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'Outrageous' bullying attacks on DOJ staffers are escalating, AG Merrick Garland says
By Bart Jansen, USA TODAY,
2 hours ago
WASHINGTON – Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday that Justice Department staffers have suffered an escalation of bullying attacks during the last three and a half years in the form of conspiracy theories and being singled out with threats of actual violence.
“It is dangerous to target and intimidate individual employees of this department simply for doing their jobs,” Garland said in a speech to the staff. “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.”
He said the department has reinvigorated its norms to maintain its independence from political intereference.
Attorney General Merrick Garland gives remarks during a meeting of the Department of Justice’s Election Threats Task Force at the Justice Department in Washington on Sept. 4, 2024. Annabelle Gordon, REUTERS
Garland didn't cite specific incidents, but he took over the department after what he called "a difficult period" in the wake of its entire upper leadership threatening to resign over former President Donald Trump’s demands for unfounded investigations of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, which officials told him were baseless.
Chutkan and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis , who is prosecuting Trump in Georgia on charges of election racketeering, have each received death threats after the former president criticized them.
“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,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social .
Trump's campaign called Garland's conduct "disgraceful" and said people driving the investigations of Trump "have to be held accountable."
"The disgraceful conduct of Attorney General Merrick Garland has done tremendous damage to a once great institution," Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. "Using phony charges to interfere with the presidential election on behalf of the Democrat Party has to be stopped and those driving these Hoaxes have to be held accountable."
Implementing remedial measures to comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The department overhauled its surveillance warrants and training after a flawed investigation into a Trump campaign adviser .
Updating protections for the press in law enforcement investigations.
“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."
If anyone should be bullied its the DOJ! Leftist leaning picking and choosing politically who to prosecute. Hand in hand with leftist media and the FBI!
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