On The Evening Of The Sixth Of January, When The Smell Of Tear Gas Was Still Stuck In The Corridors Of The Capitol, And When The Traces Of Shattered Glass And Scattered Papers Were Bearing Witness To A Day That Washington Had Not Witnessed Since A Distant Civil War, The Question That Was Haunting The Whole City Was Not Only About What Had Happened, But About What Would Happen After It. Could The State Whose Pillars Had Shaken Hold Accountable Those Who Pushed It To The Edge Of The Abyss, Or Would It Be Satisfied With Punishing Those Who Broke The Windows And Entered The Halls, And Leave Those Who Planned And Incited And Wrote The Statements Outside The Circle Of Accountability? From This Suspended Question, And From That Frightening Void Between Crime And Punishment, The Book Injustice: How Politics And Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department By The Journalists Carol Leonnig And Aaron C. Davis, Published By Penguin Press In 2025, Begins Its Long Journey Inside One Of The Most Dangerous Institutions In The United States And The Most Sensitive, The Department Of Justice, To Narrate How This Institution That Was Founded To Be The Guardian Of The Law Far From Politics Turned Into An Arena Tossed By Calculations And Fear And Hesitation, At A Moment When The Law Itself Was At Stake.
This Book Is Not An Attempt To Shout In The Face Of Power, Nor A Partisan Statement Searching For A Quick Condemnation, But A Tight Investigation, Relying On Hundreds Of Interviews And Documents And Internal Messages That Remained For Years Locked Inside Closed Offices On The Sixth Floor Of The Department Of Justice Building. And The Strength Of The Book Lies In That It Does Not Start From The End That We All Know, Which Is The Return Of Donald Trump To The White House In January 2025, But It Returns To The Beginning, To Those First Days When Everyone Thought That Justice Would Take Its Natural Course, And That What Happened At The Capitol Would Inevitably Lead To Comprehensive Accountability. And Through This Return To The Beginning, The Two Authors Reveal That What Happened Was Not Merely A Series Of Individual Mistakes Or Misjudgments, But A Complete System Of Excessive Caution And Fear Of Appearing Politicized, Until The Fear Of The Accusation Of Politicization Became More Dangerous To Justice Than Politicization Itself.
Carol Leonnig Is Not A Passing Name In American Journalism, For She Has Won The Pulitzer Prize More Than Once For Her Coverage Of The White House And The Secret Service And The Department Of Justice, And She Is Known For Her Ability To Penetrate Beyond Official Statements And Reach What Goes On In Closed Rooms. And Her Partner In This Book Aaron C. Davis Is Also One Of The Veteran Journalists Of The Washington Post, Who Lived For Years The Details Of Federal Investigations And Their Entanglements With Politics. And This Long Professional History Gives The Book A Special Credibility, For It Does Not Rely On A Single Source Or On Scattered Leaks, But On An Accumulation Of Testimonies Of Prosecutors And Agents Of The Federal Bureau Of Investigation And Senior Officials Who Were Witnesses To The Decisions Moment By Moment, Some Of Them Spoke For The First Time, And Some Of Them Decided To Narrate What They Saw Because They Felt That Silence Had Become A Kind Of Complicity. And Therefore The Book Sometimes Reads Like A Novel, And Sometimes Like An Investigation Record, And Sometimes Like An Elegy For An Institution That Believed It Was Above Politics And Discovered That It Was Immersed In It Up To Its Ears.
At The Heart Of This Narrative Stands One Man, Merrick Garland, The Secretary Of Justice In The Era Of President Joe Biden, Whom The Book Draws In A Complex And Painful Image At The Same Time. For Garland Is Not Here The Villain Who Hides The Truth, Nor The Hero Who Tried To Save The Republic, But The Dignified Judge Who Came To The Department Carrying The Legacy Of Watergate, And Believing That The Independence Of The Judiciary Is The Most Sacred Thing That Can Be Protected, And That Any Step That Looks Political Will Destroy The Trust Of Americans In Their Institution Forever. Garland Used To Place On His Desk Table A Worn Copy Of The Principles Of Federal Prosecution, That Document That He Helped Draft After The Watergate Scandal, As If He Wanted To Remind Himself And His Visitors In Every Moment That The Law Must Proceed According To Evidence. And He Refused To Speak To The White House Except Through Narrow Official Channels, And He Cut His Relationship Even With His Old Friend Ron Klain, The White House Chief Of Staff, So That It Would Not Be Said That There Was Coordination Between Politics And The Judiciary. And In The Eyes Of Many, This Behavior Was A Model Of Integrity In A Time When Boundaries Had Collapsed, But The Book Raises A Harsher Question: Can Integrity Turn Into Impotence When The Sole Goal Becomes Protecting The Image Of The Institution And Not Performing Its Function?
