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Biden Attorney General Merrick GarlandMandel Ngan-Pool/Getty Images

WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Democrat Merrick Garland used his last remarks as Attorney General of the United States to warn against the danger of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) abusing its law-enforcement power despite long-standing accusations of doing just during with his tenure.

The Hill reported that Garland gave his farewell address Thursday to employees of the nation’s top law enforcement institution. “The same powers that enable the federal prosecutor to pursue justice also create the potential for grave injustice,” he said and that DOJ must keep in mind the “difference between what we can do — and what we should do.”

DOJ must also retain independence from the White House, he continued, “not because independence is necessarily constitutionally required but because it is the only way to ensure that our law enforcement decisions are free from partisan influence.”

“It is the obligation of each of us to follow our norms not only when it is easy, but also when it is hard – especially when it is hard,” Garland said. “It is the obligation of each of us to adhere to our norms even when – and especially when – the circumstances we face are not normal.”

Garland’s advice stands in stark contrast to how the Biden administration’s critics described his own tenure as one defined by the weaponization of federal law enforcement against pro-lifers, conservatives, and President Donald Trump. Garland denied that characterization.

“Over the years, some have criticized the department, saying it has allowed politics to influence its decision-making,” he said. “That criticism often comes from people with political views opposite from one another, each making the exact opposite points about the same set of facts (…) The story that has been told by some outside of this building about what has happened inside of it is wrong. You have worked to pursue justice, not politics. That is the truth, and nothing can change it.”

Critics point to a wealth of examples indicating otherwise, however.

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade inspired a wave of threats and vandalism against churches and pregnancy centers, yet the perpetrators mostly went unpunished, with Garland citing the supposed difficulty of gathering evidence.

By contrast, the federal government not only charged pro-life activist Mark Houck with violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for a 2021 altercation with a violent pro-abortion agitator that had already been resolved at the local level but arrested him in an armed morning raid of his home. Houck was acquitted, but those responsible for his treatment were not removed from government. Similarly targeted were the so-called DC Nine, who entered an abortion center in the nation’s capital to peacefully protest and refused to leave in 2022, and who received prison time this summer despite several of them being elderly with medical issues.

In early 2023, a leaked memo from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified “Radical Traditionalist Catholic (RTC) ideology” as a potential motivator for “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists,” citing a study by far-left attack group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 

The FBI quickly retracted that memo, which Garland later disavowed as “appalling,” but that was far from the end of concerns about religious intolerance within the federal law enforcement bureaucracy. In summer 2023, the House Judiciary Committee obtained documents revealing that, contrary to previous assurance, multiple FBI field offices were involved in spying on Catholic communities.

Also in 2023, Manhattan Institute journalist and New College of Florida board member Christopher Rufo interviewed a then-anonymous former Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) employee who said the hospital’s activist, Dr. Richard Roberts, did not hesitate to prescribe cross-sex hormones and mastectomies to gender-confused children whose medical records indicated “serious mental health issues” including autism.

That whistleblower, now known to be former TCH general surgeon Dr. Eithan Haim, was later indicted by the Biden DOJ, ostensibly for sharing confidential patient records in violation of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) – even though the materials he exposed were not patient charts and were redacted to preserve patients’ anonymity. Haim faces up to 10 years in prison.

Trump has pledged to “review the cases of every political prisoner … unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration” and “sign their pardons or commutation on Day One.” In November 2024, federal Judge Matthew Leitman paused the sentencing of seven Michigan pro-lifers until after Trump’s inauguration in anticipation of a new DOJ reversing the Biden position on the prosecutions.

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