Takeaways from Donald Trump’s airing of grievances at the Justice Department
(CNN) — President Donald Trump excoriated the Justice Department prosecutors who investigated him and vowed to use it to target his own enemies in a campaign-style speech at the department’s historic Great Hall on Friday.
The hourlong speech served as both a victory lap for beating the two federal criminal cases brought against him by the Biden administration, and as a condemnation against any officials – some of whom have been fired from the DOJ – who touched those cases.
Trump is a departure from how previous presidents have dealt with the Justice Department. White Houses in the past have typically limited interactions with the department so that its work would not appear political. Trump, however, on Friday proclaimed himself the “chief law enforcement officer in our country” – a title traditionally used to refer to the attorney general.
While presidents have given speeches on law enforcement efforts and related policies at the Justice Department, Trump’s public airing of grievances was unprecedented. He took the opportunity to instead criticize the courts, rail against both his political enemies and the media, and threaten retribution.
Before he left the stage, Trump said that he questioned appearing at the Justice Department. “I said, is it appropriate that I do it?” the president recounted, “and then I realized it’s not only appropriate, I think it’s really important, and I may never do it again.”
Here are the key takeaways from Trump’s speech:
Lashing out at enemies and the media
As soon as Trump took to the lectern, he launched into a diatribe against Biden-era officials for acting, in his view, in a partisan and corrupt way, and vowed to expel “rogue actors and corrupt forces” from the government.
“We will expose, and very much expose, their egregious crimes and severe misconduct, of which was levels, you’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said.
The president promised “complete accountability” for “wrongs and abuses,” including the two special counsel investigations against him in recent years, on his campaign’s work with Russia in the 2016 presidential election and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents.
He specifically added that he believed the Justice Department “persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago.” (The FBI’s search at Trump’s Florida estate was conducted pursuant to a search warrant.)
The president didn’t limit his anger to officials from the last administration; he also lambasted the media – even pointing to reporters sitting in the room. Trump suggested that the way the media described the election may be “illegal.”
Glowing review for his lawyers and political allies
Trump also used his moment to celebrate his allies that have been caught up in various legal troubles in recent years, including January 6, 2021, rioters at the US Capitol.
There were a small number of career employees in the audience, made up mostly of political supporters including his former national security advisor Mike Flynn who was prosecuted by the Justice Department during his first term, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was also investigated by the DOJ but never charged.
“There’s a man who went through hell, by the way, and he shouldn’t have. It was, he’s a patriot. He went through hell,” Trump said of Flynn.
The president also offered a glowing review of Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, two lawyers who represented him in some of his criminal cases, including the classified documents matter, and were rewarded with top DOJ positions.
“These guys never wilted,” he said. “They were not shy. They fought. They weren’t afraid. And they were brilliant – Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney (General) Emil Bove.”
“Thank you both,” Trump said. “They’re great people.”
But his message was clear overall: “So proud of the people in this room, but first, we must be honest about the lies and abuses that have occurred within these walls,” Trump claimed. “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.”
Praise for Aileen Cannon
As he railed against the Biden Justice Department, Trump spent a considerable amount of time during his address heaping praise on the federal judge in Florida who threw out the classified documents criminal case last summer, as well as lawyers who represented him in various cases in which he was a defendant.
“We had an amazing judge in Florida, and her name is Aileen Cannon,” Trump said. He went on to claim that he didn’t know her and never spoke to her. (Cannon has said the same.)
“I did appoint her,” Trump said. He objected to unnamed “public relations lawyers” who criticized Cannon’s handling of the historic case. “They were saying she was slow; she wasn’t smart; she was totally biased; she loved Trump.”
Cannon, whom Trump appointed to the Southern District of Florida in 2020, threw out the classified documents case last July after concluding that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution, a ruling that ran counter to other federal judges. She did not rule on whether Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents was proper or not.
“The case against me was bullshit, and she correctly dismissed it,” Trump said on Friday, to laughs in the Great Hall, adding that he believed that it should be a crime to criticize the courts. “It has to stop, it has to be illegal, influencing judges.”
Smith’s appeal of Cannon’s ruling was pending when Trump was reelected, and the special counsel later moved to drop the appeal as it related to Trump after his November win.
Focus on drug enforcement
Next to Trump in the Justice Department’s Great Hall were props listed as 180 kilos of fake fentanyl sitting underneath a box that said in capital letters, “DEA evidence.”
The president did address one of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s priorities – the fight against illegal drug trafficking, specifically fentanyl.
“This department will not rest until we have ended the fentanyl epidemic in America once and for all,” Trump said. “In less than two months since I took office, the DEA and FBI have seized nearly 1 million deadly doses of fentanyl, and that’s just the beginning.”
Fentanyl has become the most common drug involved in overdose deaths in the United States, fueling what the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified as the “third wave” of the opioid overdose epidemic.
Trump has also threatened retribution against Mexico should it not curtail drug trafficking into the United States.
The drug often kills people who don’t know that the drugs they are taking are laced with it. To make that point, Trump brought a mother on stage whose son died of an accidental overdose in 2022.
“I want you to know that we are working every day to expel these savages from our country and ensure that what happened to your loved ones will never happen again, so their legacy is going to be a great one,” Trump said.
Underscoring the campaign-like nature of the event, when the hourlong speech ended, the song “YMCA,” usually played at the end of Trump rallies, rang out from DOJ’s speakers.
CNN’s Michael Williams contributed to this report.
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