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The former president drew misleading comparisons to others, misconstrued the classification process and leveled inaccurate attacks at officials.Hours after pleading not guilty in a federal court in Miami to charges related to his handling of classified documents, former President Donald J. Trump defended his conduct on Tuesday with a string of familiar falsehoods.Appearing at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump drew misleading comparisons to other political figures, misconstrued the classification process and leveled inaccurate attacks at officials.Here’s a fact check of claims Mr. Trump made related to the inquiry.What Mr. Trump Said“Threatening me with 400 years in prison for possessing my own presidential papers, which just about every other president has done, is one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law.”False. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 governs the preservation and retention of official records of former presidents, and gives the National Archives and Records Administration complete ownership and control of presidential records. The law makes a distinction between official records and personal documents, and has applied to every president since Ronald Reagan.The agency has said that “it assumed physical and legal custody of the presidential records from the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, when those presidents left office.”Separately, after Mr. Trump repeatedly and misleadingly compared his handling of records to that of his immediate predecessor, the National Archives said in a statement that former President Barack Obama turned over his documents, classified and unclassified, as required by law. The agency has also said it is not aware of any missing boxes of presidential records from the Obama administration.What Mr. Trump Said“The decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president’s term and in the president’s sole discretion.”False. The Presidential Records Act defines what constitutes personal materials — such as diaries or political campaign documents — from official records. It does not give the president “sole discretion” in determining what is and is not a personal record. Under the law, a departing president is required to separate personal documents from official records before leaving office.F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August, more than a year after the general counsel of the National Archives requested the recovery of the materials and after months of repeated inquiries from officials at the agency and at the Justice Department.What Mr. Trump Said“I was supposed to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was raided by gun-toting F.B.I. agents.”False. The Presidential Records Act does not establish a process of negotiation between the president and the archives. The court-approved search of Mr. Trump’s Florida residence unfolded after he repeatedly resisted the government’s requests that he return the material, even after being subpoenaed.What Mr. Trump Said“Biden sent 1,850 boxes to the University of Delaware, making the search very, very difficult for anybody. And he refuses to give them up and he refuses to let people even look at them, and then they say how he’s behaving so nicely.”This is misleading. Joseph R. Biden Jr. donated 1,850 boxes of documents to the University of Delaware in 2012 from his tenure as a senator representing the state from 1973 to 2009. Unlike presidential documents, which must be released to the archives once a president leaves office, documents from members of Congress are not covered by the Presidential Records Act. It is not uncommon for senators and representatives to give such items to colleges, research institutions or historical facilities.The University of Delaware agreed not to give the public access to Mr. Biden’s documents from his time as senator until two years after he retired from public life. But the F.B.I. did search the collection in February as part of a separate special counsel investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of government documents and in cooperation with his legal team. The New York Times reported at the time that the material was still being analyzed but did not appear to contain any classified documents.What Mr. Trump Said“When caught, Hillary then deleted and acid-washed. Nobody does that because of the expense, but it’s pretty conclusive. Thirty-three thousand emails in defiance of a congressional subpoena already launched. The subpoena was there and she decided to delete, acid-wash and then smash and destroy her cellphones with a hammer. And then they say I participated in obstruction.”This is misleading. There are several key differences between Mr. Trump’s case and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state — which Mr. Trump also described inaccurately.Crucially, several official investigations have concluded that Mrs. Clinton did not systematically or deliberately mishandle classified material, and a 2018 inspector general report supported the F.B.I.’s decision not to charge Mrs. Clinton.In contrast, Mr. Trump is accused of mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to recover them and making false statements to officials. The indictment unsealed last week featured photographs of documents stored in sometimes haphazard ways, including boxes stacked in a shower and others piled on the stage of a ballroom that guests frequented.According to the F.B.I.’s inquiry into the