The Answer That The Book Presents Is That The Department Of Justice In The Era Of Garland Chose An Approach That It Called From The Bottom Up, That Is To Start By Prosecuting The Small Participants In The Storming Of The Capitol, One By One, Then Gradually Ascend, If The Evidence Allowed, To The Leaders And Organizers, Then Finally To Those Who Were At The Top Of The Political Pyramid. And This Approach Seemed From The Theoretical Point Of View Sound, And From The Legal Point Of View Cautious, And From The Moral Point Of View Just, Because It Does Not Jump Over Evidence And Does Not Anticipate Judgments. But From The Practical Point Of View, As Leonnig And Davis Prove Through Precise Details And Recorded Conversations Inside The Department, It Was An Approach Slow To The Point Of Paralysis, Consuming Months In Reviewing Each Plea Agreement, And Weeks In Scrutinizing Each Charge, And Reconsidering Repeatedly Decisions That Could Have Been Settled In Days. For While The Prosecutors In Washington Were Chasing Hundreds Of Intruders, Political Time Was Moving At A Completely Different Speed, And Trump Was Rebuilding His Influence, And Rewriting The Narrative Of The Sixth Of January As A Stroll And Hugs And Kisses With The Police, And Turning His Supporters Who Were Convicted Into Political Prisoners And Patriots In His Electoral Speech, While The Department Was Still Discussing In Its Closed Rooms Whether It Was Appropriate To Direct The Charge Of Seditious Conspiracy To The Leaders Of The Militias Of The Oath Keepers And The Proud Boys Who Remained Free For Long Months After The Attack.
And What Distinguishes This Book Is That It Does Not Content Itself With Depicting Slowness, But It Dives Into The Roots Of The Fear That Produced It. For The Fear Here Is Not A Personal Fear Of One Man, But A Deep Institutional Fear Of Being Accused By The Department Of Carrying Out Political Revenge For A Democratic Party Against Its Republican Opponent, And A Fear That Any Procedural Mistake Would Lead To Dropping The Whole Case Before The Supreme Court, And A Fear That Any Trial Of Trump Would Turn Into A Trial Of The Department Itself In The Media And In Congress. And This Fear Led To A Cruel Paradox, Which Is That The Department That Wanted To Appear Completely Neutral, Became By Its Hesitant Decisions A Party In The Political Conflict Without Intending To, Because Refraining From Moving At A Decisive Moment Is In Itself A Political Decision With Political Results. And The Two Authors Narrate How The Public Integrity Section In The Department Decided At An Early Stage Not To Pursue The Case Of Pressure On Georgia Election Officials, And How This Decision Was Not Even Raised To Garland, And How The Investigations Into Parallel Schemes, Such As The Fake Electors Documents In The Swing States, Remained For A Long Time Outside The Interest Of Federal Investigators, While Monitoring Groups And Committees In Congress Were The Ones Gathering Evidence And Sounding The Alarm.
And Over The Course Of The First Pages, The Book Builds Its World, For It Does Not Present Garland Alone, But It Presents Around Him A Complete Network Of Characters Who Shaped The Fate Of Justice In Those Years, From His Deputy Lisa Monaco Who Was Managing The Daily Details With Firmness, To The Prosecutor In Washington Michael Sherwin Who Wanted To Move Faster, To The Young Investigators Who Found Themselves Before The Largest Investigation In The History Of The Department Without Sufficient Resources, To The Agents Of The Federal Bureau Of Investigation Who Felt That They Were Chasing Hundreds Of Small Cases While The Big Case Was Slipping From Between Their Hands. And Through These Characters, The Book Turns From A Mere Narration Of Administrative Decisions Into A Human Drama About People Who Wanted To Do The Right Thing, But They Were Prisoners Of Rules They Set For Themselves, Until These Rules Became A Shackle Preventing Them From Seeing The Full Picture. And In This Sense, The Title Of The Book Injustice Does Not Only Refer To The Absence Of Justice For The Victims, But To The Injustice That Occurs When The Institution Entrusted With Achieving Justice Turns Into An Institution Afraid Of Justice Itself.
The Book Leaves Its Reader Before A Question From Which There Is No Escape: Would It Have Been Possible For Things To Go Differently If The Department Had Moved In The First Months, When The Evidence Was Hot And The Witnesses Were Ready And Public Opinion Was Still Shocked? Or Was The Nature Of The American System Itself, With Its Judicial Slowness And Its Political Division And Its Supreme Court That Tends To Expand Presidential Immunity, Going To Lead To The Same Result Whatever Garland Did? This Question Is The Thread That The Two Authors Will Hold In The Following Chapters, When They Move From The Storming Of The Capitol To The Investigations Of The Secret Documents In Mar-A-Lago, And From The Case Of Hunter Biden To The Appointment Of The Special Counsel Jack Smith, And From The Attempts To Catch Up With Time To The Moment Of Collapse When Trump Returned To Power And Turned The Table On Everyone Who Tried To Hold Him Accountable.
