Merrick Garland told the department’s staff that there “is not one rule for friends and another for foes,” amid threats from former President Donald Trump to go after enemies if he is elected.
Listen to this article · 3:00 min Learn more
- Share full article
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in Washington this month.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland warned on Thursday against allowing the Justice Department to be politicized, saying “there is not one rule for friends and another for foes.”
His remarks, delivered at the agency’s headquarters, came amid regular suggestions from former President Donald J. Trump that he would seek to use law enforcement to punish perceived enemies if elected and turn the tables on Democrats after years of what he portrays as baseless and politically motivated investigations of him.
Mr. Garland said the department had to remain focused on its principles even as its employees face threats of violence and are increasingly operating in a storm of misinformation.
“We will not allow this department to be used as a political weapon,” Mr. Garland said. “We will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.”
Speaking to a gathering of U.S. attorneys from around the country, Mr. Garland said he chose to break with the tradition of delivering remarks to them in a small, windowless room. Instead, he addressed them in the building’s Great Hall, an open space where hundreds of people can gather.
“In short, we must treat like cases alike,” he said. “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.”
Mr. Trump has regularly accused the Biden administration, without any evidence, of orchestrating criminal cases against him for political gain.
And in the past month, he has stepped up his threats to prosecute people who have crossed him should he be elected in November.
“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” Mr. Trump wrote on his website Truth Social on Saturday, referring to anyone he believes improperly seeks to meddle against him in the electoral system.
Throughout President Biden’s term, Republican lawmakers have sought to portray the Justice Department as having been weaponized against Mr. Trump and the Republican Party even as Mr. Garland has appointed special counsels to investigate both the president and his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty last week to tax evasion charges.
Mr. Garland’s remarks echoed those he made on his first day as attorney general in 2021, when he promised to restore independence to the Justice Department. During both speeches, he spoke of the agency’s “norms,” centered around preventing political influence.
On Thursday, he said, “I continue to believe deeply that our norms matter now more than ever to our department and to our democracy.”
Eileen Sullivan covers breaking news, the Justice Department, the trials against Donald J. Trump and the Biden administration. More about Eileen Sullivan
See more on: U.S. Politics, 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, U.S. Justice Department, Merrick B Garland, Donald Trump
- Share full article
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Source: nytimes.com
