Elections

Former President Donald J. Trump told an evangelical gathering that no president had done more for Christians than he did.One year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, former President Donald J. Trump reminded a gathering of evangelical activists in the nation’s capital how he had shaped the court’s conservative supermajority that ended nearly 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion.Appearing at a Faith & Freedom Coalition gala in Washington on Saturday night, he cited his appointment of three of the six justices who voted to strike down the law as a capstone of his presidency. And he cast himself as an unflinching crusader for the Christian right in a meandering speech that lasted nearly 90 minutes.“No president has ever fought for Christians as hard as I have,” he said, adding, “I got it done, and nobody thought it was even a possibility.”It was the eighth appearance by Mr. Trump in front of the group, whose support he is seeking to consolidate in a crowded G.OP. competition for the 2024 nomination, though he is the front-runner in the field. He said that Republican voters were skeptical of claims by some of his rivals that they were stronger opponents of abortion, and suggested that the skepticism had arisen on the campaign trail.“A woman stood up and said, ‘This guy ended Roe v. Wade. How the hell can you go against him?’” Mr. Trump said.A few thousand activists gave Mr. Trump an ovation when he mentioned the ruling, which he said gave conservatives leverage in the ongoing battle over abortion rights. Several hundred more filled an overflow room.“You have power for the first time,” he said.Former Vice President Mike Pence called for the 2024 Republican field to back a 15-week federal abortion ban — an abortion policy more extreme than what Mr. Trump has supported.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesVirtually all of Mr. Trump’s rivals in the crowded G.O.P. field appeared during the group’s three-day Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton. The lineup included Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s chief rival, and former Vice President Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s onetime running mate.At a rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial earlier on Saturday commemorating the court’s ruling, Mr. Pence urged anti-abortion activists to continue fighting to place further restrictions on the procedure at the state level.“Save the babies, and we will save America,” he said, adding, “As the old book says, that many more are with us than are with them.”In a speech at the gathering a day earlier, Mr. Pence called on the entire 2024 Republican presidential field to pledge support for a national abortion ban at 15 weeks — a ban more extreme than what Mr. Trump has backed so far.David Porter, 64, a Republican from Newport News, Va., who wore a “Walk With Jesus” hat to the rally, commended Mr. Trump for his imprint on the judiciary.“He’s my guy right now,” he said.Several times in his speech on Saturday night, Mr. Trump sought to align himself with the faith community and said that it was under attack, much like he was.“Together, we’re warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, globalists and the Marxists,” he said.Each indictment, he added, was a “great badge of courage.”“I’m being indicted for you,” he said.Mr. Trump’s alliance with the Christian right is a study in political opportunism, one that has yielded prodigious dividends for both.In 2016, evangelical voters helped propel Mr. Trump to successive Republican primary victories in South Carolina and other key states, giving him a pathway to the nomination and ultimately the presidency.The influential electoral bloc demonstrated its willingness to look beyond the impieties of the twice-divorced Mr. Trump, whose extramarital affairs had long been tabloid fodder and who came with a history of supporting abortion rights in the 1990s. Evangelical voters bought into Mr. Trump’s populist narrative, as well as his pledges to carry out a hard-line reset of the nation’s immigration and trade policies and to appoint “pro-life” justices.The group collected its returns during Mr. Trump’s presidency when he cemented a supermajority on the Supreme Court.Mr. Trump has heralded his remake of the nation’s highest court as he once again seeks the support of evangelical voters, this time beset by a cascade of indictments, including one in a hush-money case involving a porn star.But even as Mr. Trump has highlighted his role in the right’s fight to end abortion rights, he has repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if Republicans managed to steer one through the divided Congress.Mr. Porter, the anti-abortion activist from Virginia, said Mr. Trump’s evasiveness was concerning.Mr. Trump has suggested that a six-week abortion ban signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was “too harsh,” causing some of his rivals to see an opening on the right of Mr. Trump on the issue.Pete Marovich for The New York Times“Either you stand for what you believe in or you don’t,” he said.Mr. DeSantis, who spoke on Friday at the evangelical conclave, has sought to stake out the right flank against Mr. Trump on abortion policy. He criticized the former president for suggesting that a six-week abortion ban that Mr. DeSantis signed in Florida was “too harsh.”Susan Migliore, an anti-abortion activist from Falls Church, Va., who said she was religious but not evangelical, said at the Lincoln Memorial rally that she was grateful for Mr. Trump’s court picks, but had not decided which candidate she will support in 2024. More

Donald Trump this month became the first former or incumbent American president to be charged with crimes against the nation that he once led and wishes to lead again. He cynically calculated that his indictment would ensure that a riled-up Republican Party base would nominate him as its standard-bearer in 2024, and the last few weeks have proved that his political calculation was probably right.The former president’s behavior may have invited charges, but the Republicans’ spineless support for the past two years convinced Mr. Trump of his political immortality, giving him the assurance that he could purloin some of the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets upon leaving the White House — and preposterously insist that they were his to do with as he wished — all without facing political consequences. Indeed, their fawning support since the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol has given Mr. Trump every reason to believe that he can ride these charges and any others not just to the Republican nomination, but also to the White House in 2024.In a word, the Republicans are as responsible as Mr. Trump for this month’s indictment — and will be as responsible for any indictment and prosecution of him for Jan. 6. One would think that, for a party that has prided itself for caring about the Constitution and the rule of law, this would stir some measure of self-reflection among party officials and even voters about their abiding support for the former president. Surely before barreling headlong into the 2024 presidential election season, more Republicans would realize it is time to come to the reckoning with Mr. Trump that they have vainly hoped and naïvely believed would never be necessary.But by all appearances, it certainly hasn’t occurred to them yet that any reckoning is needed. As only the Republicans can do, they are already turning this ignominious moment into an even more ignominious moment — and a self-immolating one at that — by rushing to crown Mr. Trump their nominee before the primary season even begins. Building the Republican campaign around the newly indicted front-runner is a colossal political miscalculation, as comedic as it is tragic for the country. No assemblage of politicians except the Republicans would ever conceive of running for the American presidency by running against the Constitution and the rule of law. But that’s exactly what they’re planning.The stewards of the Republican Party have become so inured to