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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Judge Aileen Cannon cited how special counsel Jack Smith was appointed to investigate the former president's handling of classified documents. -
The FBI and Pennsylvania state authorities continue to investigate what they call an attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump and the shooting of other rallygoers.
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The Senate has overwhelmingly passed a landmark bill to bring more oversight to federal prisons. The legislation will soon head to the White House, for a signature from President Biden.
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The American Civil Liberties Union is developing a legal strategy to counter former President Donald Trump in the event he returns to the White House. -
Judge Joshua Kindred, a Trump appointee, resigned after investigators concluded he sent crude messages to employees, engaged in sexual contact with a former law clerk and lied to colleagues about it. -
A federal judge in Alaska resigns after investigators conclude he created a hostile environment for law clerks and had an inappropriate relationship with one of them.
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The Supreme Court suggests a president's conversations with Justice Department officials are out of bounds for prosecutors -- even when he may be pressing them about investigations of his rivals. -
For the first time, the Supreme Court this week gave presidents a substantial amount of immunity from prosecution. Experts think it could have shielded Richard Nixon.
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The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that a former president has absolute immunity for his core constitutional powers — and is entitled to a presumption of immunity for his official acts.
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The Supreme Court has narrowed the Justice Department's use of an obstruction law to prosecute people who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
