The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

The real lesson of the E. Jean Carroll investigation is Trump’s weakness

Trump’s war on his enemies keeps running into the same problem.

Had you time-traveled back to 2023, and started telling people that President Donald Trump’s Justice Department would soon be trying to imprison a woman who had accused him of rape, most would likely have dismissed it as a paranoid #resistance fantasy.

Yet now, it appears to be reality. Reporting in both CNN and the New York Times suggests that the DOJ has opened a criminal inquiry into E. Jean Carroll, the journalist who successfully won $88.3 million in damages from Trump after federal juries determined he sexually abused her in 1996 and later defamed her. The allegation now under investigation, per reporting, is that Carroll committed perjury during a deposition for the case.

This is, without a doubt, an authoritarian abuse of power: the president weaponizing the Justice Department to go after one of his most prominent and effective critics. It is the kind of thing that you expect in a country like Turkey or Venezuela, where the justice system has been transformed into an enforcement mechanism for an authoritarian regime.

But the comparison also suggests why the case is less scary than it appears.

Unlike in those countries, where those targeted by the state have little plausible chance to fight back, Trump’s track record for prosecuting his opponents has been exceptionally poor. Due to a combination of his own attorneys’ incompetence, the jury system, and the genuine independence of America’s lower court judges, they’ve repeatedly failed to secure indictments — let alone actually imprison anyone.

The administration has repeatedly failed to present a credible case against former FBI Director James Comey, with its most recent indictment revolving around an allegedly threatening picture of seashells. In February, a grand jury rejected both its efforts to prosecute six Democratic lawmakers over a video calling on the US military to disobey unlawful orders. A criminal investigation into then-Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell backfired when senators threatened to........

© Vox