Elections

The remarks are some of the former vice president’s most pointed about what happened in the lead up to Jan. 6, 2021.Former Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday said that former President Donald J. Trump and his advisers had tried to get him “essentially to overturn the election” and that the American people needed to know it.The remarks, made in an interview with Fox News, are some of Mr. Pence’s most pointed to date about what he experienced in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, when he presided over the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.And they came as Mr. Pence, who is trailing his former boss, the G.O.P. front-runner, in the Republican primary, has faced a slog in his attempt to get enough small-donor donations to qualify for the first Republican debate on Aug. 23. An adviser to Mr. Pence said he got more than 7,000 donations on Wednesday, the day after Mr. Trump’s indictment on charges of conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election.The new remarks are less of a pivot than a subtle shift in Mr. Pence’s language on a topic over which he has long walked a delicate tightrope — condemning Mr. Trump’s behavior while saying he hoped an indictment would not be in the offing, describing it as divisive for the country.But in the hours after the indictment, Mr. Pence became somewhat more explicit publicly about some of the pressure campaign tactics that Mr. Trump and his allies engaged in while attempting to persuade Mr. Pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing the certification of Electoral College votes to toss out the results.In a campaign speech earlier Wednesday at the Indiana State Fair, Mr. Pence reiterated his stance that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” Mr. Trump, in a post on his social media site, Truth Social, said he feels “badly” for Mr. Pence as he struggles to gain traction in his presidential bid.The effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to push Mr. Pence to reject the 2020 election results is laid out in detail in the indictment that the special counsel Jack Smith brought on Tuesday. The indictment focuses extensively on Mr. Trump’s attempts to twist Mr. Pence’s arm, with details provided by Mr. Pence in an interview with investigators and in contemporaneous notes that he provided under subpoena.The indictment references an episode where Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, alerted the lead Secret Service agent on Mr. Pence’s detail that he was “concerned for the Vice President’s safety” after Mr. Trump told Mr. Pence he would have to “publicly criticize” him for refusing to go along with Mr. Trump’s request after a meeting on January 5.Mr. Pence told Fox News: “I never considered it. ““I was clear with President Trump throughout all the way up to the morning” of Jan. 6, 2021, he told Fox News. “It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause. The president specifically asked me and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes.”He said that people can read the indictment, which he had hoped wouldn’t have to happen.“I don’t know if the government can meet the standard, the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt for criminal charges,” he said. “But the American people deserve to know that President Trump and his advisers didn’t just ask me to pause. They asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election.” More

Rikki Novetsky, Stella Tan, Clare Toeniskoetter and Liz O. Baylen and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWith Donald Trump facing charges in three different criminal cases, the biggest questions in American politics are whether that creates an opening for his Republican rivals in the presidential race — and whether it disqualifies him in the eyes of general election voters.A new set of Times polls has answers to those questions. It shows the president and the former president still tied among registered voters, each at 43 percent.Nate Cohn, The New York Times’s chief political analyst, talks us through the first Times/Siena polling of the 2024 election cycle.On today’s episodeNate Cohn, chief political analyst for The New York Times.Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are tied, each at 43 percent, among registered voters in our first Times/Siena poll of the 2024 election cycle.Pete Marovich for The New York Times; Scott Morgan, via ReutersBackground readingCan the race really be that close?The first Times/Siena poll of the Republican primary shows Trump still commands a seemingly unshakable base of loyal supporters.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Nate Cohn More

From 6h agoGood morning. It is around 6am in Washington DC, where today we expect to see the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, in court.The former president is accused of conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights, and obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding. Here is what we know and what we are expecting:
Trump’s third appearance in a courtroom as a criminal defendant is expected at 4pm Eastern time (9pm BST).
Prosecutors in Washington will outline the four conspiracy and obstruction counts and a judge will set bail conditions.
The magistrate judge, Moxila Upadhyaya, will set a schedule for pre-trial motions and discovery.
Both sides are likely later to file motions seeking to shape what evidence and legal arguments will be permitted at trial, which could be many months away.
In a possible preview of Trump’s defence, his lawyer John Lauro called the indictment “an attack on free speech and political advocacy”, implying Trump’s lies about election fraud were protected under the constitutional right to freedom of expression.
This is Martin Belam in London. I’ll be covering the build-up to Donald Trump’s court appearance for the next couple of hours before handing over to my colleagues in the US. You can reach me at [email protected] representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has called the indictment against Donald Trump a “political assassination.”Greene, a staunch Trump ally, tweeted on Thursday:
“Today’s indictment of President Trump is a political assassination attempt by Joe Biden and his henchmen to remove the leading presidential candidate from the ballot in 2024.”
“The American people will reelect President Trump! #Trump2024,” she added.
