Garland Gets Grilled on the Hill

While it will probably amount to the proverbial nothing-burger, Attorney General Merrick Garland spent at least part of what must have been a busy day on Thursday in front of the House Judiciary Committee. In a perhaps less-surprising turn of events, the AG seemed to be suffering from missing morning briefings, a significant lapse in memory, or a severe case of Pleadthefifth, a devastating disease that can conveniently wreak havoc on the minds of people who find themselves in the middle of things like hearings.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) specifically questioned Garland about the situation in Loudoun County, Va., in which a boy dressed as a woman allegedly violently sexually assaulted a girl in a girls’ restroom, and wanted to know if Garland had any information about it, this case being the second such assault allegedly perpetrated by the boy. Garland’s response? “It sounds like a state case, and I’m not familiar with it. I’m sorry.”

Seriously? Garland did not know? You knew about it. I knew about it. The whole world knew about it almost immediately after the Daily Wire broke it. You would have to be getting your mail under a manhole cover if you did not know about it. Of course he knew about it. He gets the same news the rest of us do. He probably gets more.

But the fact that Garland seems clueless — maybe he was absent that day or has a note from his mother — is hardly surprising, given the genesis of the situation in Loudoun County and other areas that have parents showing up to school board meetings demanding accountability and action. During the same hearing, Garland denied that he was mired in a conflict of interest when it came to his directive to federal agents to investigate parents who made alleged threats against school board members in different parts of the country.

You see, Garland’s son-in-law helped create and is the CEO of Panorama Education. This company sells educational training materials and other resources on intersectionality and various progressive issues to schools around the country — the very materials to which so many parents are objecting. Garland even refused to indicate if he would submit to an ethics review.

And speaking of threats and Loudoun County, this video shows parents calling out a school board member for participating in a Facebook group targeting dissenting parents. The board member resigned, but given the current state of the nation, much like Thursday’s testimony, you probably shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for any further results.