In The Months That Followed The Storming Of The Capitol, While Washington Was Trying To Catch Its Breath And Convince Itself That The Worst Had Passed, The Department Of Justice Was Living In Two Different Times That Never Meet. The Time Of The Street That Was Moving At The Speed Of Rockets, Where Donald Trump Was Rebuilding His Political Movement Stone Upon Stone, And Turning The Electoral Defeat Into A Legend About Forgery And Theft, And Gathering Money And Holding Rallies And Choosing His Candidates For The Coming Elections, And The Time Of The Department That Was Moving At The Slowness Of The Turtle, Where Every Memorandum Needed Review, And Every Charge Needed Consensus, And Every Step Forward Needed Three Steps Of Verification Backward. And Carol Leonnig And Aaron C. Davis Reveal In This Stage Of Their Book That The Problem Was Not In The Lack Of Evidence, For Evidence Was Flowing From Everywhere, From The Phones Of The Intruders And From Video Clips And From Testimonies Of Election Officials In The Swing States, But It Was In The Way Of Dealing With This Evidence, And In The Absence Of Whoever Possessed The Courage To Say That The Big Case Cannot Wait Until The Small Cases End. There Was Whoever Whispered Inside The Department That Focusing On The Intruders Of The Capitol Alone Resembles Chasing Those Who Lit The Fire In The Forest While Leaving Free The One Who Poured Gasoline On It, But This Whisper Was Lost In The Corridors Of Bureaucracy, And Collided With A Wall Of Rules That Garland Had Set For Himself Since The First Day.
And Garland Was Not Alone In This Hesitation, But He Was Surrounded By A Team Sharing The Same Philosophy, And At Its Head His Deputy Lisa Monaco, Who Was Managing The Department With A Rare Administrative Strictness, And Believing That Any Mistake In Procedures Would Give Trump A Golden Opportunity To Claim That He Was A Victim Of A Political Hunt. And Through Internal Conversations That The Two Authors Convey, We See How Monaco Was Reviewing Every Decision As If She Was Preparing To Present It Before The Supreme Court, And How She Was Asking For More Evidence Even In Cases That Seemed Complete, And How This Care, Despite Its Noble Intentions, Turned Into Permanent Postponement. And In Contrast, There Was In The Office Of The Prosecutor In Washington Whoever Felt Suffocated, And At Their Head Michael Sherwin Who Was Seeing The Files Piling Up On His Desk, And Seeing His Young Colleagues Working Night And Day On Storming Cases, While The Cases Related To The Broader Scheme To Stay In Power Did Not Find Whoever Would Open Them Seriously. And The Tension Between The Sixth Floor In The Department Of Justice And The Office Of The Prosecutor Reached The Point That Some Prosecutors Began To Talk About Two Departments Inside One Department, A Department That Wants To Move Quickly And A Department That Wants To Make Sure Of Every Letter Before It Moves.
And At The Heart Of This Tension, One Of The Most Revealing Moments Emerges In The Book, Which Is The Case Of The Secret Documents In Mar-A-Lago. For In The Spring Of 2022, When The National Archives Discovered That Trump Had Kept After Leaving The White House Dozens Of Boxes Containing Documents Classified At The Highest Degrees Of Secrecy, Some Of Them Related To Nuclear Capabilities Of Foreign Countries And Sensitive Military Plans, The Matter Seemed Like A Clear Case That Could Not Bear Interpretation. For Here The Talk Was Not About A Political Speech Or About A Confused Constitutional Interpretation, But About Material Documents Existing In A Private Club In Florida, Through Which Guests And Workers Pass, And Anyone Could Look At Them. And Yet, The Two Authors Narrate How The Department Of Justice Dealt With This Case With The Same Caution With Which It Dealt With The Case Of The Sixth Of January, For It Sent Polite Messages, And Asked For The Return Of The Documents Voluntarily, And Waited For Months, And Allowed Trump’s Lawyers To Sign A False Declaration That All The Documents Had Been Returned, While Trump Himself, According To The Testimonies Of His Aides That The Book Conveys, Was Ordering The Moving Of The Boxes From One Place To Another, And Hiding Some Of Them In A Storage Room, And Boasting Before His Guests That He Still Kept The Secrets Of The State. And The Federal Bureau Of Investigation Did Not Move To Search Mar-A-Lago Except In August 2022, After All Diplomatic Means Had Been Exhausted, And After It Had Become Clear That Politeness With The Former Power Would Not Return The Documents.
And Leonnig And Davis Present The Search Scene As A Moment Of Break In The Relationship Between The Department And Trump, And The Beginning Of A New Stage Of Open War. For The Pictures That The Federal Agents Took Of Boxes Piled In A Ballroom And In A Bathroom And In A Storage Room, Which Were Later Published, Shook American Public Opinion, And Gave The Case A Material Dimension That Was Not Present In The Election Case. But At The Same Time It Gave Trump A New Weapon, For He Turned The Search Into A Story About A Raid And A Storming And Persecution, And His Supporters Began To Attack The Agents Of The Federal Bureau Of Investigation Publicly, Until One Of Them Tried To Attack An Office In Cincinnati, While Trump Himself Was Demanding The Recovery Of His Documents On The Pretext That They Were His Personal Property. And Here The Book Shows Clearly How Every Delay In Taking A Decision Turns Into An Opportunity For The Other Party To Reframe The Story, And How The Department That Wanted To Protect Itself From The Accusation Of Politicization, Found Itself Accused Of Politicization More Than Ever Before, Because When It Finally Moved, It Seemed As If It Was Moving At An Electoral Timing, While If It Had Moved Early It Would Have Seemed As If It Was Moving From A Purely Legal Motive.