Mike Pence has hit back at the “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” that worked with Donald Trump to allegedly attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reports:Trump was charged with four felonies this week over his attempts to meddle with the presidential election. The 45-page indictment shows that Pence was a crucial figure in Jack Smith, the special counsel, being able to bring those charges.“Contemporaneous notes” taken by Pence, and referred to in the indictment, document how Trump and his advisors pressured Pence to reject the certification of the election in January, which could have resulted in the House of Representatives handing Trump a second-term in office.On Wednesday, as Trump and his legal team attempted to downplay those efforts – one of Trump’s lawyers suggested that they only asked Pence to do “pause the voting” on January 6 – the usually meek Pence reacted angrily.“Let’s be clear on this point. It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause,” he told Fox News.“The president specifically asked me, and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me, to literally reject votes, which would have resulted in the issue being turned over to the House of Representatives, and literally chaos would have ensued.”For the full story, click here:Donald Trump has vowed to get his revenge on Joe Biden and his attorney general for charging him “with as many crimes as can be concocted”.Posting on Truth Social, the former president wrote:
Look, it’s not my fault that my political opponent in the Democrat Party, Crooked Joe Biden, has told his Attorney General to charge the leading (by far!) Republican Nominee & former President of the United States, me, with as many crimes as can be concocted so that he is forced to spend large amounts of time & money to defend himself. The Dems don’t want to run against me or they would not be doing this unprecedented weaponization of “Justice.” BUT SOON, IN 2024, IT WILL BE OUR TURN. MAGA!
US Marshals have been seen inside the federal courthouse where Donald Trump is to due to appear later today.A group of heavily armed men, including members of the service’s special operations unit, were seen arriving inside the court with tactical gear and rifles, CNN reported. A bomb-sniffing dog, a black lab named Legend, was also seen on patrol, as well as Secret Service agents patrolling inside the building.From NBC’s Ryan J Reilly:Federal prosecutors have charged Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the latest criminal case before the former president that comes just weeks after he was charged with retaining national defense information.You can read the indictment here in full:Biotech entrepeneur and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy appeared outside the federal courthouse in Washington in an attempt to boost his visibility.In a video posted to Twitter, Ramaswamy questioned why Trump has been indicted in three “supposedly independent prosecutions” in the midst of a presidential election. “The government does not trust the people to select their leaders,” he said.When Donald Trump appears at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, DC this afternoon to answer the indictment brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith for allegedly trying to overturn his 2020 election loss, he will not be formally arrested or have his mugshot taken.The former president will undergo digital fingerprinting as part of the booking process at the federal courthouse, and will be required to provide his social security number, date of birth, address, and other personal information, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing US Marshals Service spokesman Drew Wade.Trump will not have his photograph taken during his processing, “since he’s already easily recognizable and there are already many photographs available”.He will also not be placed under arrest, according to Wade. In accepting the indictment on Tuesday, US Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya issued a summons for his appearance, not an arrest warrant.For those involved with the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment brought a collective sigh of relief, according to a Washington Post report.For them, the indictment served as the start of a final stage of accountability for Donald Trump and his allies that the committee long sought, but also as a validation of the group’s work, the paper wrote, citing sources.
The indictment also elevated their findings outside of the political arena, where their work was subject to constant allegations of partisanship, bringing the credibility of the criminal justice system.
Retired group chats were revived and calls placed to old colleagues as lawmakers and investigators absorbed the news.
Tim Heaphy, the lead investigator for the committee, told the paper:
As I read the indictment, it really struck me how closely it hews to our structure and our findings. Facts are what matters. And lawyers get too much credit for facts. We gathered really important facts because a lot of people came forward and gave us those facts. Those same facts are leading to a criminal indictment of the former president.
The indictment comes more than two years after a group of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. The January 6 attack, which has already resulted in more than 1,000 arrests, caused the deaths of seven people, a bipartisan Senate report found.Despite the deadly consequences of the Capitol insurrection, past efforts to hold Trump accountable for the violence and his broader election subversion campaign have fallen short. The House voted to impeach Trump for inciting the insurrection, but he was acquitted by the Senate. The House then passed a bill calling for the formation of an independent commission to investigate the Capitol attack, but that proposal also failed in the Senate.House Democrats instead created a select committee to examine the origins and impact of the January 6 insurrection, and the panel held a series of hearings that painted a damning picture of a president hellbent on remaining in office even after it became clear he had fairly lost his bid for reelection. The select committee ultimately voted to refer Trump to the justice department for criminal prosecution, but the panel itself could not advance charges against the former president.Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor and now counsel at the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy, said:
The select committee did an outstanding job of presenting a lot of evidence that they gleaned from their interviews with people who essentially were willing to cooperate, but criminal investigators and prosecutors have the ability to subpoena people.
Unlike Donald Trump’s first two indictments, the former president’s third set of criminal charges stands out as the first major legal effort to hold him accountable for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Pro-democracy experts welcomed the indictment as a victory for the rule of law that could help fortify America’s election systems in the face of ongoing threats from Trump and his allies.The indictment charges Trump with four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights in his relentless pursuit to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and remain in office.“This is one of the worst things any American president has ever done,” said Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law.
The magnitude of the indictment matches the magnitude of what Trump tried to do, which is to overthrow the constitutional system to stay in office.
The significance of the indictments extends beyond accountability, Parker argued. As Trump and his allies continue to spread lies about rampant voter fraud and threaten the foundation of America’s system of government, the recently announced criminal charges could send a chilling message to anyone else considering similar anti-democratic efforts in the future.“We have been kind of living under a question mark ever since the events of January 6, and that question mark has been: are we as a country going to be able to hold this person accountable, even though he was the 45th president of the United States?” Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor and now counsel at the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy, said.
If you let a person like that walk away without any kind of accountability, then the chances of something like what we saw on January 6 happening again are extremely high.
