Attorney General Merrick Garland may have to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing if Republican Senator Ted Cruz’s (Texas) request is granted.
According to reporting by Fox News, Cruz has sent a letter to committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) requesting that Garland appears before the panel to “detail the steps the Department of Justice is taking to protect our Supreme Court Justices in the wake of an unprecedented harassment and intimidation campaign.”
In his letter, Cruz points to 18 U.S.C. 1507, a law criminalizing attempts to influence a judge by picketing at their home. The law was passed to give judges the “freedom to exercise their judicial power free from outside influence or intimidation.”
The Texas Senator also cites Article III of the U.S. Constitution. Article III shields judges from being influenced by anything other than law and facts in the case by granting them life tenure and salary protection.
But Cruz accuses the country’s chief law enforcement officer of disregarding “clear evidence that federal law was violated by mobs of Protestors” when he “flatly refused to enforce federal law.”
Cruz also pointed to the request made by the Supreme Court Marshal to Maryland and Virginia officials, asking them to “enforce laws that prohibit picketing outside the homes of the Justices who live in the two states.”
The Republican Senator emphasized that “the governors of Virginia and Maryland called upon Attorney General Garland to ‘enforce the law as it is written,'” but added that Garland “has ignored such calls, doing so with near-tragic results.”
