President Trump on Friday told Justice Department employees to expose past corruption and abuse at the department and usher in a new era of accountability.
In remarks at Justice Department headquarters in Washington, Mr. Trump lauded his new team that includes Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as uniquely qualified for the job of rooting out corruption and political bias at DOJ and FBI.
“Unfortunately, in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations, they weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people,” Mr. Trump said.
The president called out several Biden administration officials, Democratic activists and allies who he thinks had done him and others wrong.
He named Attorney General Merrick Garland, election attorney Marc Elias, attorney Norm Eisen, attorney Mark Pomerantz, former special counsel Jack Smith, former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“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 president said. “The American people have given us a mandate, a mandate like few people thought possible”
He recalled the 51 intelligence agents who claimed just before the 2020 election that Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop computer had “earmarks” of Russian disinformation.
“They knew it came right from his bedroom,” Mr. Trump said of the FBI. “They knew that it was a big lie, and they knew it so well.”
He rattled off a litany of alleged wrongdoing by federal law enforcement officials.
“They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another. They broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago,” he said. “And did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.”
After Mr. Trump took office in January, the Justice Department began making changes even before his full team was in place. Early last month, a DOJ official ordered then Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll to fire several top bureau senior executives and send over a list of FBI personnel who worked on cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The request for the several thousand FBI employees who worked Jan. 6 cases ran into a firestorm of opposition at the DOJ and two lawsuits were filed. Mr. Driscoll refused to comply with the order, which also called for specific information about every FBI employee who worked on Jan. 6 cases.
James Dennehy, the FBI assistant director in charge of the New York field office, led a revolt against the DOJ request for the employees’ names. He was recently forced out of the bureau.
The Justice Department also terminated dozens of attorneys in the agency who previously worked on Mr. Trump’s criminal prosecutions and those who worked on Jan. 6 cases.
On her first day as attorney general, Ms. Bondi went after cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities and ordered a 60-day pause on funding for sanctuary cities, including New York.
Mr. Trump has made depoliticizing the DOJ and FBI a top priority, but his detractors accuse him of using the federal law enforcement agencies to target his political enemies.
The president, however, claims he was the victim of politically biased investigations and prosecutions by the DOJ and FBI.
After all, he notes, it was the same Justice Department that ordered a raid in 2022 on his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, to search for classified documents, which led to Mr. Trump being criminally indicted on multiple federal counts by special prosecutor Jack Smith.
The federal cases against Mr. Trump were dismissed in November following Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.
The DOJ and the FBI have been under scrutiny of Republicans for several years.
GOP lawmakers have demanded more information about the DOJ’s targeting of Catholics, parents at school-board meetings, pro-life protestors at abortion clinics and prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants.
