Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Remarks Announcing the Results of Operation North Star

Remarks as Delivered

Good afternoon.

We are here today to announce the results of the fourth phase of Operation North Star, a five-month initiative undertaken by the U.S. Marshals Service and law enforcement partners to target the most dangerous fugitives and violent offenders in 10 metropolitan areas across the country.

Before we do, however, there are two matters I want to address:

The first is a major law enforcement action the Justice Department has taken to counter some of the many threats Iran poses to our country.

And the second is that we will soon mark one year since Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

First, with regard to Iran. There are few actors in this world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism.

Iran’s malign activities are wide-ranging.

The U.S. government is intensely tracking Iran’s lethal plotting against current and former U.S. government officials, including former President Trump.

We are working to investigate and disrupt Iran’s funding and support of Hamas, Hizballah, and other terrorist groups.

And we are working relentlessly to uncover and counter Iran’s efforts to stoke discord, to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions, and to influence our elections.

As the intelligence community has reported, we are seeing increasingly aggressive Iranian cyber activity during this election cycle.

In August, the Intelligence Community reported an ongoing effort by Iran to compromise former President Trump’s campaign and to influence the U.S. election process.

Last week, the Intelligence Community reported that in late June and early July, Iranian malicious cyber actors sent unsolicited emails to individuals, who were then associated with President Biden’s campaign. The emails contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public information from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails. The Intelligence Community reported that there is currently no information indicating the recipients of the emails replied.

The Intelligence Community further reported that Iranian malicious cyber actors have continued their efforts since June to send stolen, non-public material associated with former President Trump’s campaign to U.S. media organizations.

Moments ago, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging three hackers working for the Iranian government with material support for terrorism, computer fraud, wire fraud, and identity theft for their roles in these cyberattacks. The three hackers are Iranian nationals residing in Iran.

As outlined in our indictment, the defendants, Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri, and Yaser Balaghi, conspired with others to deploy a years-long, wide-ranging hacking operation on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. The operation targeted the email accounts of current and former American public officials, journalists, and most recently, individuals associated with U.S. political campaigns.

The defendants’ own words make clear that they were attempting to undermine former President Trump’s campaign in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

We know that Iran is continuing its brazen efforts to stoke discord, erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process, and advance its malign activities through the IRGC, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

The Justice Department is committed to countering the threat that Iran poses to our democracy, to our national security, and to our allies in the international community.

As we approach the upcoming election, I want to reiterate that the Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by Iran — or by any foreign power — to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy.

Together with our partners across the federal government, we will use every tool we have to counter and disrupt the efforts of Iran, as well as Russia and China, to exploit our democratic system of government.

The message of the U.S. government is clear:

The American people — not a foreign power — decide the outcome of our country’s elections.

Not Iran and its malicious cyber activities, as laid bare in today’s indictment.

Not Russia, and its efforts to spread disinformation and propaganda to secure its preferred outcome in the U.S. presidential election, as laid bare in the indictment and seizures announced earlier this month.

And not China, which continues in its efforts to exert targeted influence at the federal, state, and local levels in furtherance of the PRC’s agenda, as described in multiple previous indictments and the Intelligence Community’s recent Election Security Updates.

These authoritarian regimes, which violate the human rights of their own citizens, do not get a say in our country’s democratic process.

The American people — and the American people alone — will decide the outcome of our country's elections.

Now to the second matter.

In just over a week, we will mark one year since Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists murdered nearly 1,200 people, including more than 40 Americans, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians.

And they perpetrated the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

We are committed to pursuing the terrorists responsible for murdering Americans — and those who illegally provide them with material support — for the rest of their lives.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department unsealed charges against Yahya Sinwar and other senior leaders of Hamas for the October 7 attacks and for financing and directing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the security of the United States.

Those charges are just one part of our effort to target every aspect of Hamas’ operations. There will be more to come.

In the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attacks, we also saw a disturbing increase in the volume and frequency of threats here at home against Jewish, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian communities.

That is why, last October, I directed all of our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and all of our FBI Field Offices to meet with local law enforcement and community leaders to strengthen our response to threats of hate-fueled violence. And that is what we have continued to do in the year since.

But we recognize that the ramifications of October 7 are still being felt in communities across the country.

For the Jewish community, this has been a time of a renewed, deeply familiar sense of isolation and fear.

And as we approach one year since the October 7 attacks, we do so at a time when Jews across the country will soon be observing the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

For Jews, this is a period of solemn reflection and prayer.

It is a time to gather together to worship and to be in community with each other.

It should not be a time of fear.

The Justice Department has and will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute acts and threats of violence fueled by antisemitism and by hatred of any kind.

