Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland sounded the alarm on the threat of domestic terrorism at his confirmation hearing Monday, saying the U.S. is "facing a more dangerous period" than after the Oklahoma City bombing.

The big picture: Garland drew a line between the bombing — for which he supervised the prosecution during a stint at the Justice Department — to a recent "enormous rise in hate crimes." He compared the effort to curb the violence with the "battles of the original Justice Department against the Ku Klux Klan."

• "I certainly agree that we are facing a more dangerous period than we faced in Oklahoma City," Garland said.

In his opening remarks, Garland told the committee he will "supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6," as he did as a federal prosecutor investigating the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, which killed 168 people.