num_pages: 537
description: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  The vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour from the rise of autocracy unleashed by Trump to the January 6 insurrection and a warning that those forces remain as potent as everfrom the congressman who led the first impeachment of Donald J. TrumpEngaging and informative . . . a manual for how to probe and question power how to hold leaders accountable in a time of diminishing responsibility. The Washington PostWith a new afterword by the authorIn the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump Congressman Adam Schiff had already been sounding the alarm over the resurgence of autocracy around the world and the threat this posed to the United States. But as he led the probe into Donald Trumps Russia and Ukraine-related abuses of presidential power Schiff came to the terrible conclusion that the principal threat to American democracy now came from within. In Midnight in Washington  Schiff argues that the Trump presidency has so weakened our institutions and compromised the Republican Party that the peril will last for years requiring unprecedented vigilance against the growing and dangerous appeal of authoritarianism. The congressman chronicles step-by-step just how our democracy was put at such risk and traces his own path to meeting the crisisfrom serious prosecutor to congressman with an expertise in national security and a reputation for bipartisanship to liberal lightning rod scourge of the right and archenemy of a president. Schiff takes us inside his team of impeachment managers and their desperate defense of the Constitution amid the rise of a distinctly American brand of autocracy. Deepening our understanding of prominent public moments Schiff reveals the private struggles the internal conflicts and the triumphs of courage that came with defending the republic against a lawless presidentbut also the slow surrender of people that he had worked with and admired to the dangerous immorality of a president engaged in an historic betrayal of his office. Schiffs fight for democracy is one of the great dramas of our time told by the man who became the presidents principal antagonist. It is a story that began with Trump but does not end with him taking us through the disastrous culmination of the presidency and Schiffs account of January 6 2021 and how the antidemocratic forces Trump unleashed continue to define his party making the future of democracy in America more uncertain than ever.
language: English
title: Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could
publisher: Random House