The headline for this NYT review of David Rhode’s new is puzzling. It says I thought the story was going to be about DOJ employees being afraid of getting in trouble if they spilled the beans to David Rhode. But it doesn’t really reveal anything like that except a passing reference to the fear for their jobs if Trump wins in November and to say that Merrick Garland wanted to preserve the norms of the Justice Department and that was hard because Trump is such a lying criminal. Be that as it may, it sounds like an interesting book anyway: Trump was the first president since Nixon to utterly reject the idea that federal law enforcement should operate independently of the president’s personal desires or prejudices. Rather, he sought to use the attorney general, special prosecutors, U.S. attorneys and the F.B.I. as instruments to help himself and his friends and to punish his enemies. Although Rohde doesn’t hide his conviction that Trump undermined democracy with his salvos against the Justice Department’s independence, he nonetheless writes in measured, restrained language that should hold up well in the light of history. “Where Tyranny Begins” is a work of reporting and sober analysis, not polemic. While his title might sound shrill, it’s actually an allusion to words from John Locke: “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” Importantly, Rohde understands that there’s tension and ambiguity in the Justice Department’s charge: It’s expected to carry out the president’s policies yet simultaneously to investigate him and his associates neutrally. After Watergate, America enacted…