Elections

Former President Donald J. Trump has been informed that he could soon face federal indictment for his efforts to hold onto power after his 2020 election loss, potentially adding to the remarkable array of criminal charges and other legal troubles facing him even as he campaigns to return to the White House.Mr. Trump was informed by his lawyers on Sunday that he had received a so-called target letter from Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating his attempts to reverse his defeat at the polls, Mr. Trump and other people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. Prosecutors use target letters to tell potential defendants that investigators have evidence tying them to crimes and that they could be subject to indictment.“Deranged Jack Smith” sent Mr. Trump a letter on Sunday night informing him he was a “TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury” investigation, Mr. Trump said in a post on his social media platform.Such a letter “almost always means an Arrest and Indictment,” wrote Mr. Trump, whose campaign is rooted in accusations of political persecution and a promise to purge the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation of personnel he sees as hostile to him and his agenda.Mr. Smith’s spokesman had no comment.An indictment of Mr. Trump would be the second brought by Mr. Smith, who is also prosecuting the former president for risking national security secrets by taking classified documents from the White House and for obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim the material.Mr. Trump is also under indictment in Manhattan on charges related to hush money payments to a porn star before the 2016 election. And he faces the likelihood of charges from the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., who has been conducting a wide-ranging inquiry into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election loss in that state.The target letter cited three statutes that could be applied in a prosecution of Mr. Trump by Mr. Smith’s team, a person briefed on the matter said. They include a potential charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States and a broad charge related to a violation of rights, the person said.Whether Mr. Smith and his prosecutors will choose to charge Mr. Trump on any or all of those statutes remained unclear, but they appear to have assembled evidence about an array of tactics that Mr. Trump and his allies used to try to stave off his election defeat.Those efforts included assembling slates of so-called fake electors from swing states that Mr. Trump lost; pressuring state officials to block or delay Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victories; seeking to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to impede congressional certification of the Electoral College outcome; raising money based on false claims of election fraud; and rallying supporters to come to Washington and march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.It also remains unknown whether others might be charged along with Mr. Trump. Several of his closest allies during his efforts to remain in office, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was serving as his personal lawyer, and John Eastman, who promoted the idea that Mr. Pence could keep Congress from certifying Mr. Biden’s victory, said through their lawyers that they had not received target letters.Just hours after Mr. Trump disclosed his receipt of the target letter, the Michigan attorney general announced felony state charges against 16 people for their involvement in an attempt to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in the state by convening a slate of pro-Trump electors.The news of another potential indictment of Mr. Trump underscored the stakes of an intensifying legal and political battle whose consequences are both incalculable and unpredictable.Mr. Trump remains a dominant front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, in spite of — or to some degree because of — the growing list of charges and potential charges against him.His campaign strategy has been to embrace the investigations as evidence of a plot by a Democratic administration to deny him and his supporters a victory in 2024, a message that continues to resonate among his followers. He was raising money off news of the target letter within hours of disclosing that he had received it.But for Mr. Trump, the stakes are deeply personal, given the serious threat that he could face prison time if convicted in one or more of the cases. In that sense, a winning campaign — and the power to make at least the federal cases go away by pardoning himself or directing his Justice Department to dismiss them — is also a battle for his liberty.At a Fox News town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday night, the host, Sean Hannity, asked Mr. Trump how he appeared unbothered by the investigations. But Mr. Trump pushed back.“It bothers me,” Mr. Trump said. He accused the Biden administration of trying to intimidate him but said, “They don’t frighten us.”Mr. Trump spent much of Tuesday promoting a scorched-earth political strategy, consulting with allies in Washington including Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican and onetime critic who has become one of his staunchest defenders. Mr. Trump urged Ms. Stefanik to go “on offense” during a lengthy call from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., according to a person with knowledge of the conversation.His main rival at the moment for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, said Mr. Trump was a victim of the “politicization” of the Justice Department, continuing a pattern in which prominent figures in his party remain leery of criticizing him and drawing the ire of his supporters.At least two grand juries in Washington have been hearing matters related to Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in office. A trial, if it comes to that, would likely be held in Federal District Court in Washington, where many of the Jan. 6 rioters and leaders of two far-right groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, have been prosecuted.Based on the outcomes of those trials, the jury pool in Washington would likely be less favorable to the former president than the one that would be empaneled from a largely pro-Trump region around Fort Pierce, Fla., where the classified documents trial is currently scheduled to take place.Two of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Christopher M. Kise, briefly mentioned the new target letter at a pretrial hearing in Florida on Tuesday on the documents case. While Mr. Kise and Mr. Blanche gave no details about what the letter said, they used it to argue that Mr. Trump was essentially being besieged by prosecutors and that the trial in the classified documents case should be delayed until after the 2024 election.In disclosing that he had received the target letter, Mr. Trump said he was given four days to testify before a grand jury if he chooses. He is expected to decline. The timetable suggested by the letter suggests that he will not be charged this week, according to people familiar with the situation.