Trump pledges to ‘expel rogue actors’ in political speech at Justice Department
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- In often profane terms, President Trump decried his adversaries and cast himself as a victim of unfair and biased prosecutions.
- The venue selection for the speech underscores Trump’s keen interest in the department and desire to exert influence over it after criminal investigations.
奥础厂贬滨狈骋罢翱狈&苍产蝉辫;—&苍产蝉辫;President Trump used a triumphant visit to the Justice Department on Friday to air a litany of grievances about the criminal investigations that threatened to torpedo his political career, decrying in often profane terms his adversaries and casting himself as a victim of unfair and biased prosecutions.
The speech was meant to rally support for Trump’s law enforcement agenda, which he casts as tough on crime. But it also functioned as a victory lap after he emerged legally and politically unscathed from two felony federal indictments that were dismissed as a result of his election win last fall.
The venue selection for the speech underscores Trump’s keen interest in the department and desire to exert influence over it after criminal investigations that shadowed his first four years in office and subsequent campaign. The visit, the first by any president in a decade, brought him into the belly of an institution he has disparaged for years and one that he has sought to reshape by installing loyalists and members of his personal defense team in top leadership positions.
“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 levels never seen anything like it,” Trump said in a wide-ranging speech that touched on topics including Russia’s war against Ukraine and the price of eggs.
“It’s going to be legendary. And 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.”
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Although there is some precedent for presidents to speak to the Justice Department workforce from the building’s ceremonial Great Hall, Trump’s trip two months into his second term was particularly striking because of his unique status as a onetime criminal defendant indicted by the agency he was addressing and because his remarks featured an airing of grievances over his exposure to the criminal justice system — including an FBI search in 2022 of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., for classified documents he had removed from the White House.
Trump’s visit also comes at a time when Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi has asserted that the department needs to be depoliticized even as critics assert that agency leadership is injecting politics into the decision-making process.
The relationship between presidents and Justice Department leaders has waxed and waned over the decades depending on the personalities of the officeholders and the sensitivity of the investigations that have dominated the day. The dynamic between President Biden, a Democrat, and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, was known to be fraught in part because of special counsel investigations that Garland oversaw into Biden’s mishandling of classified information and into the firearms and tax cases involving his son Hunter.
When it comes to setting its agenda, the Justice Department historically takes a cue from the White House but looks to maintain its independence on individual criminal investigations.
Trump has upended such norms.
He encouraged specific investigations during his first term and tried to engineer the firing of Robert Mueller, the special counsel assigned to investigate ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. He also endured difficult relationships with his first two handpicked attorneys general — Jeff Sessions was fired immediately after the 2018 midterm election, and William Barr resigned weeks after publicly disputing Trump’s bogus claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Arriving for a second term in January fresh off a landmark Supreme Court opinion that reaffirmed a president’s unshakable control of the Justice Department, Trump has appeared determined to clear from his path any potential obstacles, including by appointing Bondi — a former Florida attorney general who was part of Trump’s defense team at his first impeachment trial — and Kash Patel, another close ally, to serve as his FBI director.
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At her January confirmation hearing, Bondi appeared to endorse Trump’s false claims of mass voter fraud in 2020 by refusing to answer directly whether Trump had lost to Biden.
She also echoed his position that he had been unfairly “targeted” by the Justice Department despite the wealth of evidence prosecutors say they amassed. She regularly praises him in Fox News Channel appearances and proudly noted that she had removed portraits of Biden, Garland and Vice President Kamala Harris from a Justice Department wall upon arriving.
“We all adore Donald Trump, and we want to protect him and fight for his agenda. And the people of America overwhelmingly elected him for his agenda,” Bondi said in a recent Fox interview with Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
Even before Bondi had been confirmed, the Justice Department fired department employees who served on special counsel Jack Smith’s team, which charged Trump with plotting to overturn the 2020 election and with hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Both cases were dismissed last November in line with long-standing Justice Department policy against indicting sitting presidents.
Officials also demanded from the FBI lists of thousands of employees who worked on investigations into the Jan 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol — the focus of one of the criminal cases against Trump — and fired prosecutors who had participated in the cases.
And they’ve ordered the dismissal of a criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams by saying the charges had handicapped the Democrat’s ability to partner in the Republican administration’s fight against illegal immigration.
Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press. Associated Press writer Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
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