During the tenure of Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into threats of violence against school board members, pushed for severe sentences against Jan. 6 defendants, and created a new domestic counterterrorism office—all with the stated aim of combating white supremacy and domestic extremism.
But if Garland really wants to combat violent racists, according to researchers of the subject, then he should reopen the case he worked on 27 years ago and find the accomplices of Oklahoma City bomber and avowed white supremacist Timothy McVeigh.
Garland should be aware of these matters, having discussed McVeigh’s enigmatic accomplice, “John Doe 2,” court transcripts show.
Additionally, The Epoch Times received previously unpublished White House visitor logs showing the attorney general’s apparent visit to “FLOTUS” the day before he led the prosecution at McVeigh’s preliminary hearing—raising questions about why he’d met with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton before jetting 1,300 miles west to Oklahoma.
Garland and the DOJ didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Garland’s Role
When President Barack Obama nominated him to the Supreme Court in 2016, the president heaped praise on Garland’s role in prosecuting the perpetrator of the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history.“In the wake of the bombing, he traveled to Oklahoma to oversee the case, and in the ensuing months coordinated every aspect of the government’s response, working with federal agents, rescue workers, local officials, and others to bring the perpetrators to justice,” Obama said.
“It’s the issue about conspiracy theories, about ‘Maybe somebody else did it’ or ‘You hadn’t done everything,'” Garland reportedly said in a 2013 oral history about the case. “I wanted to be sure we had done everything we could possibly do to find every person who was involved.”
However, some top former FBI officials who investigated the attack have raised eyebrows at Obama’s description of Garland, as well as the attorney general’s own words.“The people who ran the case at the DOJ, that wasn’t him,” said Coulson, who was in charge of the crime scene. “Merrick Garland was mainly there for his resume, I think.”
Coulson’s colleague, former FBI agent Bob Ricks—who led the bureau’s investigation—said he got along well with Garland, but that “his role was a limited one.”
“He [Garland] was sent, in my understanding, primarily to be of assistance, and as the representative of the DOJ during that time period,” he told The Epoch Times. “A difficulty we had was that our United States Attorney had resigned, and the acting U.S. Attorney had very limited experience.
“So we had a vacuum there that did exist. DOJ sent out two attorneys. One was Garland,” said Ricks, who disagrees with the researchers and his former colleague Coulson, taking the position that the Oklahoma City bombing case was solved and needn’t be reopened.
Sanders, the grandmother of two of the victims, has little recollection of Garland from that era. But as one of the “Oklahoma City Dissidents”—a term coined by British writer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard to describe a group of bombing survivors and victim family members who have been critical of the FBI’s investigation—her research has raised numerous questions that still linger.
“First of all, I have a problem that the FBI never identified the people seen coming and going from the Dreamland Hotel, where McVeigh stayed the week before the bombing,” she said, referring to multiple witnesses who saw numerous people coming and going from McVeigh’s hotel room. “He drove right from the Dreamland to the Murrah Building to blow it up. I think it’s important to know who those people were.”
“I don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle, but I have enough to know that everyone involved in that crime was not arrested,” Sanders said.
But when asked about Garland’s comment about finding “every person who was involved” in the murder of her grandchildren, she gave him the benefit of the doubt. The author of a book on forgiveness, Sanders is concentrated more on her charity work for victims of the war in Ukraine these days than she is on criticizing Garland.
“He could be very sincere, but he might not know everything,” she said of the attorney general.
Garland at the Preliminary Hearing
However, records show that Garland is at least familiar with some of the questions that still linger with Sanders and others. Court transcripts chronicle Garland’s discussions about John Doe 2 during McVeigh’s April 27, 1995, preliminary hearing.Garland started the hearing with his witness, FBI agent Jon Hersley, who outlined the government’s case against McVeigh. Hersley said first responders recovered an axle from the Ryder Truck that exploded outside the Murrah Building, using the serial number on the part to trace where the truck came from, eventually leading investigators to McVeigh.
Defense attorney John Coyle, who was representing McVeigh at the time, then cross-examined Hersley. When Coyle attempted to inquire into John Doe 2, Garland objected.
“Did this particular witness indicate to agents of the FBI how many persons were in the speeding yellow Mercury?” Coyle asked Hersley, referencing a witness who saw McVeigh leaving the scene with another man.
“Two,” Hersley responded.
“Did this witness also identify the person that we know as number 2, ‘unsub [unidentified subject] 2’ at the scene?” Coyle asked, referencing John Doe 2.