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., who has pressed ahead with her own investigation of Mr. Trump and his allies, could bring charges as early as next month. If she were to proceed first, that could complicate Mr. Smith’s case. Accounts of witnesses called to testify both cases could vary slightly, seeding doubts about their testimony, for instance — which might explain why Mr. Smith is moving fast, according to former federal prosecutors.Federal investigators were slow to begin investigating all the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, overwhelmed with prosecuting the hundreds of rioters who illegally entered the Capitol. The initial plan for investigating the attack’s planners, drafted by the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Washington and later adopted by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, did not include any explicit reference to the former president. The F.B.I. took a similar tack.However, in the months leading up to Mr. Smith’s appointment as a special counsel last fall, there were strong indications that federal prosecutors were pivoting to examine whether Mr. Trump and his allies may have committed crimes.The F.B.I.’s Washington field office opened an investigation in April 2022 into electors who pledged fealty to Mr. Trump in states he had lost. Earlier, the authorities had seized the cellphones of Mr. Eastman, a legal architect of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, and Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer whom Mr. Trump had tried to install as the acting attorney general.Among the crimes that prosecutors and agents intended to investigate were mail and wire fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding before Congress.By late last year, the various investigations were brought under Mr. Smith, who moved quickly with a flurry of activity, including subpoenas and witness interviews.Mr. Smith and his team do not appear to be done. A spokesman for former Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona said that Mr. Smith’s team reached out to him after The Washington Post reported that Mr. Trump had tasked Mr. Pence with pressuring Mr. Ducey to overturn Mr. Biden’s narrow victory there.The spokesman said that Mr. Ducey will do “the right thing” and that he had done so since the election. It was unclear whether the contact was to request a voluntary interview by Mr. Ducey or a grand jury appearance.Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, appeared before one of the grand juries in June, according to people familiar with his appearance. Mr. Giuliani had a recent interview with prosecutors.Ben Protess More

As news broke Tuesday morning that former President Donald J. Trump was likely to be indicted in a third criminal case, the reaction from his rivals in the 2024 Republican primary was notably muted.Mr. Trump still had defenders — including his top competitor in polls, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — who cast him as a victim of “politicization” of the Justice Department. But the tenor was subtly different. Some candidates seemed visibly tired of having to continually respond to Mr. Trump’s legal troubles at the expense of talking about anything else, and some did not say anything at all.Nikki Haley, who served as United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump and is now running against him, sounded exasperated when asked on Fox News about the investigation into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. She called it a “distraction” from important issues like foreign policy, border security and the national debt.“The rest of this primary election is going to be in reference to Trump: it’s going to be about lawsuits; it’s going to be about legal fees; it’s going to be about judges; and it’s just going to continue to be a further and further distraction,” Ms. Haley said. “And that’s why I am running, is because we need a new generational leader. We can’t keep dealing with this drama.”She notably did not repeat what she said when Mr. Trump was indicted last month for his retention of classified documents: that the charges were evidence of “prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics.”Mr. DeSantis, for his part, said that any indictment would be part of “an attempt to criminalize politics and to try to criminalize differences,” while also saying that Mr. Trump should have “come out more forcefully” to stop his supporters from storming the Capitol on Jan. 6.And while Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, speaking before a campaign event in New Hampshire, denounced what he described as “the weaponization of the Department of Justice against political enemies,” he quickly turned to naming non-Trump-related examples. Pressed further on Mr. Trump, he said, “The voters will decide the next president of the United States.”In other corners, silence reigned. The campaigns of Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota did not respond to requests for comment. And a spokesman for former Vice President Mike Pence — who, by certifying the election results on Jan. 6, made an enemy of his former boss — said that Mr. Pence had nothing to say Tuesday morning.But, in a nod to the political inescapability of Mr. Trump’s legal troubles, the spokesman, Devin O’Malley, added that Mr. Pence would be making television appearances later in the day and would probably be asked about it then.The restraint was not universal.A candidate who has been one of Mr. Trump’s most forceful defenders, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, went so far last month as to urge every 2024 contender to pledge to pardon him if elected. On Tuesday, he initially took a less fiery tack, saying he “would have made very different judgments than President Trump did, but a bad judgment is not a crime.” But not long after, he issued a conspiratorial statement, suggesting without evidence that the possible indictment was part of a plot to disqualify Mr. Trump from office under the 14th Amendment.