This message comes from NPR.
Sponsor Greenlight want to teach your kids financial literacy with greenlight, kids and teens use a debit card of their own.
While parents can keep an eye on kids spending and savings in the app.
Get your first month free@greenlight.com.
Npr this is FRESH AIr.
I'm Dave Davies.
If you read tomorrow that the Justice Department had charged a politician or business executive in your community with fraudhouse after an FBI investigation, how would you regard the news?
Would you suspect that the charges were really an inside job, the result of a personal vendetta or a political rivalry rather than a genuine effort to root out wrongdoing?
Our guest today, veteran investigative reporter David Rhode, argues that in Donald Trump's four years as president and three years out of office, he successfully used online attacks, conspiracy theories and threats of violence to discredit, divide and intimidate FBI and Justice Department officials.
His new book reviews years of Trumps interaction with the justice system, from firing his first FBI director to pardoning allies convicted of crimes to attacking the investigation of January 6 as a witch hunt.
Rhode argues that the norms and practices implemented in the Justice Department after the Watergate scandal made law enforcement more vulnerable to Trumps attacks.
Since career, government officials were reluctant to fight back lest they appear to be involved in a political dispute.
David wrote is a two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize who has worked for the New York Times, the New Yorker and other publications.
He was twice kidnapped and held in captivity covering conflict zones, once in Bosnia and once in Afghanistan.
Hes now the national security editor at NBC News.
His new book is where Tyranny begins, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the war on democracy.
David Rhode, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thank you so much for having me.
You know, a lot of this book covers events in the Trump years that were intensely reported on, you know, the firing of James Comey, the Mueller probe, the January 6 attack and prosecutions.
Why did you want to go back and revisit these events?