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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump defended his allies Friday while calling for his perceived political opponents to be jailed during a speech at the headquarters of the Justice Department — an agency that was prosecuting him just months ago.
Trump called U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who helped dismiss his classified documents case, a “brilliant” judge, while condemning “horrible human beings” whom he accused of disparaging Cannon.
“It’s totally illegal what they do. I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal, and it was so unfair what they were doing to her,” Trump said.
After deeming the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as “the most humiliating time in this history of our country,” Trump repeated his false claims of a rigged election in 2020.
“What a difference a rigged and crooked election had on our country, when you think about it. And the people who did this to us should go to jail. They should go to jail,” he said, without specifying anyone by name. Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that Democrats interfered in the 2020 contest.
On Friday he also said, “Our predecessors turned this department of justice into the department of injustice,” adding that he would “insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred.”
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Calling former special counsel Jack Smith “deranged,” Trump referred to the hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants he pardoned on his first day in office as “hostages” and said the Justice Department would not return to what he declared as an era of weaponization.
“Those days are over, and they are never going to come back,” Trump said.
Trump was indicted in two separate federal cases: one involving his handling of classified documents, and another involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. The cases were dismissed after the 2024 election, and career prosecutors who had worked on Smith’s team were fired when Trump took office, as were numerous federal prosecutors who handled Jan. 6 cases.
Trump’s remarks are not the first time he has called to imprison his political opponents. But the venue of his speech — delivering the remarks at the Justice Department to a room full of its top officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel — demonstrates how his previous campaign threats of vengeance and retribution have taken on significantly higher stakes now that he wields the enormous power of the presidency.
Trump noted the significance of his remarks at the Justice Department, on Friday becoming the third president this century to deliver a speech at the agency’s headquarters.
“I was asked to do it, and I said, ‘Is it appropriate that I do it?’ And then I realized it’s not only appropriate, I think it’s really important, and I may never do it again,” Trump said. “I may never have another chance to do it again, because this is something that I’m leaving to the greatest people I know, the best people, the smartest people, the toughest people I know, and they’re going to do an incredible job.”
When Trump finished his speech, a mainstay of his campaign rallies, the song “Y.M.C.A.,” played over the speakers inside the Justice Department’s Great Hall.
Nnamdi Egwuonwu is a politics reporter at NBC News.
Ryan J. Reilly is a justice reporter for NBC News.
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