A concern to preserve the impartiality of the Department of Justice generally leads US presidents to avoid speaking within its walls. President Donald Trump had no such scruples on Friday, March 14, delivering a speech very similar to those of his campaign rallies, closing disco music included. He attacked all those involved in the lawsuits against him, as well as the press, whose investigative work on him he called "illegal."

His speech was initially presented as an opportunity to revive traditional Republican principles: law and order. The result, however, was the consecration of a form of privatization of the judicial institution, illustrated by the appointment of loyalists to the most strategic posts in this department, to whom he paid a heavy tribute, starting with the lawyers who had assisted him during his most recent legal troubles.

"All I'm going to do is set out my vision," Trump had explained the day before about the visit. "It's going to be their vision, really, but it's my ideas," he added. Federal justice as he sees it is embodied by Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general who was at his side during his first congressional impeachment in 2019. Bondi, now the US attorney general, is leading with an iron fist a department subjected to a vast purge as soon as she arrived. She asserted her loyalty to the president in an interview with his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, on the conservative Fox News channel.

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