President Donald Trump accused former President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice of transforming the agency into the ‘department of injustice,’ as they sought to turn the U.S. into a ‘corrupt communist’ country.
‘Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice,’ Trump said Friday at the Department of Justice. ‘But I stand before you today to declare that those days are over and they are never going to come back.’
Trump routinely has blasted the Justice Department and the FBI since his first term for being corrupt, amid multiple investigations and lawsuits filed against him. The FBI investigated Trump and his 2016 campaign for alleged collusion with Russia, which ultimately found no evidence that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the outcome of the election.
More recently, Trump has come under legal scrutiny after former Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped former special counsel Jack Smith to conduct investigations into alleged efforts from Trump to overturn the election results in 2020, and Trump’s efforts to obtain allegedly classified materials at Mar-a-Lago following his first term as president.
‘They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third world country, but in the end, the thugs failed and the truth won,’ Trump said. ‘Freedom won, justice won, democracy won. And above all, the American people won.’
‘There could be no more heinous betrayal of American values than to use the law to terrorize the innocent and reward the wicked,’ Trump said. ‘And that’s what they were doing at a level that’s never been seen before. And it’s exactly what you saw with Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and their cronies to do the building over the last four years. They ripped what they’ve ripped down is incalculable.’
A spokesperson for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Trump also accused the judicial branch of conspiring with the media, and accused newspapers and TV networks of functioning as a ‘paid political operative.’
‘It has to be illegal,’ Trump said Thursday. ‘It’s influencing judges … and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal, and they do it in total coordination with each other.’
Trump also accused a ‘corrupt group of hacks and radicals’ within the American government of targeting him and his family over the years, and claimed they sought to prevent him from ever returning to the White House again. Specifically, he said the government employed those like Marc Elias, the former chair of law firm Perkins Coie.
In April 2016, Perkins Coie hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research into then-presidential candidate Trump on behalf of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee.
Fusion GPS then hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who authored the so-called ‘Steele dossier,’ which contained shocking and mostly unverified allegations, including details that Trump engaged in sex acts with Russian prostitutes.
The FBI also used the dossier to obtain a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Trump routinely has denied the allegations included in the dossier, and signed an executive order on March 4 cutting off security clearances and federal access for Perkins Coie attorneys.
In response, the law firm filed a motion in a federal court in Washington Tuesday requesting a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration from rescinding its access to federal resources, and U.S. Judge Beryl Howell approved the request Wednesday afternoon.
‘It is absurd that a billion-dollar law firm is suing to retain its access to government perks and handouts,’ White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a Wednesday evening statement to Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ Breanne Deppisch and David Spunt contributed to this report.