Takeaways from Donald Trump’s airing of grievances at the Justice Department

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.

President Donald Trump walks to speak to reporters before leaving the White House to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025.
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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.