Senate panel expected to grill Garland on Trump, Biden special counsels, other hot-button DOJ topics

(WASHINGTON) — For the first time since his appointment of two special counsels to oversee investigations into both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland is testifying before lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday for an annual oversight hearing.

Garland, who is famously tight-lipped in terms of discussing any aspects of ongoing criminal investigations before his department, will likely be pressed on a wide-ranging number of topics from investigators’ actions in the Trump and Biden cases, the new revelations of classified materials found in former Vice President Pence’s home, to the still-unresolved investigation into Biden’s son Hunter.

Other topics Garland could be pressed on — the department’s formal position regarding when prosecutors should recommend the death penalty for certain federal offenders, the recent arrest of former FBI special agent Charles McGonigal in New York over his ties to a Russian oligarch, DOJ’s civil rights investigations into alleged incidents of police brutality, and how DOJ is responding to various threats from abroad.

His appearance also comes as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox host Tucker Carlson unfettered access to thousands of hours of video from the Capitol during the Jan. 6 assault on Congress, despite warnings in the past from prosecutors that widespread release of such video could potentially compromise the safety of lawmakers. McCarthy on Tuesday defended giving the footage to Carlson and said other networks and the American public would get access to the video as “soon as possible” but did not commit to a timeline.

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