WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump highlighted “the abuses that have occurred within” the Department of Justice (DOJ) in a speech on Friday and said former President Joe Biden’s DOJ used “the law to terrorize the innocent.”
Trump, who was criminally pursued twice by Biden’s DOJ in cases that were dropped after his election win in November, tore into a “corrupt group of hacks and radicals” who “weaponized” intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
He said:
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.
After pointing to the letter from 51 intelligence officials discrediting the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation ahead of the 2020 election as one example, Trump said he was targeted in a number of ways:
They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff, and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago, and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.
Trump went on to call out former President Joe Biden and former Attorney General Merrick Garland directly.
“There could be no more heinous betrayal of American values than to use the law to terrorize the innocent and reward the wicked. That’s what they were doing at a level that’s never been seen before,” he said, going on to name Biden, Garland, “and their cronies,” specifically.
Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith, who ultimately brought two federal indictments against Trump: one of which was the classified documents and the other regarded Trump’s challenge of the 2020 election. The unprecedented indictments notably came after Trump had been out of office for more than two years and after he launched his third presidential campaign.
“Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice,” Trump said in his speech Friday. “But I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back.”
Along with the federal cases, Trump faced two cases at the state level. The first was the business records case in New York, where he was sentenced to an unconditional discharge, meaning he was not punished, but his conviction stood. The other case is in Georgia and surrounds his 2020 presidential election challenge.
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