Trump plans to visit the Justice Department Friday, a rare move for a president
President Trump is set to visit the Justice Department on Friday to lay out his vision for the department.
“I think we have unbelievable people, and all I’m going to do is set out my vision. It’s going to be their vision, really, but it’s my ideas,” he told reporters at the White House on Thursday.
Trump said he would be talking about crime as well as immigration. “We’ll be talking about a lot of things,” he said. “The complete gamut.”
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump will also discuss “ending the weaponization of justice against Americans for their political leanings.”
It’s unusual for a sitting president to give a speech from the Justice Department. There is typically a separation between politics and the DOJ, but Trump has repeatedly made attacking the department part of his campaign speeches and said on the trail last year that he would use the DOJ to go after people he sees as disloyal.
Last year, Trump faced two federal special counsel investigations into his actions around the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and related to his handling of classified documents. The Justice Department officially dropped those cases after Trump won the 2024 election — in line with its longstanding view that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.
Trump’s visit on Friday comes as the Trump administration has spent the last several weeks trying to reconfigure the department, demoting attorneys who worked on cases related to Jan. 6 and firing officials who investigated the president himself.
Trump has also put in place some of his closest allies in the leadership positions. Trump ally Pam Bondi is leading the department as attorney general. Last month, the Senate — where Republicans are the majority — confirmed Kash Patel as FBI director. Patel has promoted conspiracy theories about the “deep state” and is a longtime critic of the FBI and DOJ.
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