U.S. President Donald Trump promised to seek accountability for those who pursued legal cases against him when he was out of office, speaking Friday at the Justice Department.
“Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice. But I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back. They’re never coming back,” Trump said.
During his years out of office, the department twice indicted Trump on charges that he illegally stored classified documents at his Florida estate and that he worked to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Both cases were dismissed after Trump won election in November, with the department citing a long-standing policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
“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. The American people have given us a mandate, a mandate like few people thought possible,” Trump said.
Trump has fired prosecutors who investigated him during the Biden administration and scrutinized thousands of FBI agents who investigated some supporters of the president who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Representative Jamie Raskin, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called Trump’s speech a “staggering violation of [the] traditional boundary between independent criminal law enforcement and presidential political power.”
Speaking outside Justice shortly after Trump spoke, Raskin said, “No other president in American history has stood at the Department of Justice to proclaim an agenda of criminal prosecution and retaliation against his political foes.”
Trump has long been critical of both the department and the FBI. He has installed political allies into top leadership positions at both of those agencies. FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi attended Friday’s talk.
In introducing Trump, Bondi said, “We all work for the greatest president in the history of our country. … He will never stop fighting for us, and we will never stop fighting for him and for our country.”
During his speech, Trump promised “historic reforms” at the agencies and said, “Under the Trump administration, the DOJ and the FBI will once again become the premier crime fighting agencies on the face of the Earth.”
His speech had echos of his campaign rallies, with music blaring from speakers before Trump entered the department’s Great Hall and his address hitting on some of the main themes from his campaign, including border security and fighting violent crime.
On crime, Trump said that homicides, property crime and robberies rose during the Biden administration.
“I have no higher mission as president of the United States than to end this killing and stop this law breaking and to making America safe again. And that’s what you’re all about in this room. We want to protect Americans, and we protect everybody that’s in our country,” he said.