And In Parallel With The Two Cases Of The Elections And The Documents, There Was A Third Case Revealing Another Face Of The Caution That Afflicted The Department, Which Is The Case Of Hunter Biden, The Son Of The President. For At The Time When The Republicans Were Accusing The Department Of Protecting The Biden Family, The Prosecutor David Weiss Had Been Investigating For Years Into The Tax And Commercial Affairs Of Hunter, Without Reaching A Decisive Result. And The Two Authors Narrate How This Investigation Also Turned Into An Arena Of Mutual Fear, For The Prosecutors Feared Being Accused Of Leniency If They Did Not Direct Harsh Charges, And Feared Being Accused Of Revenge If They Directed Harsh Charges At A Time When His Father Was In The White House. And This Fear Led To Years Of Hesitation, And To A Plea Agreement That Collapsed Before The Judge At The Last Moment, And To The Appointment Of Weiss As A Special Counsel At The Moment When Everyone Was Demanding Transparency. And In This Chapter, The Book Presents One Of Its Strongest Paradoxes, Which Is That The Attempt Of The Department To Prove Its Neutrality Through Strictness With The Son Of The President, Did Not Convince The Republicans And Did Not Satisfy The Democrats, But Increased The Feeling Of Both Parties That Justice Was Being Managed By Political Calculations And Not Legal Ones.
And In The Midst Of This Storm, Came The Decision That Was Supposed To Change Everything, Which Is The Appointment Of The Special Counsel Jack Smith In November 2022. Smith Was Known As A Fierce Prosecutor Who Did Not Know Hesitation, And He Had Investigated War Crimes In The Hague, And Chased Corrupt Politicians In America, And He Possessed A Reputation That He Did Not Fear Confrontation. And Many Saw In His Appointment A Sign That Garland Had Finally Decided To Leave Caution Aside And To Hand The Two Major Cases To A Man Who Could Move Quickly. And The Two Authors Describe The Moment Of Smith’s Arrival In Washington, As He Came On A Wheelchair After An Injury In His Knee While Riding A Bicycle In The Netherlands, To Find Before Him An Exhausted Team And Piled Files And A Frighteningly Ticking Political Clock. And In The First Months, Smith Seemed Like The Storm That The Department Needed, For He Expanded The Investigations, And Summoned Major Witnesses, And Requested Phone Records, And Directed Charges To Trump In The Documents Case In June 2023, Then In The Election Case In August Of The Same Year. And For The First Time, The Prosecutors Felt That Justice Was Moving, And That The Law No Longer Waited For Permission From Anyone.
But The Book Does Not Leave The Reader Long In The Euphoria Of This Movement, But It Returns To Remind Him That The Wasted Time Cannot Be Recovered. For When Smith Directed His Accusations, Trump Had Already Announced His Candidacy For The Presidency, And Every Judicial Step Became Read In An Electoral Context, And The Courts Themselves Became An Arena For The Political Battle. And The Judge Aileen Cannon In Florida, Whom Trump Had Appointed, Was Obstructing The Documents Case With Prolonged Sessions And Controversial Decisions, While The Supreme Court Was Looking Into The Issue Of Presidential Immunity In A Way That Would Change The Course Of The Whole Case. And Thus, The Book Draws A Painful Picture Of A Department Of Justice That Arrived Late To The Battle, After Its Opponent Had Chosen The Battlefield And Its Timing And Its Weapons. And With The End Of This Section, It Leaves The Reader Before A New Question: Was The Appointment Of Smith A Genuine Attempt To Catch Up With Time, Or Was It An Attempt By Garland To Disclaim Responsibility And Hand The Hot File To Another Person To Bear The Consequences Of The Decision?
