Trump Calls For Imprisoning His Opponents In Bellicose Speech At Justice Department

President Donald Trump on Friday walked into the Department of Justice and labeled his courtroom opponents “scum,” judges “corrupt” and the prosecutors who investigated him “deranged.”

With the DOJ logo directly behind him, Trump called for his legal tormentors to be sent to prison.

“These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” the president said. “The people who did this to us should go to jail.”

In a rambling speech that was by turns dark, exultant and pugnacious, Trump vowed to remake the agency and retaliate against his enemies.

It was, even by Trump’s standards, a stunning show of disregard for decades of tradition observed by his predecessors, who worried about politicizing or appearing to exert too much control over the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. Trump, instead, called himself the “chief law enforcement officer in our country” and accused the DOJ’s prior leadership of doing “everything within their power to prevent” him from becoming the president.

Trump charged the DOJ with spying on his campaign, raiding his home, persecuting his “family, staff and supporters,” launching “one hoax and disinformation campaign after the other” and breaking the law “on a colossal scale,” making clear the glee he has taken in undermining the department’s typical independence and wielding it to achieve the White House’s objectives.

“First, we must be honest about the lies and the abuses that have occurred within these walls,” Trump 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.”

Those days, Trump said, “are over, and they are never going to come back. He added that he would demand “full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred.”

While any presidential visit to the Justice Department is a rarity, Trump repeatedly breached other norms in his remarks as he slammed former officials, unleashed attacks on private attorneys, and touted his vote tallies in last year’s election.

“It’s a campaign by the same scum you’ve been dealing with for years,” Trump said of the lawyers and officials who have targeted him. “We will expel the rogue actors and corrupt forces from our government. ... We will restore the scales of justice in our country.”