Merrick Garland
The Public Record
Merrick Brian Garland is an American attorney and jurist currently serving as the 86th Attorney General of the United States, a position he has held since March 11, 2021. Prior to his appointment as Attorney General, Garland served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2013 to 2021. He is a member of the Democratic Party and has been involved in significant legal and judicial matters throughout his career.
★ Featured Quote
June 13, 2026
The obligation of the Justice Department is to protect the American people against violence and threats of violence and that particularly includes public officials.
— Merrick Garland
I will not be intimidated and the Justice Department will not be intimidated.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act has been extraordinarily helpful in our effort to combat gun violence.
I will not be intimidated, and the Justice Department will not be intimidated.
These repeated attacks on the Justice Department are unprecedented and they are unfounded.
If you threaten to harm or kill an election worker, volunteer, or official, the Justice Department will find you.
People want to work, and put yourself in the shoes of a 42-year-old woman who's just been a retail clerk her whole career or a waitress and got put out of work in COVID.
There's something special about manufacturing jobs. They're high paying. They don't require a college degree.
It's a great program that you created and authorized. We have 400 applications worth about $2 billion.
We do think that the Baltimore Police Department has made substantial progress towards satisfying the key provisions of the consent decree.
The Justice Department is in favor of the Antitrust Division getting the full access to the fees.
I will ask my staff to get back to you on which of the grant programs go to the program you are talking about.
The purpose is to prevent guns from being sold to prohibited persons without a background check.
The purpose of the new rule is to implement the definitional change brought by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
I would say that there is always more applications than we have money to give out.
Our strategy here is to develop trust within communities before something bad happens.
I think the money we have in the budget is sufficient for those kind of reachout programs, but we won't be satisfied until all the crimes are reported.
We're investigating that. We're investigating. We have a criminal investigation in connection with the deaths and kidnapping of Americans in Israel on October 7, yes.
This was, in addition, of course, to the killing of Americans, this is the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust.