matter, Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers provided about 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department in 2014 and instructed an employee to remove all personal emails older than 60 days. In 2015, after The Times reported Mrs. Clinton’s use of a personal email account, a Republican-led House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on American outposts in Benghazi, Libya, sent a subpoena requesting all emails she had in that account related to Libya.That same month, an employee working for the company that managed Mrs. Clinton’s server realized he did not actually delete the personal emails as instructed in 2014. He then used a free software program called BleachBit — not actual acid or chemical compounds — to delete about 30,000 personal emails.The F.B.I. found thousands of additional work-related emails that Mrs. Clinton did not turn over to the State Department, but the director of the bureau at the time, James B. Comey, said it found “no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.”Mrs. Clinton would almost certainly disagree with Mr. Trump’s assertion that the F.B.I. and the Justice Department “protected” her, and has said that Mr. Comey’s actions as well as Russian interference cost her the 2016 election.What Mr. Trump Said“He totally exonerated Mike Pence. I’m happy about that. Mike did nothing wrong, but he happened to have classified documents in his house. But they exonerated him. And Biden is a different story.”This is misleading. Classified documents were found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s home in Indiana in January and President Biden’s former office at a Washington think tank in November and his Delaware residence in January. The Justice Department declined to pursue charges against Mr. Pence, and the investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of materials is continuing.But those cases differ in several significant ways from Mr. Trump’s, particularly in the volume of documents found and in Mr. Pence’s and Mr. Biden’s response.About a dozen documents with classified markings were found at Mr. Pence’s home. The F.B.I. searched his home in February with his agreement and found one additional classified document. It is unclear how many classified documents were found in Mr. Biden’s possession, but his lawyers have said “a small number” were discovered at his former office and about a half-dozen at his Delaware home.In contrast, Mr. Trump stored “hundreds” of classified documents, according to the Justice Department’s indictment, which said some records included information about the country’s nuclear programs as well as “potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack.” In total, the government has retrieved more than 300 files with classified markings from his Florida home and private club.Representatives for Mr. Pence and Mr. Biden have said that they inadvertently kept those documents and quickly alerted the National Archives once they were discovered. Both men also cooperated with government officials in turning over the documents and appeared to have voluntarily complied with searches of their properties.In contrast, Mr. Trump repeatedly defied requests to return materials for months and, according to the indictment, played an active role in concealing classified documents from investigators. The archives alerted Mr. Trump in May 2021 that presidential documents were missing. Officials retrieved 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January 2022 but suspected that other records remained missing. Seven months later, F.B.I. agents searched the Florida property and recovered additional documents.What Mr. Trump Said“Unlike me, who had absolute declassification authority as president, Joe Biden as vice president had no authority to declassify and no right to possess the documents. He had no right.”This is misleading. Vice presidents do have the power to declassify certain material, though the scope of their declassification powers has not been explicitly tested in courts.Mr. Trump has previously insisted that he had the power to declassify material without needing to inform anyone. There are formal procedures for declassifying information, but whether presidents must abide by them is an unsettled legal issue, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service and the American Bar Association. A federal appeals court ruled in 2020 that “declassification, even by the president, must follow established procedures.” But the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on the matter.It is worth noting, though, that Mr. Trump followed these procedures for certain documents, like issuing a memorandum on the day before leaving office declassifying information related to the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia.Separately, legal experts have noted that the classification of information related to nuclear weapons or “restricted data” is governed by a separate legal framework entirely, the Atomic Energy Act. That law does not explicitly give the president the authority to declassify nuclear secrets unilaterally and establishes a strict process for declassification that involves several agencies. It is unclear whether documents stored at Mar-a-Lago included “restricted data.”Chris Cameron More

