Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Address to the Workforce: “An Independent Justice Department”

An Independent Justice Department

Remarks as Delivered

Hello everyone.

And thank you, Dawn, for that overly generous introduction.

U.S. Attorney Dawn Ison served for nearly 20 years as a career Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan. Today, she leads that office. I am grateful to her for all she does. And I am grateful to all the U.S. Attorneys who are with us today for your leadership, and for generously agreeing to invite the entire DOJ workforce to this closing session of the 85th annual U.S. Attorneys’ conference.

Since 1939, U.S. Attorneys have traveled to Washington from across the country to meet with one another to discuss the most pressing issues facing their communities.

Each year, the Attorney General addresses the conference. In recent years, Attorneys General have delivered their remarks only to the U.S. Attorneys, in a small windowless room upstairs in this building.

This year, I wanted to talk to everyone, here in this Great Hall.

First, and foremost, to thank you — all of you — the over 115,000 public servants who make up this Department.

Every day, in communities across the country and around the world, you do difficult and often dangerous work on behalf of the American people.

When a heinous crime has been committed, you are the ones to whom victims and survivors turn to seek justice on their behalf.

You are the ones to whom the American people turn for help:

… when a community is targeted by hate crimes;

… when a neighborhood is poisoned by toxic chemicals;

… when workers and consumers are harmed by corporate monopolies;

… when voters are unlawfully blocked from participating in our democratic process;

… when our country faces threats ranging from violent crime and drug trafficking to terrorist organizations and authoritarian regimes.

You are the agents, prosecutors, correctional officers, victims service specialists, grantmaking experts, administrative professionals, and so many others who step up when you are needed the most.

And in the wake of horrific tragedies, you are the ones to whom communities look for protection — and for solace.

Yesterday, we marked the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on our country. As we took time to remember all those who were taken from us on that day and in the years since, we honored the DOJ employees who risked their lives in responding to the attacks.

They are heroes.

Their service and sacrifice remind us that, when the American people look to see what the Justice Department stands for, they are looking to the example of the people who work here — all of you.

I know that is an enormous responsibility. So, I want you to know that you have not only my gratitude, but the gratitude of every person whose life you have saved or changed through your work.

You do not hear it often enough: thank you.

Thank you for being selfless public servants and patriots.

Thank you for the countless hours, the nights and weekends, holidays and time away from family that you have spent because you believe in the mission of this Department and because you want to serve the American people.

And thank you not only for the work you do, but for the way you do your work — with skill and integrity.

That is what I want to talk about today — this workforce's ironclad commitment to the principles of fairness and impartiality that have long guided it, and why that commitment is as important as it ever has been.

Eighty-four years ago, then-Attorney General Robert Jackson delivered a now-famous address to the U.S. Attorneys right here in this Great Hall.

In that speech, he sought to remind U.S. Attorneys of the enormous power they hold as federal prosecutors, and the responsibilities that come with that power.

He defined what he deemed “a good prosecutor” as a person “who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.”

That speech, which he titled, “The Federal Prosecutor,” outlined values that have echoed in the halls of this Department, and outside of it, for generations.

He gave voice to the principles that have guided not only prosecutors but all of our employees, who understand deeply what is at stake when it comes to the fair and impartial application of our laws.

His words have inspired generations of public servants, including me.

I first came to the Justice Department more than forty years ago, at a time when both the leadership and the career employees of this Department were working to restore public confidence in the fair and impartial application of our laws in the wake of Watergate.

To do so, Department leaders like Attorneys General Ed Levi, Griffin Bell, and Benjamin Civiletti developed and formalized a set of norms to guide the Justice Department's adherence to the rule of law.

Relying on values foundational to our democracy — in particular, the promise of equal justice under law — they put forward a set of policies to guide the Justice Department's work. Those included:

… policies designed to protect the independence of the Justice Department from partisan influence.

… guidelines for FBI investigations

... regulations to protect the freedom of the press, and

... policies to ensure respect for the Department's career lawyers, agents, and staff.

And they included a project to set out, for the first time in a single authoritative source, a set of principles to guide the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

In my first job at the Justice Department, working for Attorney General Civiletti, I assisted on that project. 

The result was a slim paperbound volume entitled, Principles of Federal Prosecution, published in 1980. As you well know, the current version of the Principles is now a 23,000-word electronic document enshrined in the Justice Manual.

The purpose of those principles, as we wrote in the Preface, was “to promote the reasoned exercise of prosecutorial authority and contribute to the fair, evenhanded administration of the federal criminal laws.”

Much of that document is devoted to giving guidance to prosecutors about which factors they should consider in a multitude of situations — from initiating prosecution, to selecting charges, disclosing exculpatory information, entering into plea agreements, and making sentencing recommendations.

