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This is Fresh Air.

I'm Dave Davies.

If you read tomorrow that the Justice Department had charged a politician or a business executive in your community with fraud 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 Road,

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 Trump's interaction with the justice system, from firing his first

FBI director to pardoning allies convicted of crimes, to attacking the investigation of January

6th as a witch hunt.

Road argues that the norms and practices implemented in the Justice Department after the Watergate scandal

made law enforcement more vulnerable to Trump's attacks,

since career government officials were reluctant to fight back

lest they appear to be involved in a political dispute.

David Road 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.

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