Garland objected to this question, telling the presiding judge that “unsub 2 is not before the court.”
The judge sustained the objection.
But later during the cross-examination, Hersley referenced “occupants” of the Ryder Truck—leading Coyle to ask about John Doe 2 again, and for Garland to object once more.
“Did you tell me [the witness] saw occupants of a Ryder Truck and there was more than one?” Coyle asked the FBI agent.
“Objection,” Garland interjected. “The only person on trial at this hearing is Mr. McVeigh. It doesn’t matter whether there were two or 100 people in that truck as long as there was somebody representing Mr. McVeigh there. It is discovery and totally outside of the scope of this hearing.”
Coyle urged the judge to overrule the objection.
“May I respond? I think it is important to see if we distinguish it as the same truck or not. I think it is very important to the credibility of the witness and credibility of the evidence and what they saw as to whether or not the person saw three or five or six,” Coyle argued.
This time, the judge agreed with Coyle, overruling Garland.
After Coyle repeated his question, the FBI agent said: “This witness advised that there were two individuals in the truck. The individual resembling Mr. McVeigh was the driver.”
Despite the revelation from Hersley, Coyle didn’t pursue the matter further and stepped down as McVeigh’s attorney shortly after the hearing. He didn’t respond to an interview request for this story.
Trentadue and Charles both said they thought Coyle performed remarkably well during the hearing, considering he had been thrown into the case immediately before the hearing.
“He was really thrown into the thick of it,” Charles said.
Trentadue and Charles chastised Garland for what he didn’t examine as much as they did his objections.
To Trentadue’s point, the court transcript indeed also shows Garland objecting when Coyle asked the name of the FBI agent who handled the “film footage”—another matter left unexamined by both parties.
Garland’s White House Visit
If Garland’s performance at the preliminary hearing raises questions with the researchers, then a document they found a few years ago left them even more baffled. The record in question is an entry in the White House visitor logs that indicates that Garland was there the night before McVeigh’s preliminary hearing.According to the 230,644th entry in the 1995 White House visitors logs, Garland signed in at 5:30 p.m. to visit “FLOTUS” in room 450 on April 26. The logs state that Garland’s “visitor access type” was “VA,” but don’t explain the designation.
“Garland goes to Oklahoma April 21, and I thought he stayed until the 12th or 13th of May; I hadn’t seen anything indicating that he went to DC,” Charles told this reporter. “But I asked Richard [Booth] to get the White House visitor logs from the Clinton Library—and there’s Merrick Garland meeting with Hillary [Clinton].”
“That would have been the most important hearing in [Garland’s] life. He would have been there for days going through all the evidence,” Trentadue said.
Former FBI agents Coulson and Ricks both said they were less surprised at the finding.
“It was the most significant thing that was going on in the United States at the time, so it wouldn’t surprise me that the political side of the administration would want to be appraised of what was going on,” Ricks said.
“Like I said, he was kind of the point man for the Department of Justice, so I didn’t realize he was back there the day before the preliminary hearing, but it wouldn’t surprise me. You know, he was in and out ... He really wasn’t trying to direct the investigation. He was there to monitor and follow where it was going.”
But Trentadue wonders what was so important that it couldn’t be discussed over the phone.
“If Garland were briefing someone [about the case], wouldn’t it be done by phone?” Trentadue asked.
Booth—who provided this reporter with the visitor logs and Clinton Library receipts to show their authenticity—said he believes Garland’s White House visit must have been related to the McVeigh case due to its monumental importance. The researcher said he hasn’t found further details about the meeting.
But regardless of what Garland did 27 years ago, he should reopen the investigation, Booth said.
For her part, Sanders still has hope that all those responsible for her grandchildren’s murders will be brought to justice—though maybe not in her lifetime.
“I’ve watched my late husband die, [Oklahoma City bombing investigator and journalist] J.D. [Cash] die, now Roger Charles, and [fellow Oklahoma City Dissident] Jannie Coverdale,” she said. “Jesse Trentadue and I are about the only two left.”
Despite the lack of answers after 27 years, Sanders still counts her blessings.
“I was downtown in the bombing with my daughter, and both my grandchildren died. But when the Ukrainian war began, I saw the buildings being bombed and it brought it all back to me,” she said. “I thought, ‘Man, I get to go home at night. After our babies were killed, I did get to go home and sleep in my own bed.’”