President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to end “militarization” from the Justice Department, saying the previous administration abused its power to investigate political opponents.
But in recent weeks, the Justice Department has begun investigating Trump’s comments. political opponentsincluding one of his former opponents in the 2024 elections, the head of the Federal Reserve and a former critic of cable television.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, the president suggested more was in the works. Speaking of the 2020 presidential election – which he lost by more than 7 million votes— Trump said: “It was a rigged election. Everyone knows it now… People will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”
He did not provide further details, but the remark came about a week later The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had complained that the Justice Department had yet to take any action related to the 2020 election. NBC News has not independently confirmed this information, attributed to people familiar with the president’s complaints.
The five-year statute of limitations for any crimes committed in 2020 has already expired, but some Trump allies have suggested they could get around that if they can identify a criminal conspiracy that continued until more recently.
Since then, there has been a surge of activity on the part of the Department of Justice.
J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal appeals court judge, told NBC News that the administration’s actions “beyond comprehension.”
“At the start of his second term, Donald Trump himself defined his presidency as one of vengeance and retaliation,” Luttig said.
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the burst of activity, while White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson called “the premise of this article laughable” in a statement and complained that “the mainstream media turned a blind eye when Joe Biden used his Justice Department as a weapon against his political opponents.”
“President Trump and his administration are restoring the integrity of the Justice Department that Joe Biden shattered – and we will absolutely enforce the law and hold criminals accountable. Democrats must simply not be accustomed to this,” the statement said.
During this second term, the Trump administration has repeatedly taken action against the president’s critics and those who investigated him, including instituting sanctions against the law firms where some of them work.
The Justice Department, led by two of Trump’s former personal lawyers — Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche — in late September indicted a longtime subject of Trump’s public complaints, former FBI Director James Comey. The indictment on costs of making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation came days after Trump complained Social truth that the department had yet to take action against Comey and others accused of criminality, including New York Attorney General Letitia James.
James was also later charged on costs of bank fraud and false declaration to a financial institution. Both pleaded not guilty and their cases were dismissed after a judge ruled that the prosecutor who brought the case, another former Trump personal lawyer, was illegally appointed. The ministry is appealing these decisions.
The pace of investigations into people targeted by Trump has accelerated since the start of the new year. Here are some people the president has targeted in recent weeks, many of whom are now under investigation.
Minnesota DemocratsOn Tuesday, the Justice Department sent half a dozen criminal subpoenas to various state and local government offices in Minnesota as part of an investigation into whether they conspired to obstruct law enforcement during immigration operations there, according to a document reviewed by NBC News and a person familiar with the investigation.
Recipients included the office of Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee; the office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a former vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee and longtime Trump critic; and the office of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, whom White House adviser Stephen Miller accused of “deliberately and intentionally inciting this violent insurrection” in his city.
The subpoenas were served hours after Trump called for an investigation into Walz and another Minnesota Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar, on social media.
“Investigate these corrupt politicians and do it now!” » Trump wrote on Social truth.
Ellison and Frey also had filed a complaint against the administration last week, challenging the influx of thousands of agents and immigration agents sent to the city in recent weeks, saying “the operation is motivated solely by the Trump administration’s desire to punish political opponents and score partisan points.”
The Justice Department called the suit “frivolous” in a statement. legal deposit Tuesday.
Ellison told reporters As of Tuesday, the entire situation was “highly irregular, particularly the fact that this comes shortly after my office sued the Trump administration to challenge its illegal actions in Minnesota.”
“I will not be intimidated and I will not stop working to protect Minnesotans from Trump’s campaign of retaliation and revenge,” he said.
Renée Good’s partnerTrump has repeatedly criticized protesters in Minneapolis who have been demonstrating since an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Nicole Goodan American citizen and mother of three, during an immigration enforcement operation on January 7. Administration officials said the shooting was an act of self-defense. The murder has leads to clashes between law enforcement and protesters whom Trump called “anarchists” and “professional agitators.”
“Fear not, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF ACCOUNTING AND PAYMENT IS COMING!” » Asset wrote in an article last week, referring to the protests.
Federal authorities are investigating Becca Good, Renée Good’s partnerto determine whether she may have obstructed a federal officer moments before he killed Good, two people familiar with the investigation, as well as her possible ties to activist groups, told NBC News.
Becca Good was on the street filming ICE agents near her partner’s car and can be heard on cell phone video of the encounter that pushes her to “drive”.
Trump called Good’s shooting a ‘tragedy,’ but also told reporters on Air Force One on January 11, that she was “very violent. She’s a person, you know, very radical. Very sad what happened.” “Her friend was very radical,” he added, referring to Becca Good.
