We’re talking to breaking news Attorney General Merrick Garland about the increasing attacks and threats on Justice Department employees and his pledge not to let the DOJ be used as a political weapon. Let’s listen to the Senate floor earlier this spring and I’m thinking about heroes like the Communard family who made the kind of sacrifice no one should make. In addition to facing threats like violent crime and terrorism, I’ve also seen how you bravely worked and survived an unprecedented increase in threats targeting so many public officials across the country.
The past three and a half years have seen a surge in attacks on career Justice Department lawyers, agents, and other personnel that go far beyond investigations, criticism, and illegal and necessary oversight of our work. These attacks have come in the form of conspiracy theories, dangerous lies, efforts to intimidate and bully career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out, and threats of actual violence. Your work made it clear that the Department of Justice will not be intimidated by these attacks, but it is dangerous. It is outrageous that you have to endure them. It is dangerous to target and intimidate individual employees of this department simply for doing their jobs. It is outrageous that you have to endure these baseless attacks because you are doing what is right and upholding the rule of law. You deserve better than this.
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 deserve to be respected. The work you do every day makes a difference. The way you do that work makes it clear that the public servants of the Department of Justice do not bow to politics. They will not crumble under the pressure of the choices you make in every investigation, in every filing, in every lawsuit, in everything you do to ensure that the fair and impartial application of the law makes this department and our democracy the public deserves. We are proud of the people we serve and for that you deserve respect.
We hope you already know that you have my whole heart. You also have my promise that nothing will ever stop me. Protecting this Department and protecting the extraordinary people who work here is what started my career as Attorney General back in O.J. Believing that our standards are some of the most powerful tools we have to ensure that the rule of law is upheld. Having served as Attorney General for the past three and a half years, I continue to believe deeply that our standards matter now more than ever to our Department and to our democracy. I also believe that now more than ever the most important resources the Department of Justice has are opportunity and the integrity of the people who work here.
As we wrote in the preface to the first edition of Principles of Federal Prosecution. The quote is important, though these principles are for the proper operation of our federal prosecution system. The success of that system must ultimately depend on character. The integrity, the sensitivity, and the competence of the men and women who are chosen to represent the public interest in the federal criminal justice process. It is through their efforts that the objectives of these principles will be achieved Close Quote I know many of you have heard me talk about this. Why the work of the Department of Justice is so important.
I have often shared that I wanted to give back to the country and the system that took in and protected my grandparents when they had no other place to go. That protection is what sets America apart from many other countries. The protection of the law and the rule of law is the foundation of our system of government. Our democracy depends on an independent law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, that ensures those protections. And most importantly, our democracy depends on the people who dedicate themselves and their careers to that.
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