page_title: Presidency of Donald Trump
section_title: Criminal justice
hierarchical_section_title: Presidency of Donald Trump / Domestic policy / Criminal justice
caption_attribution_description: -Washington, D.C., 15, May 2017. The 36th Annual National Peace Officers' Memorial Service held on the West Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., honored law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. Speakers included President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and guests on the dais included the Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Director the U.S. Marshals Service David Harlow. During the ceremony family of fallen officers placed carnations for the fallen forming a star and received a medal for the officer’s service. Photo by: Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals
context_page_description: The presidency of Donald Trump began at noon EST on January 20, 2017, when he was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, succeeding Barack Obama. A Republican, Trump was a businessman and reality television personality from New York City at the time of his 2016 presidential election victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. While Trump lost the popular vote, he won the Electoral College vote, 304 to 227, in a presidential contest that American intelligence agencies concluded was targeted by a Russian interference campaign. Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. The statements have been documented by fact-checkers, with political scientists and historians widely describing the phenomenon as unprecedented in modern American politics. Trump's approval rating has been stable, hovering at high-30 to mid-40 percent throughout his presidency.
  Trump rolled back numerous environmental protections, as well as reducing enforcement of existing regulations.
context_section_description: In August 2017, Trump used an executive order to reverse a ban implemented by the Obama administration, thus allowing certain kinds of military equipment to be given to American police. That ban was one of the police reform policies implemented in the wake of 2014's Ferguson unrest.
  In September 2017, the Justice Department under the Trump administration stated that it would no longer investigate police departments and publicize their shortcomings in reports, a policy previously enacted under the Obama administration. These reports were the basis of negotiating "consent decrees", agreements for police reform between police departments and the Justice Department, which courts could enforce. These consent decrees were used by the Obama administration and the Trump administration. However, the Trump administration's first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, publicly opposed consent decrees, and in November 2018, just before Sessions was fired by Trump, Sessions ordered for consent decrees to be severely restricted. Later in June 2020, Trump falsely claimed that the Obama administration never tried to reform the police.
  In November 2017, the New York Times summarized the Trump administration's "general approach to law enforcement" as "cracking down on violent crime", "not regulating the police departments that fight it", and overhauling "programs that the Obama administration used to ease tensions between communities and the police". The administration reversed a 16-year old moratorium on federal capital punishment in 2019, with Attorney General Barr directing the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule five executions.
  The administration reinstated the use of asset forfeiture—the practice of seizing the property of crime suspects who have not been charged with or convicted of a crime—making it so local authorities in the states that banned asset forfeiture could engage in the practice. When a sheriff complained about a state senator who proposed legislation to end asset forfeiture, Trump responded, "Who is the state senator? Do you want to give his name? ... We'll destroy his career."
  Trump appeared to advocate police brutality in a July 2017 speech to police officers, prompting criticism from law enforcement agencies.
  In December 2018, Trump signed the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill which sought to rehabilitate prisoners and reduce recidivism, notably by expanding job training and early-release programs, and lowering mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. Trump's proposed 2020 budget underfunded the new law; the law was intended to receive $75 million annually for five years, but Trump's budget proposed only $14 million. According to reporting by Axios in 2020, Trump expressed regrets in private about having followed Jared Kushner's lead in going through with the First Step Act.
  Beginning during his campaign and continuing into his presidency, Trump called for a sweeping investigation into alleged wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton. In November 2017, Attorney General Sessions appointed a federal attorney to review a wide array of issues, including the Clinton Foundation, the Uranium One controversy and the FBI's handling of its investigation into Clinton's emails. In January 2020 the investigation was reported to be winding down after no evidence was found to warrant the opening of a criminal investigation. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's April 2019 report documented that Trump pressured Sessions and the DOJ to re-open the investigation into the Hillary Clinton email controversy.
  Trump's 2019 budget plan proposed nearly 50% cuts to the COPS Hiring Program which provides funding to state and local law enforcement agencies to help hire community policing officers.
  The number of prosecutions of child-sex traffickers has showed a decreasing trend under the Trump administration relative to the Obama administration. Under the Trump administration, the SEC charged the fewest number of insider trading cases since the Reagan administration.
caption: Trump pays tribute to fallen police officers on May 15, 2017.
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