“It is un-American for the ruling party to use police power to arrest its chief political rivals,” Mr. Ramaswamy said. He added that he had filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking evidence for his belief that President Biden ordered the Justice Department and the special counsel to indict Mr. Trump. He ended the statement by promoting an upcoming campaign event.Three other low-polling candidates who, unlike Mr. Ramaswamy, have sought out the anti- Trump lane of the primary field reacted predictably.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Twitter that he would not comment on the potential legal case until an indictment was released, but that Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 proved “he doesn’t care about our country & our Constitution.” And former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas reiterated his call for Mr. Trump to suspend his campaign.“I have said from the beginning that Donald Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 should disqualify him from ever being president again,” Mr. Hutchinson said in a statement. He added, “Anyone who truly loves this country and is willing to put the country over themselves would suspend their campaign for president of the United States immediately.”The third candidate, former Representative Will Hurd of Texas, was scathing: “Losing to Joe Biden was so humiliating to Donald Trump that he was willing to let people die for his lies about a stolen election,” he said in a statement. He added, “Trump’s inaction then, and now being a target in the investigation, proves he’s not fit for office.” More

The Michigan attorney general announced felony charges on Tuesday against 16 Republicans for falsely portraying themselves as electors from the state in an effort to overturn Donald J. Trump’s 2020 defeat there.Each of the defendants was charged with eight felony counts, including forgery and conspiracy to commit forgery, on accusation that they had signed documents attesting falsely that they were Michigan’s “duly elected and qualified electors” for president and vice president.“They weren’t the duly elected and qualified electors, and each of the defendants knew it,” Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said in announcing the charges. “They carried out these actions with the hope and belief that the electoral votes of Michigan’s 2020 election would be awarded to the candidate of their choosing instead of the candidate that Michigan voters actually chose.”The charges, the first against false electors in a sprawling scheme to hand the electoral votes of swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. to Mr. Trump, add to the rapidly developing legal peril for Mr. Trump and those who helped him try to overturn the results of the election. They came the same day that Mr. Trump said federal prosecutors had told him that he is a target of their investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and other schemes he and his allies used to try to maintain power.Those charged in Michigan included Meshawn Maddock, 55, who went on to serve for a time as the co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party. Ms. Maddock, who has close ties to former President Donald J. Trump and is married to Matt Maddock, a state representative, accused Ms. Nessel of “a personal vendetta.”“This is part of a national coordinated” effort to stop Mr. Trump, she added.Wright Blake, a lawyer representing Mayra Rodriguez, 64, another elector who is a lawyer, said in an interview: “I’m very disappointed in the attorney general’s office. This is all political, obviously. If they want to charge my client, how come they didn’t charge Trump and the Trump lawyers that he sent here to discuss with the delegates what to do?”While a similar investigation in Atlanta has pulled in witnesses from across the country and has led to legal battles with Mr. Trump himself, thus far the Michigan inquiry has focused on residents of the state. It is not clear whether that will remain the case.“This remains an ongoing investigation, and our department has not ruled out potential charges against additional defendants,” Ms. Nessel said Tuesday of her inquiry.Others among the electors who were charged included Kathy Berden, 70, a member of the Republican National Committee, and Marian Sheridan, 69, the state party’s grass-roots vice chair. Neither responded to requests for comment.Documents released Tuesday by Ms. Nessel’s office laid out a scheme in which many of the Trump electors convened at the Republican Party state headquarters on Dec. 14, 2020, after being turned away from the State Capitol. The real electors who were certified by the Board of State Canvassers did meet at the Capitol, as required by law. Yet the Republican group falsely claimed they were the rightful electors and had met at the Capitol.Michigan is one of three states, along with Georgia and Arizona, where there are ongoing investigations relating to the use of false electors by the Trump team in 2020. Another investigation in Michigan, being conducted by a special prosecutor, concerns a network of right-wing activists — including Matthew DePerno, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully against Ms. Nessel last year — who are suspected of breaching voting machines in search of evidence of election fraud.In total, allies of Mr. Trump pushed to convene slates of fake electors in seven swing states that Mr. Biden won. The plan was to create the illusion of a dispute over which slates — the fake Trump ones or the real Biden ones — were legitimate, and to have members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence certify the fake Trump slates, thus handing the election to Mr. Trump in defiance of the will of voters.Ms. Nessel began investigating the matter in early 2021, but referred it to the Justice Department in January 2022. She said at the time that while there were grounds to bring criminal charges, because there appeared to be “a coordinated effort between the Republican parties in various