Carrie Johnson
Carrie Johnson is a justice correspondent for the Washington Desk.
She covers a wide variety of stories about justice issues, law enforcement, and legal affairs for NPR's flagship programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as the newscasts and NPR.org.
Johnson has chronicled major challenges to the landmark voting rights law, a botched law enforcement operation targeting gun traffickers along the Southwest border, and the Obama administration's deadly drone program for suspected terrorists overseas.
Prior to coming to NPR in 2010, Johnson worked at the Washington Post for 10 years, where she closely observed the FBI, the Justice Department, and criminal trials of the former leaders of Enron, HealthSouth, and Tyco. Earlier in her career, she wrote about courts for the weekly publication Legal Times.
Her work has been honored with awards from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, the Society for Professional Journalists, SABEW, and the National Juvenile Defender Center. She has been a finalist for the Loeb Award for financial journalism and for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news for team coverage of the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas.
Johnson is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Benedictine University in Illinois.
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Three senior prosecutors resigned from the DOJ after refusing to drop a corruption case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams. It's raising alarms about whether politics influences decisions in Trump's DOJ.
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A veteran Justice Department lawyer has left the agency and is starting a new group to help advise and defend government lawyers under attack from the new administration.
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In termination letters sent to more than a dozen officials, acting Attorney General James McHenry wrote that he did not believe they "could be trusted to faithfully implement the President's agenda." -
The report on federal charges against Trump for election interference in 2020 offers special counsel Jack Smith a last chance to explain his decisions after dropping the case. -
Tim Heaphy was the lead investigator for the House Jan. 6 committee. He also looked into the violence in Charlottesville in 2017. He's got a new book out with insights into that experience.
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Officials are still trying to identify the person who placed bombs outside of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee offices in 2021. Now they have fresh details. -
Advocates and relatives of people in prison say they're facing lockdowns that hit hard during the holidays.
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President-elect Donald Trump announced over the weekend that he would be replacing FBI director Chris Wray with Kash Patel, a longtime ally. Patel has made controversial statements about the agency.
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President-elect Trump announced he intends to nominate Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general, putting a fierce critic of federal law enforcement in charge of the Justice Department.
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The incoming Trump administration has expressed a desire for a big overhaul at the Department of Justice and the FBI.
