When You Come at the King

Inside DOJ's Pursuit of the President, From Nixon to Trump

Elie Honig

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9780063447349
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"[A] deeply researched, keenly analytical, and frequently provocative chronicle of this singular judicial entity. . . . A senior legal analyst for CNN and former assistant U.S. attorney, Honig is well-suited to the task of providing a historical overview of the special counsel's function with the ever-evolving context of politics, partisanship and political skepticism." —Booklist (STARRED review)

"A fascinating, fast-paced insider’s account....[a] riveting, deeply reported book.” —Anderson Cooper

“Every page hums with gripping anecdotes and breaking news journalism." —Douglas Brinkley

Imagine you’ve been put in charge of investigating your own boss—who also happens to be the most powerful person on the planet.

You might unearth information that will be politically, professionally, and personally devastating to your subject, and you alone hold the power to indict and potentially imprison him. At the same time, the boss can fire you and end the case—and might even turn the tables and launch an inquiry aimed at you. As the lone-wolf assassin Omar put it in The Wire: “You come at the king, you best not miss.”

That’s the crucible for any Special Counsel. For decades, the Department of Justice has appointed outside prosecutors to handle our highest-stakes cases. But do these independent investigations lead to just results?

In When You Come at the King, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig delivers a fast-paced, insider’s account of the most important Justice Department investigations of the past fifty years, based on dozens of on-record interviews with firsthand participants. A Watergate prosecutor reveals she hid copies of key documents at home to guard against potential destruction of evidence by the president’s allies. A member of the Iran–Contra prosecution team explains why they made a shocking election-eve revelation. A defense lawyer for Donald Trump details his private meeting with Jack Smith just days before Trump was indicted.

From Ken Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton to modern cases involving Patrick Fitzgerald, Robert Mueller, Jack Smith, and more, Honig charts how the Special Counsel system developed and evolved over time. We know the maxim that a nation can be measured by how it treats its weakest members. This book explores an inverse corollary: A nation reveals much about itself by how it holds accountable its most powerful leaders when they’ve done wrong.

Now, with the future of Special Counsels in doubt, When You Come at the King addresses the most important question of all: Can the system evolve to better serve the call for justice?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Note to Readers
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1: The Crucible: “Every Special Counsel Starts with a Sterling Reputation, but No One Finishes Up That Way”
• Chapter 2: The Wild West Era Through Watergate: “Let’s Make the President Fire All of Us
• Chapter 3: The Independent Counsel Act: “An Institutionalized Wolf Hanging on the Flank of the Elk”
• Chapter 4: Whitewater, Ken Starr, and Bill Clinton: “We Were More Than Prepared to Pull the Trigger, if Necessary”
• Chapter 5: The End of the Independent Counsel Era: “A Crumbling Monument to Watergate”
• Chapter 6: The Special Counsel Regulations: “We Knew We Had a Balancing Act on Our Hands”
• Chapter 7: Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald (Leak of Identity of CIA Operative Valerie Plame): “Give Truth Back”
• Chapter 8: James Comey and the Hillary Clinton Email Investigation: “The Rules Are Made for the Hard Cases”
• Chapter 9: Special Counsel Robert Mueller (Trump Campaign and 2016 Russian Election Interference): “We Had Just Been Played by the Attorney General”
• Chapter 10: Special Counsel John Durham (Origins of the 2016 Russia Investigation): “There’s Nothing to Get to the Bottom Of ”
• Chapter 11: Special Counsel Robert Hur (Joe Biden Classified Documents): “I Just Found All the Classified Stuff Downstairs”
• Chapter 12: Special Counsel David Weiss (Hunter Biden): “Raw Politics Has Infected This Process”
• Chapter 13: Special Counsel Jack Smith (Donald Trump 2020 Election Subversion and Classified Documents): “You’ve Already Lost. You Just Don’t Know It Yet.”
• Chapter 14: Trump 2.0: The New Landscape and the Challenge Ahead
• Chapter 15: The Next Evolution
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Author
• Praise
• Also by Elie Honig
• Copyright
• About the Publisher