Garland is badass.
In addition, the United States became the first country to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the seven-member Joint Investigative Team (JIT) that is investigating Russian atrocities in Ukraine. The MOU, signed by the Attorney General, will facilitate the United States’ cooperation and coordination with the JIT members as we collect evidence and investigate Russia’s atrocity crimes. It also signals our resolve that Russia’s invasion will not undermine our collective commitment to uphold human rights and preserve a free and democratic society.
At the conference, the Attorney General also met with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Brink, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Kostin, EU Commissioner Reynders, Polish Minister of Justice General Ziobro, and Polish National Public Prosecutor Barski, regarding operational cooperation on Russian war crimes and illicit finance and to further discussions about how the U.S. can partner internationally on these issues.
In sum, this conference both signals our joint resolve that Russia’s invasion will not undermine our collective commitment to preserving a free and democratic world and charts the way forward for our practical work to achieve that goal.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the with the seven-member Joint Investigative Team.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/readout-attorney-general-merrick-b-garland-s-trip-ukraine
= new reply since forum marked as read
President Zelenskyy, Prosecutor General Kostin, and esteemed colleagues: it is an honor to be here with you on behalf of the United States Department of Justice.
Just over twelve months ago, invading Russian forces began committing atrocities at the largest scale in any armed conflict since the second World War.
We are here today in Ukraine to speak clearly, and with one voice: the perpetrators of those crimes will not get away with them.
Thirty years ago, at the dedication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the late Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel issued a charge:
“For the dead and the living,” he said, “we must bear witness.”
For the past year, our colleagues in the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office have risked their lives to bear witness.
Ukrainian prosecutors and investigators have worked tirelessly to uncover the truth of what is happening here in Ukraine, and to preserve and record it for future generations.
They have meticulously collected and catalogued evidence from the rubble of blast sites – including hospitals, apartment buildings, and schools.
They have worked urgently to seek justice on behalf of the thousands of Ukrainian men, women, and children who have been killed.
They have exhumed mass graves and carefully studied the bodies of victims – in order to tell the stories of those who no longer can.
They have documented the Russian regime’s forced deportation of Ukrainian children and its use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
They have worked relentlessly to pursue accountability for these crimes and make clear the costs of perpetrating them.
They have opened investigations, identified and tracked down suspects, and initiated prosecutions.
And they are only just getting started.
In bearing witness, Ukrainian prosecutors, like the Ukrainian people, have stood courageously in defense of democracy and in defense of the rule of law.
The United States Department of Justice is honored to stand beside you.
And we are honored to stand beside our international partners here today.
The courage of the Ukrainian people has inspired us all.
And it has galvanized cooperation in the international community to hold the Russian regime accountable for its crimes.
Just now, the United States signed an historic agreement with Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, and Romania that will strengthen our efforts to hold Russian war criminals accountable.
This agreement will expand information sharing between our countries that will help us not only to identify and prosecute Russian war criminals, but to build winning cases against them.
In addition to strengthening our international partnerships, the United States is working more closely than ever with our Ukrainian partners in our investigations of Russian war crimes.
Together, American and Ukrainian prosecutors have zeroed in on specific crimes committed by Russian forces, including attacks on civilian targets.
We are working to identify not only the individuals who carried out these attacks, but those who ordered them.
As part of this effort, the Department’s human rights prosecutors are providing advice and assistance to the Prosecutor General’s office on specific cases.
Our environmental crimes prosecutors are training their Ukrainian counterparts on the investigation and prosecution of potential environmental war crimes.
And we are partnering together to apply the lessons the Justice Department has learned from its own complex criminal investigations to assist the Prosecutor General’s Office in developing a secure electronic case management and analysis system.
This is not the first time the Justice Department has worked with the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office to hold accountable those who committed atrocities in Ukraine.
Thirty years ago, the U.S. Justice Department and the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office signed an agreement similar to the one that Prosecutor General Kostin and I signed in Washington last fall.
In 1993, the goal of that agreement was to deepen our countries’ cooperation on cases involving Nazi war crimes.
As a result, the Justice Department and the Prosecutor General’s Office successfully worked together to prove atrocity crimes in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.
This was integral to the Justice Department’s own decades-long efforts to identify, denaturalize, and deport Nazi war criminals in the United States.
All told, the Department’s Office of Special Investigations brought more than 130 cases against perpetrators of Nazi crimes.
The Justice Department – and the American people – have a long memory.
I am proud that I successfully persuaded the same prosecutor who led the Justice Department’s work to investigate Nazi atrocity crimes to lead the Department’s current efforts to investigate atrocity crimes in Ukraine.
I announced that effort – the War Crimes Accountability Team – when I visited Ukraine last June.
