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President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to end the “weaponization“ of the Justice Department, saying the previous administration abused its power to investigate political opponents.
But in recent weeks, the Justice Department has started investigating Trump’s political adversaries, including one of his former opponents in the 2024 election, the head of the Federal Reserve and a former cable TV critic.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, the president suggested more was on the way. Speaking of the 2020 presidential election — which he lost by more than 7 million votes— Trump said, “It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. … People will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”
He did not elaborate, but the remark came about one week after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had been complaining that the Justice Department hadn’t yet taken any action related to the 2020 election. NBC News has not independently confirmed the reporting, which was attributed to people familiar with the president’s complaints.
The five-year statute of limitations on 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.
There’s been a surge of activity from the Justice Department in the days since.
J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal appeals court judge, told NBC News that the administration’s actions are “beyond all comprehension.”
“At this early point in his second term, Donald Trump has himself defined his presidency as one of vengeance and retribution,” 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 for this article laughable” in a statement and complained the “mainstream media turned a blind eye when Joe Biden weaponized his Department of Justice against his political opponents.”
“President Trump and his Administration are restoring integrity to the Justice Department that Joe Biden broke — and we will absolutely enforce the law and hold criminals accountable. Democrats just must not be used to that,” the statement said.
During this second term, the Trump administration has repeatedly taken action against the president’s critics and those who once investigated him, including instituting penalties on law firms where some of them work.
The Justice Department, which is headed by two of Trump’s former personal lawyers — Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche — indicted a longtime subject of Trump’s public complaints, former FBI Director James Comey, in late September. The indictment on charges of making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation came days after Trump complained on Truth Social that the department had yet to take any action against Comey and others he’s accused of criminality, including New York Attorney General Letitia James.
James was later indicted as well on charges of bank fraud and making a false statement to a financial institution. Both pleaded not guilty and their cases were dismissed after a judge found the prosecutor who’d brought the case, another of Trump’s former personal attorneys, had been unlawfully appointed. The department is appealing those rulings.
The pace of the investigations into those Trump singled out has accelerated since the beginning of the new year. Here are some people the president has targeted in recent weeks, many of whom are now being investigated.
Minnesota Democrats
On Tuesday, the Justice Department sent out a half-dozen criminal subpoenas to various state and local government offices in Minnesota as part of an investigation into whether they’ve conspired to impede law enforcement during immigration operations there, according to a document reviewed by NBC News and a person familiar with the investigation.
The recipients included the office of Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2024; the office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the former deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee and a longtime Trump critic; and the office of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, whom White House adviser Stephen Miller has accused of having “willfully and purposely incited this violent insurrection” in his city.
The subpoenas were served hours after Trump called for a probe into Walz and another Minnesota Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar, on social media.
“Investigate these Corrupt Politicians, and do it now!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Ellison and Frey had also filed suit against the administration last week challenging a surge of thousands of immigration officers and agents been sent to the city in recent weeks, saying the “operation is driven by nothing more than the Trump Administration’s desire to punish political opponents and score partisan points.”
The Justice Department called the suit “frivolous” in a legal filing Tuesday.
Ellison told reporters Tuesday that the whole situation was “highly irregular, especially the fact that this comes shortly after my office sued the Trump Administration to challenge their illegal actions within 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.
Renee Good’s partner
Trump has repeatedly criticized protesters in Minneapolis who’ve been demonstrating since an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, during an immigration enforcement operation Jan. 7. Administration officials have said the shooting was in self-defense. The killing has led to clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators Trump has labeled “anarchists” and “professional agitators.”
“FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!” Trump wrote in a post last week, referring to the protests.
Federal officials are investigating Becca Good, Renee Good’s partner, to determine whether she may have impeded a federal officer moments before he shot and killed Good, two people familiar with the investigation previously told NBC News, as well as her possible ties to activist groups.
Becca Good was on the street filming ICE agents near her partner’s car and can be heard on cellphone video from the encounter urging her to “drive.”