When Jack Smith Actually Began His Work, He Was Aware That He Was Not Chasing An Ordinary Criminal, But Chasing A Man Who Had Turned Every Courtroom Into An Electoral Platform, And Every Indictment Into An Opportunity To Collect Donations, And Every Hearing Session Into A Television Scene In Which He Addressed His Supporters Directly. And Carol Leonnig And Aaron C. Davis Narrate How Smith Entered The Battle With The Mentality Of The Investigator Who Does Not Care About Noise, But About Evidence And Witnesses And Documents, And How He Built His Team From Young Prosecutors Who Were Ready To Work Night And Day, And How In The First Weeks He Was Asking His Assistants To Forget Everything That Was Said In The Newspapers, And To Start From Zero, As If The Case Had Not Started Before. And This Method Bore Fruit In A Rapid Movement That The Department Had Not Known Before, For In The Documents Case, Smith Was Able To Prove That Trump Did Not Keep The Documents By Mistake, But Deliberately Hid Them, And Ordered His Assistants To Move Them, And Tried To Deceive The Investigators, And Displayed Secret Military Documents To People Who Did Not Possess A Security Clearance In His Golf Club. And In The Election Case, He Was Able To Draw A Complete Map Of The Scheme To Stay In Power, From Pressuring Vice President Mike Pence To Refuse To Certify The Results, To Pressuring Election Officials In Georgia And Arizona And Michigan To Change The Results, To Manufacturing False Lists Of Alternative Electors, To Inciting The Crowd That Ended With The Storming Of The Capitol. And For The First Time, It Seemed That There Was A Coherent Legal Narrative, Not Relying On Slogans, But On Recorded Calls And Text Messages And Testimonies From Inside The White House Itself.
But This Legal Progress Was Colliding Each Time With A Wall That Smith Had Not Fully Calculated, Which Is The Wall Of Politics And The Judiciary Together. For The Judge Aileen Cannon, To Whom The Documents Case In Florida Was Assigned, Was Not Managing The Case As A Neutral Judge Wanting To Reach The Truth Quickly, But, As The Book Documents Through Her Decisions And Her Prolonged Sessions, She Was Granting The Defense Team Everything It Asked For Of Time, And Accepting Postponement Requests One After Another, And Listening To Legal Arguments That Other Judges Would Have Rejected From The First Session. And The Matter Reached The Point That Prosecutors In Smith’s Team Began To Wonder In Their Internal Messages Whether Cannon Was Deliberately Trying To Postpone The Trial Until After The Elections, Because She Knew That Trump’s Return To Power Would Mean The End Of The Case. And In Contrast, The Supreme Court, Whose Majority Of Members Lean To The Conservatives, Was Looking Into The Case Of Presidential Immunity In A Way That Raised The Concern Of The Prosecution Team, For The Judges Were Asking Questions Suggesting That They Wanted To Expand Immunity To A Degree That Was Not Known Before In American History, As If They Were Writing A New Rule Saying That The President Can Do Whatever He Wants As Long As He Said That He Was Acting In His Official Capacity. And Trump’s Lawyers Exploited This Direction Cleverly, For They Requested Postponing Everything Until The Supreme Court Decided On Immunity, And Postponement Turned Into A Complete Strategy, Whose Goal Was Not Winning In Court, But Winning Time.
And In Washington, The Committee Of The Sixth Of January In The House Of Representatives Had Already Preceded The Department Of Justice By Wide Steps, Which The Book Reveals As One Of The Most Painful Paradoxes In The Whole Story. For While The Department Was Hesitating, The Committee Was Holding Public Sessions Followed By Millions, And Listening To Witnesses From The Heart Of The Trump Administration, Such As Cassidy Hutchinson, The Young Assistant In The White House Who Narrated How Trump Tried To Lead His Motorcade To The Capitol Himself, And How He Threw The Lunch Plate On The Wall When He Learned That He Had Lost The Elections, And How He Knew That His Supporters Were Armed And Yet He Wanted Them To Enter The Vicinity Of The Capitol. And The Committee Was Revealing Documents And Messages That The Department Had Not Yet Requested, Until Some Prosecutors In The Department Of Justice Were Watching The Sessions On Television And Discovering New Evidence That Was Not In Their Files. And This Led To Unprecedented Tension Between The Committee And The Department, For The Committee Was Accusing The Department Of Slowness And Hesitation, And The Department Was Accusing The Committee Of Spoiling The Investigations By Publishing Evidence Before It Was Complete, And Of Seeking Media Show More Than Seeking Justice. And The Two Authors Narrate How This Dispute Reached Its Peak When The Department Asked The Committee To Hand Over All It Had Of Documents, And The Committee Refused At First, Because It Feared That The Department Would Bury The Evidence In Its Drawers As It Had Done Before.
And At The Heart Of This Complex Scene, Merrick Garland Found Himself Besieged From All Sides. For The Democrats Were Accusing Him Of Weakness And Hesitation, And Saying That If He Had Been A Republican Secretary In Confrontation With A Democratic President He Would Have Moved Faster, And The Republicans Were Accusing Him Of Being A Tool In The Hand Of Biden To Liquidate His Political Opponent, And The Media Were Chasing Him In Every Press Conference With One Question: Why Have You Not Directed The Accusation To Trump Yet? And Garland Was Answering With The Same Calm Sentence Each Time, Which Is That He Would Not Speak About Ongoing Investigations, And That The Department Would Follow The Facts And The Law Wherever They Led It, Without Fear Or Favoritism. But The Book Reveals That Behind This Calm There Was A Man Feeling The Weight Of History On His Shoulders, And Fearing To Be The Secretary Who Turned The Department Of Justice Into A Political Weapon, And Fearing At The Same Time To Be The Secretary Who Allowed A Former President To Escape From Justice. And The Two Authors Conveyed From Those Close To Him That He Was Waking Up At Night And Thinking About His Decisions, And That He Was Saying To His Friends That The Hardest Thing In His Position Was Not Taking The Difficult Decision, But Knowing That Any Decision He Would Take Would Be Read As A Political Decision, Even If It Was A Purely Legal Decision.
