Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday delivered remarks for a grim anniversary: the fourth year since the assault on the Capitol. “The public servants of the Justice Department have sought to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the Jan. 6 attack on our democracy with unrelenting integrity,” he said.What went unspoken was the obvious exception to Mr. Garland’s insistence on accountability. The chief culprit behind the insurrection will shortly be inaugurated once again as president. After Donald Trump’s election to a second term, the Justice Department secured the dismissal of the criminal case against him, and the president-elect has said that he would pardon at least some of the more than 1,500 people who have been charged in connection with crimes that occurred on Jan. 6. The department itself, meanwhile, may soon be leveraged as a political tool against Mr. Trump’s enemies.Over the next four years, the Justice Department as an institution will face a profound test of its commitment to the values that Mr. Garland set out in January 2024 as “enforcing the law, without fear or favor.” The equal administration of justice according to established rules, rather than the opaque whims of a tyrant, is the aspiration of law in a liberal democracy.It is worth considering why voters seem to care so little about these values, such that Mr. Trump’s commitment to destroying the independence and integrity of law enforcement — or at least downgrading it — was not a deal-breaker for much of the electorate.Protecting the rule of law from predation requires building a democratic constituency to support it. And that, in turn, requires reflection on how it is that the Justice Department has failed to build and maintain both public understanding of that project and public trust that the department can carry it out. In this respect, the agency’s struggles are one manifestation of a broader institutional malaise in a country gripped by an anti-institutional paroxysm, represented most directly in the figure of Mr. Trump.During his first term, the Justice Department became a focal point of his efforts to transform the federal government into a personal plaything. It was a tempting target for an aspiring autocrat. As the agency responsible for enforcing federal law, it is the arm of the state that most directly wields control over the freedom of those within its jurisdiction.But the post-Watergate structures developed to shield the department from presidential influence operate largely on the level of norms, not legal restrictions. That leaves the president with a great deal of power to abuse his authority if he wants. And Mr. Trump did, directing the Justice Department to harass his enemies.The transition from the Trump to the Biden administration was a relief from this pressure, but the Justice Department couldn’t seem to move itself out of the political spotlight.Mr. Garland immediately faced questions about whether and how the department would pursue criminal charges against Mr. Trump. He emphasized that the department was doing things by the book: working methodically to build a case step by step rather than rushing to bring charges. Even after the special counsel Jack Smith ramped up the investigation, the department faced criticism both from the right and the left. The right insisted that the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s actions was a politicized effort to sabotage his electoral chances in 2024, and the left argued that Mr. Garland had failed to quickly enough in prosecuting those involved in the greatest internal attack on the American system of government since the Civil War.The department did not dawdle quite so much as its fiercest critics argue. Still, if the goal in moving slowly was to turn down the political temperature, this seems in hindsight to have had the opposite effect. In explaining his thinking, Mr. Garland said that “the best way to ensure the department’s independence, integrity and fair application of our laws” is to have “a set of norms to govern our work.” Protecting the rule of law, it turns out, requires more than maintaining the Justice Department’s own internal processes.Instead of ensuring the “health of our democracy,” as Mr. Garland promised, this slow and careful approach instead allowed the patient to decline further by contributing to circumstances that allowed Mr. Trump to slip free of criminal accountability. The Justice Department is far from the only institution responsible. The Supreme Court bears a heavy portion of the blame by stalling the Jan. 6 case for months and then casting the prosecution into legal uncertainty in its ruling on presidential immunity. Voters could be forgiven, not seeing haste on the part of the legal system to treat Mr. Trump’s abuse of power as a matter worthy of condemnation, if they concluded that Jan. 6 must not have been such a big deal.As we head into a second Trump administration, those who care about the Justice Department as an institution — both inside and outside government — must insist on the importance of independent law enforcement free from political interference. Preserving the department’s values, though, shouldn’t obscure the need to ask deeper questions about who and what those values are really meant to serve, and what it means to do justice in an era when the rule of law itself is under such serious threat. And it should not rule out acknowledging the flaws of those institutions and how they might be pushed to improve.The Justice Department is not alone in this. These struggles are best understood as part of an conversation in the wake of the 2024 election among Americans committed to liberal democracy. On the one hand, they have risen to defend American institutions. On the other, this defense risks eliding the many ways those institutions stumbled. And that, in turn, risks further eating away at public trust, if people perceive a widening gap between high-minded claims of institutional integrity and their personal experiences of government’s limitations.Early in the Jan. 6 investigation, Mr. Garland announced the department’s commitment to the principle that “there cannot be different rules for the powerful and the powerless.” How well does that claim hold up today, with Mr. Trump having slipped free of the charges against him precisely because of his wealth and power?Over the next four years, those who believe in the rule of law will have to work to protect it from the predations vowed by Mr. Trump, just as they did during his first administration. This time around, they also need to think more seriously about how to build a system of equal justice that’s worthy of support on its own merits, rather than only as a contrast to what Mr. Trump has to offer.After all, for the average person not steeped in Justice Department traditions, the first Trump administration’s model of law enforcement as a system of patronage — with preferential treatment apparently given to allies of the president — might seem appealing when compared with a plodding, opaque, rule-bound bureaucracy that nevertheless reliably manages to advantage those in power.At least under Mr. Trump, you might hope to secure the good graces of the “chief law enforcement officer” long enough to secure a benefit for yourself. As one Jan. 6 defendant recently called out in court before being taken into custody following his sentencing: “Trump’s going to pardon me, anyways.”Quinta Jurecic is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.