different states, we think this is a matter that is best investigated and potentially prosecuted by the feds.”A few months later, she posted on Twitter: “If we don’t hold the people involved in the alternate elector scheme accountable, there is literally nothing to stop them from doing this again because there will have been no repercussions for it.”But by January of this year, federal prosecutors had taken no apparent action. So Ms. Nessel announced that “we are reopening our investigation, because I don’t know what the federal government plans to do.”In recent weeks, investigators have collected evidence and interviewed witnesses who have been affiliated with the state party.Since Ms. Nessel reopened her investigation, federal prosecutors have become increasingly active in Michigan and appear to be treading similar ground. A number of elections officials and lawmakers — including the secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson — have reportedly been interviewed in recent months by federal prosecutors.Both the federal and Michigan investigations are part of a reckoning over the conspiracy theories Mr. Trump and his allies have promoted about the election. More

The mayor has raised $1.3 million for re-election since January, relying on many wealthy donors from New York City and beyond.Despite falling poll numbers and critical news coverage, Mayor Eric Adams clearly has the continued monetary support of two influential spheres of influence: real estate leaders and the donor class from New York City and beyond.Mr. Adams has raised $1.3 million since January for his 2025 re-election effort in the latest reporting period, drawing maximum $2,100 donations from real estate magnates like Marc Holliday, the chief executive of SL Green, the city’s largest commercial landlord, and its founder, Steve Green; and Alexander and Helena Durst, members of The Durst Organization real estate dynasty, according to new filings with the city’s Campaign Finance Board. About $550,000 came from donors outside New York City who live in the suburbs, Florida and other states — a continuation of a pattern displayed early in his tenure, when he held fund-raisers in Beverly Hills and Chicago in his first months in office.As mayor, Mr. Adams has often taken positions that benefit the real estate industry, including being supportive of rent increases and criticizing state lawmakers for failing to replace a tax-incentive program for developers known as 421a.He has frequently met with real estate leaders and has used One Vanderbilt, one of the city’s newest skyscrapers, developed by SL Green, as a backdrop for photo ops and news conferences. As a small-time landlord, Mr. Adams once declared, “I am real estate.” And major landlords have consistently been among his most faithful donors.Mr. Adams frequently asserts that his political base of working-class New Yorkers and churchgoers understands and supports his mission. But the continued support from real estate interests only furthers the notion that Mr. Adams may be too aligned with major developers.Vito Pitta, a lawyer for the Adams campaign, insisted that the mayor’s success in addressing crime and job losses was driving donations.“Our campaign is well on its way to raising the maximum amount it can spend under the city’s campaign finance system — just 18 months into the mayor’s tenure — because New Yorkers see that Mayor Adams is lowering crime, increasing employment, and moving our city in the right direction,” Mr. Pitta said in a statement.Marc Holliday, left center, the chief executive of SL Green, the city’s largest commercial landlord, donated the maximum allowed to Mr. Adams, who watches from the side.Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty ImagesThe spending cap for the 2025 primary is $7.9 million. Under the city’s generous public financing system, his campaign is expected to have about $4.6 million on hand, after matching funds are included.Mr. Adams has faced a series of setbacks in recent weeks. His approval rating fell to 46 percent in a Siena College poll last month. A longtime associate of his was charged in a straw donor scheme to raise money for his mayoral campaign; the mayor was not implicated. The New York Times reported that a photo of a police officer killed in the line of duty, which the mayor said he had long carried in his wallet, was created by employees in the mayor’s office last year, and was made to look old.The mayor also drew attention for his response last month to an 84-year-old tenant-rights activist whose family had escaped the Holocaust. The mayor publicly likened her to a plantation owner after he believed the activist had been disrespectful to him.Still, Mr. Adams, a Democrat who ran for office on a public safety message, could be difficult to beat in 2025.He is likely eager to show off a large war chest to fend off a serious competitor. He won a competitive Democratic primary in 2021 by only 7,197 votes.“The bigger the fund-raising number, the less likely that someone else gets into the race,” said Chris Coffey, a former campaign manager for Andrew Yang, one of the mayor’s primary opponents in 2021.Mr. Coffey said that the mayor’s low approval rating was not too worrisome, noting that Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor, had an approval rating as low as 24 percent in his second year in office and still won two more terms.“If the city has made progress on public safety, it’s really hard to see the mayor have any re-election challenges,” Mr. Coffey said.The real estate industry once again also provided the largest donor base for Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Buffalo Democrat who narrowly won a full four-year term in November. Of the $4.5 million her campaign raised in the first six months of the year, more than $950,000 came from developers and real estate investors, and more from other industries with business before the state, according to an analysis of her public filings by The Times.At least 45 donors connected to the real estate industry chipped in $18,000, the new legal maximum for statewide candidates, including Mr. Holliday, Scott Rechler and Jeff Blau. Mr. Rechler and Mr. Blau are both Democratic megadonors whose firms are competing with Mr. Holliday’s for a license to operate a casino in the New York City area.Gov. Kathy Hochul’s campaign raised $4.5 million since January, with roughly a fifth coming from developers and real estate investors.