What if Mitch McConnell, at the close of his scalding speech on the Senate floor blaming Donald Trump for the riot that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, had promised to use his every last breath to ensure that Trump was convicted on impeachment charges and could never, ever become president again?What if Melania Trump, after the porn star Stormy Daniels said Trump had unprotected sex with her less than four months after Melania gave birth to their son, had thrown all of Trump’s clothes, golf clubs, MAGA hats and hair spray onto the White House lawn with this note, “Never come back, you despicable creep!”What if the influential evangelical leader Robert Jeffress, after Trump was caught on tape explaining that as a TV star he felt entitled to “grab” women in the most intimate places — or after Trump was found liable by a Manhattan jury of having done pretty much just that to E. Jean Carroll — declared that he would lead a campaign to ensure that anyone but Trump was elected in 2024 because Trump was a moral deviant whom Jeffress would not let babysit his two daughters, let alone the country?Where would statements and actions like those have left Kevin McCarthy, his knuckleheads in the House G.O.P. caucus, and other Republicans who now are defending Trump against the Justice Department indictment? Would they be so eager to proclaim Trump’s innocence? Would they be raging against Tuesday’s hearing in Miami? Would they be claiming, falsely, that President Biden was indicting Trump, when they know full well that the president doesn’t have the power to indict anyone?I doubt it. But I know that all of these questions are rhetorical. None of those people have the character to rise to these ethical challenges and take on Trump and what he has done to break our political system. Trump is like a drug dealer who thrives in a broken neighborhood, getting everyone hooked on his warped values. That is why he is doing everything he can to break our national neighborhood in two fundamental ways.For starters, Trump has consistently tried to denigrate people who have demonstrated character and courage, by labeling them losers and weaklings. This comes easy to Trump because he is a man utterly without character — devoid of any sense of ethics or loyalty to any value system or person other than himself. And for him, politics is a blood sport in which you bludgeon the other guys and gals — whether they are in your party or not — with smears and nicknames and lies until they get out of your way.Trump debuted this strategy early on with John McCain — a veteran, a man who never broke in five-plus years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, a man of real character. Do you remember what Trump said about McCain at a family leadership summit in Ames, Iowa, on July 18, 2015?When McCain ran for president, “I supported him,” Trump told the audience. “He lost. He let us down. But he lost. So I never liked him much after that, because I don’t like losers.” When the audience laughed, the moderator, the pollster Frank Luntz, interjected, “But he’s a war hero!”Trump — who wangled a dubious medical deferment to avoid the Vietnam War draft — then responded: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” Later that day, Trump retweeted a web post headlined, “Donald Trump: John McCain Is ‘A Loser.’”So part of the way Trump tries to break our system is to redefine the qualities of a leader — at least in the G.O.P. A leader is not someone like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney, people prepared to risk their careers to defend the truth, serve the country and uphold the Constitution. No, a leader is someone like him, someone who is ready to win at any cost — to the country, to the Constitution and to the example we set for our children and our allies.And when that is your definition of leadership, of winning, people of character like McCain, Cheney and Romney are in your way. You need to strip everyone around you of character, and make everything about securing power and money. That is why so many people who entered Trump’s orbit since 2015 have walked away muddied. And that’s why I knew that all the questions I asked earlier were rhetorical.The second way that Trump is trying to break our system was on display on Tuesday in Miami, where he followed his appearance as a federal criminal defendant with a political meet-and-greet at a Cuban restaurant. There, once again, Trump tried to discredit the rules of the game that would restrain him and his limitless appetite for power for power’s sake.How does he do that? First, he gets everyone around him — and, eventually, the vast majority of those in his party — to stop insisting that Trump abide by ethical norms. His family members and party colleagues have grown adept at running away from reporters’ microphones after every Trump outrage.But precisely because key political allies, church leaders and close family members will not call out Trump for his moral and legal transgressions — which would make his 2024 re-election bid unthinkable and hasten his departure from the political scene — we have to rely solely on the courts to defend the rules of the game.And when that happens, it puts tremendous stress on our judicial system and our democracy itself, because the decision to prosecute or not is always a judgment call. And when those judgment calls have to be rendered at times by judges or prosecutors appointed by Democrats — which is how our system works — it gives Trump and his flock the perfect opening to denounce the whole process as a “witch hunt.”And when such behavior happens over and over across a broad front — because Trump won’t stop at red lights anywhere and just keeps daring us to ignore his transgressions or indict him so he can cry bias — we end up eroding the two most important pillars of our democratic system: the belief in the independence of our judiciary that ensures no one is above the law, and the belief in our ability to transfer power peacefully and legitimately.Just consider one scene in Trump’s indictment. It’s after a federal grand jury subpoenaed him in May 2022, to produce all classified material in his possession. Notes written by his own lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, quote Trump as saying: “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t. … What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them? Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”Better for whom? Only one man. And that’s why I repeat: Trump has not put us here by accident. He actually wants to break our system, because he and people like him only thrive in a broken system.So he keeps pushing and pushing our system to its breaking point — where rules are for suckers, norms are for fools, basic truths are malleable and men and women of high character are banished.This is exactly what would-be dictators try to do: Flood the zone with lies so the people trust only them and the truth is only what they say it is.It is impossible to exaggerate what a dangerous moment this is for our country.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

In the days leading up to his arraignment in Miami, former President Donald J. Trump and several of his allies called on supporters to rally to his side.Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longtime political adviser, called for protests, insisting that they should be peaceful. A Miami chapter of the Proud Boys — long associated with Mr. Stone — echoed the invitation, posting a flier on its Telegram page last week advertising an event at the federal courthouse on Tuesday morning.All of this raised the level of concern among civic leaders in the city, who issued calls for protesters to remain peaceful. In the end, their fears did not materialize. It did not appear that any Proud Boys showed up and about 500 people, including one with a pig’s head on a spear, answered Mr. Trump’s call to action.The atmosphere outside the building was circuslike. There was the Uncle Sam who sped around the courthouse grounds on a two-wheeled hoverboard singing pro-Trump songs, the woman with a unicorn horn affixed to her forehead who wore an “Aunt-ifa” shirt and chanted derisively about the former president, and the man in a black-and-white jail jumpsuit carrying a sign that read, “Lock Him Up.”That man in the jumpsuit later instigated the most hectic moment of the day, when he ran in front of Mr. Trump’s S.U.V. as it left the courthouse. The man, who was not immediately identified, was pushed out of the way by the police and later taken into custody. As officers took him away, a crowd of Trump supporters used the message on his sign to taunt him: “Lock him up!”As he left, Mr. Trump, sitting in the back seat of the S.U.V., flashed a thumbs up to supporters, some of whom sprinted after the vehicle as they cheered. He headed to the famous Cuban restaurant Versailles, where a smaller crowd of supporters awaited him, a rabbi and minister prayed for him and he briefly shook hands and posed for photos.It was the second time this year that Mr. Trump had called for protests at a court appearance, only to have his summons receive a kind of fizzled response. When he was arraigned in a separate case in April in Manhattan, the New York City Police Department mobilized in force over concerns about unrest, but the chaos never occurred.In Miami, too, on a blazingly hot day thick with humidity, the crowd was calmer than some had feared. Miami’s police chief, Manuel Morales, faced tough questions from reporters a day earlier on whether he was doing enough to keep the area safe during the court proceeding and why he did not plan to separate anti-Trump and pro-Trump demonstrators.“We know there is a potential of things taking a turn for the worse, but that’s not the Miami way,” he said in response.The Proud Boys, who were founded during Mr. Trump’s first campaign for office, have rallied for years on his behalf, often violently. During the 2020 election, Mr. Trump notably called out the group, urging them during a presidential debate to “stand back and standby.”Scores of Proud Boys took part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and federal investigators cracked down hard on them in the aftermath. The group’s former leader, Enrique Tarrio, who is from Miami, was convicted of seditious conspiracy along with three of his lieutenants for their role in the attack. Dozens of other Proud Boys have either been charged or questioned by the authorities.It is possible that the group never intended to take part in an event in Miami. It is also possible that the group has simply had enough of supporting Mr. Trump and suffering the consequences. After the violence at the Capitol, some high-ranking Proud Boys disavowed Mr. Trump, expressing anger at him for having left them standing on a limb.As temperatures reached nearly 90 degrees by lunchtime, trucks circled around the courthouse with flags and loudspeakers, and several people on foot with selfie sticks broadcast live video streams to thousands of viewers while weaving in and out of the crowds.