But the core of the Principles is its directive about which factors an attorney for the government may not consider.  In the words of that document:

“[T]he attorney for the government may not be influenced by:

[a] person’s race, religion, gender, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, or political association, activities, or beliefs;

by [t]he attorney’s own personal feelings concerning the person, the person’s associates, or the victim; or

by [t]he possible effect of the decision on the attorney’s own professional or personal circumstances. …”

This provision of the Principles ends with an admonition: “Federal prosecutors and agents may never make a decision regarding an investigation or prosecution … for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

In short, we must treat like cases alike.

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.

Over the past three and a half years, I have spoken to you often about the importance of these norms.

I know that, to many outside of this Department, they may seem abstract or even inconsequential. They are anything but. And they must not be taken for granted.

For us, adhering to these policies, principles, and norms in everything we do is how we fulfill the promise that is foundational to our democracy — that all people will be protected equally under the law, and that all people will be held accountable equally under the law.

Our norms are a promise that we will fiercely protect the independence of this Department from political interference in our criminal investigations.

Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this Department to be used as a political weapon.

And 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.

Over the course of four decades, during which I served in different jobs — both career and non-career — in this Department, and in a completely different job in the Judicial Branch, I watched as those norms became woven into the fabric of the Justice Department and were sustained by its dedicated career employees.

When I came back to DOJ in 2021, after a particularly difficult period for the Department, I said that my mission as Attorney General would be to reaffirm and strengthen those norms as the principles upon which the Justice Department operates.

So, we took steps to better protect the Department's criminal and civil law enforcement decisions and its legal judgments from partisan or other inappropriate influences.

To name only a few of those steps:

We reinstituted policies regulating contacts between Department personnel and both the White House and Congress.

We strengthened and clarified the guidelines for sensitive FBI investigations.

We implemented remedial measures to ensure robust compliance with Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We updated protections for the press in law enforcement investigations, in order to safeguard the essential role that a free press plays in our democracy.

We published new policies to guide prosecutorial discretion with respect to charging, pleas, and sentencing.

We supplemented our state secrets privilege policy to ensure that the United States invokes that privilege only when there is a genuine risk to national security.

And Department leadership restated and demonstrated through our actions, again and again, our respect for the work and integrity of the career employees who constitute the institutional backbone and historical memory of this Department.

Over the past three and a half years, I have seen how the public servants of this Department have continued to uphold and strengthen those norms.

I have seen how you have risen to meet a range of extraordinary challenges.

And I have seen the incalculable toll this work has taken on so many of you, especially those of you who risk your lives every day.

I am thinking of heroes like Tommy Weeks, the Deputy U.S. Marshal who was killed while apprehending a fugitive earlier this Spring. And I am thinking of heroes like Tommy's family, who have made the kind of sacrifice no one should ever have to make.

In addition to seeing how you have operated in the face of dangers like violent crime and terrorism, I have also seen how you have bravely carried on in the face of an unprecedented spike in threats targeting a range of public officials across the country.

Over the past three and a half years, there has been an escalation of attacks on the Justice Department's career lawyers, agents, and other personnel that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work.

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.

Through your continued work, you have made clear that the Justice Department will not be intimidated by these attacks.

But it is dangerous — and outrageous — that you have to endure them.

It is dangerous to target and intimidate individual employees of this Department solely for doing their jobs.

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.

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 deserve to be honored.

The work you do every day makes a difference.

And 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.

The choices you make in every investigation, in every filing, in every trial, in everything you do to ensure the fair and impartial application of the law make this Department and our democracy worthy of the public we serve.

And for that, you deserve respect.

As I hope you already know, you have mine — wholeheartedly.

You also have my promise, that nothing will ever stop me from defending this Department, and the extraordinary people who work here.

I came back to DOJ as Attorney General believing that our norms are some of the most powerful tools we have to ensure our adherence to the rule of law. Having now served as Attorney General for the past three and a half years, I continue to believe deeply that our norms matter, now more than ever, to our Department and to our democracy.

I also believe, now more than ever, that the most important resources the Justice Department has are the dedication and integrity of the people who work here.

As we wrote in the Preface to the first edition of the Principles of Federal Prosecution:

“Important though these principles are to the proper operation of our federal prosecutorial system, the success of that system must rely ultimately on the character, integrity, sensitivity, and competence of those men and women who are selected to represent the public interest in the federal criminal justice process. . . [I]t is with their efforts that the purposes of these principles will be achieved.”

I know that many of you have heard me talk about why the work of the Justice Department is so important to me personally.

I have often shared that I wanted to give back to the country — and to the system of laws — that took my grandparents in and protected them when they had nowhere else to go.

That protection is what distinguishes America from so many other countries. The protection of law, the rule of law, is the foundation of our system of government.

Our democracy relies on an independent law enforcement agency — the Department of Justice — to ensure those protections.

And critically, our democracy depends on people who dedicate themselves and their careers to ensuring those protections.

People like all of you.

Protecting the rule of law is the obligation of every generation of public servants at the United States Department of Justice.

In this time and place, that responsibility is yours, and it is mine.

I know we are up to it.

I am grateful to each of you for your commitment to this Department, to the norms that sustain it, and to the people we all serve.

Thank you.