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesWith New York facing an affordable housing crunch, Ms. Hochul has spent much of the year fighting for new government programs to spur development. On Tuesday, she announced she would bypass opponents in the legislature and take executive actions that had been a priority of the real estate industry.Other major donors included members of the Sands family, which controls the Rochester-based beverage giant Constellation Brands; well-known Albany lobbyists Emily Giske, Giorgio DeRosa and the firm Cozen O’Connor; and tech executives like Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber. Ms. Hochul also brought in more than $250,000 at a fund-raiser this month from board members and doctors connected to Somos Community Care, a Bronx-based nonprofit that has tapped into lucrative government health programs.Ms. Hochul managed to raise the sum — plus another $1.5 million for the state Democratic Party — despite new, stricter contributions limits that cap individual gifts at $18,000, down from nearly $70,000 last election cycle. For much of the period, Ms. Hochul was also dealing with tumult within her political operation after reporting by The Times prompted the ouster of her top political aide.For his part, Mr. Adams was a prolific fund-raiser in 2021 and received significant support from a super PAC, which received donations from Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire who owns the Mets and is vying for a casino license in the city. Earlier this year, SL Green retained Frank Carone, the mayor’s former chief of staff, to aid its bid to build a Caesars Palace casino in Times Square.A Broadway fund-raiser for the mayor last month at a showing of the musical “New York, New York” proved especially lucrative. The campaign raised about $600,000 at the event, which was organized by Mr. Carone, according to Evan Thies, a spokesman for the campaign.Helena Durst, principal of the Durst Organization, donated the maximum of $2,100 to Mr. Adams’s campaign.Santiago Mejia/The New York TimesFred Elghanayan, a founder of TF Cornerstone, a real estate company, and Todd Cooper, a founder of RIPCO Real Estate, both donated to the Adams campaign. A dozen people who work at Morgan & Morgan, a national personal injury law firm, donated a total of $25,000 to the mayor’s campaign. Four employees of Meridian Properties, another real estate firm, donated $8,400. Six people who work at another real estate firm, Top Rock Holdings, each gave the maximum of $2,100 to the mayor’s campaign.Many donations came from outside the state, including from Alex Havenick, a gambling and cannabis entrepreneur in Miami, and David Kovacs, a virtual reality video game developer in Miami. Brock Pierce, a cryptocurrency investor who once flew Mr. Adams to Puerto Rico on his private jet, donated $2,100. He listed his address as a ZIP code in Puerto Rico.There were plenty of smaller donations as well. A senior pastor at a church in Queens donated $250 to the mayor’s campaign, as did the director of a New York City children’s theater. More

Despite rising scrutiny, the Florida governor stuck to the same strategy — including by defending his top rival, Donald Trump, in the face of new legal troubles.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, with his poll numbers sagging and his opponents circling, defended his struggling campaign on Tuesday, saying on CNN that he had been “taking fire nonstop” but was putting together the political operation he needed to win the early nominating states next year and vault to the presidency.His afternoon appearance in a rare interview in the mainstream news media seemed intended to reset his White House campaign after weeks of second-guessing from critics who have failed to see much progress in catching his main rival, Donald J. Trump. But a major shift in tone or strategy from Mr. DeSantis, either toward the former president or in the issues he focuses on, did not appear in the offing.He remained deferential to Mr. Trump even after the front-runner signaled on Tuesday morning that he could soon be indicted for a third time, in this instance on federal charges stemming from his efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election. Speaking with the CNN host Jake Tapper in an interview recorded earlier in the day, Mr. DeSantis dodged questions on his support for a national abortion ban, whether he would commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan and how to end the war in Ukraine.But he expressed confidence that he was laying the groundwork for victory in the Iowa caucuses in January, and that he, as the only military veteran in the race, would win South Carolina, a military-heavy state that comes third in the primary process.“I’ll be the first president elected since 1988 that served in a war,” Mr. DeSantis, who served in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps in Iraq, said outside South Carolina’s capital building in Columbia. Simply appearing on CNN appeared to be an acknowledgment that Mr. DeSantis needs to change his approach after confining his interviews to conservative news outlets and relying on allies to take on the former president. Mr. Trump has comfortably led polls nationally and in the Palmetto State for months.And Mr. DeSantis’s newly released fund-raising figures, although strong overall at $20 million, showed that his campaign has been spending hand over fist and is dangerously dependent on large donors, who could be looking elsewhere for a Trump alternative. His campaign has also begun cutting its staff, in another worrying sign.Still, mindful of alienating core Republican voters who are sympathetic to Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis pulled his punches on Tuesday. After news broke that Mr. Trump had received a “target letter” from the special counsel, Jack Smith, the Florida governor said Mr. Trump “should have come out more forcefully” on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the rioting at the Capitol.On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has mostly held interviews with friendly conservative news outlets, not mainstream organizations.Meg Kinnard/Associated PressBut Mr. DeSantis added that criminal charges would fit a pattern of weaponization of political institutions against conservatives.