“Renee and Becca Good were responsible members of the community who lived peacefully and did not engage in harmful conduct toward others, including the federal agents involved on January 7, 2026,” Good’s attorneys said in a statement last week.
The Minnesota Protesters – and Don LemonThe Justice Department is also investigating another protest in Minnesota, in which demonstrators entered a Saint-Paul Church and disrupted services, alleging that an ICE official is a pastor there. NBC News has not verified a connection.
Trump called the protest a “church raid” by “agitators and insurrectionists” in 2017. a post on Truth Social this week, and said the protesters “are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail or kicked out of the country.”
He also reposted another user’s post calling out former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who broadcast the protest live, for to be locked up and called him a “loser” during his remarks at the White House on Tuesday.
Bondi announced Thursday that federal agents from Homeland Security and the FBI had arrested activists Levy Armstrong to some And Chauntyll Louisa Allen in connection with the demonstration.
The White House celebrated the arrest by messages on X. “WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP”, said in one.
Jordan Kushner, Armstrong’s attorney, told NBC News in a phone call Thursday that his client was “arrested for organizing a peaceful, nonviolent protest at a church” and that the protesters “were engaged in an exercise of free speech.”
The department also tried, unsuccessfully, to load Lemon. A federal judge in Minnesota dismissed a criminal complaint against Lemon, according to a source familiar with the matter, who described Bondi as “enraged” by the decision.
Deputy Attorney General, Mother Dhillon, Children’s Rights Division, retweeted from her personal account, another user X who said that Lemon should “get a lawyer”.
“You’re next. B—-,” the user wrote.
Dhillon wrote in a separate post on its government account, “Stay tuned, more to come!” »
Lemon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but said in an email earlier this week that “it is remarkable that I was chosen as the face of a protest that I was covering as a journalist — especially since I was not the only journalist present.”
Chairman of the FedJerome Powell, whom Trump appointed to head the Federal Reserve during his first administration, become a frequent target of the president for not lowering interest rates as much as he would like.
Since July, Trump has broadened his attacks by criticizing the Fed’s budget overruns. a multi-billion dollar renovation of two of the central bank buildings in Washington, D.C. He told reporters in late December that he thought he would sue Powell for work-related “incompetence.”
This month, Powell revealed that the Justice Department had served the central bank with “grand jury subpoenas, threatening criminal indictment” related to its testimony before the Senate Banking Committee regarding the renovations. He also said he believed the real purpose of the investigation was to put pressure on him to I hope he lowers interest rates.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, a longtime Trump ally, said in a statement post on that his office had “contacted the Federal Reserve multiple times to discuss the cost overruns and the president’s testimony to Congress, but were ignored, necessitating the use of legal proceedings – which does not constitute a threat.”
Democratic lawmakersA group of Democratic lawmakers that Trump has accused of sedition said this month that they were under investigation by federal prosecutors for their participation in a video urging members of the army and the intelligence community not to follow illegal orders.
Four of the six — Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania — said they were contacted by Pirro’s office about their involvement in the video.
Crow said they were all in “the same situation.” “The administration has decided to arm the Justice Department to try to silence its political opponents and suppress dissent. But we are members of Congress, we will do our duty.”
The Pentagon, for its part, decided at the beginning of the month to demote rank and pay from another of the video’ Among the participants was Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy captain. Kelly filed suit against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, alleging that this effort is “punitive retaliation.”
Complaints, but no DOJ actionNot everyone who Trump says should be prosecuted is being investigated.
In remarks to reporters Tuesday marking his first year in office, Trump took aim at prosecutors who charged him with crimes while he was out of office.
He called Jack Smith, the former special counsel who accused Trump of mishandling classified information and a criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 election, a “sick guy.”
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who accused Trump of plotting to overturn Georgia’s election results, is also “sick,” Trump said, as is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who won a criminal conviction against Trump for falsifying business records.
Trump is appealing this conviction, and the Smith and Willis cases have been finally rejected after Trump’s election.
“I won,” Trump said. “And then, if I suggest that someone might be guilty of a terrible crime: ‘Oh, he’s militarizing the government. Trump is militarizing the government. It’s terrible!’ Can you imagine?
“I don’t use anything as a weapon,” he continued. “But what they did to me, no one has ever gone through what I went through, and here I am in a place called the White House. It’s a beautiful place. Who would have thought it, right?”
On Thursday, as Smith testified before Congress about his role as special counsel, Trump wrote on Truth Social”I hope the Attorney General takes a look at what he did, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses he tried to use in his case against me. This was all a Democratic scam – they should pay a high price for what they did to our country!”
Dareh Gregorian is a political reporter for NBC News.
Ryan J. Reilly is a court reporter for NBC News.
