The Department of Revenge: How Trump Took Control of American Justice

Dear American,

No part of life in the United States has been untouched by Donald Trump’s relentless weaponization of the Justice Department. This is a cautionary tale about how, once a president amasses such power, future presidents may never relinquish it.

Whose votes get counted and whose get tossed out? Who gets prosecuted and who gets protected, like Jeffrey Epstein’s friends? Who gets to run our colleges and schools? How do citizens protest without getting killed? For generations, the Justice Department has sought to enforce the law fairly, without fear or favor. But Trump came into his second term with one obsession above all. “I was the hunted,” he said. “And now I’m the hunter.”

In this shocking exposé, the three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Devlin Barrett reveals the systematic way the president’s men and women have dismantled the department as it once existed and retooled it to hunt Trump’s enemies.

This time around, the president and his team have been far shrewder about getting what they want: revenge against the people who investigated and prosecuted Trump; revenge against a legal system he believes was set to ruin not just his career but also his life; and, ultimately, revenge against the parts of America he despises.

In a book filled with bombshells, Barrett describes how Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller drives the department and the FBI on a daily basis; how the White House decimated the justice divisions that protect civil rights and punish tax cheats; how prosecutors deploy a “charge first, ask questions later” approach against those they don’t like; and how lawyers are hired for the purpose of going after Trump’s personal targets, such as James Comey, Jerome Powell, Chuck Schumer, and even the mayor of Newark.

Most concerning, Barrett shows how the Trump administration has shut down a program used to monitor and react to election security threats, raising concerns that future elections could be chaotic and that the Justice Department, rather than ensuring the integrity of the results, may instead serve as a megaphone for unfounded claims of fraud.

This is the inside story of the damage—and a road map for putting our justice system back together.

Devlin Barrett has covered federal law enforcement for more than twenty-five years. He writes about the Justice Department and FBI for The New York Times, and previously worked for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, and the New York Post. In the past decade, he has been part of three Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting teams—for Public Service, for National Reporting, and for Breaking News—and was a cofinalist for Pulitzer Prizes for International Reporting and Feature Writing. He is also the author of October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election, an account of the FBI's role in the 2016 presidential election. Barrett lives in Virginia with his wife and children.