“I think what we’ve seen in this country is an attempt to criminalize politics and to try to criminalize differences,” he said during a campaign event in West Columbia, S.C.Mr. DeSantis’s social media team, in fact, pushed back on the suggestion that the governor was insufficiently supportive of the former president.How such deference might undermine Mr. Trump’s lead was unclear. Two Republican candidates from South Carolina, Senator Tim Scott and former Gov. Nikki Haley, are also hoping to capitalize on Mr. Trump’s legal peril and Mr. DeSantis’s stumbles and present themselves as the new alternative to the former president.For Mr. DeSantis, a drastic reboot of his campaign is not obvious.On Monday night in Tega Cay, S.C., on the North Carolina border, he stuck to his well-worn talking points: the supposed “indoctrination” of children by “leftist” educators; mobilizing the military to the southern border to stop “our country being invaded”; and his disappointment in Mr. Trump for failing to fire Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who helped lead the Covid-19 response.On Tuesday morning, Mr. DeSantis discussed military policy in an airplane hangar outside Columbia. He filed the paperwork formally declaring his candidacy in the state that morning.His remarks were heavy on themes he has hit since he joined the race: railing against diversity, equity and inclusion programs and what he called “woke operating policies” like drag shows, which the Defense Department ended last month. He also proposed to reinstate the Trump administration’s ban on transgender sailors, soldiers and marines, and promised to end funding for transition care for active-duty service members.Pressed by Mr. Tapper on how the roughly one million transgender adults in the United States would live under a DeSantis administration, the governor said military readiness took precedence over what he characterized as individual life choices.Beyond the military, he said, “I would respect everybody, but what I wouldn’t do is turn society upside down” to accommodate “a very, very small percentage of the population.”Mr. DeSantis also said he would reinstate service members who had been relieved of duty for declining to take the Covid-19 vaccine, a move that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III instituted a year ago.Although the Trump administration broadly moved against transgender rights throughout the federal government, the DeSantis campaign has framed Mr. Trump as weak on his opposition to rolling back L.G.B.T.Q. rights. It may be having an impact.Elizabeth James, 69, a retiree and self-proclaimed “grandmama for DeSantis” who lives in the Columbia area, said she supported Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020 but soured on him after he “waffled” on transgender issues. She applauded Mr. DeSantis’s plans to end military funding for service members’ transition surgeries and said she believed that too few Republican voters knew enough about Mr. Trump’s record on L.G.B.T.Q. issues.“They’re just holding over from him in 2020 without re-examining where he is now,” she said of the former president. “I think he shifted a lot from where he was.”By holding the CNN interview, the governor had most likely hoped to quiet detractors who say he cannot handle the heat of a critical press.Mr. Tapper pressed Mr. DeSantis on whether he would sign a national ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, mirroring the ban he signed in Florida. He said he saw no evidence Congress could pass a national abortion ban.On committing to send U.S. troops to beat back a theoretical Chinese invasion of Taiwan, again, he dodged: “We’re going to deter that from happening.”And on the hot-button Republican issue of continued U.S. military support for Ukraine, he was even more vague.“The goal should be a sustainable, enduring peace in Europe, but one that does not reward aggression,” he said.The DeSantis political operation may be strengthening its jabs against Mr. Trump. The DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down confirmed on Tuesday that a new advertisement from the group had used artificial intelligence to mimic the voice of Mr. Trump as if it were attacking Iowa’s popular conservative governor, Kim Reynolds. Politico reported on the ad on Monday evening.Mr. Trump’s feud with Ms. Reynolds over her refusal to endorse him is real, and began with an attack on his social network, Truth Social. And it could hurt the former president’s chances in Iowa.But the ad falsely purports to catch Mr. Trump on tape. The super PAC said, “Our team utilized technology to give voice to Donald Trump’s words and Truth Social post attacking Gov. Reynolds.”The Trump campaign evinced no fear.“The DeSantis campaign doesn’t know how to turn things around with their current candidate,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign, said in a statement. More

The vote to pick a new member of Parliament in the ex-prime minister’s once-reliably Conservative district is just one of three by-elections on Thursday that will give a snapshot of Britain’s mood.When Boris Johnson paid a surprise visit last year to the Swallow pub and poured some pints, he seemed to leave the clientele more agreed on his skills as a barman than as a politician.“He asked me whether it was a decent pint — and it was,” said Tony O’Shea, 55, holding up a photo on his phone of the moment he was served a beer by Mr. Johnson, then the prime minister. Still a fan, Mr. O’Shea described Mr. Johnson as a “lovable rogue” whom he had voted for in 2019.On the other side of the pub, however, Jenny Moffatt, 73, had no complaints about the drinks she was served by Mr. Johnson. But she described him as “a buffoon,” with a tendency to “pontificate.”Love him or laugh at him, Mr. Johnson was an outsize presence both in British politics — and here in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, the district of outer London that he represented in Parliament. Now he is gone: He was forced out of Downing Street last summer and chose to resign his seat in Parliament last month after a ruling by senior lawmakers that he had lied to Parliament about lockdown-breaking parties.That leaves voters in his constituency to determine on Thursday what kind of post-Johnson future they prefer — to stick with the Conservatives or flip to Labour. Since the district was created in 2010, there have only been Tory representatives in Parliament but the party now trails badly in national opinion polls.Mr. O’Shea, who runs a cleaning