And With The Approach Of The 2024 Elections, This Dilemma Became More Acute, Because The Department Of Justice Has An Unwritten Rule Saying That It Must Avoid Taking Major Steps In The Months Preceding The Elections So As Not To Affect The Voters. And The Department Adhered To This Rule To The Letter, Until It Practically Stopped Many Of The Public Investigations In The Autumn Of 2024, While Trump Was Exploiting Every Day In His Electoral Campaign To Attack The Department And Describe It As The Department Of Injustice And The Deep State. And Here The Book Raises Its Most Bitter Question: Can An Institution Be Neutral When One Of The Candidates Is Accused In Two Federal Cases, And When His Victory Means Canceling The Two Cases And Pursuing Those Who Investigated Him? And Was The Rule Of Electoral Silence, Which Was Set To Protect The Elections From The Influence Of The Judiciary, Turned In This Case Into Protecting The Accused Candidate From The Judiciary? And The Book Answers That This Is Exactly What Happened, For At The Time When Smith Was Waiting For The Decision Of The Supreme Court, And Garland Was Adhering To Silence, Trump Was Contesting The Elections With Complete Freedom, And Promising His Supporters That On The First Day Of His Return He Would Pardon All Those Convicted In The Capitol Case, And Would Expel The Prosecutors Who Investigated Him, And Would Rewrite The History Of The Sixth Of January Anew.
And When The Decision Of The Supreme Court Was Issued In The Summer Of 2024, It Was Like The Earthquake That Smith’s Team Had Expected. For The Court Ruled That The President Enjoys Wide Immunity For His Official Acts, And That Much Of The Evidence That Smith Had Gathered, Such As Trump’s Conversations With Officials Of The Department Of Justice And With His Deputy, Cannot Be Used In The Trial. And Smith Was Forced To Reformulate The Indictment Completely, And Delete Entire Paragraphs, And Search For New Evidence Not Relying On Official Acts, Which Consumed Additional Months While The Electoral Race Was Being Decided. And In Florida, The Judge Cannon Exploited The Immunity Decision To Deepen The Doubt In The Legitimacy Of Smith’s Appointment Itself, Then She Issued Her Shocking Decision To Cancel The Documents Case Entirely On The Pretext That The Appointment Of The Special Counsel Was Unconstitutional, A Decision That Many Legal Experts Described As Contradicting Decades Of Judicial Precedents, But It Was Sufficient To Bury The Case Until Further Notice. And Thus, Within A Few Weeks, The Two Major Federal Cases That Were Viewed As The Last Hope For Accountability Collapsed, Not Because The Evidence Was Weak, But Because The Judicial System Itself, With Its Slowness And Politicization, Granted The Accused What He Had Not Dreamed Of, Which Is Time.
It Is The Moment Of The Void That Preceded The Elections, Where Justice Had Reached A Dead End, And Politics Had Taken Its Place Completely. For It Had Become Clear That Trump’s Fate Would Not Be Determined In The Courtroom, But In The Ballot Boxes, And That The Department Of Justice That Wanted To Protect Itself From Politics, Had Become A Hostage To Politics To The Point That Its Whole Future Became Suspended On The Result Of A Single Election. And This Is The Bridge That The Two Authors Will Cross To The Night Of The Elections And Beyond, When Trump Returns To The White House, And The Stage Of Revenge Begins That Everyone Feared, And That Will Reveal That The Fear That Ruled The Department Of Justice For Years Was Not An Imaginary Fear, But A Prophecy That Came True Completely.
On The Night Of The Fifth Of November 2024, When The Results Began To Arrive From The Swing States, And When It Became Clear That Donald Trump Was On His Way To Return To The White House, There Was No One In The Department Of Justice Building Who Was Celebrating Or Crying Publicly, But There Was A Heavy Silence Resembling The Silence That Precedes The Storm. And Carol Leonnig And Aaron C. Davis Narrate That A Number Of The Prosecutors Who Worked On Trump’s Two Cases Stayed In Their Offices Until The Hours Of Dawn, Not Because They Were Waiting For Instructions, But Because They Knew That Everything They Had Built Over Years Was About To Collapse, And That The History They Tried To Write In The Courtrooms Would Be Rewritten The Next Day In The White House. For It Was Clear To Everyone That Trump’s Return Would Not Only Mean Closing The Two Federal Cases Against Him, But Would Mean Turning The Whole Equation, So That The Investigators Would Turn Into Accused, And The Accused Into Heroes, And The Department That Tried To Protect Itself With Caution, Into A Department That Would Be Punished For Its Caution Itself. And On That Night, As The Book Conveys From Eyewitnesses, Jack Smith Sent A Short Message To His Team, Which Was Not A Message Of Surrender, But A Professional Farewell Message, Saying That They Had Done Their Work According To The Law, And That History Would Judge What They Did, Even If The Courts Did Not Judge.
