Presidents and prosecutors have for generations appeared in the Great Hall of the Justice Department to announce important anti-crime initiatives or to offer plaudits for the fundamental tenet of the rule of law, while maintaining distance from the detailed workings of the department itself.
When President Bill Clinton addressed the Great Hall in 1993, he used the occasion to discuss the crime bill he was trying to push through Congress. Eight years later, when President George W. Bush appeared there to dedicate the building in honor of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, he declared that everyone who worked at the department did so to “serve the public in the cause of justice.”
But when President Trump appeared in the gilded room on Friday afternoon, he did something different: He delivered a grievance-filled attack on the very people who have worked in the building and others like them. As he singled out some targets of his rage, he appeared to offer his own vision of justice in America, one defined by personal vengeance rather than by institutional principles.
“These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” Mr. Trump said. “They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third-world country, but in the end, the thugs failed and the truth won.”
Among those Mr. Trump lashed out at were Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who took the lead in fighting his attempts to challenge his loss in the 2020 election, and Mark F. Pomerantz, a prosecutor who worked on an early version of a criminal case against him in Manhattan; efforts in the case ultimately led to Mr. Trump’s conviction last year on dozens of state felony charges.
His anger rising, Mr. Trump went on to assail Mr. Pomerantz’s former boss, Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, and the former special counsel, Jack Smith, who had accused him in separate criminal indictments of illegally holding on to classified materials and of using lies and fraud to remain in office at the end of his last term in the White House.