Audiobooks by Elie Honig

When You Come at the King: Inside DOJ's Pursit of the President, From Nixon to Trump

For decades, the Department of Justice has appointed Special Counsels to resolve our most difficult, high-stakes cases involving our most powerful politicians. But do these independent legal investigators, who operate at the intersection of politics and the law, lead to more just results? Federal prosecutors at the United States Department of Justice are fond of saying they treat all criminal cases, and all subjects, “without fear or favor.” But the DOJ’s most explosive, highest-profile criminal investigations and prosecutions have been conducted differently. When the stakes are the highest, DOJ literally operates by a different set of rules: the Special Counsel regulations. In this hard-hitting analysis, CNN Senior Legal Analyst and bestselling author Elie Honig chronicles the history of outside prosecutors and the Justice Department’s most consequential political casesHonig offers new insights into the machinations of American government with original reporting, including over 25 on-record interviews with historic figures who worked directly on our most important cases, including prosecutors, defense lawyers, and targets and subjects ofinvestigations by outside prosecutors Going back to Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal, through Ken Starr’s investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Honig reveals how the Special Counsel system developed, and why the number of investigations has rapidly risen in recent years. He looks closely into cases involving Robert Mueller, John Durham, Jack Smith, Robert Hur, and others, covering each of the major Special Counsel investigations in modern history, considering them not merely as freestanding prosecutions, but as part of an ongoing historical development. While each major Special Counsel case rests on its own merits, these investigations collectively test the Justice Department’s foundational policies and principles. In its most dramatic, politically consequential cases, DOJ changes its own practices in ways that are at once both necessary and problematic. The question is: What would happen if we got rid of the Special Counsel, and can the system evolve to better serve the call for justice in a constantly-changing political environment?

Elie Honig (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It

A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB 'MUST-READ' #1 ON COSMOPOLITAN'S 11 BEST NEW NON-FICTION BOOKS TO ADD TO YOUR TBR PILE IN 2023 CNN senior legal analyst and nationally bestselling author Elie Honig explores America’s two-tier justice system, explaining how the rich, the famous, and the powerful— including, most notoriously, Donald Trump—manipulate the legal system to escape justice and get away with vast misdeeds. How does he get away with it? That question, more than any other, vexes observers of and participants in the American criminal justice process. How do powerful people weaponize their wealth, political power, and fame to beat the system? And how can prosecutors fight back? In Untouchable, Elie Honig exposes how the rich and powerful use the system to their own benefit, revealing how notorious figures like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby successfully eluded justice for decades. He demonstrates how the Trump children dodged a fraud indictment. He makes clear how countless CEOs and titans of Wall Street have been let off the hook, receiving financial penalties without suffering criminal consequences. This doesn’t happen by accident. Over the four years of his administration, Donald Trump’s corruption seemed plain for all to see. The former president obstructed justice, flouted his responsibility to the Constitution, lied to the American people, and set the United States on a dark path to disunity and violence. Yet he has never been held accountable for any of his misdeeds. Why not? Untouchable holds the answer. Honig shows how Trump and others use seemingly fair institutions and practices to build empires of corruption and get away with misdeeds for which ordinary people would be sentenced to years behind bars. It’s not just that money talks, Honig makes clear, but how it can corrupt otherwise reliable institutions and blind people to the real power dynamics behind the scenes. In this vital, incisive book, Honig explains how the system allows the powerful to become untouchable, takes us inside their heads, and offers solutions for making the system more honest and fairer, ensuring true justice for all—holding everyone, no matter their status, accountable for their criminal misdeeds.

Elie Honig (Author), Elie Honig (Narrator)

Audiobook

Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department

NATIONAL BESTSELLER! CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig exposes William Barr as the most corrupt attorney general in modern U.S. history, with stunning new scandals bubbling to the surface even after Barr's departure from office. In Hatchet Man, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig uncovers Barr’s unprecedented abuse of power as Attorney General and the lasting structural damage done to the Justice Department. Honig uses his own experience as a prosecutor at DOJ to show how, as America’s top law enforcement official, Barr repeatedly violated the Department’s written rules, and those vital, unwritten norms and principles that comprise the “prosecutor’s code.” Barr was corrupt from the beginning. His first act as AG was to distort the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, earning a public rebuke for his dishonesty from Mueller himself and, later, from a federal judge. Then, Barr tried to manipulate the law to squash a whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine—the report that eventually led to Trump’s first impeachment. Barr later intervened in an unprecedented manner to undermine his own DOJ prosecutors on the cases of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, both political allies of the President. And then Barr fired the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York under false pretenses. Finally, Barr amplified baseless theories about massive mail-in ballot fraud, pouring gasoline on the dumpster fire battle over the 2020 election results and contributing to the January 6 insurrection that led to Trump’s second impeachment. In Hatchet Man, Honig proves that Barr trampled the two core virtues that have long defined the department and its mission: credibility and independence – ultimately in service of his own deeply-rooted, extremist legal and personal beliefs. Honig shows how Barr corrupted the Justice Department and explains what we must do to prevent this from ever happening again.

Elie Honig (Author), Elie Honig (Narrator)

Audiobook