Injustice

The U.S. Department of Justice has long served as a pillar of American democracy, tasked with enforcing the law impartially, protecting national security, and safeguarding citizens' rights. Its political independence rested not on statute but on a shared norm: Presidents historically respected the department's autonomy. Injustice, by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, chronicles how that norm collapsed during Donald Trump's rise to power and the department's halting, ultimately failed effort to hold him accountable.

The book opens in late 2018, when career prosecutors Kamil Shields and David Kent grappled with a case against Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director accused of giving investigators an inaccurate account of his role in leaking information to a newspaper. Though evidence suggested McCabe withheld the truth, Trump's more than 50 public attacks demanding his prosecution threatened to make any indictment appear politically motivated. Shields and Kent argued that the president's interference had destroyed their chance of winning, and a grand jury twice declined to indict.

Simultaneously, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office secretly investigated intelligence suggesting that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi directed aides to funnel $10 million to Trump's 2016 campaign. Mueller limited his team's access to Trump's bank records, fearing a leak could get the Special Counsel's Office shut down. The probe was handed off to the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, where it died after Attorney General William Barr questioned the justification for subpoenaing Trump's accounts and his handpicked acting U.S. attorney halted further steps.

Mueller's broader investigation concluded with a 448-page report that declined to state whether Trump committed a crime, citing DOJ policy against indicting a sitting president. Barr seized the vacuum, releasing his own summary that framed the findings as "no collusion, no obstruction," shaping public perception before the full report appeared. Jeannie Rhee, a leader of one of Mueller's internal prosecution teams, told devastated colleagues that Barr's framing could not be undone.

The book traces how Barr's DOJ then intervened in cases involving Trump's allies. Barr overruled prosecutors' sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, Trump's longtime adviser convicted on all seven felony counts, after Trump tweeted his outrage, prompting all four prosecutors to withdraw from the case. In May 2020, Barr moved to dismiss charges against Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents. Nearly 2,000 DOJ alumni published a letter calling on Barr to resign.

As the 2020 election approached, Barr pressured a local U.S. attorney to publicize an investigation into nine accidentally discarded ballots in Pennsylvania, violating longstanding DOJ policy against publicizing election probes before certification. After Biden won and Barr instructed prosecutors to ignore these prohibitions, Richard Pilger, director of DOJ's Election Crimes Branch, resigned. The FBI received dozens of warnings about extremist violence planned for January 6, 2021, the day Congress would certify the Electoral College results, but largely dismissed them.

In Trump's final weeks, he pressured Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue to declare the election corrupt. He secretly met with Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ environmental lawyer with no criminal investigation experience, who agreed to send a letter to Georgia officials falsely claiming the department had found significant election fraud. When 10 senior DOJ officials threatened to resign en masse at an emergency Oval Office meeting, Trump backed down. On January 6, rioters overwhelmed Capitol Police, breached the building, and forced the evacuation of Congress. Vice President Mike Pence and his family came within 75 feet of the mob. By evening, order was restored and Congress reconvened to certify Biden's victory.

The book's second act covers the Biden-era investigation. President Biden selected Merrick Garland, who had helped write DOJ's post-Watergate Principles of Federal Prosecution as a young department attorney, as attorney general. Garland arrived determined to restore the department's independence and insisted on a methodical, bottom-up approach to January 6. His caution attracted internal critics who worried his determination to appear apolitical was itself a political choice, particularly when the department ceded the Georgia election investigation to state prosecutors.

The House January 6 committee, formed after Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan commission, raced ahead of DOJ. Beginning in June 2022, its nationally televised hearings drew millions of viewers and repeatedly revealed information the department had not yet obtained. Investigators identified a pattern connecting Trump's post-election maneuvers to a coordinated fake elector scheme, and a federal judge ruled it was "more likely than not" that Trump "corruptly attempted to obstruct" Congress's certification. Inside DOJ, prosecutors and the FBI clashed over investigating Trump's allies, and Garland did not authorize a formal fake electors investigation until April 2022, more than 15 months after the fraudulent documents were first discovered.

A parallel crisis erupted when the National Archives discovered hundreds of pages of classified documents in boxes Trump had returned from Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. Trump secretly directed staff to move approximately 64 boxes before his lawyer, Evan Corcoran, searched a storage room in response to a grand jury subpoena, then had only about 30 returned. When prosecutors subpoenaed surveillance footage revealing the obstruction, the FBI's resistance to a search collapsed. On August 8, 2022, agents executed a search and recovered hundreds of classified pages. Trump framed the search as political persecution.

Garland froze both investigations before the 2022 midterm elections under an expansive reading of DOJ policy, despite Trump not being a candidate. When Trump announced his 2024 presidential candidacy in November, Garland appointed Jack Smith, a former chief of DOJ's Public Integrity Section who had been serving as a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague, as special counsel over both investigations. Smith drove the cases at an intense pace, obtaining an audio recording of Trump boasting about possessing a classified war plan and evidence that Trump personally encouraged the fake elector scheme. A Miami grand jury indicted Trump on 33 felony counts, and Smith filed separate election interference charges in D.C.

Trump's strategy of delay proved effective. His lawyers argued that presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts. On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling dramatically expanding presidential immunity, gutting much of Smith's case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent: "The President is now a king above the law." Two weeks later, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case, ruling that Smith was not lawfully appointed. Trump won the 2024 election on November 5, and Smith's team filed motions to dismiss both cases. The charges were wiped away without ever reaching a jury.

On Inauguration Day 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled "Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government" and pardoned nearly 1,600 January 6 rioters, including Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy. His administration forced out senior FBI leadership and demanded lists of agents who investigated January 6. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered the dismissal of a bribery case against New York Mayor Eric Adams to secure Adams's cooperation on immigration enforcement. Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon refused, calling the order "a bargain that a prosecutor should not make," and over a single day five supervisors in DOJ's Public Integrity Section resigned rather than sign the dismissal motion.

On March 14, 2025, Trump visited DOJ headquarters, where crews had hung curtains over the Art Deco statues Spirit of Justice and Majesty of Law. Attorney General Pam Bondi declared, "We are so proud to work at the directive of Donald Trump." Trump called Smith "deranged," government lawyers who opposed him "scum," and claimed the title of "chief law enforcement officer in our country." That same night, over 230 men were deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime power used only three times in American history, and the administration ignored a federal judge's order to return the planes. Asked whether he agreed with John Adams's principle that America is "a government ruled by laws, not by men," Trump replied that "somebody has to administer the law" and that ideally the country would have "honest men like me."