Attorney General Merrick Garland says Justice Department ‘will not bend’ to political pressure

By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — Attorney General Merrick Garland slammed efforts to turn the Justice Department into a “political weapon” during a fiery speech Thursday to department staff and US attorneys from across the country amid attacks from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

Garland decried the “escalation of attacks” against its career staff in years through “conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out, and threats of actual violence.”

“It is dangerous to target and intimidate individual employees of this Department simply for doing their jobs,” he said from the DOJ headquarters in Washington. “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.”

The attorney general’s comments come as Trump has claimed that the Justice Department has been weaponized against him amid his criminal prosecutions and suggested that he would politicize the department should he return to the Oval Office.

Neither Trump nor his allies were mentioned by name.

“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,” the attorney general said.

“Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics,” Garland added to applause.

Trump and his associates have publicly discussed plans to dismantle the department and its law enforcement components like the FBI, or to prosecute his political enemies.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the Justice Department under Biden, claiming without evidence that the president has used the department to criminally pursue him and his allies for political purposes. During Tuesday’s presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump pushed those claims again, falsely claiming that Biden and his administration were behind the state-level election subversion case brought against him by local prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and the criminal fraud case brought against him in New York.

“They weaponized the Justice Department. Every one of those cases was involved with the DOJ, from Atlanta and Fani Willis to the attorney general of New York and the DA in New York. Every one of those cases,” Trump claimed. “And then they say, ‘Oh, he’s a criminal.’ They’re the ones that made them go after me.”

During his speech, Garland noted he was tapped to lead the Justice Department in 2021 and had a goal to “fiercely protect the independence of this department from political interference in our criminal investigations.”

The department took steps to achieve that goal, Garland said, including reinstituting policies that regulate contacts that department personnel have with the White House and Congress, clarifying guidelines for sensitive FBI investigations and updating protections that reporters have from law enforcement investigations.

Garland also thanked the prosecutors and Justice Department staff for refusing to “bend to politics” and “break under pressure.”

“You deserve better,” he said.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.

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