Trump has called the shooting of Good a “tragedy,” but also told reporters on Air Force One on Jan. 11 that she was “very violent. She’s a, you know, very radical person. Very sad what happened.” “Her friend was very radical,” he added, referring to Becca Good.
“Renee and Becca Good were responsible community members 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.
Minnesota protesters — and Don Lemon
The Justice Department is also investigating another protest in Minnesota where demonstrators went into a St. Paul church and disrupted services, alleging 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 a Truth Social post this week, and said the demonstrators “are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.”
He also reposted a message from another user calling for former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who livestreamed the protest, to be locked up and blasted him as a “loser” during remarks at the White House on Tuesday.
Bondi announced Thursday that federal agents with Homeland Security and the FBI had arrested activists Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Louisa Allen in connection with the protest.
The White House celebrated the arrest in posts on X. “WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” it said in one.
Jordan Kushner, Armstrong’s attorney, told NBC News in a phone call Thursday that his client was “arrested for doing a peaceful nonviolent protest in a church” and that demonstrators “were engaged in an exercise of free speech.”
The department also tried, unsuccessfully, to charge Lemon. A federal magistrate judge in Minnesota rejected a criminal complaint against Lemon, according to a source familiar with the matter, who described Bondi as “enraged” by the decision.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, the chief of the Civil Rights Division, retweeted from her personal account another X user who said Lemon should “lawyer up.”
“You’re next. B—-,” the user wrote.
Dhillon wrote in a separate post on her 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’s notable that I’ve been cast as the face of a protest I was covering as a journalist — especially since I wasn’t the only reporter there.”
Fed chair
Jerome Powell, whom Trump nominated to head the Federal Reserve during his first administration, has become a frequent target of the president for failing to lower interest rates as much as he would like.
Since July, Trump has expanded his attacks to include criticism of the Fed’s over-budget multibillion-dollar renovation of two of the central bank’s buildings in Washington, D.C. He told reporters in late December that he was thinking of suing Powell for “incompetence” related to the work.
This month, Powell revealed that the Justice Department had served the central bank with “grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment” related to testimony he gave before the Senate banking committee about the renovations. He also said he believed the true impetus for the investigation was to put pressure on him to lower interest rates.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, a longtime Trump ally, said in a post on X that her office had “contacted the Federal Reserve on multiple occasions to discuss cost overruns and the chairman’s congressional testimony, but were ignored, necessitating the use of legal process — which is not a threat.”
Democratic lawmakers
A group of Democratic lawmakers whom Trump has accused of sedition said this month that they’re being investigated by federal prosecutors for their participation in a video urging members of the military 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’d been contacted by Pirro’s office about their involvement with the video.
Crow said all of them are in “the same situation.” The “administration has decided to weaponize the Department of Justice to try to silence their political opponents and suppress dissent. But we are members of Congress, we will do our duty.”
The Pentagon, meanwhile, moved earlier this month to downgrade the rank and pay of another of the video’s participants, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy captain. Kelly has filed suit against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, alleging the effort is “punitive retribution.”
Complaints, but no DOJ action
Not all of those Trump has suggested should be prosecuted are known to be under investigation.
In remarks to reporters Tuesday marking his first year in office, Trump took aim at the prosecutors who’d charged him with crimes while he was out of office.
He called Jack Smith, the former special counsel who charged Trump with mishandling classified information and a criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 election, a “sick guy.”
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who charged Trump with conspiring to overturn the election results in Georgia, is also “sick,” Trump said, as is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who secured a criminal conviction against Trump for falsifying business records.
Trump is appealing the conviction, and the Smith and Willis cases were ultimately dismissed after Trump was elected.
“I won,” Trump said. “And then if I suggest that somebody may be guilty of a terrible crime — ‘Oh, he’s weaponizing government. Trump is weaponizing government. It’s terrible!’ Can you imagine?”
“I don’t weaponize anything,” he continued. “But what they did to me, nobody ever went 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, right?”
On Thursday, while Smith was testifying before Congress about his role as special counsel, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me. The whole thing was a Democrat SCAM — A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through!”
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