company, said he was unsure for whom he will cast his ballot on Thursday. “There are a lot of people, irrespective of what has happened, who would still vote for Boris because of his character,” he said.It is partly thanks to Mr. Johnson’s tarnished legacy, however, that the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, faces three unwelcome tests on Thursday in so-called by-elections — contests in local parliamentary districts — that fall at a time of roaring inflation and economic stagnation.As well as Mr. Johnson’s seat on the fringes London, there is a vacancy in Selby and Ainsty, in northern England, where one of Mr. Johnson’s allies, Nigel Adams, also quit. In both these contests, the Labour Party, the main opposition, detects the scent of success.A third contest was called when David Warburton, another Conservative, resigned after admitting he had used cocaine. In the race to succeed him in Somerton and Frome, in southwest England, the centrist Liberal Democrats are seen as the main challengers.Steve Tuckwell, second from left, the Conservative candidate running for a parliamentary seat in Boris Johnson’s former district, at a debate with other candidates this month. Susannah Ireland/Reuters“There is a sense that the by-elections are the end of the Boris Johnson era — this electoral test wouldn’t have happened but for him,” said Robert Hayward, a Conservative member of the House of Lords and a polling expert. He added that, because the three seats are being fought in three very different areas, they will give a rare snapshot of opinion across the country.“For the Conservatives, it will be a challenge and damaging if they lose all three,” said Mr. Hayward, while adding that “if they win even one it would substantially lift their spirits because expectations are so low.”Perhaps surprisingly, given their poor national poll ratings — trailing Labour by around 20 percentage points — the Conservatives are optimistic in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where in the 2019 general election Mr. Johnson won by a relatively modest majority.However, the party is relying on local issues to buoy them, rather than counting on affection for Mr. Johnson. Indeed, the former prime minister has largely been airbrushed from the Tories’ campaign literature, has not been asked (or offered) to campaign for the new Tory challenger in his former district, Steve Tuckwell, and has had only a brief phone call with him.“Boris Johnson was a marmite politician” said David Simmonds, a Conservative lawmaker in the neighboring area of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, referring to a salty, yeasty paste that Britons tend to either love or hate.“There were people here who voted Conservative because they liked Boris Johnson and other people who stopped voting Conservative because they didn’t think he was the right person,” he added. “But that’s history, he’s not on the ballot paper at this election, I think people have moved on a while ago.”The résumé of Mr. Tuckwell is strikingly different from that of Mr. Johnson, who was educated at Eton College, Britain’s most famous private school, and Oxford University. By contrast Mr. Tuckwell stocked shelves at a supermarket as a part-time job when he was young, and then was employed as a postal worker. A protest against plans to extend an ultra low emission zone for vehicles, known as ULEZ, across all London boroughs, in London, in April.Maja Smiejkowska/ReutersMr. Tuckwell’s campaign stresses his local credentials in part because his main rival, the Labour Party’s Danny Beales, is now an elected councilor in Camden, an inner London municipality. (Mr. Beales was born and raised in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip district.)The Conservatives also have a pressing local issue because the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a Labour member, plans to extend an ultra low emission zone across all of London’s boroughs, including Uxbridge, effectively levying a fee on drivers of older, more polluting, cars.The plan, known as ULEZ, already operates in central London and aims to improve the quality of the city’s air, which has been found to have contributed to the death of one girl in the city.The threatened new cost has alarmed many drivers in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, and Mr. Tuckwell has likened the scheme to the tactics of a famed highwayman, Dick Turpin, an 18th century figure whose exploits were romanticized after his execution and who, according to legend, may have once lived locally.“After all, Turpin asked for a few shillings — not four-and-a-half grand a year,” Mr. Tuckwell wrote, totaling the cost of using a noncompliant car every day of the year to more than £4,500, or about $5,870.Mr. Beales has been under pressure on the issue and recently said that now is “not the right time” to extend ULEZ because of the squeeze it puts on incomes.But that is not enough to satisfy some. Outside his home, Neil Wingerath said the new rules would cost him £12.50 each time he drove his 13 year-old Land Rover SUV.“I’m not a Conservative but I am persuaded to vote Conservative because of ULEZ,” said Mr. Wingerath, 67, a retired accountant, who added that the resale value of his car had halved since the announcement of the ULEZ expansion to the area. “They are unsellable locally.”Even on this most local of issues, however, there is no escaping the legacy of Mr. Johnson who, in a newspaper article, recently condemned the “sheer bone-headed cruelty,” of the extension of ULEZ to outer London.His critics point out that the policy was introduced in inner London, by none other than Mr. Johnson himself when he served as the city’s mayor. More