And In The Days That Followed The Elections, The Process Of Systematic Dismantling Of Everything Smith Had Built Began. For Smith Asked The Courts To Stop The Procedures, Not Because He Retreated From His Accusations, But Because The Department Of Justice Has An Old Rule Saying That A Sitting President Cannot Be Prosecuted, And It Is The Same Rule That Prevented Directing The Accusation To Trump In The Mueller Investigation Years Before. And Smith Was Forced To Close The Two Cases, One After The Other, And To Write A Final Report Summarizing The Evidence, A Report That Trump Prevented Its Publication By All Legal Means, Until Part Of It Did Not See The Light Except After A Long Judicial Battle. And The Two Authors Present This Moment As The Peak Of The Tragedy, Because The Man Who Possessed The Strongest Evidence Against A Former President, Found Himself Forced To Fold His Files Himself, Not Because The Evidence Was Weak, But Because The Voters Decided To Grant The Accused The Immunity That The Courts Had Not Granted Him. And Here The Book Raises A Question That Cannot Be Ignored: Can Justice Triumph In A Country Where The Voters Choose To Pardon The Accused Before They Try Him? And Was The Delay Of The Department The One That Gave The Voters The Opportunity To Take This Decision, Because If The Trials Had Ended Before The Elections, The Voters Would Have Gone To The Ballot Boxes While Knowing The Full Legal Truth?
And With Trump’s Return To Power In January 2025, The Fears That Were Circulating In Whispers In The Corridors Of The Department Turned Into A Bitter Daily Reality. For On The First Day, The New President Signed A Comprehensive Pardon For All Those Convicted In The Case Of The Storming Of The Capitol, Even Those Who Attacked Policemen With Sticks And Sprayed Gas In Their Faces, And Those Who Were Sentenced To Prison For Years On Charges Of Seditious Conspiracy. And The Two Authors Narrate How This Pardon Was Not Merely A Legal Decision, But A Political Message Saying That What Happened On The Sixth Of January Was Not A Crime, But A Patriotic Act, And That Everyone Who Participated In It Is A Hero Deserving Honor Not Punishment. And The Impact Of This Decision On The Prosecutors And Agents Of The Federal Bureau Of Investigation Was Devastating, For They Had Spent Years Gathering Evidence And Listening To Witnesses And Standing Before The Families Of The Policemen Who Were Injured, To Find That All Of That Had Been Erased With One Signature, And That The Men Who Were Convicted Came Out Of Prisons To Be Received As Stars In Parties And Festivals, While The Policemen Who Defended The Capitol Remained Suffering From Their Physical And Psychological Injuries Without Any Recognition Of Their Sacrifices.
And The Matter Did Not Stop At The Pardon, But The Stage Of Purge Began That The Book Had Warned Of In Its First Chapters, As If It Were A Prophecy That Came True. For Within Weeks, Dozens Of Prosecutors And Agents Of The Federal Bureau Of Investigation Who Worked On The Cases Of The Sixth Of January And Trump’s Two Cases Were Expelled Or Forced To Resign, And Lists With Their Names Were Sent To The New Administration, And They Were Asked To Justify Their Participation In Investigations That Were At The Time Official Investigations By Order Of The Department Itself. And Leonnig And Davis Narrate Painful Scenes Of Federal Agents Who Served The Country For Twenty Years, And Chased Terrorists And Drug Dealers, Finding Themselves Suddenly Accused Of Being Part Of A Conspiracy Against The President, And That Their Personal Files Were Being Examined, And That Their Colleagues Feared Even Talking To Them In The Corridors. And The Matter Reached The Point That Some Prosecutors Began To Keep Copies Of Their Files In Their Homes, Fearing That The Evidence Would Be Erased From The Servers Of The Department, While Others Were Resorting To Lawyers To Defend Themselves, After They Were The Ones Defending The State. And In This Chapter, The Book Turns From A Narration About The Hesitation Of The Department Of Justice Into A Narration About Its Collapse, Because The Institution That Feared Appearing Politicized, Has Now Become Completely Politicized, But In Favor Of The Other Party.
