A new banner hanging along the facade of the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington is sparking criticism from Democrats and a former FBI director, who suggest that it exemplifies President Donald Trump’s encroachment on the agency, which has long prided itself on being independent from the White House.
The tall banner displays a portrait of Trump, cast in a dark blue hue, staring down at tourists, commuters and cars along Washington’s bustling Pennsylvania Avenue. “MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN,” reads the banner, which is emblazoned with the Justice Department’s seal.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the banner was hung in commemoration of the United States’ Semiquincentennial, writing in a statement: “We are proud at this Department of Justice to celebrate 250 years of our great country and our historic work to make America safe again at President Trump’s direction.”
Similar banners have appeared recently on other government buildings in Washington. But Democrats said that the decision to install one at the Justice Department symbolizes the influence Trump has wielded over the agency during his second term and that the display is comparable to the imagery deployed by authoritarian regimes.
“The irony of a twice-impeached, convicted felon putting his own picture on the wall of the Department of Justice,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (New Mexico) wroteon X. “President Trump is weaponizing the DOJ as his own personal law firm.”
Rep. Mike Quigley (Illinois) shared an image of the banner online and wrote: “POTUS is putting his face on the Justice Department. … This is not the work of an independent and impartial justice system.”
“Ok Kim Jong Un,” Rep. Jim McGovern (Massachusetts) wrote.
A pair of similar banners hung at the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed Trump and Abraham Lincoln’s portraits emblazoned with the phrase: “Growing America Since 1862.” (A government purchase orderfor the pair of banners at USDA showed they cost $16,400.) And banners hung on the Labor Department’s building featured portraits of Trump and Theodore Roosevelt that read, “American workers first.”
The addition to the Justice Department building follows a pattern of norm-breaking efforts that critics say amount to Trump using the agency as a personal cudgel against his political enemies.
In a speech delivered inside the building last year, Trump declared himself the nation’s “chief law enforcement officer.” Attorney General Pam Bondi rarely misses an opportunity to praise the president and credit him with the department’s success, including at a contentious congressional oversight hearing last week in which she repeatedly described him “the greatest president in American history.”
To Trump’s critics, the banner is also striking given his status as a felon. He was found guilty in 2024 in a New York state case on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult-film actress.
Less than two years ago, Justice Department prosecutors had been pursuing two federal cases against him led by former special counsel Jack Smith. One focused on efforts to overturn the 2020 election, while the other related to Trump’s handling of classified documents.
Trump is continuing to appeal his state court conviction in New York. A Georgia criminal case against Trump related to efforts to change the 2020 election result was dismissed last year.
The two federal cases were also dismissed. One ended because of issues with Smith’s appointment. The other Smith withdrew after Trump’s 2024 election victory, in line with long-standing Justice Department policies preventing prosecution of a sitting president.
Trump and his Justice Department appointees have contended that the prosecutions arose out of a Biden-era weaponization of the justice system to punish political foes.
Since his return to the White House, Trump has ordered several prosecutions of political rivals on social media. Federal prosecutors brought charges against former FBI Director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James last year — both of whom Trump had demanded Bondi move swiftly to prosecute. Those cases were later thrown out over issues with the appointment of the U.S. attorney selected to oversee them.
Comey, in a social media post Thursday, called the installation of the banner outside the Justice Department headquarters “sickening.”
“But they forgot to cover the inscription on the Pennsylvania Avenue side: ‘WHERE LAW ENDS TYRANNY BEGINS,’” he wrote.
The banner is hardly the first time the Trump administration has been accused of adopting aesthetics and deploying imagerytypically associated with imperialism or authoritarianism since his return to office last year.
The administration, for example, roiled the art world when the Department of Homeland Security used images of Americana paintings to bolster support for Trump’s large-scale deportation campaign.
There was also a massive military parade in Washington last year, which ran against an American tradition of avoiding public displays of martial strengthmore common in authoritarian regimes. The president is also planninga giant triumphal arch across from the Lincoln Memorial, which could dwarf the size of that and other monuments.
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