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Trump reclaims a Justice Department reshaped in his wake

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President Trump speaks at the Justice Department on Friday. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images hide caption

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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

In a winding speech given from the Department of Justice — a place not typically frequented by sitting presidents — President Trump blasted former officials and lawyers who investigated him, saying they turned the department into one of "injustice."

The remarks were billed as an address on law and order by the White House. Trump did announce a new advertising campaign to curb fentanyl use. But he spent the majority of his time on stage going after the "hacks and radicals" in the U.S. government who he said eroded trust.

"They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people," Trump said.

Trump called out former Attorney General Merrick Garland, Marc Elias, a lawyer who worked against Trump's legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and Mark Pomerantz, a lawyer who investigated Trump's business practices, calling them "really bad people."

The president faced federal charges after he left office in 2021, including for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost — though the Justice Department dropped that case when Trump won reelection in November.

Trump's speech Friday comes as his administration has spent the last several weeks trying to reconfigure the Justice Department, including demoting attorneys who worked on cases related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and firing officials who investigated the president himself.

"We're turning the page on four long years of corruption, weaponization and surrender to violent criminals, and we're restoring fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law," Trump said to dozens of people gathered at the DOJ, including his Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Hands-off approach

Presidents typically have a more hands-off approach to the DOJ, in an effort to preserve the independence of the rule of law.

Trump was the first president to come to the Justice Department in person since President Barack Obama, who was there twice — once to talk about changes his administration was making to surveillance programs.

But Trump hasn't hesitated to talk about the Justice Department, and it came up repeatedly on the campaign trail as he railed against the federal charges against him; Trump said he would use the DOJ to go after people he sees as disloyal.

In his speech on Friday, Trump boasted that his administration stripped security clearances from others who have investigated him, including Special Counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump has also revoked security clearance and intelligence briefings for former President Joe Biden.

Trump also went after the press, and said coverage of Judge Aileen Cannon should have been "illegal." Cannon, appointed by Trump, threw out the federal case that accused Trump of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

"The case against me was bull**** and she correctly dismissed it," Trump said.

Trump said he has appointed "patriotic tough on crime warriors" to the DOJ. He said he would revive the 1033 program, which gives excess military equipment to state and local law enforcement.

Trump also said he will launch an anti-drug advertising campaign that shows the effects of fentanyl on the body.

"Everyone's vain. They don't want to lose their look. The look is so important. And I think when they see these things, they may say, you know what, I'm going to take a pass," he said.

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Trump calls his opponents 'scum' and lawbreakers in bellicose speech at Justice Department - POLITICO

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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 his political opponents lawbreakers and said others should be sent to prison.

“These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” the president said in a rambling speech that lasted more than an hour.

While condemning officials who directed the military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and repeating his false claims about the 2020 election being stolen, Trump said: “The people who did this to us should go to jail.”

In remarks that were by turns dark, exultant and pugnacious, Trump vowed to remake the Justice Department and retaliate against his enemies, some of whom he called “thugs.”

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.”

The president sought to recast his fraught history with the department — most notably the two federal criminal cases he faced last year, one on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the other for refusing to return a hoard of classified documents after he left office in 2021. Trump also bragged about revoking the security clearance of “deranged Jack Smith,” the special counsel who indicted him in those cases. (Smith and the Justice Department abandoned both cases after Trump won reelection last year.).

Trump boasted about pardoning hundreds of “political prisoners who have been grossly mistreated,” referring to the people convicted in connection with the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And he said “there was no better day” than when he fired James Comey, the president’s first-term FBI director who investigated the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

“What they’ve ripped down is incalculable,” Trump said of the department’s leaders under the Biden administration.

Trump critics said his decision to come to the Justice Department to deliver such strident attacks was the real source of damage to the department’s traditions and its morale.

“No president has ever given a speech at the Department of Justice like that, where he railed against his political foes and summoned up an agenda for totally political, partisan prosecution,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said. “It was an absolute desecration of the culture and history of the Department of Justice.”

Raskin also ridiculed Trump’s description of those charged in the Capitol riot as political prisoners. “He called the insurrectionists today political prisoners, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Nelson Mandela. What a joke,” the lawmaker said.

Trump also used his visit to offer an effusive tribute to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who issued a ruling that tossed out the classified documents case against him. Prosecutors were appealing that decision when Trump prevailed at the polls last November.

“The case against me was bullshit and she correctly dismissed it,” he said.

Noting that he had appointed her but did not know her personally, Trump praised Cannon as “brilliant” and credited her for standing her ground under withering criticism from the media and legal pundits. “She was very courageous and it only made her angry,” the president said. “They were hitting her so hard it was hard to watch. … She was the absolute model of what a judge should be.”

And he said the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices are treated “unbelievably badly” by Democrats opposing Trump’s agenda.

Attorney General Pam Bondi introduced Trump by pledging that she and others at the department are fully engaged in his mission.

“We will never stop fighting for him and for our country,” she said.

Before the president arrived, the audience heard from two other prominent Trump appointees at DOJ: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel. Both did their best to fire up the crowd by declaring that DOJ is heeding Trump’s call to get tough on criminals and undocumented immigrants.

Despite Trump’s repeated and bitter denunciations of his critics, at times Friday he appeared to say that he does not intend to instruct his appointees how to target his opponents but instead plans to trust them to use their judgment to achieve his goals.

“I don’t do it. They do it,” the president said, adding later that he might not return to the department again during his presidency.

