WATCH: Chuck Grassley Calls Out Democrat Lawyer Marc Elias in Garland Vote

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called out Democrat lawyer Marc Elias on Monday in a speech explaining his vote on the confirmation of Judge Merrick Garland as U.S. Attorney General.

Though Grassley noted that he intended to vote for Garland, he expressed reservations about the judge’s evasions on whether he would retain Special Counsel John Durham, and about the intentions of congressional Democrats to turn the Department of Justice into a partisan organization.

“[Garland] will be under tremendous pressure from within the administration, and particularly from pressure from congressional Democrats, to turn the Justice Department into Marc Elias and the ACLU, and do it with each of them having guns,” Grassley said. “It will be up to him to keep the Justice Department from turning into the Social Justice Department.”

Elias was the Democrats’ main election lawyer in 2020, and is currently representing Democrat Rita Hart in Iowa’s 2nd congressional district. Hart lost by six votes to Republican Marianette Miller-Meeks, and is asking the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives to overturn the election result.

Apparently, @ChuckGrassley is concerned that Congress will force Merrick Garland to turn DOJ over to me and that I will have guns.ὄ pic.twitter.com/xYAY73MpuD

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) March 1, 2021

Mockery notwithstanding, Elias helped fund the fraudulent Russia “dossier” on then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016. The forgery made its way to the Department of Justice and was used as a basis for renewing a surveillance warrant on Trump aide Carter Page.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.