Biden's attorney general wanted to return to normal order; it hasn't been easy

The day after rioters ransacked the U.S. Capitol and interrupted the peaceful transfer of power, the new president-elect unveiled his choice to lead the Justice Department.

At that news conference on Jan. 7, 2021, Joe Biden described Merrick Garland as a man who embodies character and decency. He pledged that Garland would be a lawyer for the people and not the president. And he said Garland would help restore the DOJ’s independence from the White House.

Now, more than three years later, the way Garland drew the line between politics and law has somehow alienated Biden, former President Donald Trump and many of their supporters. That violent Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol—and the people responsible for it—will help define Garland's tenure in what may have been his final act of sustained public service.

“He’s really the consummate institutionalist,” said Alex Aronson, a former Justice Department lawyer and Democratic Senate aide. “I think he came in to his tenure as attorney general very much with that good-faith intention to preserve those institutionalist values.”

But Aronson, now executive director at advocacy group Court Accountability, said Trump and his followers pose an ongoing threat to democracy—one that Biden and Garland misunderstood in this historical moment.

“Like a lot of leading Democrats, establishment Democrats, he sort of tried to wave a magic wand and bring back these norms of the pre-Trump era — and that’s just not a realistic approach after what happened during Trump,” Aronson said. “And that’s not how norms work."

Commitment to the public

Garland entered a Justice Department that had endured blistering criticism from the former president.

While president, Trump fired the FBI director, derided career