Here are some key takeaways from the latest indictment:Trump faces four chargesThe former president is accused of conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights, and obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.In the 45-page indictment, prosecutors laid out their case in stark detail, alleging Trump knowingly spread false allegations about fraud, convened false slates of electors and attempted to block the certification of the election on January 6.The former president was ‘determined to remain in power’Federal prosecutors said Trump was “determined to remain in power”. Prosecutors said that for two months after his election loss, Trump spread lies to create an “intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger” and “erode public faith in the administration of the election”. They cited an example in Georgia, where Trump claimed more than 10,000 dead people voted in four days even after the state’s top elections official told him that was not true.There are six un-indicted co-conspiratorsThe indictment included six un-indicted co-conspirators as part of Smith’s inquiry, including four unnamed attorneys who allegedly aided Trump in his effort to subvert the 2020 election results, as well as an unnamed justice department official and an unnamed political consultant.While unnamed in the document, the details in the indictment indicate that those people include Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark.The special counsel wants a speedy trialIt’s unclear yet when the case will go to trial, but special counsel Jack Smith said his office will seek speedy proceedings. Smith said in a press conference on Tuesday:
I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, in a court of law.
Indictments won’t disqualify Trump from officeTrump’s indictments will not bar him from seeking the presidency again, nor will any conviction. However, if he’s convicted, there would likely be lawsuits seeking to disqualify him from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars those who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office. But Congress could override that disqualification in the 14th amendment by two-thirds vote.The indictment follows a path laid by the House January 6 committeeThe congressional panel, which was created to investigate the insurrection, concluded last December recommending criminal charges. Over the course of the investigation, the committee conducted more than 1,000 interviews, collected more than a million documents and interviewed key witnesses. In public hearings, some held at prime time, investigators aired dramatic and damning footage, making the case that Trump “was directly responsible for summoning what became a violent mob” despite understanding that he had lost the election.The justice department received what the committee had uncovered, but conducted its own interviews and used its authority to gain key evidence that wasn’t easily accessible to Congress.The final charges against Trump include ones that the committee had recommended, including conspiracy to defraud the United States.Members of the media and public are lining up outside the federal courthouse in Washington, where Donald Trump is expected to appear at 4pm Eastern time (9pm BST).The chief of the Capitol Police told reporters on Wednesday that the force is “prepared for whatever might happen”. He said there is “security plan in place” but declined to go into specifics.Donald Trump’s former attorney general William Bar said he believes Trump “knew well he lost the election” and that special counsel Jack Smith has more evidence to prove that the former president knew the 2020 election was not stolen.Barr, who resigned as Trump’s attorney general weeks after the election in December 2020, told CNN:
At first I wasn’t sure, but I have come to believe he knew well he had lost the election.
He went on to say that the four charges Trump is accused of in the latest indictment are just the “tip of the iceberg” and that Smith has “a lot more evidence” against him.
I think there is a lot more to come, and I think they have a lot more evidence as to President Trump’s state of mind.
“It would not come out very well for him” if Trump took the stand on that defense, Barr said, adding that he doubted if the former president “remembers all the different versions of events he has given over the last few years.”Good morning from Washington DC. Thursday’s arraignment follows the release of a 45-page indictment that alleges that Donald Trump repeated false claims of election fraud, despite repeated warnings from multiple people in his circle, including senior leaders in the Department of Justice and senior attorneys who had been appointed by Trump, and the former vice-president Mike Pence, who told him “he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud”.The indictment describes a conspiracy which, at its core, involves Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly trying to dupe Pence into falsely suggesting the outcome of the 2020 election had been in doubt.To do so, prosecutors say Trump tried to use the Department of Justice to open “sham election fraud investigations” and repeatedly tried to co-opt Pence into rejecting electoral college votes for Joe Biden in an effort to stop his election win being certified.When that failed, the indictment says, Trump tried to block the certification and exploited the January 6 Capitol attack by trying to push false claims of election fraud and to convince members of Congress to continue to delay the certification.The indictment also listed six co-conspirators who were not charged in the indictment. While they were unnamed, the descriptions of five of the six matched those of the Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark.This is Léonie Chao-Fong taking over the blog in Washington. You can reach me at [email protected] colleague in New York, Sam Levine, has put together this useful guide to some of the possible scenarios and outcomes from this criminal legal action against Donald Trump. He addresses some of the key unknowns, like for example “If convicted, can Trump be blocked from holding office?”, “What happens if Trump goes on trial during the presidential primaries?” and “could Trump theoretically pardon himself if he goes on to win the Republican nomination and then the election?”Donald Trump has used his Truth Social platform to issue an early morning screed to call for a change of venue in the trial.Labelling it a “fake ‘case’” which has been “brought by crooked Joe Biden and deranged Jack Smith”, Trump suggested “politically unbiased” West Virginia as a venue, arguing it is impossible for him to get a fair trial in Washington, which he described as “95% anti-Trump”.The message suggests that anybody who thought Trump might temper his language, in light of the charges he faces, was misguided.In the Washington Post this morning, one lawyer is quoted suggesting that the case could hinge on whether the prosecution can prove what is going on inside Donald Trump’s mind. It quotes Robert Kelner, who it describes as a veteran DC lawyer, saying:
I think the entire indictment really turns on the question of Trump’s intent. Arguably, there isn’t any smoking-gun evidence in the indictment regarding intent, though there is certainly circumstantial evidence. At the heart of the case is really a metaphysical question of whether it’s even possible for Donald Trump to believe that he lost the election, or lost anything else, for that matter.
[Special Counsel Jack] Smith needs to show that all of the false statements Trump made about the election, which the indictment chronicles in great detail, were understood by Trump to be false; otherwise, it becomes a case about political speech and first amendment rights.