their putative leader, they have managed to convince themselves that an indicted and perhaps even convicted Donald Trump is their party’s best hope for the future. But rushing to model their campaign on Mr. Trump’s breathtakingly inane template is as absurd as it is ill fated. They will be defending the indefensible.On cue, the Republicans kicked their self-defeating political apparatus into high gear this month. Almost as soon as the indictment in the documents case was unsealed, Mr. Trump jump-started his up-to-then languishing campaign, predictably declaring himself an “innocent man” victimized in “the greatest witch hunt of all time” by his “totally corrupt” political nemesis, the Biden administration. On Thursday, he added that it was all part of a plot, hatched at the Justice Department and the F.B.I., to “rig” the 2024 election against him.From his distant second place, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida denounced the Biden administration’s “weaponization of federal law enforcement” against Mr. Trump and the Republicans. Mike Pence dutifully pronounced the indictment political. And both Governor DeSantis and Mr. Pence pledged — in a new Republican litmus test — that on their first day in office they would fire the director of the F.B.I., the Trump appointee Christopher Wray, obviously for his turpitude in investigating Mr. Trump. It fell to Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, to articulate the treacherous overarching Republican strategy: “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”There’s no stopping Republicans now, until they have succeeded in completely politicizing the rule of law in service to their partisan political ends.If the indictment of Mr. Trump on Espionage Act charges — not to mention his now almost certain indictment for conspiring to obstruct Congress from certifying Mr. Biden as the president on Jan. 6 — fails to shake the Republican Party from its moribund political senses, then it is beyond saving itself. Nor ought it be saved.There is no path to the White House for Republicans with Mr. Trump. He would need every single Republican and independent vote, and there are untold numbers of Republicans and independents who will never vote for him, if for no other perfectly legitimate reason than that he has corrupted America’s democracy and is now attempting to corrupt the country’s rule of law. No sane Democrat will vote for Mr. Trump — even over the aging Mr. Biden — when there are so many sane Republicans who will refuse to vote for Mr. Trump. This is all plain to see, which makes it all the more mystifying why more Republicans don’t see it.When Republicans faced an 11th-hour reckoning with another of their presidents over far less serious offenses almost 50 years ago, the elder statesmen of the party marched into the Oval Office and told Richard Nixon the truth. He had lost his Republican support and he would be impeached if he did not resign. The beleaguered Nixon resigned the next day and left the White House the day following.Such is what it means to put country over party. History tends to look favorably upon a party that writes its own history, as Winston Churchill might have said.Republicans have waited in vain for political absolution. It’s finally time for them to put the country before their party and pull back from the brink — for the good of the party, as well as the nation.If not now, then they must forever hold their peace.J. Michael Luttig (@judgeluttig) was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006.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

Los comicios en la nación centroamericana están marcados por la exclusión de importantes candidatos y llamados a tomar medidas enérgicas contra la delincuencia.Guatemala, el país más poblado de Centroamérica, votará este domingo en unas elecciones presidenciales que están dirigiendo el foco de atención a la erosión del Estado de derecho en una nación que se ha convertido en una fuente importante de migración hacia Estados Unidos.La incipiente democracia del país tras el fin de una guerra civil hace unas cuatro décadas que dejó cientos de miles de personas desaparecidas o muertas —una de las más sangrientas en la historia reciente latinoamericana— ha decaído en años recientes bajo un gobierno cada vez más autoritario.El poder judicial se ha utilizado como arma arrojadiza y ha forzado al exilio a decenas de jueces y fiscales que se dedicaban a combatir la corrupción. La libertad de prensa también ha recibido ataques: este mes, el editor de un importante periódico que expuso muchos episodios de corrupción fue sentenciado a seis años de prisión tras haber sido acusado de delitos financieros.El Tribunal Supremo Electoral de Guatemala, un país de 18 millones de habitantes, ha incrementado las preocupaciones sobre los ataques a las normas democráticas tras haber descalificado a varios candidatos presidenciales importantes que eran percibidos como una amenaza a la clase política y económica dominante.La descalificación de varios candidatos de la contienda presidencial, entre ellos Carlos Pineda, ha generado dudas sobre la legitimidad de las elecciones del domingo.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesLas tensiones en torno a la inestable democracia de Guatemala han dejado a algunos votantes desilusionados y preguntándose si deberían incluso molestarse en ir a votar.“Creo que no deberían celebrarse las elecciones”, afirmó Óscar Guillén, de 70 años, quien explicó que tenía planeado dejar su voto en blanco para expresar su descontento.Los electores todavía podrán elegir entre un nutrido grupo de más de 20 candidatos, ninguno de los cuales se prevé que obtenga una mayoría el domingo, lo que obligaría a ir a una segunda vuelta el 20 de agosto entre los dos primeros lugares.Las segundas vueltas se han vuelto comunes en Guatemala desde que los acuerdos de paz de 1996 pusieron fin un conflicto interno que duró 36 años y que estuvo marcado por brutales tácticas de contrainsurgencia que resultaron en un genocidio contra la comunidad indígena.El presidente actual de Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, tiene prohibido por ley buscar la reelección. Pero incluso luego de que un aumento pronunciado en los crímenes violentos y un costo de vida extremadamente alto causaron que el mandatario, conservador, sea profundamente impopular, los candidatos líderes en la contienda son de tendencia en general conservadora, lo que sugiere que habrá continuidad con la clase política dominante del país.La votación no es obligatoria en Guatemala y la tasa de abstención, que casi llegó al 40 por ciento en las últimas elecciones presidenciales en 2019, será observada de cerca como un indicador del descontento entre los electores.A continuación, lo que debes saber sobre las elecciones de este domingo.Sandra Torres parece ser la principal candidata, con niveles de apoyo que rondan el 20 por ciento.Daniele Volpe para The New York Times¿Quién se está postulando a la presidencia?Ninguno de los tres candidatos principales tiene proyectado obtener ni siquiera algo cercano a la mayoría necesaria para ganar en primera vuelta el domingo. En diferentes encuestas, Sandra Torres, una ex primera dama, parece ser la principal candidata, con niveles de apoyo que rondan el 20 por ciento. (Según las encuestas, los números del candidato presidencial del partido de Giammattei rondan cifras bajas de un solo dígito)Torres, de 67 años, estuvo casada con Álvaro Colom, presidente de Guatemala de 2008 a 2012 y quien falleció este año, a los 71 años de edad. Se divorciaron en 2011, cuando Torres intentó postularse por primera vez a la presidencia, en un intento de sortear una ley que prohíbe que los familiares del presidente puedan presentarse como candidatos.Torres no logró conseguir la autorización para postularse a la presidencia ese año, pero obtuvo el segundo lugar en las dos elecciones presidenciales más recientes. Después de las elecciones de 2019, fue acusada de cometer violaciones de financiación de campaña y pasó tiempo en arresto domiciliario.A finales del año pasado, un juez sentenció que no había suficientes pruebas para