Kerry Johnson
speaker
362 appearances
40 recordings
4 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 7 Jun
Kerry Johnson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 36 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 8.
Appearances
It's really been giving rise to a concern that allies of the president are getting a break from the Justice Department and that some of Trump's critics could be getting targeted by it. The DOJ and the FBI, of course, have a great deal of power to put people under enormous financial and psychological pressure. And if that power is being misused, it will have consequences for the rule of law.
Thank you.
The NPR Politics Podcast · NPR Investigation: Harassment In The Federal Court System · 1 Mar 2025
podcast
In 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic began to shut things down, a recent law school graduate started a new job all the way across the country in Alaska. She accepted a coveted post as a law clerk for a federal judge.
She didn't know anyone else there, only the judge.
She says she thought it was part of her job to listen to the judge and help him with anything. He was going through a divorce, and he began to text her constantly, to the point where her phone felt like an electric leash.
That pressure built. He texted that she looked like a, quote, fucking Disney princess and that he liked her blue pants. He even asked how things were going with her boyfriend.
She stayed in Alaska, but she got a new job as a federal prosecutor. And this, she hoped, would put an end to the ordeal. As it turned out, that was wrong. The voice you've been hearing is not her real voice, although they are her words verbatim. We're using a voice actor because she was too afraid to talk. You'll understand why in a moment.
About a week after she left the judge's chamber, she ran into him at a party. I'm going to tell the next part of the story entirely from allegations in the court papers. That's in part because retelling it to me was too painful. At the party, he tried to get her to sit next to him on the couch. Eventually she left, but she got a text from him saying he needed to talk to her.
It was cold that night, so the judge suggested they chat inside his apartment. Once inside, the judge insisted she come to the bedroom. At first, she sat on the corner of the bed but he wanted her to lay down. Then, she told investigators, he grabbed her breast. She tried to pull his arm off, but he was really strong.
I just remember thinking, like there's nothing I can do about this, she told the investigators. This is about to happen. Like I always felt like this thing he could not touch, and finally he felt like he could touch. He took off her pants and performed oral sex on her. A judge's control over the future of a young lawyer is real and lasting.
With only a phone call, a judge can open doors to a lucrative job at a law firm or shut them permanently. And there's no one really policing what happens inside a judge's chambers beside the judge themselves. Unlike people who work for private companies, nonprofit groups, or Congress, employees of the federal courts usually cannot sue for mistreatment.
For nearly a year, I interviewed 42 people, current and former workers within the federal court system, about their experience. They're men and women who work for more than two dozen judges, appointed by presidents from both major political parties. I heard from people whose self-confidence was shattered by judges who screamed so loudly others could hear from the hallways.
People who were fired after a week or two on the job for no clear reason. Some describe sexual harassment like in the case of the Alaska clerk. Many more shared episodes of bullying, and others said they faced discrimination because they had a disability or were pregnant, like Jessica Horton.
When she graduated from law school at age 24, she felt lucky to get a job as a law clerk to a new federal judge. Horton says she disclosed her pregnancy a couple months before she started work. And at the time, it didn't seem like it would be much of a problem for the judge, who was herself a mom.
Inside those chambers, the judge's word is law, and Horton fell in line. She worried so much about missing work that she told the doctor she wanted to avoid a C-section because of the recovery time. She refused an epidural, too. because she had read about complications with them.
Horton ended up back at work for an event 11 days after her first child was born.
She returned to work fighting infections and bullying from another clerk in the chambers. Her clerkship lasted a year, and leaving wasn't a possibility in her mind.
She started counting down the days.
Starting out, Horton had been so excited about learning from the judge, having a mentor, maybe someday becoming a judge herself.
Her son is now nine years old. Sometimes they drive by the courthouse and she reminds him that's where he slept underneath her desk as a baby. Horton decided to talk to me on the record, in part because she's left the legal profession, and things can get pretty tough for clerks who speak out.
Showing 281–300 of 362 · page 15 of 19
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