberal court analysts like Dahlia Lithwick. “Garland probably won’t want to give up his lifetime tenure as the chief judge of the second-most important court in the land,” Lithwick wrote, “and surely the most significant bulwark against Trump administration overreach, in exchange for a 12-minute gig on The Apprentice before he uses the wrong color highlighter and gets fired by a crazy person.” Among most court-watchers, the scheme was pretty obvious: Lee would give Republicans a chance to tweak a Garland-less court, changing a 7-to-4 liberal majority to a 6-to-5 majority. And in his tweet, Lee was explicit: If Garland went to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Democrats wouldn’t need a President Trump/Russia special prosecutor.

That makes sense to me. At the same ceremony that Garland is sworn into office, after having resigned from the bench, Trump both administers the oath and then says “You’re fired!,” as Trump simultaneously announces the name of the person being nominated to replace Garland on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

I’m not endorsing Garland for FBI Director, but the scenario painted above is at least worth playing out for a while, if for no other reason than to further stoke Democrat paranoid delusions.

Oh, and there’s one other reason. I wouldn’t mind being mistaken for the FBI Director every once in a while:

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