Attorney General Merrick Garland denounces 'dangerous' and 'outrageous' attacks on DOJ prosecutors and personnel
Former President Donald Trump and his lawyers have claimed that the DOJ has been weaponized to keep him from being elected to another term.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday denounced "dangerous" and "outrageous" attacks on Justice Department prosecutors and personnel and sought to reassure them that he has their backs.
The speech to his employees, at times emotional and forceful, appeared to allude to the kinds of accusations and threats made by former President Donald Trump, his allies and supporters, though Garland didn’t explicitly name Trump in his remarks.
Garland thanked DOJ workers for their dedication in the face of “an escalation of attacks on the Justice Department’s career lawyers, agents and other personnel” over the last three-and-a-half years.
"These attacks have come in the form of conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out, and threats of actual violence," Garland said. "It is dangerous and outrageous that you have to endure them."
"It is dangerous to target and intimidate individual employees of this department simply for doing their jobs." Garland added. "And it is outrageous that you have to face these unfounded attacks because you are doing what is right and upholding the rule of law."
Garland received heavy applause when he said: “The way you do that work makes clear that the public servants of the Department of Justice do not bend to politics. And that they will not break under pressure.”
A main thrust of his remarks was that every American is equal under the law: “There is not one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, or different rules depending on one’s race or ethnicity.”
“To the contrary, we have only one rule: We follow the facts and apply the law in a way that respects the Constitution and protects civil liberties,” he said.
The attorney general said he and other department officials will "fiercely protect" the DOJ's independence from "political interference in our criminal investigations," will not allow the department to be used "as a political weapon" and will not allow law enforcement to be "treated as an apparatus of politics."
Garland listed steps that the department has already taken to protect the DOJ's criminal and civil decisions, such as reinstating policies regulating communication between DOJ employees and Congress and the White House. Other actions have included improving and clarifying guidelines for sensitive FBI investigations and publishing new policies to guide "prosecutorial discretion with respect to charging, pleas and sentencing."
He said of the attacks on prosecutors: "You deserve better. You deserve gratitude for the noble and difficult work you do. You deserve recognition for the integrity and skill with which you do that work."
"You also have my promise, that nothing will ever stop me from defending this Department, and the extraordinary people who work here," Garland said.
Since leaving office in 2021, Trump has continually lashed out at the Department of Justice over its investigations into him as well as the indictments. Trump and his lawyers have claimed the DOJ has been weaponized to target him largely in an effort to prevent him from being elected to another term as president.
Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment on Garland's remarks.
The former president has called DOJ employees derogatory names, for example, calling special counsel Jack Smith, who has charged Trump in separate cases, "deranged." He has also threatened prosecutors, saying in a Truth Social post last year when alluding to the federal 2020 election interference charges against him, "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!" As a result, judges have instituted gag orders to block Trump from speaking about certain officials in various cases.
Smith has even been targeted in a swatting incident, as have judges involved in Trump's cases.
During the six-week New York hush money trial this year, Trump said in remarks outside the courtroom on a near daily basis that Biden's Justice Department was being weaponized against him. The case, however, wasn't federal; it was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Trump was eventually convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
One of Trump's proposals if he wins the election is to reimpose an order known as "Schedule F" that would make it easier for the president to fire government workers, with a policy focus on overhauling federal agencies and removing what his plan refers to "corrupt actors" in the national security and intelligence communities.
In recent weeks, Trump has doubled down on threats use the DOJ to to prosecute people he believes have gone after him while he's been out of office.
After a recent rally, Trump wrote on social media: "“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences. Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.”
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