Joe Biden announced Thursday that he has nominated Judge Merrick Garland to serve as his attorney general. Recall that Garland was the judge Barack Obama nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court during the last year of his presidency, a nomination the Republican-controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell refused to consider.

With the choice of Garland, Biden seemingly has avoided picking a controversial and partisan individual who would have raised serious objections from Republicans. While Garland certainly leans left, the even-tempered 68-year-old is not likely to ruffle partisan feathers — or so we hope. In his introduction, Garland noted that he was there to serve “the law and not factional purposes.”

His choice of Garland also indicates that Biden is not likely to push for investigations into President Donald Trump. As Biden stated in November, “I will not do what this president does and use the Justice Department as my vehicle to insist that something happen. There are a number of investigations that I’ve read about that are at a state level — there’s nothing at all I can or cannot do about that. But I’m focused on getting the American public back in a place where they have some certainty, some surety, some knowledge that they can make it. Middle-class and working-class people are being crushed — that’s my focus.”

What this president does? It was Team Obama-Biden that weaponized the Justice Department against political opponents. As for the people “being crushed” right now, we can only presume Biden means to shift the focus from the DOJ and Rule of Law to the economy. But it is Democrats — governors, mayors, county executives — who are crushing people with lockdowns. That is an injustice.

Back to the DOJ, the bigger question is whether Garland will continue to allow both the ongoing John Durham investigation into the origins of the Russia hoax and the FBI’s investigation into Hunter Biden. Will he be a straight-up law man, or will he become Biden’s henchman? Time will tell.