It is not too soon for the thinking about this work to start, even though the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision last summer makes it much easier for Trump to avoid federal prosecution in the future. And, for all we know, Trump could issue a mass federal pardon for members of his administration when his term ends. The levers of accountability may have to come from other prosecutorial bodies or civil, rather than criminal, law.

But if Democrats are to avoid making the same mistakes all over again, Leonnig and Davis’ book offers both an engaging and enraging opportunity to learn. It’s a journalistic tour-de-force that draws on interviews with more than 250 key individuals to reveal how former Attorney General Merrick Garland and top leaders at the DOJ and the FBI, in the authors’ words, “helped pave a path for Trump’s reascendance, and his eventual unraveling of the department’s core mission.”

The book includes forehead-smacking details about the Biden-Garland DOJ’s bungled prosecutorial effort. Perhaps chief among them is that DOJ and FBI leaders rejected at least three different proposals by career prosecutors over the course of 2021 to expand the department’s investigation of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol to include Trump and his advisers’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The reason? Fear that investigating Trump would seem too political and would upset Republicans.

Leonnig and Davis report that it took a year before the DOJ agreed in principle to begin an investigation that they knew might touch on Trump himself — starting with Trump’s “fake” electors scheme — but the FBI then still dragged its feet for a couple more months. It was not until April 14, 2022 — fifteen months after Jan.