Democrats are planning to hold a forum later this week, a mock hearing of sorts, designed to highlight Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland's qualifications. | Getty Congress Supreme showdown: Democrats to stage mock Garland hearing, GOP scoffs Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn calls a planned forum on the high court nominee 'a desperate act.'

Top GOP senators dismissed the latest tactic from Senate Democrats in the ongoing contentious battle over confirming Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court: a mock hearing designed to tout the nominee’s attributes and shame the GOP for obstructing him.

Fed up that Garland won’t be getting a confirmation hearing anytime soon, Senate Democrats plan to host a forum on Wednesday that features former top legal and government officials who know Garland personally and who will testify on behalf of the veteran jurist’s legal acumen and personal character.


The event with Garland proxies is probably the closest Democrats can get to a hearing this year, considering Republicans in the majority refuse to hold an actual confirmation hearing and Garland is almost certainly not going to address his nomination fight publicly.

“Looks like a desperate act to me. It’s all about show business,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), who also sits on the Judiciary Committee, said Monday of the Democrats’ latest strategy. “They’re trying to keep it in the news.”

In the two months since Garland stood in the Rose Garden as President Barack Obama announced him as his choice to serve on the Supreme Court, Senate Republicans have barely cracked in their near-uniform view that Garland should not get confirmation hearings this year. GOP senators also now openly acknowledge that they want a conservative to fill that seat, left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February.

The forum Wednesday will also give Garland a bit of public defense, particularly when the judge has been battered by millions of dollars’ worth of ads from a conservative group painting him as a gun-rights opponent and a proponent of government regulation. Democrats have been especially frustrated that Garland, who’s had to stay mostly quiet as he’s been making rounds with senators one-on-one and dutifully filling out his nominee questionnaire, isn’t getting the chance to publicly speak on his own behalf.

“The public discussion we are convening this week allows senators, the press and the public to learn more about this highly qualified nominee and the importance of a fully functioning Supreme Court,” said Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “I hope all senators will join us for this public meeting.”

Among the top people invited to appear at the Democrats’ forum are Abner Mikva, a former Democratic congressman and Clinton White House counsel who served, like Garland, as chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. His visit was tentative, however, because of scheduling conflicts.

But if he does appear, Republicans are preparing to launch criticisms of Mikva similar to those they leveled at Joe Biden and his so-called Biden Rule — when the GOP used the then-senator’s comments from 1992 that President George H.W. Bush shouldn’t fill a hypothetical court vacancy in the middle of a campaign season.

On Monday, Republicans pointed to a 2002 op-ed from Mikva in The Washington Post that they said read as an endorsement of their stand against confirming Garland. In the piece, Mikva criticized the Supreme Court — then led by conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist — as being in an “activist mood,” and argued that then-President George W. Bush, who had lost the popular vote in 2000, should not get his own picks for the court.

“If there are to be changes in its personnel, they ought to be made by a president who has a popular vote mandate,” Mikva wrote. “I think the Senate should not act on any Supreme Court vacancies that might occur until after the next presidential election.”

Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), noted Mikva also wrote in the op-ed that if the Senate chose not to confirm anyone sent up by Bush, that would be a “responsible exercise of the Senate’s constitutional power.”

“It’s encouraging that the Democrats have invited a witness who believes that the Senate should wait until after an election to confirm a Supreme Court nominee,” Stewart said Monday.

Judiciary Committee Democrats have invited five former officials who know Garland to speak on his behalf at Wednesday’s forum, which will be held at 11:30 a.m. at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Democrats plan to approach the meeting as they typically would for any standard nominee, quizzing those called to speak on Garland’s fitness to serve on the Supreme Court and offering highlights from his public service career.

Other speakers set to appear Wednesday include Donna Bucella, a former prosecutor who worked with Garland when he led the federal investigation into the 1995 bombings in Oklahoma City, and Justin Driver, who clerked for Garland and is now a law professor at the University of Chicago.

Also invited are former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater and former 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Timothy Lewis, who was appointed by George H.W. Bush and who testified on behalf of Justice Samuel Alito during his confirmation hearings in January 2006.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who holds the power to call a real confirmation hearing, said Democrats have “every right” to hold their forum but would say little else.

“I think that they want to do everything they can to bring the issue up,” Grassley said Monday evening. “They’re doing what they want to do.”

As of Monday, Garland’s nomination had lingered for 61 days. Last week, he sent his response to an extensive questionnaire — another standard feature of the Senate confirmation process — to the Judiciary Committee.

Garland will get a chance to speak at Niles West High School in Skokie, Illinois, later this month as his alma mater’s commencement speaker, but he won’t address the ongoing nomination fight. He also made an unannounced appearance at a breakfast last month to commend D.C. law firms that are active in pro bono work.

The idea of a mock hearing had been tossed around privately by Senate Democrats for some time, but at a news conference promoting Garland’s questionnaire last week, Leahy signaled strong opposition to the idea.

“Some would probably like for us to do some sort of a pretend hearing,” Leahy said then, when asked about the potential for a mock hearing for Garland. “That gets [Republicans] off the hook. The Senate is not a pretend office.”

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has also said Hillary Clinton, should she win the White House, should renominate Garland — a significant show of support for the respected jurist yet also a tacit acknowledgment that his confirmation fight is going nowhere this year.

