TY - GEN AU - Rohde,David Stephenson TI - Where tyranny begins : : the Justice Department, the FBI, and the war on democracy SN - 9780393881967 AV - 002 E 912 R737w 2024 PY - 2024/// CY - New York, N.Y. : PB - W.W. Norton & Company Ltd. KW - Trump, Donald, KW - Estados Unidos. KW - Departamento de Justicia KW - Oficina Federal de Investigaciones KW - Poder ejecutivo KW - Estados Unidos KW - Corrupción Política KW - Política y gobierno KW - 2017-2021 N1 - Prologue : A come-to-Jesus meeting Trump. LOL nothing matters lawyering Demolish norms Terminate and remove Investigate the investigators Disparage and discredit Shield and protect Stoke conspiracy theories Menace Fraud Biden. Stop the steal Prosecuting violent extremists The lost year A clear and convincing case Delay Silver bullets Unintended consequences Epilogue : Equal justice N2 - "How Donald Trump used threats, co-option, and conspiracy theories to bend DOJ and FBI officials to his will to a greater extent than publicly known -- and how Merrick Garland, other prosecutors, and judges failed to hold him accountable before the 2024 election. 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 nonpartisan 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.'" -- Jacket flap ER -