Toward the end of his speech, Trump quoted an unlikely source.

“Etched onto the walls of this building are the words English philosopher John Locke said: ‘Where law ends, tyranny begins,’” Trump said. “And I see that.”

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Breaking taboo on official meetings, US ambassador meets with Georgian Foreign Minister

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On Friday, US Ambassador to Georgia Robin Dunnigan met with Georgian Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili, the first formal meeting held between US officials and representatives of Georgian Dream since the contested parliamentary elections in October.

‘Ambassador Dunnigan met Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili today to outline President Trump and Secretary Rubio’s top priorities and steps that Georgia can take to demonstrate its seriousness about improving its relationship with the US’, the US Embassy said in a post.

There were no further details added.

In its own readout of the meeting, Georgia’s Foreign Ministry said ‘the agenda of cooperation between Georgia and the US was discussed at the meeting, noting that the partnership of the two countries, which is based on common values and interests, requires positive dynamics, which the Georgian government has repeatedly confirmed’.

‘The parties noted that the strategic relations established between the countries over the decades are the best basis for deepening future cooperation. The meeting also discussed the security environment and challenges in the region and the world and, in this context, the importance of US support and cooperation. At the end of the meeting, the parties expressed their readiness to work actively to make progress in the strategic cooperation of the two countries’.

The meeting came after months of a diplomatic freeze between the US and Georgia, particularly during the final months of former President Joe Biden’s administration.

The crisis followed the contested parliamentary elections, which handed the ruling Georgian Dream party another four-year term in office. The official results have been widely criticised, including by the US, but the Biden administration fell short of explicitly declaring the election to be illegitimate.

The ruling Georgian Dream party has openly stated on numerous occasions that it was hoping for a reset under the Trump administration, but concrete steps in that direction — before today’s meeting — had yet to materialise.

At the same time, a bipartisan group of US senators reintroduced the MEGOBARI Act in the Senate earlier this week, an act that would mandate further sanctions against Georgian officials and reaffirm support for Georgian media and civil society.

Another bill, the Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act, was introduced by Representative Joe Wilson in January 2025. The legislation would prohibit the recognition or normalisation of relations ‘with any Government of Georgia that is led by (Georgian Dream honorary founder) Bidzina Ivanishvili or any proxies due to the Ivanishvili regime’s ongoing crimes against the Georgian people’.

Neither bill has been held for an official vote.

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Nate joined OC Media as an editor after a year at The Kyiv Independent, where he covered Ukraine, Russia, and the South Caucasus. He has a background in grant writing and reporting on post-Soviet geopolitics, with a focus on conflict-sensitive journalism and human rights.

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Georgian Organized Crime Boss and Associates Sentenced in New York for Extortion Scheme

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A Georgian organized crime boss along with his associates have been sentenced for their involvement in an extortion scheme, as announced by the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Matthew Podolsky.

According to the press release, Vazha Gabadadze, who bears the distinction of a "vor v zakone," governed a crew that practiced violent extortion, imposing their will upon a victim whom they followed from the Republic of Georgia to the U.S.

The final defendant in the case Teimuraz Tavberidze, was sentenced to a 21-month prison term after a December conviction.

His accomplices Kakha Katsadze, and Davit Tikaradze received sentences ranging from 12 to 30 months.

These convictions came as a result of FBI diligence and the prosecutorial efforts of the General Crimes Unit.

Podolsky acknowledged the defendants' use of brutal measures, they threatened to harm the victim and his family to extract thousands of dollars.

Gabadadze, a figure of authority within Eastern European crime syndicates, initially demanded $15,000 from a man in Georgia, claiming it was a debt owed by the victim's friend.

The victim subsequently relocated to the U.S., with Gabadadze and his associates pursuing him and resuming their threatening behavior.

Their tactics included visceral threats of violence, promising the victim would suffer broken bones and mutilations unless the demanded payments were made, as detailed by the same press release.

Each member of Gabadadze's group had a role in exacting the extortion.

While Tavberidze was the one who directly interacted with and threatened the victim, Katsadze handled the payment collections, and Tikaradze issued threats as well.

The culprits successfully extorted around $19,000 before justice intervened.

Podolsky's team, together with the FBI, brought these men to account for preying on their victim with threats and intimidations, disrupting the network of fear they had cast.

Gabadadze and Katsadze pleaded guilty to one count of Hobbs Act extortion, while Tikaradze and Tavberidze were convicted of conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act extortion, with Tavberidze also being convicted of Hobbs Act extortion itself. The cross-agency collaboration, which included U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the New York City Police Department, was pivotal in the success of this case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Getzel Berger, Varun Gumaste, Chelsea Scism, and Daniel Richenthal handled the prosecution, as per the U.S. Attorney's Office.

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Azerbaijan, Armenia say peace deal ready for signing

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Trump’s special envoy’s plane lands in Baku after departing Moscow – Aze.Media

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Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steven Witkoff, left Russia on the night of March 14. According to Russian media, his plane departed from Vnukovo Airport around 2:00 AM.

Witkoff had arrived in Moscow on Thursday for a meeting with the Russian president. However, there has been no official confirmation of any talks, including on the Kremlin’s website. Nevertheless, some sources claim that a closed-door meeting took place, after which the envoy immediately left Moscow.

According to Flightradar, Witkoff’s plane headed to Baku, where it landed a few hours later.

Earlier, the Mayak radio station reported that Putin’s official meetings at the Kremlin concluded at 1:30 AM Moscow time.

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