There is a decades-old question about whether, in the privacy of his own office or bedroom, Donald Trump admits to things that he doesn’t admit publicly or whether, even when he’s staring at himself in the bathroom mirror shaving, he’s telling himself the same lies that he tells the rest of us. I don’t think we know the answer. It may be an unanswerable question.
In his response to the indictment on Tuesday, Donald Trump’s statement described it as a “pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election”.“Biden Crime Family” has become the latest epithet that Donald Trump drops into his statements in the hope that it will be picked up and amplified by his followers.The former president has a knack for pithy phrases and nicknames which become shortcuts and memes for his fans – think rallies chanting “Lock her up” about opponent “Crooked Hillary” Clinton in the 2016 election or Trump dubbing his opponent “sleepy Joe” in 2020.It isn’t just those in the Democratic party who have been on the receiving end. He has labelled his Florida governor opponent for the 2024 nomination “Ron DeSanctimonious” and Ted Cruz earned the Trump name “Lyin’ Ted”.“Biden Crime Family” isn’t an original Trump phrase though, but one that has been floating around Republican circles for some time. In fact only a week ago Jill Biden’s first husband was using the phrase in a New York Post interview about his experience of dealing with the president and his wife after the split.The “crime family” name derives from a continued Republican fascination with the legal worries of Biden’s son Hunter, who has pleaded not guilty to tax and gun charges. Overseas dealings involving the Biden family have been subject to a House Oversight Committee investigation, which is yet to report any wrongdoing. More

What if he’s president again? Who will be around for that, inside a second Trump administration, when he asks why the military can’t shoot protesters in the legs, or when he wants to withdraw all military dependents from South Korea and throw Asia into an economic crisis?Nobody, outside his supporters, wants to talk about the eventuality — not probable but definitely not impossible — that Donald Trump will be re-elected. His former cabinet secretaries don’t. The people — the foreign ministers and former national security officials — at the Aspen Security Forum don’t.And the closer you get to presidential campaign events, elections can become a kind of dreamscape, a contained universe where meta attacks are signaled yet nothing seems that weird about Mr. Trump’s dominance. After Friday night’s Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines — a fund-raiser for the Iowa Republican Party, held in the city’s convention center — the candidates hosted after-parties off a long hallway, producing an animatronicesque gallery effect.In one room, for about an hour, Mr. Trump stood grinning and shaking hands and posing for photos, with an ever-replenishing line of dozens waiting to get in, and dozens wandering out, ice cream in hand and wearing “TRUMP COUNTRY” stickers. In the next room, Senator Tim Scott, a putting green and cornhole game. In the next, Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami and a live band, with a foursome playing dominoes, red wine on the table. Through another door, at a more subdued valence, you could see Mike Pence talking to little groups of people, mostly older couples, a father and son, a nod, a hand on a shoulder, a photo. Nikki Haley signed books and posters in the hall, and 20-something aides holding red “DESANTIS 2024” signs roamed, directing people to his room, where Republicans threw baseballs at pyramids of Bud Light cans. Step, repeat.This looked fun and vaguely normal — like something from the past. In reality, Mr. Pence is disappearing, politically, before our eyes. Mr. Scott says he can hold only the rioters who were violent, and not Mr. Trump, responsible for the events of Jan. 6. The physical distance between all three of them on Friday night was roughly the distance that separated that mob from Mr. Pence, or the mob from the Senate chamber, that day.That wasn’t that long ago. You can read all about it, across 45 pages in the federal indictment against Mr. Trump for events some of which unfolded in public. We know what happens to people around Mr. Trump. To preserve influence, those hired by him either exist on a total MAGA wavelength, or else have to dodge or lie sometimes to beat back chaos. And in the indictment, the frayed and unnerving interpersonal dynamics abound: Consider the case of Co-conspirator 4, whose description matches Jeffrey Clark, and who prosecutors say kept pressing to send a letter claiming the Justice Department had concerns — or had even found — “significant irregularities” in the 2020 election.It’s hard not to flash back and then forward, to that surreal period when politicians joined the first administration and to think about the even more uncertain future. Recall the photo of Mitt Romney and Mr. Trump eating dinner after the 2016 election; despite having opposed Mr. Trump’s nomination, there was Mr. Romney, offering himself as secretary of state. Mr. Romney’s expression captured a strong public sentiment toward people who joined the Trump administration: at best, it was seen as a slightly embarrassing exposure of the pursuit of power and personal ambition.The last year of the Trump administration concentrated how bad and complex this situation was: The government transformed into a body that had to handle crisis, but also one in which officials’ intentions could not be always known by the public, and one in which the act of joining government service came with deep personal repercussions. The pandemic required, for instance, a massive collaboration across departments and the private sector to produce a vaccine. Things had to stop, or start, with government employees at moments of intense crisis.And, in books, committee depositions and now in this latest indictment, the months after the 2020 election sound especially abysmal — a White House ghost town deserted by people tired of dealing with Mr. Trump and his break with reality about election’s outcome. They left behind a few panicked people who remained grounded in reality like former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Mr. Pence, and then Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and the rest. Again and again, people describe desperate circumstances, arguments about doing things like seizing the voting machines, or trying to persuade Mr. Trump to call off the riot. According to prosecutors, at 7:01 p.m. on Jan. 6, Mr. Cipollone called Mr. Trump and asked him to withdraw his objections to certification; Mr. Trump refused. Would there be more Clarks or Cipollones in a future administration? The idea for many around Mr. Trump is to use a second administration as a path to clearing out parts of the government and reorganizing it around a stronger executive, with true believers underneath him. Jonathan Swan has written extensively about those plans, most recently in an article about the expansive efforts Trump allies want to undertake, like placing the Federal