David Rohde – författare

Three-quarters of Americans believe that a group of unelected government and military officials secretly manipulate or direct policy in the United States, and President Trump blames the “deep state” for his impeachment. David Rohde explores the “deep state” and asks whether it really exists.To conservatives, the “deep state” is a government bureaucracy that encroaches on the rights of Americans. Liberals fear a cabal of generals and defence contractors who they believe push the country into wars. Modern American presidents have engaged in power struggles with Congress, the CIA and the FBI. CIA and FBI directors suspect White House aides and members of Congress of leaking secrets. Citizens increasingly distrust the politicians, unelected officials and journalists who they believe set the country’s political agenda. Now, in this time of heightened uncertainty, American democracy faces its biggest crisis of legitimacy in a half century.In Deep examines the CIA and FBI scandals of the past fifty years. It then investigates the claims and counterclaims of the Trump era. While Donald Trump says he is the victim of the “deep state”, Democrats accuse the president and his allies of running a de facto “deep state” of their own. Now more urgently than ever, the debate over the “deep state” raises questions about the future of American democracy.

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 non-partisan 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.”

Three-quarters of Americans believe that a group of unelected government and military officials secretly manipulate or direct policy in the United States, and President Trump blames the “deep state” for his impeachment. David Rohde explores the “deep state” and asks whether it really exists.To conservatives, the “deep state” is a government bureaucracy that encroaches on the rights of Americans. Liberals fear a cabal of generals and defence contractors who they believe push the country into wars. Modern American presidents have engaged in power struggles with Congress, the CIA and the FBI. CIA and FBI directors suspect White House aides and members of Congress of leaking secrets. Citizens increasingly distrust the politicians, unelected officials and journalists who they believe set the country’s political agenda. Now, in this time of heightened uncertainty, American democracy faces its biggest crisis of legitimacy in a half century.In Deep examines the CIA and FBI scandals of the past fifty years. It then investigates the claims and counterclaims of the Trump era. While Donald Trump says he is the victim of the “deep state”, Democrats accuse the president and his allies of running a de facto “deep state” of their own. Now more urgently than ever, the debate over the “deep state” raises questions about the future of American democracy.