Attorney General Merrick Garland: The Justice Department will not bow to political pressure

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In a fiery speech Thursday to department officials and U.S. prosecutors across the country, Attorney General Merrick Garland criticized efforts to turn the Justice Department into a “political weapon” amid attacks from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

Garland condemned the “escalation of attacks” on his officers over the years, which he said were due to “conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, attempts to intimidate officers through repeated and public salience, and threats of actual violence.”

“It is dangerous to attack and intimidate individual employees of this department simply for doing their jobs,” he said from Justice Department headquarters in Washington. “And it is outrageous that you have to face these unfounded attacks for doing the right thing and upholding the rule of law.”

The attorney general's comments come after Trump claimed the Justice Department had been used as a weapon against him in his prosecutions and suggested he would politicize the department if he returned to the Oval Office.

Neither Trump nor his allies were mentioned by name.

“There is not one rule for friends and another for enemies, 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 based on race or ethnicity,” the attorney general said.

“Our standards are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as a political apparatus,” Garland added to applause.

Trump and his confidants have publicly discussed plans to disband the department and its law enforcement agencies such as the FBI or to prosecute his political opponents.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the Justice Department under Biden, claiming without evidence that the president abused the department to prosecute him and his allies for political purposes. During Tuesday's presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump reiterated those claims, falsely claiming that Biden and his administration were behind the state-level election tampering case brought against him by local prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, as well as the criminal fraud case brought against him in New York.

“They used the Justice Department as a weapon. Every one of these cases was tied to the Justice Department, from Atlanta and Fani Willis to the Attorney General of New York and the District Attorney in New York. Every one of these cases,” Trump claimed. “And then they say, 'Oh, he's a criminal.' They're the ones who got them going after me.”

In his speech, Garland mentioned that he was selected to lead the Justice Department in 2021 and that his goal is to “vigorously protect the independence of this Department from political interference in our criminal investigations.”

The department has taken steps to achieve that goal, Garland said, including reinstating policies governing department employees' contacts with the White House and Congress, clarifying guidelines for sensitive FBI investigations and updating protections for reporters from police investigations.

Garland also thanked prosecutors and Justice Department officials for not “bowing to politics” and “not giving in to pressure.”

“You deserve better,” he said.

This story has been updated with further developments.

CNN's Devan Cole contributed to this report.