Trade Commission under presidential control, or using Schedule F to fire federal employees. The idea for the next term, in Mr. Trump’s telling, is also retribution.This only ups the anxiety around, basically, who might be involved in such an administration and what the broader American public would tolerate from them. In his book, “Why We Did It,” Tim Miller debates this question with Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House communications official. “Governing is happening under him whether we want it to be or not,” she argues, citing the prospect of whatever goon would serve instead of her, which Mr. Miller concedes is true. But, he counters: “This logic is circular. It justifies anything! Alyssa was a flack; she wasn’t securing loose nukes.” She counters again, ticking off different things people had talked Mr. Trump out of: invoking the Insurrection Act during the George Floyd protests or firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper.In these circumstances, the line between “responsible influence, working to contain the worst impulses in private” and “passive bystander” and “amoral chump” is difficult to discern.Mr. Pence’s experience highlights the dangers for the individual and the public. In his book, Mr. Esper describes the way Mr. Pence represented a sane, normal presence in meetings. But, Mr. Esper writes, he could never discern how much their boss even considered the vice president’s views: “He was part cheerleader and part sounding board, though I could never tell how much influence he really had with Trump. He often didn’t say much in meetings that the president attended, and he rarely disagreed with Trump in front of us.”Mr. Trump’s first vice president ended up trapped inside the Capitol with a mob calling for his death by hanging. Now people talk about the other Republican presidential candidates as though they might be his running mate this time around, as though all this didn’t just happen. And now, as Mr. Pence runs for president himself, the reward for coming through in a central moment of American history is a kind of surround-sound aversion.At first, at that dinner in Iowa last week, Mr. Pence talked brightly, in the expectation of applause, which came, sort of, at muted levels, muted even for the kinds of things — like his abortion politics — that resulted in applause for others.This was tepid, indifferent clapping, a kind of subtle hell worse than booing, where people who knew you have forgotten you. Mr. Pence kept talking, the delivery staying even and polished, the brightness fading, talking about restoring civility. “So I thank you for hearing me out tonight,” he said, almost somber.On Tuesday evening, Mr. Pence was one of few Republican candidates to put the situation plainly: “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” At the moment, Mr. Pence has not yet qualified for the debates, and is polling badly.As Mr. Trump told him when he balked at the idea of returning votes to the states, according to the indictment, “You’re too honest.”Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Mike Pence has lashed out at the “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” who worked with Donald Trump to allegedly try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as the former vice-president found himself thrust into an unwelcome spotlight.Trump was charged with four felonies this week over his attempts to meddle with the presidential election. The 45-page indictment shows that Pence was a crucial figure in Jack Smith, the special counsel, being able to bring those charges.“Contemporaneous notes” taken by Pence, and referred to in the indictment, document how Trump and his advisers pressured Pence to reject the certification of the election in January, which could have resulted in the House of Representatives handing Trump a second-term in office.On Wednesday, as Trump and his legal team attempted to downplay those efforts – one of Trump’s lawyers suggested that they only asked Pence to do “pause the voting” on January 6 – the usually meek Pence reacted angrily.“Let’s be clear on this point. It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause,” he told Fox News.“The president specifically asked me, and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me, to literally reject votes, which would have resulted in the issue being turned over to the House of Representatives, and literally chaos would have ensued.”The former vice-president is unlikely to be thrilled with his newly central role in Trump’s indictment. Pence is running – so far unsuccessfully – for president himself, and is already unpopular with a Republican base which is still largely in thrall to Trump.Along with the notes which Smith used, among other sources, to build the case against Trump, Pence also spent seven hours before a grand jury investigating Trump in April.According to the indictment, Trump repeatedly pressured Pence to reject electoral votes in phone calls across late December and early January, including on Christmas Day.“On December 25, when the vice-president called the defendant to wish him a Merry Christmas, the defendant quickly turned the conversation to January 6 and his request that the vice-president reject electoral votes that day,” the indictment reads.“The vice-president pushed back, telling the defendant, as the vice-president already had in previous conversations: ‘You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome’.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPence, who was a notably obsequious figure through the majority of Trump’s presidency, had earlier stood up to Trump, a little bit, on Twitter.“Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” Pence tweeted on Tuesday.“Our country is more important than one man. Our constitution is more important than any one man’s career. On January 6th, Former President Trump demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution and I always will.” More

The former president’s appearance before Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya on election subversion charges comes about six weeks after his arraignment over sensitive documents.Former President Donald J. Trump is expected to appear at 4 p.m. on Thursday in the U.S. federal courthouse at the foot of Capitol Hill, the site of a yearslong government effort to hold accountable those who tried to subvert democracy.Mr. Trump’s appearance before Moxila A. Upadhyaya, a federal magistrate judge, comes about six weeks after his arraignment in Miami on charges of mishandling government documents after he left the White House and seeking to block investigators.His second federal indictment is likely to follow a cadence similar to his first.The former president will fly down on his private jet from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. He is expected to arrive between 3 and 4 p.m., at the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse, the venue for dozens of trials stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The U.S. Marshals Service, which is responsible for security inside federal courthouses, will escort him to an area where he will