proceder al juicio de Torres, lo que le permitió volver a postularse. Durante la campaña, ha logrado conseguir el apoyo de su partido, la Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), el cual está bien arraigado y es ampliamente conocido en Guatemala.Torres, al igual que sus dos principales rivales, ha expresado admiración hacia la represión a las pandillas ejecutada por el gobierno del país vecino de El Salvador, la cual ha ayudado a disminuir los niveles de violencia, pero también ha planteado preocupaciones referentes a abusos de derechos humanos.Torres también ha prometido ampliar las transferencias de efectivo y la asistencia alimentaria para las familias de bajos recursos, valiéndose de su experiencia como primera dama, cuando fue el rostro de este tipo de iniciativas populares.Otra de las principales candidatas, Zury Ríos, de 55 años, es también una figura conocida en la política guatemalteca. Es la hija de Efraín Ríos Montt, quien fue dictador del país a principios de la década de 1980 y que fue condenado por genocidio en 2013 por intentar exterminar a los ixiles, un pueblo maya indígena de Guatemala.Aunque la evidencia contra su padre fue meticulosamente documentada y detallada en su juicio, Ríos ha negado repetidas veces que haya ocurrido un genocidio. Su partido ultraconservador está liderado por figuras que tienen vínculos con su padre.Sin embargo, aunque Ríos publicita sus credenciales conservadoras y su fe cristiana evangélica, tiene un historial más matizado como exdiputada del Congreso, donde forjó alianzas en un esfuerzo por obtener la aprobación legislativa para proyectos de ley enfocados a mejorar las condiciones para las mujeres y la comunidad LGBTQ.Otro de los principales aspirantes a la presidencia es Edmond Mulet, de 72 años, un abogado y experimentado exdiplomático que ha sido el embajador de Guatemala en Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, así como jefe de la Misión de Estabilización de las Naciones Unidas en Haití.Si bien Mulet ha destacado su experiencia diplomática, también es conocido por su labor como abogado en la década de 1980, cuando fue arrestado en conexión con su trabajo organizando adopciones de niños guatemaltecos por parte de familias canadienses.Aunque fue puesto en libertad rápidamente y ha negado haber cometido algún delito, Mulet ha tenido que invertir tiempo en la campaña para explicar su participación en este episodio.En su campaña, Mulet está representando a un partido nuevo que no ocupa ningún escaño en el Congreso, pero que ha forjado una coalición competitiva de candidatos a nivel local y nacional para las elecciones del domingo. Entre sus propuestas se encuentran la creación de una pensión universal, el incremento de salarios policiales y la construcción de una nueva cárcel de máxima seguridad.Alrededor del 20 por ciento de los legisladores en el congreso de Guatemala enfrentan algún tipo de acusación por corrupción.Daniele Volpe para The New York Times¿Cuáles son los principales temas?Corrupción: Guatemala obtuvo elogios en la última década por sus esfuerzos para reducir la impunidad y la corrupción. Pero esa iniciativa, liderada por una comisión de investigadores internacionales respaldada por la ONU, fue sistemáticamente desmantelada en años recientes cuando los intereses políticos y económicos arraigados comenzaron a acosar a jueces y fiscales anticorrupción y a obligarlos a salir del país.Según grupos defensores de libertades civiles, la exclusión de candidatos importantes en las elecciones refleja cómo la élite está firmemente reafirmando su poder.Familiares alrededor del ataúd de Miguel Rojché Zapalu, uno de los hombres guatemaltecos que murieron en un incendio en un centro migratorio cerca de la frontera con Estados Unidos, durante su funeral en abril en Chicacao, una comunidad indígena.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesMigración: Los guatemaltecos figuran entre los grupos de migrantes de más rápido crecimiento en Estados Unidos. El número de migrantes que llegan anualmente se ha incrementado cerca de 33 por ciento entre 2010 y 2021, de 830.000 a más de 1,1 millón.Existen varios factores que impulsan a los guatemaltecos a emigrar, en el que destaca la falta de oportunidades económicas: cerca del 59 por ciento de la población vive por debajo de la línea de pobreza.El gobierno de EE. UU. le dio prioridad a la lucha contra la corrupción y el fortalecimiento de la democracia en Guatemala y otros países centroamericanos al principio del mandato del presidente Biden, argumentando que eso evitaría que la gente abandonara su tierra natal.Pero esos esfuerzos han hecho muy poco para prevenir un retroceso de la democracia en la región o para reducir de forma notable el flujo de migrantes.Un acusado es escoltado a una audiencia en unn tribunal de Ciudad de Guatemala.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesDelincuencia: Un tema importante durante toda la campaña electoral en Guatemala han sido los llamados a emular la represión a las pandillas realizada por el El Salvador, tras señalar la creciente frustración con los altos niveles de crímenes violentos.La cantidad de homicidios en Guatemala —impulsada en parte por pandillas poderosas— se incrementó casi 6 por ciento en 2022 con respecto al año anterior, y también ha habido un aumento marcado en el número de víctimas de homicidio que han mostrado señales de tortura. Muchos guatemaltecos citan el temor a la extorsión y el crimen como razones para emigrar. More

The election in the Central American nation is marked by the exclusion of top candidates and calls to crack down on violent crime.Guatemala, Central America’s largest nation, will vote on Sunday in presidential elections that are casting scrutiny on the erosion of the rule of law in a country that has become a major source of migration to the United States.Guatemala’s nascent democracy — which emerged after the end of a civil war nearly four decades ago that left hundreds of thousands dead or missing, one of the bloodiest in recent Latin American history — has frayed in recent years under an increasingly authoritarian government.The judiciary has been weaponized and has forced into exile dozens of prosecutors and judges focused on battling corruption. Press freedom has also come under attack, and this month, the publisher of a leading newspaper that exposed many episodes of graft was sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted of financial crimes.The electoral authority in Guatemala, a country of 18 million, has added to concerns about assaults on democratic norms after it barred several top presidential candidates who were viewed as a threat to the political and economic establishment.The disqualification of several candidates from the presidential race, including Carlos Pineda, has raised questions about the legitimacy of Sunday’s voteDaniele Volpe for The New York TimesThe tensions over Guatemala’s teetering democracy has left some voters disillusioned and wondering if they should even bother casting a ballot.“I don’t think there should even be an election,” said Óscar Guillén, 70, explaining that he planned to leave his ballot blank to express his disenchantment.Voters will still choose from a crowded field of more than 20 candidates, not one of whom is predicted to obtain a majority on Sunday, which would force a runoff on Aug. 20 between the top two finishers.Runoffs have become common in Guatemala since peace accords in 1996 ended an internal conflict that lasted 36 years and was marked by brutal counterinsurgency tactics that resulted in genocide against Indigenous people.Guatemala’s current president, Alejandro Giammattei, is barred by law from seeking re-election. But even though a sharp increase in violent crime and a punishingly high cost of living have made Mr. Giammattei, a conservative, deeply unpopular, the leading candidates in the race generally also lean conservative, suggesting continuity with the country’s political establishment.Voting is not mandatory in Guatemala, and the abstention rate, which was nearly 40 percent in the last presidential election, in 2019, will be closely watched as a gauge of voter discontent.Here’s what you need to know about the vote on Sunday.Sandra Torres has been the top candidate across several polls, though her support would fall far short of winning a majority of the vote. Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesWho is running?Of the three leading candidates, no one is predicted to secure anything close to the majority needed to win outright on Sunday. Across several polls, Sandra Torres, a former first lady, appeared to be the top candidate, but with levels of support hovering around 20 percent. (The presidential candidate from Mr. Giammattei’s party is polling in the low single digits.)Ms. Torres, 67, was married to Álvaro Colom, who was the president of Guatemala from 2008 to 2012 and who died this year at 71. They divorced in 2011, when Ms. Torres first tried to run for president and tried to circumvent a law prohibiting a president’s relatives from running for office.She was still barred from running that year, but was the runner-up in the two most recent presidential elections. After the 2019 election, she was accused of campaign finance violations and spent time under house arrest.Ms. Torres prevailed in that case late last year when a judge ruled that were was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial, allowing her to run again. On the campaign trail, she has been able to draw support from her party, National Unity of Hope, which is well established and widely known in Guatemala.Ms. Torres, like her two main rivals, has expressed admiration for the crackdown on gangs by the government in neighboring El Salvador, which has helped drive down violence, but has also raised concerns about human rights abuses.She has also promised to increase cash transfers and food assistance to poor families, building on her time as first lady when she was the face of those kinds of popular initiatives.Another top challenger, Zury Ríos, 55, is also a familiar figure in Guatemalan politics. She is the daughter of Efraín Ríos Montt, a dictator in the early 1980s who was convicted in 2013 of genocide for trying to exterminate the Ixil, a Mayan people.While the evidence against her father was meticulously documented and detailed at his trial, Ms. Ríos has claimed repeatedly that no genocide ever took place. Her ultraconservative party is led by figures with links to her father.Still, while Ms. Ríos promotes her conservative credentials and evangelical Christian beliefs, she has a more nuanced record as a former member of Congress when she forged alliances in an effort to win legislative approval for bills aimed at improving conditions for women and L.G.T.B.Q. people.Another main presidential contender is Edmond Mulet, 72, a lawyer and a seasoned former diplomat who has served as Guatemala’s ambassador to the United States and the European Union, as well as the head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.While Mr. Mulet has highlighted his diplomatic experience, he is also known for his work as a lawyer in the 1980s, when he was arrested in connection to his work arranging adoptions of Guatemalan children by Canadian families.Though he was quickly set free and Mr. Mulet has denied any wrongdoing, he has still spent time on the campaign trail having to explain his involvement in the episode.In his campaign, Mr. Mulet is representing a newly formed party without any seats in Congress, but that has forged a competitive coalition of candidates at the national and local level in Sunday’s election. His proposals include a universal pension, increasing police salaries and building a new high-security prison.About 20 percent of the legislators in Guatemala’s Congress face some kind of corruption accusation.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesWhat are the main issues?Corruption: Guatemala won plaudits during the past decade for efforts to curb impunity and graft. But that initiative, led by a U.N.-backed panel of international investigators, was systematically dismantled in recent years as entrenched political and economic interests started hounding anticorruption judges and prosecutors from the country.The exclusion of top candidates in the election reflects, civil liberty groups say, how elite figures are steadily reasserting their power.Family members mourned over the coffin of Miguel Rojché Zapalu, one of 17 Guatemalan men killed in a fire at a migration center near the U.S. border, during his funeral in April in Chicacao, a predominantly Indigenous community.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesMigration: Guatemalans rank among the fastest-growing groups of migrants in the United States. The number of those arriving annually has increased by about 33 percent from 2010 to 2021, from 830,000 to more than 1.1 million.Various factors drive Guatemalans to emigrate, notably a lack of economic opportunity, with about 59 percent of the population living below the poverty line.The United States made fighting corruption and shoring up democracy in Guatemala and other Central American countries a priority early in President Biden’s tenure, arguing that it would keep people from leaving their homelands.But those efforts have done little to prevent a backsliding of democracy in the region or make a major dent in the flow of migrants.A defendant being escorted to a hearing at a court in Guatemala City.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesCrime: A top theme throughout the campaign season in Guatemala has been calls to emulate the crackdown on gangs in El Salvador, pointing to the rising frustration with high levels of violent crime.The number of homicides in Guatemala — fueled in part by powerful gangs — climbed nearly 6 percent in 2022 from the previous year, and there has also been a sharp increase in the number of murder victims who showed signs of torture. Many Guatemalans cite fears of extortion and crime as reasons to emigrate. More

A torrent of sexual harassment accusations has prompted questions about the state of women’s rights on an island democracy that has long been one of Asia’s most progressive places.In the past few weeks, a wave of #MeToo allegations has raced to the very top of Taiwan’s political, judicial and arts scenes, forcing a new reckoning of the state of women’s rights on a democratic island that has long taken pride in being among Asia’s most progressive places.Nearly every day, fresh allegations emerge, setting off discussions on talk shows and on social media, with newspaper commentaries and activist groups calling for stronger protections for victims.In many ways, Taiwan stands out for the significant strides that women have made that helped elect the island’s first female president and bolster laws against rape and sexual assault, before #MeToo took off in the United States. But the flood of new sexual harassment accusations points to what activists and scholars say is entrenched sexism that leaves women vulnerable at work, and a culture that is quick to blame victims and cover up accusations against powerful men.President Tsai, in 2020, with other officials. Some of the earliest #MeToo allegations centered on senior members of her political party, posing risks to the party’s credibility with younger voters.Makoto Lin/Taiwan Presidential Office, via ReutersThe outpouring of complaints was set off by a popular Netflix drama about Taiwanese politics called “Wave Makers,” which featured a subplot about a female member of a political party telling her boss that she had been sexually harassed by a high-ranking party member. Her boss promises to help her report the harassment, and in an indication of how often such politically inconvenient complaints are ignored, says, “Let’s not just let this go this time.”That quote from the fictional supervisor became a clarion call, inspiring more than 100 accusers, mostly women, to speak out on social media, sharing their accounts of unwanted kisses, groping and in a few cases, attempted rape. They described the indignities endured at the workplace, including inappropriate touching and unwanted advances by male colleagues and bosses, as well as lewd comments. Some of their posts have been shared thousands of times.The stakes are particularly high for President Tsai Ing-wen’s governing Democratic Progressive Party. Senior party and government officials were among the first accused of harassment and of seeking to silence accusers, forcing Ms. Tsai to apologize twice for her party’s mishandling of internal complaints. The criticism runs counter to the party’s record as a champion of liberal values, which includes legalizing same-sex marriage in 2019 and granting gay couples the right to adopt earlier this year. And it poses risks to the party’s credibility with younger voters ahead of a presidential election next year.