Attorney General Warns Against Politicizing the Justice Department

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland warned on Thursday against allowing the Justice Department to be politicized, saying “there is not one rule for friends and another for foes.”

His remarks, delivered at the agency’s headquarters, came amid regular suggestions from former President Donald J. Trump that he would seek to use law enforcement to punish perceived enemies if elected and turn the tables on Democrats after years of what he portrays as baseless and politically motivated investigations of him.

Mr. Garland said the department had to remain focused on its principles even as its employees face threats of violence and are increasingly operating in a storm of misinformation.

“We will not allow this department to be used as a political weapon,” Mr. Garland said. “We will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.”

Speaking to a gathering of U.S. attorneys from around the country, Mr. Garland said he chose to break with the tradition of delivering remarks to them in a small, windowless room. Instead, he addressed them in the building’s Great Hall, an open space where hundreds of people can gather.

“In short, we must treat like cases alike,” he said. “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.”

Mr. Trump has regularly accused the Biden administration, without any evidence, of orchestrating criminal cases against him for political gain.

And in the past month, he has stepped up his threats to prosecute people who have crossed him should he be elected in November.

“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED