By Josh Gerstein

In an unusual 22-minute speech to the DOJ workforce, Garland toed a careful line, decrying threats and abuse coming largely from supporters of former President Donald Trump, while not mentioning the Republican presidential nominee by name.
Speaking with the hotly contested presidential race in full swing, the attorney general also insisted that the Justice Department has not and will not allow political considerations to impact its decisions.
“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,” Garland said while speaking to the US Attorneys’ annual conference in Washington, repeatedly interrupted by applause from the hundreds of DOJ employees on hand.
While the attorney general denounced the outright threats, he also decried a series of activities that Trump and his allies have often engaged in or fueled, including “conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out.”
“You have made clear that the Justice Department will not be intimidated by these attacks,” Garland said. “But it is dangerous and outrageous that you have to endure them … You deserve better.”
Garland’s speech came just inside a 60-day preelection window, when prosecutors typically refrain from filing new cases against candidates out of concern about roiling the electoral process. He made no explicit reference to the presidential campaign, although some of his remarks seemed intended to discourage political rhetoric aimed at DOJ, particularly attacks on individual prosecutors or investigators.
“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 attorney general said.
Garland appeared to allude to claims of political interference with DOJ during the Trump administration when he called the time just before he was sworn in “a particularly difficult period for the department.”
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung described the attorney general’s remarks as “disgraceful” and said Garland “has done tremendous damage to a once great institution.”
As the attorney general repeatedly praised the agency’s adherence to “norms,” he seemed to exhort the career workforce to resist any politicization of the department in the future, regardless of the outcome of the November election.
“Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this department to be used as a political weapon,” Garland said. “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.”
Parts of Garland’s speech had a valedictory tone as he reviewed his three-and-a-half years leading the department, although he made no announcement of any plan to resign.
The Justice Department has filed dozens of cases in recent months charging individuals with making threats -often death threats- against judges, FBI agents and prosecutors. Some appear to have targeted officials connected to criminal or civil cases against Trump.
Trump has not been charged in connection with the threats and has denied encouraging violence against anyone. He and his allies have also insisted that the Justice Department was “weaponized” against him during his term in office.
In May, federal prosecutors pursuing a criminal case accusing Trump of hoarding classified information at his Florida home asked a judge to impose a gag order on him after he repeatedly and falsely alleged that FBI agents were authorized to shoot him during a search of his residence in 2022. The search was deliberately conducted while he was not home.
Special counsel Jack Smith did not ask US District Judge Aileen Cannon to expedite the gag order, which Trump’s lawyers opposed as an unwarranted intrusion on his speech during the campaign. The gag request was still pending in July when Cannon dismissed the case on unrelated grounds.
Trump is under a gag order imposed by a judge in Washington limiting his comments about prosecutors, potential witnesses and court personnel in the case Smith is pressing over Trump’s efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.