Sixteen people who signed paperwork falsely claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election in Michigan have been criminally charged, Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, announced on Tuesday.Michigan was one of several swing states that Trump lost in 2020 in which he and his legal team convened alternate slates of electors as part of an effort to overturn the election. The Tuesday charges mark the first time any of the electors have been charged.Each of the fake electors was charged with eight felony counts, including multiple counts of forgery, a felony punishable by 14 years in prison in Michigan. The other charges include conspiracy to commit forgery, conspiracy to commit uttering and publishing, conspiracy to commit election law forgery, and election law forgery. The charges were filed in state court in Lansing, the Michigan capital.The 16 people charged include Meshawn Maddock, a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican party, and Kathy Berden, a national commiteewoman for the Republican National Committee. The other 14 fake electors held various connections to the state and local party.Knowing that Trump lost the election, the 16 electors met in the basement of the Michigan Republican party headquarters on 14 December 2020 – the same day the legitimate electors convened, and three weeks before Congress would meet to certify the election results on 6 January – and knowingly signed “multiple certificates” falsely proclaiming Trump the winner in their state, Nessel said in a statement. Those certificates were transmitted to the National Archives in Washington.“This plan – to reject the will of the voters and undermine democracy – was fraudulent and legally baseless,” Nessel said in recorded remarks. “The False Electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections, and not only violated the spirit of the laws enshrining and defending our democracy but, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan and peaceably transfer power in America.“Undoubtedly, there will be those who will claim these charges are political in nature. But where there is overwhelming evidence of guilt in respect to multiple crimes, the most political act I could engage in as a prosecutor would be to take no action at all,” Nessel added.The Michigan charges come as both the justice department and the district attorney in Fulton county, Georgia, are examining fake electors as part of a broader inquiry into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump announced on Tuesday he had received a letter from the justice department saying he was a target of an investigation. Charges in Fulton county are expected sometime before the end of August.Nessel referred the fake electors to the justice department in January 2022, but reopened the case earlier this year when federal prosecutors had not brought charges, according to a person familiar with the matter.Slates of false electors were convened in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In addition to the criminal investigations into the broader scheme, there is also a civil lawsuit in Wisconsin seeking $2.4m from those who signed their names and to block them from serving as electors again.Hugo Lowell contributed reporting More

The ads will give Senator Tim Scott a significant boost as he draws attention from rival campaigns in the Republican presidential race.A super PAC supporting Senator Tim Scott’s presidential campaign said on Tuesday that it was reserving $40 million in television and digital advertising from the fall through January, the largest sum booked so far for any presidential candidate and a blitz of ads that could reshape the 2024 Republican field.The group, called the Trust in the Mission PAC, or TIM PAC, said the ad buy would cover Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Mr. Scott’s home state — the first three states that will vote in 2024 — as well as national cable channels starting in September.To put the $40 million figure in perspective, that is more money than the super PACs supporting Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida have spent so far — combined — on television in the first six months of 2023.The coming ad blitz, which follows a previously announced $7.25 million buy, will provide a significant boost for Mr. Scott. In polling, Mr. Scott has not yet broken out of the pack of Republican candidates trailing those two front-runners.But he has increasingly begun to attract the attention of the DeSantis campaign. In a memo to donors this month, the DeSantis team said it expected Mr. Scott to receive “appropriate scrutiny in the weeks ahead.”The timing of the ad reservation — days after the super PAC said it had only $15 million in cash on hand at the end of June — suggests a major donor most likely contributed a huge sum in recent days. The timing will allow the donor’s identity to remain undisclosed until early 2024.For years, one of Mr. Scott’s biggest benefactors has been Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle. Mr. Ellison had already put $35 million into a different Scott-aligned super PAC, the Opportunity Matters Fund, between 2020 and 2022. A spokeswoman for Mr. Ellison did not respond to a request for comment on any pro-Scott contributions he may have made this year.Mr. Ellison attended Mr. Scott’s presidential kickoff event in May and received a shout-out from the senator onstage. “I thank God Almighty that he continues to provide me with really cool mentors,” Mr. Scott said. “One of my mentors, Larry Ellison, is with us today, and I am so thankful to have so many different mentors in the house.”Rob Collins, a Republican strategist who is the co-chair of Trust in the Mission PAC, said that Mr. Scott’s personal history — “Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime,” Mr. Scott declared in his 2020 convention speech — would resonate with Republican primary voters.“Tim is the biggest threat to Joe Biden and the far left because Tim’s life story and accomplishments undermine decades of Democrat lies about America,” Mr. Collins said in a statement.The early ad buy will make Mr. Scott’s super PAC the first of the 2024 campaign to reserve television time into the fall and winter, which will lock in somewhat lower advertising rates that are likely to rise as more and more campaigns go on the airwaves. Super PACs pay more than candidates but the later they book the steeper the premium.“As prices skyrocket in the coming weeks, we will have a stable plan that will allow us to efficiently communicate our message, conduct a well-rounded campaign and better manage our cash,” Mr. Collins said.The super PAC also announced that Mr. Scott had begun a door-knocking campaign in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, an operation that includes a dozen staff members and almost 100 canvassers, a majority of whom are paid.The pro-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, has reported raising $130 million in the first half of 2023 and spent nearly $15 million so far on television ads. The group has outlined plans to hire 2,600 field staff members who will focus on door-knocking across the early states. More