BOOK CLUB: If you go after him, he'll go after you
In "Injustice," authors Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis reveal how judges and journalists have continued to fight for the truth in the Trump era
As Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Where the press is free and every man is able to read, all is safe.” Is our press still free? Can prosecutors, judges, and others who have been charged with upholding the rule of law truly operate without fear or favor when fomenting fear is the president’s M.O.?
The Ink Book Club’s January selection, Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department, by veteran journalists Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, offers a deep dive into how we’ve arrived at this crisis point. Leonnig and Davis place most of the blame squarely on Trump and those who have gone along with even his most egregious words and deeds, as well as a Supreme Court that appears invested in doing his bidding. But Trump and company aren’t the only responsible parties, it seems. Leonnig and Davis have also uncovered miscalculations, missteps, and a propensity to underestimate Trump’s ability to wreak havoc among the well-intended. Those possible errors in judgment or excesses of caution are given their rightful due.
In the book, what emerges as remarkable, though, is how many remained steadfast in their dedication to carry out their work “without fear or favor,” often at great personal and professional risk.
Take Judge Tanya S. Chutkan. After her appointment to the U.S. District Court by President Obama in 2014, she was asked about her goals on the bench. Among her aims, she responded, would be “To never see my name in the Washington Post.”
Despite her desire to remain low-profile, Chutkan was thrust into the spotlight when she oversaw the trials of several of the January 6 rioters. After sentencing them to prison, she began receiving pro-Trump hate mail. When it became clear that a Department of Justice case against Trump would be landing in her circuit, Chutkan told colleagues she hoped it wouldn’t end up in her court — she’d had enough. But when the grand jury handed down its indictment of Trump on charges of seeking to overturn the 2020 election, the case was assigned to her.
As Leonnig and Davis write, on August 4, 2023, Trump escalated his attacks on those bringing cases against him, writing on Truth Social that: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” That night, federal prosecutors overseeing the indictment asked a judge to impose a protective order over the discovery evidence in the case. Chutkan was assigned a security detail. On August 5, a Texas woman named Abigail Jo Shry called Judge Chutkan’s chambers, threatening: “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are going to come kill you, bitch.” Yet, according to Leonnig and Davis, “Chutkan didn’t worry for her safety.” Rather, she observed that, “For a lot of people, I seem to check a lot of boxes. Immigrant, woman, Black, Asian. Your qualifications are always going to be subject to criticism, and you have to develop a thick skin.”
Trump continued to ratchet up his attacks. “She obviously wants me behind bars,” he wrote in a post. “VERY BIASED AND UNFAIR.” And yet Chutkan went about her business, seemingly unruffled. U.S. Marshals went everywhere with her, even on her early morning jogs, though at the Marshals’ urging, she did stop biking to work. Trump’s team argued that the case should be delayed until after the November election, but Chutkan chose a trial date of March 4, 2024, citing the Speedy Trial Act of 1974, “doing what was fair not just for the defendant but for the public.” This meant the trial would begin a day before the Super Tuesday primaries, “But,” Leonnig and Davis write, “Chutkan said the court would have to divorce that fact from its obligation to evaluate Trump’s guilt or innocence. In announcing her decision at court, Judge Chutkan explained that “Mr Trump, like any defendant, will have to make the trial date work regardless of his schedule.”
Ultimately, the Supreme Court would intervene, preventing Trump from being held to account for the charges against him. But Judge Chutkan, like Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team and many others, never wavered in their dedication to the rule of law or to speaking the truth.
We see similar profiles in courage among countless members of the press, many of them now working daily under intense pressure from the federal government and the owners of their media platforms, to soften their coverage of the Trump Administration, or face potentially serious consequences.
This morning, The New York Times reported that Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home had been searched by the FBI as part of a DOJ investigation into the possible sharing of government secrets. According to The New York Times, Natanson “has spent the past year covering the Trump administration’s effort to fire federal workers and redirect much of the work force to enforcing his agenda.” They also write that “It is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of classified disclosures, for federal agents to conduct searches at a reporter’s home.”
Like the judges and lawyers who’ve fought to apply the rule of law against all odds, reporters such as Leonnig and Davis, Natanson, and all those who have preceded them in their roles as watchdogs — vital checks on government power — increasingly operate in a climate that is hostile to their work as truth tellers, holding leaders accountable and keeping the public informed.
We hope you’ll join us next Wednesday, January 21, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, when we will talk again with Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department authors Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. David.
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