Taking over the justice department headquarters for what amounted to a political event, Donald Trump railed against the criminal cases he defeated by virtue of returning to the presidency in an extraordinary victory lap the department has perhaps never before seen.
The event was billed as a policy address for the administration to tout its focus on combating illegal immigration and drug trafficking, but the majority of the president’s freewheeling remarks focused instead on his personal grievances with the department.
Trump spoke from a specially constructed stage in the great hall of the main justice building, backed with blue velvet curtains that underscored the theatrics and symbolism of Trump cementing his control over the justice department, which had tried and failed to hold him to account.
The choice of venue carried additional resonance about how Trump has fully implemented his agenda at the justice department, doing away with the longstanding tradition of independence from partisan politics and instead turning it into an extension of the White House.
The great hall has historically been used for major law enforcement announcements by the justice department and its senior leaders, and when presidents have delivered speeches at the building, the remarks have been of a national security or non-political stripe.
In Trump’s hourlong speech, he repeatedly strayed from his prepared remarks to assail the criminal cases against him, various lawyers and former prosecutors by name and accused the Biden administration of trying to destroy him, declaring Joe Biden the head of a crime family.
“The case against me was bullshit,” Trump said with fury, in the building where the charges were approved.
But he heaped praise on his defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom he elevated to effectively run the justice department as the deputy attorney general and the principal associate deputy attorney general respectively, as well as the department’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle.
The approval Trump expressed for Bove reflected his genuine appreciation. Trump has privately hailed Bove for bringing the department to heel in recent weeks, including by forcing through the dismissal of the corruption case against New York mayor Eric Adams.
Trump offered notable praise for US district judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed his criminal case on charges of mishandling classified documents, over decades of legal precedent. Trump claimed criticism of her made her angry, although he also said he had never spoken to her.
“She was brilliant,” Trump said of Cannon, “the absolute model of what a judge should be.”
He then suggested it should be a crime to criticize judges because they could be influenced by what he described as bad publicity. The remark appeared to be a new idea from Trump, who has previously castigated judges who did not rule in his favor and sought to defend legal cases in public.
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“It has to stop, it has to be illegal, influencing judges,” Trump said as his administration now attempts to defend his policies and cost cutting efforts against a wave of lawsuits.
When he returned to his prepared remarks, he followed up on a campaign promise to stop illegal immigration and hailed the decline in illegal border crossings since the start of his presidency.
Trump then announced an ad campaign to combat illegal fentanyl, which often kills people because it is laced with other drugs, recounting how Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, told him about their campaign informing the public about its consequences.
“They show the skin falling off and the teeth falling out and going blind and losing hair and everything these things do,” Trump said, “you look like you just came out of a horrible concentration camp.”
