True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump
by Jeffrey Toobin
View on GoodreadsJeffrey Toobin's account of the Mueller investigation and the first Trump impeachment, framed as a legal thriller about why a years-long inquiry and an impeachment failed to hold Trump accountable — written as a prosecutor's summation to the jury of the reader.
Core ideas
- Toobin's load-bearing argument is that Mueller's own caution defeated him: by declining to subpoena a Trump interview and by writing a report whose deliberate restraint left it open to Barr's misrepresentation, Mueller "placed Trump effectively above the law" despite documenting multiple instances of obstruction.
- The book is unsparing about the lawyers as characters — Comey's "faux humility," Rosenstein "out of his depth," Barr as "sycophantic" toady, and the judgment that but for Giuliani's ineptitude, Trump "would not have been impeached."
- It reframes the conventional collusion question: Mueller found a massive Russian conspiracy to interfere and a Trump campaign eager to benefit, but could not "close the deal" on a chargeable conspiracy — so the stronger case was always obstruction, which the system declined to act on.
Published2020
Pages470
ISBN9780385536738
ReadJun 2026