“This is craaaazy,” shouted one pro-Trump streamer, Rafael Gomez, as he walked among the palm trees in front of the tall, shimmering courthouse. “Welcome to the banana republic of Miami!”Also seeking to capture an audience were more established conservative figures, such as the Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who held a news conference in front of the courthouse defending Mr. Trump and said that he would pardon his campaign rival if elected.In an interview after his news conference, Mr. Ramaswamy said that despite his defense, he would not have done what Mr. Trump is accused of. “I wouldn’t have taken the boxes,” he said. “I’m not a memento guy. Not my style.”The police largely stayed out of the way of the demonstrators, observing from close by while a helicopter circled overhead and jumping into the crowd only a few times when more hostile arguments sprouted up.At one point, however, Homeland Security and Miami Police Department officers urgently closed in and began clearing a large area of the courthouse grounds. They investigated a large TV that had been affixed to a pole on the sidewalk and that bore a message criticizing what it called “the Communist-controlled news media.” About an hour later, the police removed the television and reopened the area.Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami, a Republican who is mulling his own presidential bid, arrived in the early afternoon wearing a Miami Police Department polo shirt. He hugged several Trump supporters before shaking hands with a line of police officers. “I think, up until now, it’s a peaceful demonstration for people exercising their constitutional rights to express themselves, which we love about this country,” he said.Nearby, Carlos Brito, 66, sold American flags for $5. Mr. Brito, who immigrated from Cuba in 1980, said he supported Mr. Trump and criticized President Biden for sending money to support Ukraine while Americans struggled financially. “Look how much a cup of coffee costs here,” he said. “We need help here at home.”Scott Linnen, 61, a Trump critic from Miami, said he came to the courthouse because he had grown distraught over the direction of the country. As a gay man, he said he had seen a rise in anti-L.G.B.T.Q. rhetoric, hate speech and extremist behavior on the right.“This man tried to overthrow the 247-year-old American experiment,” he said of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “I don’t understand why more people’s hair isn’t on fire.”Luke Broadwater More

The former president has pleaded not guilty to charges related to allegedly hoarding government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort and frustrating efforts by the federal government to retrieve them at his arraignment in Miami, Reuters reports

Trump pleads not guilty to 37 federal criminal counts in Mar-a-Lago case More

Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and activist who is running against Donald J. Trump for the Republican nomination, told reporters outside the courthouse in Miami on Tuesday that he had reached out to other presidential candidates to urge them to commit to pardoning the former president if they win in 2024.Mr. Ramaswamy, who has been among Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters since the indictment, said he had floated the idea of such a pledge to Mr. Trump’s main Republican rivals, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, as well as Democrats challenging President Biden, like Robert Kennedy Jr.Speaking outside the federal court building where Mr. Trump was scheduled to appear hours later, Mr. Ramaswamy was often drowned out by competing chants between Trump supporters and demonstrators who had come to celebrate the indictment.Mr. Ramaswamy said that even though he could benefit politically from the case, he believed the prospect of the Republican front-runner facing an extended prosecution and possibly jail time was dangerous for democracy.“It would be a lot easier for me in this race if he were eliminated,” he said.He also announced that he had submitted a Freedom of Information Act request seeking communications between Mr. Biden, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Jack Smith, the special counsel in the documents case, to search for evidence of wrongdoing.Mr. Ramaswamy claimed, without evidence, that the news media had been remiss in not investigating any improper ties between the White House and the Justice Department. He said it was “a shame” that a competitor in the race had to do so.While Mr. Ramaswamy repeatedly struggled to speak over the crowd, several of Mr. Trump’s supporters who gathered to watch yelled at Mr. Ramaswamy to drop out, while others hurled taunts about his business career and his ties to corporate donors.At one point, an aide handed Mr. Ramaswamy a microphone, which did not work. Moments later, a large group watching peeled away to watch a confrontation between demonstrators. More

Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat and The New York Times Audio app includes podcasts, narrated articles from the newsroom and other publishers, as well as exclusive new shows — including this one — which we’re making available to readers for a limited time. Download the audio app here.For the second time in recent months, Donald Trump has been indicted. This time, the charges were filed by the special counsel appointed to investigate accusations that the former president took classified documents from the White House and repeatedly resisted efforts to return them.On this episode of “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts discuss what the 49-page indictment reveals about Trump and his view of the law, and its impact on the Republican primary race.The New York TimesThoughts? Email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice mail message at (212) 556-7440. We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.Follow our hosts on Twitter: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) and Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT) and Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Stephanie Joyce. Mixing by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Isaac Jones, Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who is now a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, at a campaign event in Des Moines this month.