Injustice, Carol Leonnig
Injustice, Carol Leonnig
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Injustice
How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department

Bestseller

Author: Carol Leonnig, Aaron C. Davis

Narrator: January LaVoy, Carol Leonnig, Aaron C. Davis

Unabridged: 15 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 11/04/2025


Synopsis

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

“An amazing piece of work . . . This is not just a series of newly reported anecdotes and pieces of information. It is a remarkable thesis about how Trump effectively broke the Justice Department in his first term by bullying it.” —Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show

From Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, a shocking investigation of unparalleled depth into the subversion of the Justice Department over the last decade, culminating in President Donald Trump upending this cornerstone of democracy and threatening America’s rule of law as we have long known it

Throughout his first administration, 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. With never-before-told accounts, Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis take readers inside as prosecutors convulsed 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. Injustice is the jaw-dropping account of partisans and enablers undoing democracy, heroes still battling to preserve a nation governed by laws, and a call to action for those who believe in liberty and justice for all.

About The Author

Carol Leonnig, a five-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the author of three bestselling books and an investigative reporter who has worked at The Washington Post for the last twenty-five years. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on security failures by the Secret Service. She also was part of Post teams awarded Pulitzers in 2024, 2022, 2018, and 2014. Leonnig, a contributor to MSNBC, is the author of Zero Fail and coauthor of A Very Stable Genius and I Alone Can Fix It. Aaron C. Davis is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post who has won the Pulitzer Prize twice and has been a finalist three times. He was a lead writer and reporter on the Post’s investigative series into the January 6 attack, which won the George Polk Award, the Toner Prize, and, with other Post coverage, the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. In 2018, he was part of a Post team that won the Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting. Davis has reported from fourteen countries. He began at The Washington Post in 2008, after reporting for the Associated Press, The Mercury News, and Florida Today.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Scott on November 20, 2025

Well-researched, well-written, and incredibly informative account of how Donald Trump and those who have supported him have corrupted the Justice Department and the concept of justice in our country over the past decade. I wish every person who voted for Trump would read this book with an open mind......more

Goodreads review by Joseph on November 23, 2025

A meticulously reported book that recounts the challenges Trump's behavior poses for the rule of law. This book serves as an example of how so many people can be persuaded to act immorally and unethically. If you ever wanted to know whether Stanley Milgram's experiment of being told to administer in......more

Goodreads review by Steve on November 24, 2025

The thing is this: so much has happened so quickly that the usual complaints about a book like this being too early because the complete story hasn’t unfolded yet is kind of forgotten. The scale of the assault on DOJ is absolutely astonishing, and the mendacity of the thirst for revenge is without hi......more

Goodreads review by Deb on November 25, 2025

Brilliant. Chilling. I'd say timely, but it's way past time to clean up this mess.......more

Goodreads review by Robbie on November 26, 2025

Depressing.......more


Quotes

"Most legal stories rely on the inherent drama of trials, but in Injustice Leonnig and Davis take on the more challenging assignment of depicting a bureaucracy. Zoom meetings, as a rule, are less riveting than cross-examinations, but their upshots, especially here, can be more consequential. The heart of Injustice is the authors’ reconstruction of how Garland led the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attempt to overturn the 2020 election . . . If Injustice has heroes, it’s the investigators from the House Select Committee on the events of Jan. 6, who did what Garland forbade his subordinates to do: examine the role of Trump and his White House in the attack on the Capitol . . . The disturbing takeaway of Injustice is that, at the Justice Department, political independence has been replaced by abject servility to Trump." —Jeffrey Toobin, The New York Times Book Review

"The most detailed account yet of the Justice Department’s disastrous effort to bring Donald Trump to trial during Joe Biden’s administration, which is likely to long rank among U.S. law enforcement’s greatest failures. History will not judge this effort kindly, but perhaps more importantly — at this fractious and precarious moment in American politics — [Injustice] contains critical lessons for a future administration that wants to focus on serious legal accountability for powerful political figures . . . If Democrats are to avoid making the same mistakes all over again, Leonnig and Davis’ book offers both an engaging and enraging opportunity to learn. It’s a journalistic tour-de-force." —Politico