be booked for a third time this year. (He was arraigned in New York in the spring in connection with a hush-money payment to a pornographic actress before the 2016 election.)The sheriff in Fulton County, Ga., where another potential indictment connected to Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election looms, has suggested that if Mr. Trump is charged, he will be processed like anybody else, mug shot and all. That will not happen on Thursday: The marshals did not photograph Mr. Trump in Miami, and they will not take his picture in Washington, according to a law enforcement official involved in the planning.But federal rules dictate that an accused person be reprocessed in each jurisdiction in which he or she faces charges, so Mr. Trump will have to be fingerprinted for a second time using an electronic scanning device. He is also expected to answer a series of intake questions that include personal details, such as his age.As of late Wednesday, there have been no credible threats of organized efforts to disrupt the proceedings, a senior federal law enforcement official said, although officials expect pro-Trump demonstrations and are on the lookout for individuals or small groups that may act violently.The level of security, both outside the building and inside, is likely to be among the most intense ever deployed at a federal courthouse, officials said.Federal law enforcement agencies are coordinating with the city’s Metropolitan Police Department to guard the building and to block off some of the surrounding streets.And the courtroom itself will be packed with security. Mr. Trump, as always, will be accompanied by his Secret Service detail. The marshals will be present to protect the judge and the special counsel Jack Smith should he attend the hearing, as he did in Miami.The hearing should be relatively straightforward.Mr. Trump will be asked to enter a plea — what many anticipate will be not guilty — in response to the four-count indictment unsealed on Tuesday.Then the government will be asked to present conditions for his release.In the Florida case, government officials requested no bail and no restrictions on his travel, acknowledging his status as a leading candidate for the 2024 presidential Republican nomination.There are no indications that they plan to change their request this time.But there might be a wrinkle or two. In Miami, the magistrate judge, Jonathan Goodman, amended the bond deal reached between the two sides because it did not include restrictions on Mr. Trump’s contact with potential witnesses and his co-defendant Walt Nauta, who continues to work for him in some capacity.It is possible that Judge Upadhyaya might have a similar issue with some element of Mr. Trump’s new bond agreement, or she might simply hand off the case to the assigned trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, a President Obama appointee.The Trump side of the courtroom could be more of a wild card.The former president and his allies have accused Mr. Biden, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Mr. Smith, without evidence, of conspiring to destroy his chances of re-election by weaponizing federal law enforcement against him. And his team has made it clear that it does not think it can get a fair trial in Washington, an overwhelmingly Democratic city.One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, John Lauro, suggested on Wednesday that the trial be moved to a nearby state, with a friendlier and more conservative electorate.“Well, there’s other options — West Virginia is close by,” he told CBS.The most consequential decisions, however, will be made in the coming weeks, after Judge Chutkan takes over. District court judges in Washington have been inundated by so many Jan. 6 cases (more than 1,000 people have been charged) that their calendars are often booked for months and, in some cases, more than a year in advance.Mr. Smith has called for a “speedy trial,” presumably before the election. It remains to be seen if the judge will accommodate that timetable.Mr. Lauro, speaking to another interviewer on Wednesday, suggested it would be more fair to give Mr. Trump “years” to prepare his defense.“Why don’t we make it equal?” he told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. “The bottom line is that they have 60 federal agents working on this, 60 lawyers, all kinds of government personnel. And we get this indictment, and they want to go to trial in 90 days? Does that sound like justice to you?” More

Donald J. Trump has long understood the stakes in the election: The courts may decide his cases, but only voters can decide whether to return him to power.The indictment of former President Donald J. Trump on charges of conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election ensures that a federal jury will determine whether he is held accountable for his elaborate, drawn-out and unprecedented attempt to negate a vote of the American people and cling to power.But it is tens of millions of voters who may deliver the ultimate verdict.For months now, as prosecutors pursued criminal charges against him in multiple jurisdictions, Mr. Trump has intertwined his legal defenses with his electoral arguments. He has called on Republicans to rally behind him to send a message to prosecutors. He has made clear that if he recaptures the White House, he will use his powers to ensure his personal freedom by shutting down prosecutions still underway.In effect, he is both running for president and trying to outrun the law enforcement officials seeking to convict him.That dynamic has transformed the stakes of this election in ways that may not always be clear. Behind the debates over inflation, “wokeness” and the border, the 2024 election is at its core about the fundamental tenets of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power, the independence of the nation’s justice system, the meaning of political free speech and the principle that no one is above the law.Now, the voters become the jury.Mr. Trump has always understood this. When he ran for president the first time, he channeled the economic, racial and social resentments of his voters. But as his legal peril has grown, he has focused on his own grievances and projected them onto his supporters.“If these illegal persecutions succeed, if they’re allowed to set fire to the law, then it will not stop with me. Their grip will close even tighter around YOU,” Mr. Trump wrote to supporters on Tuesday night. “It’s not just my freedom on the line, but yours as well — and I will NEVER let them take it from you.”Mr. Trump’s arguments have so far been effective in his pursuit of his party’s nomination. After two previous indictments — over hush-money payments to a porn star and purloined classified documents — Republican voters rallied behind the former president with an outpouring of support and cash.A New York Times/Siena College poll released this week found that Mr. Trump has a commanding lead over all his Republican rivals combined, leading Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida by a two-to-one margin in a theoretical head-to-head matchup. Mr. Trump, even as America’s best-known criminal defendant, is in a dead heat with Mr. Biden among general election voters, the poll found.About 17 percent of voters who said they preferred him over Mr. Biden supported Mr. Trump despite believing that he had committed serious federal crimes or that he had threatened democracy after the 2020 election.The prevailing Republican view is that the charges against Mr. Trump are a political vendetta.Republicans have spent two years rewriting the narrative of the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, reimagining the violent attempt to disrupt the Electoral College vote count as a freedom fight against a Washington “deep state.” The result is that in many quarters of the Republican Party, Mr. Trump is more trusted than the prosecutors, special counsels and judges handling the cases against him.