Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the Fbi, and the War on Democracy - Hardcover

Over the course of his presidency, Donald Trump intimidated, silenced, and bent to his will Justice Department and FBI officials, from Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr to career public servants. He sowed public doubt in both agencies so successfully that when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, he paid little political cost and, despite an unprecedented array of criminal indictments, easily won the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

In Where Tyranny Begins, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Rohde investigates the strategies Trump systematically used to turn the country's two most powerful law-enforcement agencies into his personal political weapons. Rohde also reveals how, during the Biden years, Justice Department non-partisan 1970s norms that Attorney General Merrick Garland reinforced inadvertently helped Trump, and could fail to deliver a trial and legal accountability by Election Day 2024.

Where Tyranny Begins exposes how ill-suited both the DOJ and FBI are to serve as checks on abuses of presidential power. The rise of hyper-partisanship and the Trump and Biden presidencies have uncovered core flaws in American constitutional democracy that Trump would exploit in a second term. A round of historic reforms equivalent to the post-Watergate reforms that stabilized American democracy in the 1970s are immediately needed. A five-word warning coined by the English philosopher John Locke in 1689 captures the stakes in 2024: "Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins."

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Praise for In Deep by David Rohde

"A smart and terrific history of the suspicion between presidents and the governments they preside over, leading to the furious climax we see now with Trump."
-- Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times and MSNBC analyst

"David Rohde, one of the best investigative reporters of his generation, brings together revelatory history and original analysis to the central drama of the Trump presidency."
-- George Packer, author of The Unwinding and Our Man

"Fascinating."
-- Dina Temple-Raston, Washington Post

"Compelling and timely...The issues raised by In Deep are particularly urgent."
-- Barbara Spindel, Christian Science Monitor

"Informative, instructive, tough-minded and timely."
-- Glenn C. Altschuler, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette