Will the next administration prosecute Trump’s top officials?
Washington doesn’t do accountability. Maybe that’s about to change.
By Stephen Kinzer – Boston Globe - October 10, 2026
Lock them up! Crowds love that cathartic chant. Their frustration is understandable. Except in isolated cases like Watergate, high officials of the US government are rarely investigated or prosecuted for their acts in office. The upheaval of the Trump era could change that.
A recent poll of Democratic voters found that most want to see senior officials of the Trump administration put on trial. The largest majorities favored prosecuting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “for his role in directing the US military to violate national and international law” and presidential aide Stephen Miller “for his role in the actions of ICE and CBP,” referring to immigration crackdowns pursued by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies. If a Democratic administration takes office in 2029, prosecutors could indict them and others.
Senior figures from the Biden administration are also facing unaccustomed demands for accountability. A coalition of progressive and antiwar groups has composed a list of “officials who were responsible for promoting, lying about, and covering up the Gaza genocide.” Here, the demand is not criminal prosecution but banishment from government. Activists want Democratic candidates to break the “cycle of immunity” by pledging never to hire any of the “Genocide 20.”
Among those on the list are officials who served Biden as secretary of state, secretary of defense, national security advisor, ambassador to the United Nations, and ambassador to Israel. Others include Karine Jean-Pierre, who was Biden’s press secretary; Samantha Power, former director of the Agency for International Development; and Michael Kurilla, who commanded US troops in the Middle East from 2022 to 2025.
“Elite war criminality never receives any meaningful sanction from either party,” the organizers of this campaign asserted. “It is treated as a mere policy disagreement among friends.”
Given the importance of the Gaza conflict in Democratic politics, the Genocide 20 list could become a litmus test for candidates who seek the presidency in 2028.
Malfeasance in Washington has often been blithely pardoned. No one was held directly responsible for the misjudgments and security lapses that led to the 9/11 bombings. No high-ranking officials were seriously sanctioned for acts committed in secret prisons where Americans practiced “enhanced interrogation” during the war on terror. The financial crisis of 2008 devastated many families, but bankers went virtually unpunished. Elected officials who sought to overturn the 2020 election result, or who encouraged or cheered rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were not only unpunished but, in some cases, remain in office.
Powerful figures also escaped responsibility for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Arguments for the invasion turned out to have been based on false pretenses, but those who made the arguments were not held to account. Several even returned to high government posts. Meanwhile, too many of those who warned of the disaster to come were blackballed. Thirty-three scholars took out a full-page ad in The New York Times headlined “War With Iraq Is Not in America’s National Interest.” None ever got a policymaking job in Washington.
Countries emerging from internal conflict, ranging from Rwanda to Chile to South Africa, face the challenge of “transitional justice.” Each sought its own formula for healing a traumatized society. In the post-Trump era, judges, prosecutors, and congressional investigators will have to do the same.
Indicting former officials of the Biden and Trump administration for their actions in office may be unrealistic. But stigmatizing them would be a step toward breaking the revolving-door cycle that sees old faces reappear in one administration after another without taking past misjudgments or transgressions into account.
If Democrats take control of one or both houses of Congress next year, they will almost certainly begin investigations into the misdeeds of Trump’s administration. They may even recommend criminal prosecutions. But Democrats who seek to hold Trump’s enablers to account should only be taken seriously if they confront their own party’s role in Washington’s see-no-evil culture.
Failing to hold high officials accountable for their actions increases the likelihood that their errors — or crimes — will be repeated. It also fuels public outrage that destabilizes our political system. Washington forgives and forgets too easily. New challenges to that cycle of impunity are welcome.
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Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.