7 days ago
"Injustice": New DOJ book coming from Carol Leonnig, Aaron C. Davis
Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, both Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters, will be out Nov. 4 with "Injustice," billed as an investigation of "the subversion of the Justice Department over the last decade," starting with the department's "defensive crouch" in President Trump's first term.
Why it matters: "With a plethora of sources deeply embedded in the ranks of three presidencies," says the publisher, Penguin Press, "Leonnig and Davis reveal the daily war secretly waged for the soul of the department, how it has been shredded by propaganda and partisanship."
Leonnig announced this week that she's leaving The Post after 26 years and will start in September as a senior investigative correspondent at MSNBC, where she has been a contributor since 2017.
She tells Axios that the co-authors' "reporting found key leaders in the Justice Department and FBI shied away from investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the will of voters in 2020, and his refusal to return classified documents he took when leaving the White House in 2021."
"Ours is the first book to peer behind the headlines and tell the full, drama-packed story of how this defensive crouch helped prevent Trump from being held accountable, ... and further weakened the law enforcement agency that is an anchor of our democracy," she continued.
Zoom in: Leonnig, a five-time Pulitzer winner, is the author of the bestselling " Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service."
"We knew we had a book in summer 2023," Leonnig added, "when Aaron and I learned the inside-the-room details of DOJ and FBI fighting over everything from whether to investigate early warnings of violent attacks on Jan. 6 to whether to conduct a surprise raid on Trump's club at Mar-a-Lago."
Aaron Davis, who's been on staff at The Post for 17 years, told Axios: "As we reported and wrote over the last two years, the Justice Department clearly experienced great upheaval. Our book, based on interviews with over 200 people, provides a definitive account and lays bare why what is happening inside Justice is critical for every American to understand."