“The Democratic Progressive Party has regarded itself as the governing party that supports gender equality,” Fan Yun, a party legislator who is also a professor specializing in gender issues at National Taiwan University, said in a telephone interview. “The Netflix show was seen by others as a snapshot of what’s happening within the party, and it has brought about great impact.”A scene from Wave Makers. A line from the show about properly addressing a sexual harassment complaint, “Let’s not just let this go this time,” resonated in Taiwan.NetflixAmong the most senior figures accused of harassment is Yen Chih-fa, who denied the allegation but resigned from his post as an adviser to President Tsai. Taiwan’s highest legal body said it would investigate a complaint against a former chief justice, Lee Po-tao. Tsai Mu-lin, a high-level party official, has been accused of bullying a female party staff member into silence when she reported that a male colleague had tried to enter her hotel room.Mr. Tsai, who is not related to the president, has since stepped down.The woman who accused him, Chen Wen-hsuan, said she felt empowered to speak out publicly by the other women who had shared their experiences. “This movement has taught me that no injustice should be swallowed,” she said. “After all, we can’t just let it go.”Allegations have also been made against men from the main opposition party, the Kuomintang, as well as across Taiwan’s society more broadly, including in academia, journalism, and most recently, entertainment.Mickey Huang, a TV personality, apologized after being accused by a woman he met at work of kissing her without her consent and forcing her to be photographed nude. Aaron Yan, a pop star, apologized after an ex-boyfriend accused him of secretly shooting videos of them having sex, when the ex-boyfriend was 16, a minor. Local prosecutors said this week they would investigate the allegation.Mickey Huang, a TV personality, apologized after being accused by a woman of kissing her without her consent and forcing her to be photographed nude.Visual China Group, via Getty ImagesIn some ways, the #MeToo movement points to a generational shift in attitudes brought about by the hard-fought advances won by women’s rights activists in decades past. Taiwan’s younger generation started learning about gender equality in elementary school, as part of curriculum changes enacted in 2004, and have since come of age.But workplaces are struggling to keep pace.Taiwan’s younger generation has “a higher awareness of gender diversity and equality than the older generation,” said Wei-Ting Yen, an assistant professor of government at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. “However, the workplace that young people are entering is still dominated by the older generation.”Lawmakers have pledged to quickly pass changes to laws to make workplaces and schools safer by holding organizations accountable for protecting victims of harassment. The changes would require organizations to track complaints and provide independent, third-party review panels if needed. Women’s rights groups have called for Taiwan to extend the statute of limitations for sexual harassment complaints, currently at one year.But activists also say more needs to be done to address the culture of sexism that underlies the misconduct and deters many women from speaking out. A survey by Taiwan’s labor ministry last year showed that only a tiny percentage of female respondents who said they had encountered sexual harassment at work had filed complaints. Activists and scholars in Taiwan say that men in power, whether they are supervisors in workplaces or police officers or judges, are often seen as sympathetic toward other men in power, and likely to blame the victim.This month, Lai Yu-fen, 27, accused a Polish diplomat, Bartosz Rys, on her Facebook and Twitter accounts, of what Ms. Lai described as sexual assault last year. She said that when she filed a police report, investigators asked why she had apologized to the diplomat as she rejected his advances, and why she had not told her family about the encounter. She said a defense lawyer gossiped about her to mutual friends. “I want to take back my own story,” Ms. Lai said in an interview.The Polish Office in Taipei, Poland’s de facto embassy in Taiwan, confirmed that it cooperated with the authorities. Prosecutors decided not to charge Mr. Rys, whose posting ended last year and who later left Taiwan. He did not respond to an emailed request for comment, but said on his Twitter page that Ms. Lai had sought money in exchange for dropping the accusation. (She said the request for money was part of negotiating a legal settlement.)To those working in Taiwan’s civil society, perhaps the most concerning of allegations are those directed at activists seen as influential leaders in the rights community. Lee Yuan-chun, 29, an activist, this month publicly accused Wang Dan, a veteran Chinese pro-democracy dissident, of pressing him onto a bed and asking him for sex in 2014. He said he was suing Mr. Wang.Wang Dan, middle, a Chinese pro-democracy dissident, was accused this month by an activist of pressing him onto a bed and asking him for sex. Andres Kudacki/Associated PressIn a statement, Mr. Wang said he hoped that the public would reserve judgment until a court ruled on the lawsuit. “As a public figure, one’s private life will be subject to more stringent scrutiny,” he said. “Through this incident I will pay more attention to this in the future.” More

Gaps in campaign rules allow politicians to spread images and messaging generated by increasingly powerful artificial intelligence technology.In Toronto, a candidate in this week’s mayoral election who vows to clear homeless encampments released a set of campaign promises illustrated by artificial intelligence, including fake dystopian images of people camped out on a downtown street and a fabricated image of tents set up in a park.In New Zealand, a political party posted a realistic-looking rendering on Instagram of fake robbers rampaging through a jewelry shop.In Chicago, the runner-up in the mayoral vote in April complained that a Twitter account masquerading as a news outlet had used A.I. to clone his voice in a way that suggested he condoned police brutality.What began a few months ago as a slow drip of fund-raising emails and promotional images composed by A.I. for political campaigns has turned into a steady stream of campaign materials created by the technology, rewriting the political playbook for democratic elections around the world.Increasingly, political consultants, election researchers and lawmakers say setting up new guardrails, such as legislation reining in synthetically generated ads, should be an urgent priority. Existing defenses, such as social media rules and services that claim to detect A.I. content, have failed to do much to slow the tide.As the 2024 U.S. presidential race starts to heat up, some of the campaigns are already testing the technology. The Republican National Committee released a video with artificially generated images of doomsday scenarios after President Biden announced his re-election bid, while Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posted fake images of former President Donald J. Trump with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former health official. The Democratic Party experimented with fund-raising messages drafted by artificial intelligence in the spring — and found that they were often more effective at encouraging