World News | Garland Vows Return to 'normal' Justice Dept. on 1st Day

Washington, Mar 11 (AP) Taking the reins at the Justice Department, Attorney General Merrick Garland sought on Thursday to assure career staffers that he would prioritise restoring the department's reputation for political independence and ensuring equal justice after a tumultuous four years under former President Donald Trump.

“The only way we can succeed and retain the trust of the American people is to adhere to the norms that have become part of the DNA of every Justice Department employee,” Garland said in his first address to the department's more than 115,000 employees.

“All of us are united by our commitment to the rule of law, and to seek an equal justice under law,” he said.

Welcome to the new Justice Department, likely a much tamer place to be after four years of blaring headlines under Donald Trump.

The former president insisted that his attorney general, and entire department, be loyal to him personally, battering the department's reputation for political independence.

Former Attorney General William Barr became a veritable celebrity under Trump, after he spun the Russia report from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller favourably for the president, even though Mueller pointedly said he could not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice. Barr later moved to drop the criminal charges against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and publicly overturned his own prosecutor's recommended prison sentence for another convicted Trump ally, Roger Stone.

But not even Barr made it to the end of the Trump administration; he resigned in December, weeks after he said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential race, contradicting Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.

On Thursday, Garland signaled in his first address to staff — a formal, 10-minute speech inside the Great Hall at Justice Department headquarters, speaking virtually to staff with about 30 people spread across the large room — the department would return to its normal traditions away from the political sphere. President Joe Biden has also insisted the same.

Try though he may to stay out of politics, Garland is facing some immediate political challenges, including overseeing the ongoing criminal tax investigation into Biden's son, Hunter, and the investigations and prosecutions stemming from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol when thousands of pro-Trump rioters stormed the building to halt the certification of the election results.

The Justice Department also has an ongoing federal probe into the overseas and business dealings of the former New York City mayor and Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, which stalled last year over a dispute about investigative tactics as Trump unsuccessfully sought reelection. And separately, the special counsel investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, which shadowed Trump's presidency for more than two years, remains ongoing. Garland will have to decide how to handle it and what to make public.

But the nation's top law enforcement official vowed Thursday that he would prioritize ensuring the department return to prosecutorial norms and work to make the public confident in its independence to serve justice.

“Those norms require that like cases be treated alike,” he said. “That there not be one rule for Democrats, and another for Republicans, 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, or different rules, depending upon one's race or ethnicity." (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)