WASHINGTON — President Trump once again berated the “dirty cops” of the law enforcement establishment on Thursday, accusing the Justice Department of going after his friends but not his enemies in a public outburst that flouted Attorney General William P. Barr’s pleas to stop publicly intervening in individual prosecutions where he had a personal interest.
Speaking out hours after his friend Roger J. Stone Jr. was sentenced to more than three years in prison for lying to protect the president, Mr. Trump belittled the case and hinted broadly that he would use his clemency power to spare Mr. Stone if a judge did not agree to a retrial sought by defense lawyers.
In essentially dangling a pardon or commutation for a friend, Mr. Trump confronted Mr. Barr with a choice about how to respond after declaring last week that the president was making his job “impossible” with his attacks on the criminal justice system.
“A lot of bad things are happening,” Mr. Trump said of law enforcement at a Las Vegas event for former convicts re-entering society. “We are cleaning it out. We are cleaning the swamp. We are draining the swamp. I just never knew how deep the swamp was.”
He added: “We have a lot of dirty cops. F.B.I. is phenomenal. I love the people in the F.B.I. But the people at the top were dirty cops.”
He complained that the Justice Department prosecuted Mr. Stone for lying and obstructing a congressional inquiry, but did not charge his enemies like Hillary Clinton, the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, Mr. Comey’s onetime deputy Andrew G. McCabe and the former F.B.I. officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.
“What happened to him is unbelievable,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Stone. “They say that he lied. But other people lied, too. Just to mention, Comey lied. McCabe lied. Lisa Page lied. Her lover, Strzok, Peter Strzok, lied. You don’t know who these people are? Just trust me, they all lied.”
He went on to revive the email case involving Mrs. Clinton, his 2016 Democratic opponent. “Hillary Clinton leaked more classified documents than any human being, I believe, in the history of the United States,” he said. But, he added, “nothing happened to her.”
In repeating his attacks on his favorite targets, Mr. Trump distorted or misstated the facts. Mrs. Clinton was not accused of leaking classified documents, and certainly not the most in history. She was faulted for using a private computer server that was not as secure as a government server to send emails, some of which were later found to include classified information.
Mr. Comey, then the F.B.I. director, faulted her for carelessness but said no prosecutor would charge a crime on those facts.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, mocked the case against Mr. Stone, including the witness intimidation charge. “It’s not like the tampering that I see on television when you watch a movie,” the president said. “That is called tampering — waving guns to people’s heads and other things.”
He repeated his complaints that the jury forewoman in Mr. Stone’s case was “totally tainted” and an “anti-Trump activist,” which he said should compel the judge to order a new trial.
The forewoman was a Democrat who once ran for Congress, which was disclosed at the time of jury selection, but Mr. Trump and other allies of Mr. Stone argue that she was biased. The Justice Department opposes a new trial in a position approved by Mr. Barr.
Mr. Trump left the impression that he would use his clemency power if the judge did not go along with the defense motion, saying that he “would love to see Roger exonerated.”
“We will watch the process and watch it very closely,” Mr. Trump added. “And at some point, I will make a determination. But Roger Stone and everybody has to be treated fairly and this has not been a fair process. OK?”