engagement and donations than copy written entirely by humans.Some politicians see artificial intelligence as a way to help reduce campaign costs, by using it to create instant responses to debate questions or attack ads, or to analyze data that might otherwise require expensive experts.At the same time, the technology has the potential to spread disinformation to a wide audience. An unflattering fake video, an email blast full of false narratives churned out by computer or a fabricated image of urban decay can reinforce prejudices and widen the partisan divide by showing voters what they expect to see, experts say.The technology is already far more powerful than manual manipulation — not perfect, but fast improving and easy to learn. In May, the chief executive of OpenAI, Sam Altman, whose company helped kick off an artificial intelligence boom last year with its popular ChatGPT chatbot, told a Senate subcommittee that he was nervous about election season.He said the technology’s ability “to manipulate, to persuade, to provide sort of one-on-one interactive disinformation” was “a significant area of concern.”Representative Yvette D. Clarke, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement last month that the 2024 election cycle “is poised to be the first election where A.I.-generated content is prevalent.” She and other congressional Democrats, including Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, have introduced legislation that would require political ads that used artificially generated material to carry a disclaimer. A similar bill in Washington State was recently signed into law.The American Association of Political Consultants recently condemned the use of deepfake content in political campaigns as a violation of its ethics code.“People are going to be tempted to push the envelope and see where they can take things,” said Larry Huynh, the group’s incoming president. “As with any tool, there can be bad uses and bad actions using them to lie to voters, to mislead voters, to create a belief in something that doesn’t exist.”The technology’s recent intrusion into politics came as a surprise in Toronto, a city that supports a thriving ecosystem of artificial intelligence research and start-ups. The mayoral election takes place on Monday.A conservative candidate in the race, Anthony Furey, a former news columnist, recently laid out his platform in a document that was dozens of pages long and filled with synthetically generated content to help him make his tough-on-crime position.A closer look clearly showed that many of the images were not real: One laboratory scene featured scientists who looked like alien blobs. A woman in another rendering wore a pin on her cardigan with illegible lettering; similar markings appeared in an image of caution tape at a construction site. Mr. Furey’s campaign also used a synthetic portrait of a seated woman with two arms crossed and a third arm touching her chin.Anthony Furey, a candidate in Toronto’s mayoral election on Monday, used an A.I. image of a woman with three arms.The other candidates mined that image for laughs in a debate this month: “We’re actually using real pictures,” said Josh Matlow, who showed a photo of his family and added that “no one in our pictures have three arms.”Still, the sloppy renderings were used to amplify Mr. Furey’s argument. He gained enough momentum to become one of the most recognizable names in an election with more than 100 candidates. In the same debate, he acknowledged using the technology in his campaign, adding that “we’re going to have a couple of laughs here as we proceed with learning more about A.I.”Political experts worry that artificial intelligence, when misused, could have a corrosive effect on the democratic process. Misinformation is a constant risk; one of Mr. Furey’s rivals said in a debate that while members of her staff used ChatGPT, they always fact-checked its output.“If someone can create noise, build uncertainty or develop false narratives, that could be an effective way to sway voters and win the race,” Darrell M. West, a senior fellow for the Brookings Institution, wrote in a report last month. “Since the 2024 presidential election may come down to tens of thousands of voters in a few states, anything that can nudge people in one direction or another could end up being decisive.”Increasingly sophisticated A.I. content is appearing more frequently on social networks that have been largely unwilling or unable to police it, said Ben Colman, the chief executive of Reality Defender, a company that offers services to detect A.I. The feeble oversight allows unlabeled synthetic content to do “irreversible damage” before it is addressed, he said.“Explaining to millions of users that the content they already saw and shared was fake, well after the fact, is too little, too late,” Mr. Colman said.For several days this month, a Twitch livestream has run a nonstop, not-safe-for-work debate between synthetic versions of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. Both were clearly identified as simulated “A.I. entities,” but if an organized political campaign created such content and it spread widely without any disclosure, it could easily degrade the value of real material, disinformation experts said.Politicians could shrug off accountability and claim that authentic footage of compromising actions was not real, a phenomenon known as the liar’s dividend. Ordinary citizens could make their own fakes, while others could entrench themselves more deeply in polarized information bubbles, believing only what sources they chose to believe.“If people can’t trust their eyes and ears, they may just say, ‘Who knows?’” Josh A. Goldstein, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, wrote in an email. “This could foster a move from healthy skepticism that encourages good habits (like lateral reading and searching for reliable sources) to an unhealthy skepticism that it is impossible to know what is true.” More

A previously unnoticed change in Donald Trump’s online fund-raising appeals allows him to divert a sizable chunk of his 2024 contributions to a group that has spent millions to cover his legal fees.Facing multiple intensifying investigations, former President Donald J. Trump has quietly begun diverting more of the money he is raising away from his 2024 presidential campaign and into a political action committee that he has used to pay his personal legal fees.The change, which went unannounced except in the fine print of his online disclosures, raises fresh questions about how Mr. Trump is paying for his mounting legal bills — which could run into millions of dollars — as he prepares for at least two criminal trials, and whether his PAC, Save America, is facing a financial crunch.When Mr. Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign in November, for every dollar raised online, 99 cents went to his campaign, and a penny went to Save America.But internet archival records show that sometime in February or March, he adjusted that split. Now his campaign’s share has been reduced to 90 percent of donations, and 10 percent goes to Save America.The effect of that change is potentially substantial: Based on fund-raising figures announced by his campaign, the fine-print maneuver may already have diverted at least $1.5 million to Save America.And the existence of the group has allowed Mr. Trump to have his small donors pay for his legal expenses, rather than paying for them himself.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, did not answer detailed questions about why the Trump operation has changed how the funds he is raising are being split. Save America technically owns the list of email addresses and phone numbers of his supporters — one of the former president’s most valuable assets — and the campaign is effectively paying the PAC for access to that list, he explained.“Because the campaign wants to ensure every dollar donated to President Trump is spent in the most cost-effective manner, a fair-market analysis was conducted to determine email list rentals would be more efficient by amending the fund-raising split between the two entities,” Mr. Cheung said in a written statement.Mr. Trump gave the keynote speech at the state Republican convention in Georgia this month. Onstage, he mentioned the indictments against him, which have become intertwined with his fund-raising efforts.