Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Remarks at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York

Remarks as Delivered

Thank you all. It’s really nice to be here. Thanks, Damian.

It feels a little bit full circle because my first visit was at Damian’s investiture. I got to talk to most of you then. So, now it seems like a good time to talk to you one more time.

Mostly, what I just want to say is what Damian said, which is I am incredibly proud of you. And I am incredibly grateful for the terrific work that you’ve done.

Over the past four years, this office has received public recognition, and rightfully so, for incredibly important cases — for disrupting the Sinaloa Cartel, for driving down violent crime, for successful prosecutions of the CEOs of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world, and for relentlessly pursuing public corruption without fear or favor.

But this is just a sliver of the work you do. And I wish that the public could see all the rest of the work you do. The stuff that doesn’t make it to the headlines. The day in and day out work that you do. The time you take away from your families. The extraordinarily long days you spend and the risks that we all take. They would be extremely proud of you, to see what true patriots all of you are.

Now I want to say, while I care very much about the work that you do, I care even more about the way in which you do that work.

Yes, you are aggressive prosecutors, aggressive investigators, aggressive attorneys in service of the public.

But in everything you do, you do it the right way. You follow the rule of law. You follow the Principles of Federal Prosecution in deciding who you should prosecute and who you shouldn’t prosecute.

Every day you come to work with one job only: to do the right thing. All day long. And I wish the American people could see that. I wish they could be in on your charging conferences. I wish they could be in when you’re debating what should go into briefs. I wish they could be in when you’re making decision about what should go in an indictment or whether there should be an indictment.

They would be so proud.

That’s where the rule of law really exists in this country.

Now, for myself, I may be coming to the end of my tenure at the Justice Department, but I know that all of you will continue. You will continue in the Department’s mission, what has always been its mission: to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights.

You — the career lawyers of this district, the career lawyers of all the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the career lawyers of the Justice Department as a whole — you are the institutional backbone of this Department.

You are the historical memory of this Department.

You are the heart and the soul of the Department.

You are the Justice Department.

I could not be more proud of you. And I could not be more grateful for all of the work that you have done to protect the American people.

Thank you.