Trump takes victory lap during Justice Department speech
President Trump on Friday visited the Justice Department (DOJ) for a remarkable victory lap eight weeks into his triumphant return to the White House.
Trump has long blamed the department under his predecessor for unfairly targeting him in cases that involved dozens of serious criminal charges. But his visit visually solidified Trump’s grip on the Justice Department amid fears from critics that he may seek to diminish the agency’s independence and push for prosecution of his perceived enemies.
“First we must be honest about the lies and abuses that have occurred within these walls. Unfortunately in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and good will built up over generations. They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people,” Trump told those gathered at the department’s headquarters.
“They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago, and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.”
Past presidents have had limited interaction with their attorneys general — and visits to the department’s headquarters are rare.
In many ways the event mirrored Trump’s campaign events. A similar playlist used at rallies played as spectators awaited the president and when Trump arrived he boasted about the crowd size assembled in the building's Great Hall — calling it an “all-time record” despite the handful of presidential speeches given at the building. When the speech ended, “YMCA” played and he briefly did his signature dance on stage.
And like on the campaign trail, Trump railed against the prosecutions against him, including two led by the DOJ. Cases relating to his role in seeking to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and Espionage Act charges related to his retention of classified documents were both dismissed after his November victory.
“Now, as the chief law enforcement officer in our country, I will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred,” Trump said.
“We will expel the rogue actors and corrupt forces from our government, we will expose, very much expose their egregious crimes and severe misconduct, of which was [at] levels you've never seen anything like it. It's going to be legendary. It's going to also be legendary for the people that are able to seek it out and bring justice. We will restore the scales of justice in America, and we will ensure that such abuses never happen again in our country.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called Trump's speech an insult to rank-and-file Justice Department staff who have been carrying out nonpartisan prosecutions.
"The speech we just witnessed is a desecration of the essential values of this storied department in every way. It's an insult to the thousands of professional lawyers who go to work at the Department of Justice every day to enforce the rule of law, not the personal vendetta and partisan games of a politician," he said.
Raskin, who held an event across the street from DOJ after Trump's speech, was joined by recently dismissed Justice Department attorneys, including those who worked on Jan. 6 rioter cases.
Trump accused the Justice Department of joining with “radicals” to try to take him down.
“They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third-world country,” Trump said. “They could be no more heinous betrayal of American values than to use the law to terrorize the innocent and reward the wicked and that’s what they were doing at a level that’s never been seen before. And it’s exactly what you saw with Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and their cronies to do the building of the last four years. They’ve ripped, what they’ve ripped down is incalculable.”
Trump has put a team in place made up of loyalists at the DOJ and acknowledged he has a long-standing relationship with senior officials, including attorney general Pam Bondi, who was a senior adviser on Trump’s first impeachment defense team and also worked on legal challenges after his 2020 campaign loss.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was one of Trump’s criminal defense attorneys in his hush money trial, was in attendance, as was Kash Patel, Trump’s new FBI director who has been a fierce defender of the president. Emil Bove, another one of Trump’s defense attorneys who now serves in a top DOJ position, was also lauded by the president.
In the weeks that Trump’s new team has been assembled, they’ve overseen the firing of a number of senior career leaders, including a number of prosecutors and investigators who worked on Trump’s two criminal cases as well as those who worked on cases involving the Jan. 6 rioters.
He also called out that Michael Flynn, who was national security adviser in Trump’s first term and who resigned for lying to the vice president, was also in the Great Hall for his speech, as was Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and other lawmakers.
The president spoke multiple times about former President Biden and his family, mostly focusing on Hunter Biden and the controversy involving his laptop. Trump also attacked his predecessor’s mental fitness.
He said that “Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell” didn’t come from Russia but instead “right from his bedroom,” while he rallied against the previous Justice Department for, what he claimed, was working to prevent him from returning to the White House.
Trump also touted that his team has revoked security clearances of intelligence agents “who lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell,” as well as former DOJ special counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James, all of whom brought cases against Trump. He also lauded terminating the security clearances of Biden and his family.
He continued to name-check others who he thinks have unfairly targeted him.
He referenced Norm Eisen, an attorney for Democrats in Trump’s first impeachment who through his legal group has filed numerous cases challenging Trump’s policies and firing of staff. Trump said “he’s been after me for nine years,” adding “these are bad people. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know what he looks like.”
“His sole life is to get Donald Trump, and he’s been vicious and violent, and he’s trying and he probably had pretty good success over the years. But with me, how did he do? I think I’m president? Am I here because I’m president?” he said, mocking Eisen for targeting him.
He also rallied against the press, claiming they are influencing judges and, without any evidence, claiming the media works in coordination with political campaigns, which is not allowed in the news industry.
“These networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative. And it has to stop, it has to be illegal, it’s influencing judges and it’s really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal, and they do it in total coordination with each other,” he said.
The White House has targeted the media in recent weeks, announcing last month it would take over the press pool that surrounds the president and is in an ongoing fight with The Associated Press over the outlet’s decision not to fully adopt the name Gulf of America instead of Gulf of Mexico into its widely influential Stylebook, used by news media organizations across the U.S.
Additionally, he echoed, without evidence, claims that Biden signed executive orders with an “auto pen.”
“You don’t use auto pen. Number one, it’s disrespectful to the office. Number two, maybe it’s not even valid because who’s getting him to sign? He had no idea what the hell he was doing. If he did, all of these bad things wouldn’t be happening right now,” Trump said.
Trump also targeted Washington in his remarks, saying that Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) is doing a “good job” to “clean up” the city, but warned that the federal government will take over if she doesn’t keep up the work.
“We’re going to have a crime-free capital again. It’s going to be cleaner and better and safer than it ever was, and it’s not going to take us too long,” Trump said.
The president acknowledged at the end of his remarks that he questioned if it’s appropriate for him to be giving a speech of that nature at the DOJ, but said it was important.
“I was asked to do it and I said, ‘is it appropriate that I do it?’ And then I realized, it’s not only appropriate, I think it’s really important,” he said. “And, I may never do it again. I may never have another chance to do it again because this is something I’m leaving to the greatest people I know, the best people, the smartest people, the toughest people I know.”
—Updated at 6:05 p.m. EDT
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