Injustice How politics and fear vanquished America's Justice Department

Carol Leonnig

Book - 2025

"Throughout his first administration, Donald Trump did more than any other president to politicize the nation's top law enforcement agency, pressuring appointees to shield him, to target his enemies, and even to help him cling to power after his 2020 election defeat. The Department, pressed into a defensive crouch, has never fully recovered. Injustice exposes not only the Trump administration's efforts to undermine the Department at every turn but also how delays in investigating Trump's effort to overturn the will of voters under Attorney General Merrick Garland helped prevent the country from holding Trump accountable and enabled his return to power. Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis take readers inside as prosecutors c...onvulsed over Trump's disdain for the rule of law, and FBI agents, the department's storied investigators, at times retreated in fear. They take you to the rooms where Special Counsel Jack Smith's team set off on an all-but-impossible race to investigate Trump for absconding with classified documents and waging an assault on democracy--and inside his prosecution's heroic and fateful choices that ultimately backfired. With a plethora of sources deeply embedded in the ranks of three presidencies, Leonnig and Davis reveal the daily war secretly waged for the soul of the department, how it has been shredded by propaganda and partisanship, and how--if the United States hopes to live on with its same form of government--Trump's war with the Justice Department will mark a turning point from which it will be hard to recover" -- Dust jacket. more