And At The Heart Of This Collapse, The Two Authors Present A Detailed Picture Of The New Administration Of The Department Of Justice, And At Its Head The New Secretary Pam Bondi, And The New Director Of The Federal Bureau Of Investigation Kash Patel, Who Came To Their Positions With A Clear Speech Saying That Their Mission Is Not To Protect The Independence Of The Department, But To Purge It And Restore Justice From The Point Of View Of The President. And The Two Authors Reveal How Bondi, Who Was One Of The Most Fierce Defenders Of Trump In His Trials, Turned The Department Into A Tool To Pursue The Opponents Of The President, From Former Prosecutors To Election Officials To Journalists Who Covered The Investigations, And How Patel Began To Restructure The Federal Bureau Of Investigation In A Way That Raised The Concern Of Even Some Republicans, Because He Was Dealing With The Bureau As If It Were A Branch Of The Electoral Campaign, Not As An Independent Security Institution. And The Two Authors Narrate How The Meetings That Were In The Era Of Garland Revolving Around Evidence And Law, Became Revolving Around Loyalty And Revenge, And How The Phrase Let Us Follow The Facts That Garland Used To Repeat, Was Replaced By The Phrase Who Is With Us And Who Is Against Us. And In This Transformation, The Book Sees That The Fear That Ruled The Department In The Era Of Garland Was Not Exaggerated, But Was An Accurate Assessment Of What Would Happen If Trump Returned, But The Paradox Is That This Fear Itself Is The One That Helped His Return, Because It Prevented The Department From Moving At The Appropriate Time.
And Despite This Gloomy Scene, The Book Does Not Leave Its Reader Without Presenting To Him Testimonies From Inside The Department About The Silent Resistance That Some Of Its Workers Tried To Practice. For There Are Prosecutors Who Refused To Sign Memoranda That They Saw As Illegal, And There Are Agents Who Refused To Hand Over The Names Of Their Colleagues, And There Are Federal Judges Who Refused To Comply With The Pressures Of The New Administration, And There Are Lawyers In The Department Of Justice Who Decided To Resign Publicly And Write Letters Explaining Why They Could Not Continue. And The Two Authors Present These Testimonies As Evidence That The Institution Did Not Die Completely, And That There Are Still Those Who Believe That The Law Must Be Above The President, Even If The Price Is The Job And The Professional Future. But At The Same Time They Do Not Exaggerate In Optimism, But They Remind The Reader That These Resisters Are A Minority, And That The Majority Chose Silence Or Adaptation, Because It Learned From The Experience Of The Previous Years That Courage In Washington Has A Heavy Price, And That Whoever Speaks May Find Himself The Next Day Outside The Department, And Whoever Remains Silent May Survive.
And With The Approach Of The Book To Its End, It Returns To The Character Of Garland To Ask Him The Last Question That Remained Suspended Throughout The Pages, Which Is: Was Garland A Good Man In A Bad Time, Or Was He A Bad Man For A Position Needing A Brave Man? And The Two Authors Answer That The Truth Lies Somewhere Between The Two, For Garland Was An Honest Man And Faithful To The Law, But He Possessed A Perception Of The Institution Belonging To A Past Time, A Time When The Republicans And Democrats Agreed That The Department Of Justice Must Be Independent, And That The President Cannot Be Above The Law. And Garland Tried To Govern The Department According To The Rules Of That Time, While His Opponent Was Playing According To The Rules Of A New Time, Not Recognizing Rules Nor Institutions Nor Facts. And In This Sense, The Tragedy Of Garland Is Not Only A Personal Tragedy, But A Tragedy Of A Whole Generation Of American Officials Who Thought That Institutions Were Strong Enough To Protect Themselves, And Discovered That Institutions Do Not Protect Themselves, But They Are Protected By The People Who Possess The Courage To Defend Them At The Decisive Moment. And This Is The Bridge That The Book Will Cross To The Bigger Question: What Remained Of The American Department Of Justice, And Can What Was Broken Be Repaired, Or Has The Injustice That The Book Narrates Become The New Rule?
When The Reader Reaches The Last Pages Of The Book Injustice, He Feels That He Has Not Read Merely An Investigation About A Specific Department Of Justice, But He Has Read An Elegy For A Complete Way Of Governing That America Was Boasting About Before The World For Long Decades. For The Book Does Not Only Talk About Merrick Garland Or Jack Smith Or Donald Trump, But It Talks About The Idea That The Law Can Stand At An Equal Distance From Everyone, And That There Is An Institution That Can Say To The President No When He Exceeds His Limits, And That Democracy Is Not Merely Elections Held Every Four Years, But It Is A Network Of Rules And Institutions And Customs That Protect The Elections Themselves From Turning Into A Means To Escape From Justice. And The Strength Of This Book Lies In That It Shows You How This Network Collapses Not With One Strong Blow, But With Slow Erosion, With A Postponement Decision Here, And With A Memorandum That Was Not Raised There, And With A Meeting That Was Canceled At The Last Moment, And With A Small Fear Accumulating Above A Small Fear Until It Becomes A Mountain Blocking The Road To Justice. And Therefore, The Reader Who Closes The Book Does Not Only Ask Himself What Happened In America? But He Asks Himself What Happens When Institutions Fear Performing Their Function? And It Is A Question That Exceeds The Borders Of Washington, And Reaches Every Country Trying To Build A State Of Law In Confrontation With A Strong President Or A Ruling Party Or A Divided Public Opinion.
