On September 12, 2024, United States Attorney General [AG] Merrick Garland addressed the closing session of the 85th Annual US Attorneys Conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.  DOJ employees were invited to attend this event, held in the department’s Great Hall. He began by thanking the more than 115,000 “selfless public servants and patriots” of the department for doing their “difficult and dangerous work.” He noted that these public servants regularly help vulnerable people in extreme distress.

Garland recalled that, 84 years ago, and in the same hall, then-Attorney General Robert Jackson addressed US Attorneys (or federal prosecutors) about their work, telling them, Garland said, that “a good prosecutor” was   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,” Garland continued, “titled ‘The Federal Prosecutor,’ outlined values that have echoed in the halls of this department, and outside of it for generations. . . . His words have inspired generations of public servants—including me.”

Then Garland talked about his own service at the Department of Justice. He went to work there soon after Watergate, when the agency was trying to regain the public’s confidence. At that time, he recounted,

. . . Department leaders like Attorneys General Ed Levy, Griffin Bell, and Benjamin Civiletti  developed and formalized a set of norms to ensure 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 . . . [and] regulations to protect the freedom of the press. . . . I assisted           on that project.  The result was a slim, paper-bound 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, even-handed administration of the federal criminal laws.’ . . .

Garland goes on:

. . .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, “The attorney for the government may not be influenced by: [a] 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. . . .

Our norms are a promise that we [DOJ staff] 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.

“When I came back to DOJ in 2021,” Garland continued, “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 Department of Justice operates. . . . Over the past three and one-half years, I have seen how the public servants of this department have continued to uphold and strengthen those norms.” Garland praised their service and sacrifice, which were at times, he said, offered in the face of verbal attacks and threats of violence. And he strongly stated that his listeners deserved “better” than what they were now experiencing. They deserved, he went on, “gratitude,” “recognition,” “honor,” and “respect.”

This led to an extraordinarily bold, unqualified proclamation: “You,” Garland told them, “have my promise that nothing will ever stop me from defending this department . . . and defending the extraordinary people who work here. . . .”

Nearing his conclusion, Garland returned to the Principles: “As we wrote in the Preface of the first edition of 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.’. . .

“The protection of law,” he continued, “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 . . . 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.” [In the video, the AG’s hand covers his heart, and grand applause continues.] (CBS News, youtube.com)

Ideals without Accountability

AG Garland spent the majority of his September 12th speech declaring and detailing the lofty mission of the United States Department of Justice and its employees to uphold the rule of law, without fear or favor.  “You . . . have my promise,” he told them, “that nothing will ever stop me from defending this department . . . and defending the extraordinary people who work here.”

Think about that promise.

What if several DOJ employees have behaved in a less than exemplary fashion, to the point of bending or breaking the rule of law?  In that case, the department should subject those employees to “equal treatment under the law.”  AG Garland himself should play an essential role in legally responding to attorneys and/or staff members who allegedly betrayed the department’s norms and broke its rules. He should make sure that DOJ employees who violated the law be pursued, investigated, prosecuted if necessary, and punished if found guilty.

The following are situations where employees of the Department of Justice and/or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is part of the DOJ, appear to have violated the law in recent years. There is evidence that they:

*Misbehaved in the Clinton email-server investigation, as determined by Inspector General Horowitz’s 2016 report.

*Instructed social-media corporations to suppress the New York Post story about the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 election.

*Misused the Steele dossier and Fusion GPS opposition research to obtain FISA warrants to surveil a presidential campaign.

*Suppressed criticism, with the assistance of social media, of the government’s Covid narrative.

*Minimized or neglected threats against the lives of United States Supreme Court nominees and justices.

*De-prioritized dozens of acts of violence committed against pro-life citizens, Roman Catholic churches, and pro-life centers—especially after the Dobbs decision (2022) was handed down.

*Prosecuted, with extreme aggression, pro-life protesters.

*Treated local board-of-education protesters as domestic terrorists.

*Treated so-called Radical-Traditionalist Roman Catholics, who are decidedly pro-life, as potential domestic terrorists.

*Participated in so-called lawfare trials of a presidential candidate to weaken that candidate’s campaign and prevent that candidate’s election.

DOJ Under Law

In our democracy, the United States Department of Justice is the leading law-enforcement agency. During Democratic and Republican administrations, in carrying out its responsibilities, DOJ must be singularly and fully committed to seeking justice. That means it must be non-partisan. DOJ must always strive to uphold the rule of law for all Americans and treat all Americans equally under that law. If the agency wanders from its pursuit of equal justice for all, the Church and Christians have a compelling duty to call it out. As we have seen, DOJ appears to be increasingly politicized and partisan, not least when it comes to pro-life citizens and ministries, for whom the rule of law seems not to apply.

Merrick Garland rightly and vigorously esteems the rule of law. However, a concern of many churches and Christians is that the Attorney General seems insufficiently committed to its equal application. Rather than the blanket commendation of DOJ employees the AG gave in his speech, he should have made clear that his defense of the department would not extend to employees who step outside or violate the rule of law.  Rather, he would treat them as he would any other citizen who breaks the law.

The United States Department of Justice is an imperfect institution.  It is led by imperfect appointees and populated with imperfect employees.  For exactly those reasons, the Attorney General of the United States, Democrat or Republican, must hold DOJ and all of its employees accountable to the rule of law.  Without fear or favor.  Without exception.

When that does not happen, the administration an Attorney General works for should be opposed in the next general election.  For the sake of justice.

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