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesThe different rules governing what political action committees and candidate campaign committees can pay for are both dizzying and somewhat in dispute. But generally, a PAC cannot spend money directly on the candidate’s campaign, and a campaign committee cannot directly pay for things that benefit the candidate personally.For more than a year, before Mr. Trump was a 2024 candidate, Save America has been paying for bills related to various investigations into the former president and his allies. In February 2022, the PAC announced that it had $122 million in its coffers.By the beginning of 2023, the PAC’s cash on hand was down to $18 million, filings show. The rest had been spent on staff salaries, on the costs of Mr. Trump’s political activities last year — including some spending on other candidates and groups — and in other ways. That included the $60 million that was transferred to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that is supporting Mr. Trump. And more than $16 million went to pay legal bills.Mr. Trump’s rivals are not similarly splitting their online proceeds with an affiliated PAC. The websites of former Vice President Mike Pence, former Ambassador Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina direct all the proceeds to their campaign committees. The same goes for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Vivek Ramaswamy.Mr. Trump at a campaign event in Manchester, N.H., in April. On his campaign website, supporters can buy an “I Stand With Trump” T-shirt and other merchandise alluding to his costly legal troubles.Sophie Park for The New York Times“I think in this particular situation, specifically because of the use of the leadership PAC to pay legal expenses and potentially other expenses that would be illegal personal use of campaign money, there’s an unusual incentive for the leadership PAC to take in more than it normally would,” said Adav Noti, senior vice president and legal director of Campaign Legal Center.In the run-up to Mr. Trump’s latest campaign, his legal bills exploded in size. Save America spent $1.9 million in what it identified as legal expenses in the first half of 2022. That figure ballooned to nearly $14.6 million in the second half of last year, federal records show.In late 2022, a Trump adviser said that about $20 million had been set aside by Save America PAC to cover legal expenses.Since then, Mr. Trump has been indicted twice, once by a Manhattan grand jury on charges stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star, and once by a federal grand jury in Florida on charges including violations of the Espionage Act arising from Mr. Trump’s possession of classified material and government records long after he left office.A prominent attorney, Todd Blanche, left his white-collar law firm in April to join the former president’s legal team and is now representing him in both cases, and Mr. Trump recently met with about a half-dozen lawyers in Florida.Mr. Trump’s legal troubles are deeply intertwined with his political campaign and fund-raising efforts. His campaign store is selling an “I Stand With Trump” T-shirt showing the date of his indictment in Manhattan (“03.30.2023”) for $36; it recently added a second shirt with his Florida indictment date (“06.08.2023”) for $38. Half the featured items on the store’s landing page show a fake mug shot and the words “not guilty.”And Mr. Trump’s usual legal strategy — delay, delay, delay — could prove costly as overlapping teams of white-collar lawyers defend him in the federal case and the Manhattan criminal case, as well as in the investigation in Georgia, where Mr. Trump could face yet another indictment this summer for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. He is also facing an intensifying investigation by the special counsel Jack Smith into his efforts to cling to power after losing the election.It remains unclear whether Mr. Trump will try to use his campaign funds to pay for lawyers, should he run into difficulties with the political action committee — and whether such a move would run afoul of spending rules.“He can use the campaign to pay for legal bills that arise out of candidate or officeholder activity — and of course, some of the current legal matters fall into that category, and some do not, and some are in a gray area,” Mr. Noti said. “It really depends on what matter we’re talking about.”Jason Torchinsky, a Republican election lawyer, said he believed Mr. Trump was barred from using Save America donations to pay his personal legal expenses now that he’s a candidate, arguing that doing so would be “an excessive contribution” under Federal Election Commission precedent. And he said Mr. Trump could not use campaign money at all, because it would qualify as personal use.There have been signs that Mr. Trump’s campaign has been carefully monitoring its expenses.He has mainly attended events organized by other groups, as opposed to staging his own large-scale political rallies, which were the lifeblood of his two past runs for president and are one of his favorite parts of campaigning. Those rallies are expensive, costing at least $150,000 and usually more than $400,000.Mr. Trump has held only one full-scale rally in the seven months he has been running, with a second scheduled on July 1 in South Carolina, his first in an early-nominating state. (A rally in Iowa on May 13 was canceled after a tornado warning, though the weather cleared and Mr. DeSantis pointedly held an impromptu event nearby.)People familiar with the Trump campaign’s plans have said that the dearth of rallies was as much about husbanding resources as it was about getting Mr. Trump to engage with voters in a more traditional way. The people also suggested that more large-scale events might come in the fall, as the primary race heats up.But the fund-raising surges that Mr. Trump experienced after his first indictment at the end of March and again in June are expected to obscure a broader fund-raising slowdown. His campaign announced that he had raised $12 million in the first week after his first indictment and $7 million in the week after his second one. He will next disclose the state of his PAC and campaign’s finances in federal filings in July.Mr. Trump is unusually dependent on online fund-raising. He has held only one major campaign fund-raiser that was billed as such by his team: the event at Bedminster on the evening of his indictment. It raised $2 million. More

Only days before an election in Montenegro, a letter from Do Kwon, the fugitive founder of the Luna digital coin, claimed that crypto “friends” had provided campaign funding to a leading candidate.Already notorious as an agent of market mayhem, the crypto industry has now unleashed political havoc, too, upending a critical general election in Montenegro, a troubled Balkan nation struggling to shake off the grip of organized crime and the influence of Russia.Only days before a vote on June 11, the political landscape in Montenegro was thrown into disarray by the intervention of Do Kwon, the fugitive head of a failed crypto business whose collapse last year contributed to a $2 trillion crash across the industry.In a handwritten letter sent to the authorities from the Montenegrin jail where he has been held since March, Mr. Kwon claimed that he had “a very successful investment relationship” with the leader of the Europe Now Movement, the election front-runner, and that “friends in the crypto industry” had provided campaign funding in return for pledges of “crypto-friendly policies.”Europe Now had been expected to win a decisive popular mandate in elections for a new Parliament. Its campaign mixed populist promises to raise salaries and pensions with pledges to put the country on a clear path to joining the European Union by cleansing the crime and corruption that flourished under