Fact check: Trump’s false claims on immigration, Biden, Ukraine in DOJ remarks

Washington (CNN) — President Donald Trump made multiple false claims in a Friday speech at the Department of Justice in which he discussed the legal system and crime but also a wide range of other topics, including immigration, the war in Ukraine and former President Joe Biden.

Trump also made numerous allegations for which he provided no evidence, alleging unspecified “egregious crimes” in the government during the Biden administration, corruption among unspecified judges, illegality by media outlets that he claimed cover him too negatively and “crooked” behavior by law firms connected to cases involving Trump.

Here is a fact check of some of his assertions.

Trump’s prosecutions and Biden: Trump repeated his regular unsubstantiated claim that former President Joe Biden used his office to wield the legal system against Trump.

“Etched onto the walls of this building are the words English philosopher John Locke said: ‘Where law ends, tyranny begins.’ And I see that, and I saw it over the last four years when somebody was allowed to attack, viciously, with this department and the FBI, his political opponent. How did that work out? It didn’t work out too well, but it wasn’t pleasant. I was attacked by a political opponent,” Trump said.

There has never been any evidence that Biden personally used the Department of Justice or FBI to attack Trump.

Trump’s two federal prosecutions, one over Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and one over his retention of classified documents after his first presidency, were brought by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Smith was appointed in November 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, but that is not proof that Biden was involved in the prosecution effort, much less that Biden personally attacked Trump using the department; Garland said in 2023 that he would resign if Biden ever asked him to act against Trump, and added that he was sure that would never happen.

Trump’s two other prosecutions were brought by local district attorneys, one in Manhattan, New York, and one in Fulton County, Georgia. Both are Democrats, but there is, again, no evidence that Biden or his White House directed their decisions. Trump was convicted of falsifying business records in the Manhattan case; the Georgia case was put on hold in June 2024 while an appeals court considered whether the district attorney, Fani Willis, should be disqualified from the case.

The two federal cases were dropped by Smith because of Trump’s 2024 election victory. The documents case had previously been dismissed by a Trump-appointed federal judge, but Smith had appealed her ruling that his appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional.

Biden documents investigation: Trump falsely claimed in his remarks that former President Joe Biden was “essentially found guilty, but they said he was incompetent and therefore let’s not find him guilty, I guess.” He added, “Nobody knows what the ruling was.” He continued, “I think I would have rather been found guilty than what they found with him. They said he didn’t know what the hell he was doing and therefore … let him go.”

Biden was not found guilty, “essentially” or not, and there was no judicial “ruling” at all; Biden was not even charged with a crime. The special counsel who was appointed to look into Biden’s handling of classified documents, Robert Hur, wrote in his public report that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” adding that “several defenses are likely to create reasonable doubt as to such charges.”

Trump appeared to be referring Friday to the fact that Hur wrote in the report, “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” But Hur did not say he would have brought charges against Biden if not for this. Hur wrote at length about various facts of the case and possible Biden defenses that meant that he thought would make it too difficult for the government to win a unanimous guilty verdict.

Immigration under Trump: Trump repeated two false claims about immigration statistics during his presidencies.

First, he said, “In our first full month in office, we achieved the lowest level of illegal border crossings ever recorded.” He could have accurately said the number of migrant apprehensions by the Border Patrol in February 2025 – 8,347 – was the lowest in many decades, but it’s not the lowest number on record. Official federal statistics show there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants at the southwest border in some of the months of the early 1960s and in years prior.

Second, he said that “by the time I got out” of office the first time, “we had the lowest numbers ever. My favorite chart of all time was brought down that day and, on that chart, it said we had the lowest numbers ever.” But the chart doesn’t actually show that illegal immigration was at its lowest level at the time Trump left office, though text beside a red arrow on the chart claims that’s what it shows. In fact, the arrow actually points to April 2020, when Trump still had more than eight months left in his first term and when global migration had slowed to a trickle because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

After hitting a roughly three-year low (not an all-time low) in April 2020, migration numbers at the southern border increased each month through the end of Trump’s first term.

US and European aid to Ukraine: Trump repeated his debunked claim that the US has spent “maybe $350 billion” aiding Ukraine compared to $100 billion from Europe.

Neither figure is correct. The $350 billion figure Trump has repeatedly cited is particularly inaccurate.

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks wartime aid to Ukraine, Europe – the European Union plus individual European countries – had collectively committed far more total wartime military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine through December 2024 (about $269 billion at current exchange rates) than the US committed (about $129 billion). Europe had also allocated more military, financial and humanitarian aid (about $144 billion) than the US allocated (about $124 billion).

It’s possible to arrive at different totals using different counting methodologies, but there is no apparent basis for Trump’s “$350 billion” figure. The US government inspector general overseeing the Ukraine response says on its website that the US had appropriated about $183 billion for the Ukraine response through December 2024, including about $83 billion actually disbursed – and that includes funding spent in the US or sent to countries other than Ukraine.

US elections: Trump, vowing to restore “fairness” in the country, baselessly impugned the integrity of US elections, saying, “The elections, which were totally rigged, are a big factor.” He didn’t invoke the 2020 election in particular, as he usually does, but there is nonetheless no basis for a broader claim that recent “elections” in this country, plural, have been “totally rigged.”

Iran and terror groups: Trump repeated his false claim that when he was president, Iran was “totally broke” and therefore “they weren’t giving any money to Hamas or Hezbollah.” Iran’s funding for terror groups did decline in the second half of his presidency, in large part because his sanctions on Iran had a major negative impact on the Iranian economy, but the funding never stopped entirely, as four experts told CNN in 2024. In fact, Trump’s own administration said in 2020 that Iran was continuing to fund terror groups including Hezbollah. You can read a longer fact check here.

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