The U.S. Justice Department is also deploying our resources to hold accountable those whose criminal acts enable Russia’s continued brutality.
In March of last year, I announced the launch of the Justice Department’s Task Force KleptoCapture. That team of prosecutors, agents, analysts, translators, professional staff, and law enforcement partners has been busy seizing assets, executing arrests, and bringing prosecutions against sanctioned enablers of the Kremlin and Russian military.
Last month, I authorized the United States’ first-ever transfer of seized assets to the U.S. State Department to support the rebuilding of Ukraine. There will be more to come.
In addition to our work in partnership with Ukraine and the international community, the United States has also opened criminal investigations into war crimes in Ukraine that may violate U.S. law.
Although we are still building our cases, interviewing witnesses, and collecting evidence, we have already identified specific suspects.
Our prosecutors are working day and night to bring them to justice as quickly as possible.
What is happening here in Ukraine has significantly re-shaped the way the United States approaches war crimes accountability.
Until recently, our jurisdiction over war crimes was limited to cases in which a U.S. national was a victim or perpetrator.
But earlier this year – in the wake of Russia’s campaign of brutality – Congress enacted a change in the law that will allow the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute alleged war criminals from anywhere in the world who are found in the United States.
And we intend to do so.
This means that in the years – and decades – ahead, Russian war criminals who set foot in our country should expect to find themselves in U.S. courts of law. War criminals will find no refuge in America.
In courageously defending itself against an authoritarian regime, Ukraine has demonstrated the stakes that we all have in the success of democracy and the Rule of Law.
The United States recognizes that what happens here in Ukraine will have a direct impact on the strength of our own democracy.
That is why, in addition to ensuring accountability for individual war crimes, the United States also supports efforts by the international community to ensure that individuals responsible for crimes of aggression are held accountable.
In doing so we can, and we should, look to the model established by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg nearly eight decades ago.
In that effort, the United States and its allies demonstrated their faith in the Rule of Law to hold accountable those who perpetrated some of the worst crimes in history. That effort was led by one of my most illustrious predecessors as Attorney General – Robert Jackson.
Our presence here today is proof that our faith in the Rule of Law has not wavered.
My grandmother was one of five children born not far from here, in what is now Belarus.
Three, including my grandmother, made it to the United States long before the Nazis invaded. Two did not make it. Those two were killed in the Holocaust.
My family does not know exactly when, or exactly where, they were killed. We do not know if anyone involved in their deaths was ever held accountable.
The families and descendants of the victims of the current atrocities in Ukraine deserve to know what happened to their loved ones. They deserve justice.
Today, members of the international community have joined together here in Ukraine to bear witness to the atrocities being committed by Russian forces.
We have come here to remember and reaffirm the humanity of the individuals who have been victimized by Russia’s brutal crimes.
And we have come here to seek justice and accountability under the law for all those who bear responsibility for those crimes.
Fulfilling those tasks will demand an enormous amount of work – not only from the Ukrainian people and their leaders, but also from the international community.
It will require painstaking attention to the details of individual crimes, sifting through enormous amounts of rapidly mounting evidence, and a relentless commitment to justice.
And it will require us to continue to adhere to, and put our trust in, the Rule of Law.
The United States Department of Justice will do that work for as long as it takes.
Thank you.
That pollyanna hopefulness may feel good, but it's not realistic considering what is going on.
Thanks so much for posting! 
And this was clearly both important and reassuring.
Thanks for the op, and for standing up for those of us who haven't decided to give up hope.
I honestly can't understand why it makes some people so angry that some of us aren't rushing to throw Garland and the rest of the DOJ under all the busses.
I hear you. The scale of this national trauma has got people feeling sad, pissed off and bitter at the scale and pace of rule of law enforcement.
But that's a structural issue, and Garland is as good an AG as they come!
They are awesome 
Sorry it annoys you that I have no rose-colored glasses.
And your response acknowledges my suspicion that all the scolds will never ever admit they were wrong. Even though we will be glad to be proven wrong.
Have a nice night.
So we're scolds now? Okey dokey. 
Look, you are welcome to hold whatever opinion you wish, afaic. All I ask is that you extend the sane courtesy to those who think differently.
Personally, I think we should be able to hold differing opinions and express them without resorting to insults and putdowns. I don't see why that should be so hard.
...
Maybe it was his last comment about the whole DU site getting disappeared. 
Whatever.
I missed that bit of excitement!
I pay attention to the flood of cheap shot empty posters and the venting threads.
Here's another doozy:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217615240#post2
I'm well aware that you're not at all among them.
Cheers. 
Just more along the lines of his being a consultant to our National Guard. Or an ambassador.
So he shook hands and signed a paper in support of a popular leader in a popular war. Yeah, that took guts. 