Montenegro’s former longtime leader Milo Djukanovic.The party still won the most votes, but fell far short of expectations, finishing just ahead of a rival group that supports Russia and that can now disrupt efforts to form a stable pro-Western coalition government. Only 56 percent of the electorate voted, a record low turnout.Mr. Kwon’s intervention “destroyed us,” said the Europe Now leader, Milojko Spajic, a target of the disgraced crypto entrepreneur’s letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times and whose existence leaked in the local news media before the vote.Milojko Spajic, the leader of the Europe Now Movement, believes Mr. Kwon’s letter hurt his party’s chances in national elections.Stevo Vasiljevic/ReutersIn an interview, Mr. Spajic denounced Mr. Kwon’s accusations as “super fake” and part of a “dirty political game” to hurt his party’s chances. Mr. Kwon’s lawyers have not disputed the letter’s authenticity.As a founder of Terraform Labs, the Stanford-educated Mr. Kwon was once hailed as a crypto trailblazer, responsible for the design of a popular digital coin, Luna, he said would change the world and whose fans he proudly referred to as “Lunatics.”The spectacular collapse in May 2022 of Luna and a second cryptocurrency that Mr. Kwon designed, TerraUSD, transformed him from a hero of innovation into a fugitive wanted by both the United States and South Korea on fraud charges.After that, he vanished, his whereabouts a mystery until the authorities in Montenegro announced in March that he had been arrested while trying to board a private plane to Dubai in Podgorica, the capital, using a forged Costa Rican passport.He had insisted it was genuine, but a Podgorica court on Monday found Mr. Kwon and a South Korean crypto business partner guilty of using forged travel documents and sentenced them to four months in jail.What Mr. Kwon was doing in Montenegro before his arrest and when he arrived is still unclear. His activities since his arrest are murkier.Though stripped of his electronic devices, the jailed Mr. Kwon appears to have somehow moved $29 million from a crypto wallet linked to him, South Korean prosecutors said, confirming a report by Bloomberg News.Dritan Abazovic, the acting prime minister of Montenegro and a political rival to Mr. Spajic, said there was no record of Mr. Kwon entering the country or registering at hotels, so the authorities want to establish whether he had local collaborators.“I’m not accusing Spajic of anything,” Mr. Abazovic said in an interview, “but we need to see what was happening in the crypto community here and whether it was involved in money laundering and campaign financing.”Campaign posters in Podgorica, Montenegro. Only 56 percent of the electorate voted in the election on June 11, the lowest turnout in decades.Stevo Vasiljevic/ReutersLong a center for cigarette smuggling and cocaine trafficking during Mr. Djukanovic’s more than three-decade rule, Montenegro has in recent years promoted itself as a center for the crypto industry.In 2022, Mr. Spajic, who was the finance minister at the time, predicted that the industry could account for nearly a third of Montenegro’s economic output within three years.For Mr. Spajic and fellow blockchain believers, crypto was the next Big Thing, according to Zeljko Ivanovic, the head of the independent media group Vijesti.“It was seen as an easy way out — a new secret recipe to replace the smuggling that had been Djukanovic’s recipe for decades,” Mr. Ivanovic said. “But the miracle cure turned out to be a disaster.”Eager to attract talent, Montenegro last year awarded citizenship to Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian and the founder of Ethereum, the most popular cryptocurrency platform.Mr. Buterin said he “never knowingly met or talked to Do Kwon, including through third parties,” and “never gave money to Europe Now.”In May, he hosted a blockchain conference in Montenegro that was attended by, in addition to high-tech enthusiasts, Mr. Spajic and the acting prime minister, Mr. Abazovic.The Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin was awarded Montenegrin citizenship as part of an effort to develop a crypto industry in the country.Michael Ciaglo/Getty ImagesMr. Spajic posted a photograph on Twitter of himself with Mr. Buterin, who is holding up his new Montenegrin passport, and the message: “We will bring the best people in the world to Montenegro.”Montenegro’s welcoming ways, however, also attracted George Cottrell, a British financier convicted of wire fraud in the United States, who later moved to Montenegro under a new name, George Co.Mr. Cottrell, according to officials, left Montenegro for London on June 9, soon after the police raided Salon Privé, a bar in the coastal resort town of Tivat that law enforcement officials believe is connected to him. It features gambling machines and a “cryptomat,” used for buying and trading digital currencies.Ratko Pantovic, Mr. Cottrell’s lawyer, who also represents the bar, said his British client had no connection to the gambling salon or the crypto industry.Montenegro’s acting interior minister, Filip Adzic, who oversaw the police raid in Tivat, said Mr. Cottrell had not been charged with any crime but was being investigated for involvement in possibly illegal crypto activities.Montenegro, Mr. Adzic said, needed to be careful with a business that, because it facilitates anonymous transactions, “is good for organized crime, good for financing terrorists and good for money laundering.”The police raided a bar in Tivat, Montenegro, that featured gambling machines and a “cryptomat,” used for buying and trading digital currencies.Savo Prelevic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAmerican and South Korean prosecutors want to examine three laptops and five cellphones seized by the authorities from Mr. Kwon at the time of his arrest for clues to what happened to billions of dollars invested in his now mostly worthless digital coins.Of more interest to Montenegrin authorities, however, is what they may contain relating to campaign financing and Mr. Kwon’s relationship with Mr. Spajic.In a court hearing on June 16, Mr. Kwon’s lawyers said their client denied having funded Mr. Spajic’s electoral campaign. Mr. Kwon’s letter, however, said that “other friends in the crypto industry” contributed.“I have evidence of these communications and contributions,” Mr. Kwon said in his letter.Mr. Spajic initially denied any connection to Mr. Kwon, but later acknowledged he had known him since 2018 and invested money with him on behalf of an investment fund he says he was working for in Singapore — “he cheated us,” Mr. Spajic said — and met him again late last year in Belgrade.That followed an announcement by South Korean prosecutors in September that Interpol, the global police organization, had issued a “red notice” for Mr. Kwon’s arrest. Mr. Spajic said he had met Mr. Kwon only because “we wanted our money back.”Mr. Kwon gave a different account, claiming in his letter that Mr. Spajic wanted to discuss campaign financing. He said Mr. Spajic, who was then planning to run for the presidency, explained that he was “raising few million USD for the upcoming campaign” and “asked me to make a contribution.” Mr. Kwon said he declined.Mr. Spajic said it was “absolutely false” that they discussed campaign financing.Milan Knezevic, leader of the pro-Russian bloc that finished second in the June 11 election, casts his ballot.Boris Pejovic/EPA, via ShutterstockMilan Knezevic, the leader of the pro-Russian bloc that finished second in the election, said he relished his group’s unexpectedly strong result, achieved in part because of the disruption caused by Mr. Kwon, but he still regretted that Montenegro had opened its arms to crypto mavens.It would have been better, Mr. Knezevic said, sitting in an office decorated with pictures of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, to have welcomed fighters from the Islamic State militant group.“At least with ISIS, you know what you are up against,” he said. “But we have no idea what these crypto people are really doing.”Alisa Dogramadzieva More