“Even those who were fence sitting or window shopping, many of them are of the belief that the justice system under President Biden is simply out to get the former president,” said Jimmy Centers, a former aide to former Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, a Republican who later served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to China. “It has only strengthened his support in Iowa, to the point at which his floor is much more solid than what it was earlier this spring.”Whether Republicans continue to stand by Mr. Trump, as they have for months, remains to be seen in the wake of Tuesday’s indictment.“At a certain point, are you really going to hitch your whole party to a guy who is just trying to stay out of jail?” asked former Representative Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican who lost her seat when suburban voters turned against Mr. Trump in 2018. “There may be another strategy that Republicans could come up with. And if they can’t, I think they lose.”Strategists supporting rivals of Mr. Trump say that over time, the continued charges could hurt his standing with Republican voters, distract Mr. Trump from focusing on presenting his plans for the future and raise questions about his electability in the general election.“Even though people will rally around him in the moment, it starts to erode favorablity and his market share,” said Kristin Davison, chief operating officer of Never Back Down, the super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis. “More people will start to look forward.”Or they may not.Republicans’ responses to the third indictment have been similar to their complaints about the previous two — if slightly more muted. Loyal allies in Congress have rallied around Mr. Trump, blasting the Justice Department while most of his rivals for the party’s nomination declined to directly attack him over the charges.Richard Czuba, a veteran pollster who conducts surveys for Detroit’s media outlets, said opinions about Mr. Trump on both sides of the aisle had long been cased in cement. Like the past three cycles, this election will probably be another referendum on Mr. Trump, he said, and the outcome is likely to depend on which side can best drive its voters to the polls — regardless of whether Mr. Trump faces three indictments or 300.“We have to be brutally honest: Donald Trump sucks all the oxygen out of the room,” Mr. Czuba said. “If you were with him, you’re with him. If you were against him, you’re against him.”Still, Democrats are hopeful that in a general election, the indictments might sway some small slice of independents or swing voters. There is little doubt that a steady drumbeat of news out of the various court proceedings will ensure that Mr. Trump’s legal troubles continue to dominate the news in 2024. Court appearances and legal filings will compete for attention with debates and policy rollouts.Biden campaign officials and allies believe they can focus on topics with a more direct impact on the lives of voters — economic issues, abortion access and extreme weather — without explicitly addressing Mr. Trump’s issues.About an hour after news of Mr. Trump’s indictment broke, Mr. Biden and his wife finished dinner at a seafood restaurant in Delaware, then went to the movies. The president did not address the indictment, just as he had stayed silent after reports broke of the first two.Still, Democrats believe there will be an impact. Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board, said prosecuting Mr. Trump for his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack has the potential to galvanize the country in a way that the other legal cases against Mr. Trump do not.Tens of millions of people tuned in last summer for the hearings of the House Select Committee’s investigation of the Capitol riot, he noted, and Mr. Trump’s approval ratings among persuadable voters dropped afterward.Although a federal trial would not be televised, a steady stream of news may be enough to remind voters of the stakes in electing a candidate who is also a defendant, he said.“When you see witness after witness, day after day,” Mr. Boyle said, “I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that that could end up changing things.” More

There are no easy answers for officials trying to find shelter beds, but “everything is on the table,” a deputy mayor said.Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll see whether there’s really no space available for migrants as New York City’s shelter crisis continues. We’ll also look at Rudolph Giuliani, former prosecutor, former mayor and now Co-Conspirator 1.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“There is no more room,” Mayor Eric Adams declared this week as City Hall struggled to find space for thousands of migrants from the southern border — nearly 100,000 in the last year. Just last week, some 2,300 new migrants arrived.Is the city really full? If not, where could asylum seekers go?The answers from a handful of people with different perspectives — advocates for homeless people, hotel experts and a real estate appraiser — added up to this: There are no easy answers.“It’s not that there’s no spaces, it’s that the spaces we have are encumbered by bureaucratic barriers that make it time-consuming and difficult to get people into them,” said Catherine Trapani, the executive director of Homeless Services United, a coalition of nonprofit agencies that serve homeless and at-risk adults.Joshua Goldfein, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, said “there’s full and there’s full” as he suggested that there were places where the city could set up cots, as it does in weather emergencies: drill floors in armories, cafeterias in shelters, school gyms.But these are “places they couldn’t use on an ongoing basis,” Goldfein said before suggesting opening empty storefronts to house people. “If you just brought people inside, gave them a place that is not exposed to the weather,” he said, “that would be better.”New York has opened 194 sites to house newcomers, including hotel ballrooms, former jails and an airport warehouse. The plan is to open a tent city in the parking lot of a psychiatric center in Queens soon, and Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor for health and human services, said on Wednesday that “everything is on the table” in the hunt for more space.The city has a legal requirement to provide shelter for anyone who wants it, and the city had been looking for space long before Mayor Adams put out what amounted to a “no vacancy” sign last month, when he discouraged asylum seekers from heading to New York. The Times reported in May that city officials had approached large-scale landlords and even the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey about finding spaces that could house migrants.City Hall also looked at its own holdings: The mayor’s chief of staff told agency heads by email to list “any properties or spaces in your portfolio that may be available to be repurposed to house asylum seekers as temporary shelter spaces.”On Wednesday, Williams-Isom appeared to play down the idea of setting up tents in Central Park, saying that plan had been leaked months ago and that there were “all kinds of sites that we have to look at, similar to when we went through the Covid emergency.” She said the city had “reviewed” more than 3,000 sites.When she was asked if the city was looking to house migrants at the Javits Center, she said she would not answer “hypothetical questions.” What about hotels beyond those that already house homeless people?Vijay Dandapani — the president and chief executive of the Hotel Association of New York City, a trade group — said that “there is potentially space,” but the calendar works against filling it with migrants. September is usually a busy month for hotels in New York, what with the United Nations General Assembly and the U.S. Open, 13 days of tennis ending on Sept. 10. “Then, from September all the way to the middle of December, the city is busy,” Dandapani said. “Assuming the crisis is still as extensive as it is today, it would be January before somebody decides to put their toes in this water.”Sean Hennessey, a hotel consultant and an associate professor at New York University, said some hotels might switch to housing asylum seekers because doing so can be “relatively favorable” for hotels. They do not have to staff ancillary services like meeting rooms that “are usually a break-even proposition or worse,” he said.He said the city might also be able to work out deals with hotels now under construction, an option that could make hundreds if not thousands of rooms available — but probably not immediately.Office conversions are also a long shot, said the appraiser Jonathan Miller, even though thousands of square feet of office space are vacant. The cost of remodeling made converting “a nonstarter for most developers.” Higher interest rates have only made the expense even “more problematic.”“In the short term, this seems impossible,” he said. But as leases signed before the pandemic come up for renewal and tenants assess their space needs in a world with continuing remote work, “I think there’s going to be a lot of distressed commercial office space.” The eventual result: Corner offices could become living rooms and break rooms could become kitchens.WeatherEnjoy a mostly sunny day near the low 80s. Expect a chance of showers and thunderstorm in the evening, with temps around 70.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption).The latest Metro newsMatt Burkhartt for The New York TimesReading crisis in schools: Across the nation, state leaders are taking steps to improve reading instruction for struggling students. But in New York, concern has grown: Is too little being done?Fatal fire: A discarded cigarette may have ignited an accidental fire that killed four people, including a 4-month-old, at a New Jersey home, according to the Ocean County prosecutor’s office.Accused bishop marries: A retired Roman Catholic bishop in upstate New York who is a defendant in several sexual misconduct lawsuits said that he had recently married a woman after the Vatican denied his request to leave the clergy.The union leader from Flushing: Fran Drescher, president of the union representing more than 150,000 television and movie actors, addressed the actors’ strike in remarks to the New York City Council.Frontline workers’ commutes: If you have never had the option to work from home because your job must be done in person, tell us how your commute has shifted over the past three years.Love letter to hip-hop: Rap music, at its core, has been a 50-year love affair with the English language. To celebrate hip-hop’s birthday, we asked Mahogany L. Browne, Lincoln Center’s first poet-in-residence and an acclaimed author, to write a love letter to the genre.Prosecutor, mayor and now Co-Conspirator 1Patrick Semansky/Associated PressRudolph Giuliani’s name is nowhere in the indictment accusing former President Donald Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. But Giuliani — a former federal prosecutor, former Justice Department official, former mayor and former lawyer for Trump — appeared to be the person referred to in the indictment as Co-Conspirator 1. Giuliani’s own lawyer acknowledged it.Giuliani figures in the three conspiracies the indictment says took place, leaving open the possibility that he could be charged later. So, as my colleague Jonah E. Bromwich writes, Giuliani, who made his name as a lawman, now faces a reckoning with the law.Giuliani’s relationship with Trump hangs in the balance. A person close to Trump who spoke confidentially to describe a private relationship said that they don’t speak regularly, but the former president retains a fondness that goes back to Giuliani’s time in City Hall, when they dealt with each other often.Their relationship has appeared strained in the last couple of years. Trump told advisers in 2021 that he did not want Giuliani paid for his efforts on Trump’s behalf after the 2020 election. This year, filings suggest, Trump’s super PAC paid $340,000 to a legal vendor working on Giuliani’s behalf. The $340,000 payment was made weeks before Giuliani met voluntarily with lawyers from the office of Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the investigations of Trump.METROPOLITAN diaryWaiting aroundDear Diary:Life is slow these days. I check my lobby for packages scheduled to arrive, even though UPS sends me alerts and delivers to my door.Today, hearing a distant buzzer, I went down just in case. No package, but a woman carrying groceries was waiting outside. The latch stuck as I opened the door.“Buzzer not working?” she asked.“It worked earlier today,” I said.We stepped over to the elevator. Inside was my next-door neighbor, an older woman named Oneida. She had come down to meet her helper. She lit up when she saw us.She sometimes pops into the hall in her robe and slippers if I’m singing outside my door. She blows me kisses, and I usually get a hug.Minutes later, I was back upstairs when my doorbell rang. I sprang up to get my package. At the door was Oneida, smiling and holding an origami box I had made for her.I motioned for her to lift the lid. Then I blew a kiss into the box with both hands and motioned for her to close it. She hugged me as we parted.— Paul KlenkIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected] up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More