President Donald Trump on Monday said he would target former President Joe Biden’s circle, calling them “evil people.”
“There were some brilliant people,” Trump said, referring to Biden’s allies in his White House. “But they’re evil people, and they’re going to be brought down. They have to be brought down ’cause they really hurt our country.”
Trump’s threat to have his political opponent’s allies “brought down” marks his latest move to potentially target political adversaries in a pattern that has alarmed critics who paint the president as pursuing retribution and say he is weaponizing the Justice Department — a claim the president has made about the Biden administration.
Biden’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump made the comments during lengthy remarks in the Oval Office, where the president and his allies made a series of claims about the impact of his anti-crime efforts in D.C. and top officials took turns heaping praise on him. While signing executive orders that aim to do away with cash bail, Trump repeatedly focused on the murder rate in the city, saying it had not seen a single person killed in 11 days — a change that he has been brandishing in recent days as he touts his administration’s efforts to address D.C. crime. That push has included federalizing the D.C. police force, deploying the National Guard and stepping up the federal law enforcement presence in the city.
Trump claimed that it has been “many years” since D.C. went a week without a murder. Publicly available crime data from the Metropolitan Police Department, however, indicate that D.C. went 16 days without a murder earlier this year, from Feb. 25 to March 12.
Trump argued that the city’s restaurants are experiencing a “boomtown,” a comment that is uncertain, as restaurant employees in a D.C. neighborhood with a large immigrant community told NBC News last week that business was declining due to Trump’s policies. His deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who attended the signing with Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, claimed that people in D.C. had resumed wearing jewelry and carrying purses because of Trump’s anti-crime push.
“They’re wearing jewelry again. They’re carrying purses again,” Miller said. “People had changed their whole lives in this city for fear of being murdered, mugged and carjacked. It is a literal statement that President Trump has freed 700,000 people in this city who were living under the rule of criminals and thugs.”
At the start of the operation, though, crime in D.C. was down 26% compared to last year. Many city residents, too, have slammed the deployments and said it is scaring Washingtonians.
The president has frequently claimed that Democrats weaponized the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies against him, pointing to his criminal indictments related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents, as well as his conviction related to falsifying business records, which were dropped when he was elected to a second term. Trump repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the cases against him.
Democrats have gone after Trump’s comments, arguing that the Trump administration’s several investigations into his political foes constitute the exact weaponization that he claimed they pursued against him.
The Justice Department is investigating Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James on allegations of mortgage fraud.
James led a civil fraud case against Trump, and Schiff served as the lead House manager in Trump’s first impeachment trial. They denied any wrongdoing.
NBC News has also previously reported that the Justice Department is in the initial stages of an investigation into James’ handling of her civil fraud case against Trump, which her attorney likened to a “political retribution campaign.”
Trump also threatened Friday to fire a Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook, if she did not resign after facing separate accusations of mortgage fraud. Cook said she won’t step down.
On Monday night, Trump said he was removing Cook from her post. Trump has been highly critical of the Federal Reserve for not adjusting interest rates as he would like.
And late last week, the FBI searched the home of former national security adviser John Bolton. A source familiar with the matter told NBC News at the time that the search was part of a “national security investigation in search of classified records.” Bolton did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment Friday.
Also on Monday, Trump left the door open to investigating former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a staunch critic of Trump who was among the Republicans who ran against him for president. Trump was referring to a 12-year-old scandal called “Bridgegate.“
“If they want to look at it, they can,” Trump said, responding to a question about whether the White House planned to investigate Christie. “You can ask Pam. I think we have other things to do, but I always thought he got away with murder.”
On Sunday, after Christie criticized him on ABC News’ “This Week,” Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social, “For the sake of JUSTICE, perhaps we should start looking at that very serious situation again?”
Meanwhile, Trump’s allies in Congress have pushed to hear testimony from Biden’s circle about his mental acuity while in office, which Trump and Republicans claim was in decline but was covered up by the former president’s team. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has sought testimony from Biden’s former White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor and former White House aides, including his domestic policy adviser, Neera Tanden and his deputy chief of staff, Annie Tomasini.