In recent months, the Department has brought charges, obtained plea agreements, and obtained sentences for more than 35 defendants for criminal acts motivated by antisemitic hate. This is in addition to the many charges brought by our state and local partners. That work will continue.

No person and no community in this country should have to live in fear of hate-fueled violence. 

No faith community should have to fear that they will be attacked in their place of worship.

The Justice Department has no higher priority than protecting the safety and civil rights of everyone in our country.

Working to uphold that promise is our sacred responsibility.

It is one we will never abandon.

Protecting the safety of our people also includes combating violent crime, which is the topic of today’s third announcement to which I will now turn.

From May to September of this year, the U.S. Marshals Service worked with state and local law enforcement partners in 10 metropolitan areas to arrest more than 3,400 fugitives and violent offenders — including more than 200 wanted for homicide. They also seized more than 500 firearms, more than $500,000 in U.S. currency, and over 450 kilograms of illegal narcotics including more than 550,000 pills of deadly fentanyl.

The U.S. Marshals and their partners conducted this operation in Dallas-Fort Worth, Charleston, Baton Rouge, Little Rock, Phoenix, St. Louis, Birmingham, Winston-Salem, Dayton, and San Antonio.

The arrests included a Louisiana man, wanted for domestic abuse, child endangerment, and home invasion.

It included four people in Texas, wanted for a drive-by shooting that injured multiple children.

It included a gang member in Texas wanted for homicide.

It included a Virginia man wanted for sexually assaulting a child.

It included a Missouri man wanted for opening fire at a car meet-up, shooting seven people, and killing a 14-year-old.

These cases represent only a small fraction of the extraordinary efforts that the U.S. Marshals Service and its partners undertook during this operation.

I am deeply grateful to every Deputy U.S. Marshal, task force officer, investigator, and police officer who carried out these arrests. They did so at great risk to themselves.

And I am grateful to U.S. Marshals Service Director Ron Davis, for his leadership of the more than 5,500 public servants who have dedicated their careers to protecting their communities.

This is now the fourth iteration of Operation North Star, which we first launched in 2022 to zero in on and apprehend the most dangerous fugitives and violent offenders.

But this is the first iteration of Operation North Star since the devastating attack that took place during a U.S. Marshals task force operation in North Carolina earlier this spring.

On that day, we lost Deputy U.S. Marshal Tommy Weeks, task force officers Alden Elliot and Samuel Poloche, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Joshua Eyer.

As we remember them, we are reminded of the enormous risks that Deputy U.S. Marshals and their partners encounter every day.

We are also reminded of the extraordinary courage of the people who do this work, and of their loved ones.

We could not be more grateful for their sacrifices.

Three-and-a-half years ago, the Justice Department launched an ambitious strategy to combat the sharp spike in violent crime that had occurred during the pandemic.

We focused our efforts on enhancing the most powerful tool we have: our partnerships with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, and with the communities we all serve.

And then we fortified those partnerships with substantial funding from our grant-making components and by bringing to bear new technological tools that allowed us to identify and focus on those actors most responsible for committing violent crimes and take them off of our streets.

Today, we know that work is paying off.

Statistics released by the FBI earlier this week show an historic drop in homicides nationwide, and one of the lowest levels of violent crime in 50 years.

And recently released data from the Justice Department’s Violent Crime Steering Committee indicates that this trend is continuing. A study of 88 cities shows that violent crime has continued to decline considerably in the first half of 2024 compared to the same time last year — including a further 16.9% decline in murder.

Here in Washington, D.C., where we surged resources to target the individuals and organizations driving violent crime, we have seen a more than 30% decline in homicides so far this year compared to the same time last year.

But we know that progress in many communities is still uneven. And there is no acceptable level of violent crime.

That is why the U.S. Marshals Service launched, and continues to relaunch, Operation North Star.

And that is why the Justice Department will continue to use every resource we have in the fight against violent crime.

Our commitment to combating violent crime is not about statistics — it is about saving lives.

It is about community members and law enforcement officers, who are still here to see their children grow up and to work toward fulfilling their dreams.

The Justice Department will continue to work tirelessly to deploy our anti-violent crime strategy across our law enforcement agencies, prosecutors’ offices, and grantmaking components.

We will work in close partnership with police and sheriff’s departments and communities across the country to go after the recidivists and gangs that are responsible for the greatest violence.

We will continue to deploy our technological and prosecutorial resources to identify and prosecute the principal drivers of gun violence.

And we will continue to invest in the essential programs that allow law enforcement agencies to hire more officers; to build the public trust essential for public safety; and to support the evidence-based community violence intervention initiatives that save lives.

We will not rest until all Americans feel safe in their communities.

And now I would now like to ask Marshals Service Director Davis to say a few words.