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesSenator Tim Scott of South Carolina during a hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committee in Washington last month.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWhile most of former President Donald J. Trump’s Republican rivals have closed ranks around him since his indictment in the classified documents case, two of them — Nikki Haley and Tim Scott — have begun to move away from solely denouncing the Justice Department.In a Fox News interview on Monday, Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor who was an ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, continued to claim that the Justice Department and F.B.I. had lost credibility with the American people, but she also acknowledged the seriousness of the charges against Mr. Trump.“Two things can be true at the same time,” Ms. Haley said, adding that if the indictment was accurate, “President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security.”Ms. Haley’s initial statement on Friday, one day after Mr. Trump’s federal indictment, was an unflagging defense of her onetime boss.“This is not how justice should be pursued in our country,” she said at the time on Twitter. “The American people are exhausted by the prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics.”Mr. Scott, a senator who is also from South Carolina and, like Ms. Haley, significantly trails Mr. Trump in the Republican polls, similarly shifted his tone.During a campaign appearance on Monday in Spartanburg, S.C., Mr. Scott acknowledged the gravity of the charges against Mr. Trump while accusing the Justice Department and President Biden of targeting Republicans for prosecution.He described it as a “serious case with serious allegations,” according to The Post and Courier newspaper of Charleston, S.C.But in Mr. Scott’s initial reaction on Thursday, on Fox News, he focused solely on claiming that the Justice Department had become weaponized against Republicans.“Today what we see is a justice system where the scales are weighted,” Mr. Scott said then.Their stances are still far removed from that of another 2024 contender, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has sought to position himself as the candidate most willing to attack Mr. Trump.Mr. Christie laced into Mr. Trump again during a CNN town-hall event on Monday night, calling him “angry” and “vengeful” and saying that he believed the indictment was “a very tight, very detailed, evidence-laden indictment, and the conduct in there is awful.” More

In the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Republican officeholders had three choices.They could stick with and defend Donald Trump and his riotous allies, and if they were members of the House or Senate, they could vote in support of the effort to overturn the results of the election, in a show of loyalty to the president and, in effect, the rioters.Or they could criticize and condemn the president as conservative dissenters, using their voices in an attempt to put the Republican Party back on a more traditional path.Or they could leave. They could quit the party and thus show the full extent of their anger and revulsion.But we know what actually happened. A few Republicans left and a few complained, but most remained loyal to the party and the president with nary a peep to make about the fact that Trump was willing to bring an end to constitutional government in the United States if it meant he could stay in office.We have been watching this dynamic play out a second time with Trump’s indictment on federal espionage charges for mishandling classified documents as a private citizen. The most prominent Republican officeholders wasted no time with their full-throated denunciations of the indictment, the Department of Justice and the Biden administration.“Let’s be clear about what’s happening: Joe Biden is weaponizing his Department of Justice against his own political rival,” said Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican leader in the House. “This sham indictment is the continuation of the endless political persecution of Donald Trump.”“This indictment certainly looks like an unequal application of justice,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, who serves as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. “You can’t help but ask why this is happening. It feels political, and it’s rotten.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that the indictment was a “weaponization of federal law enforcement” that “represents a mortal threat to a free society,” and former vice president Mike Pence said he was “deeply troubled to see this indictment move forward” and vowed to “clean house” at the highest levels of the Justice Department if elected president.The only notable congressional Republican to really condemn Trump was Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. “By all appearances, the Justice Department and special counsel have exercised due care, affording Mr. Trump the time and opportunity to avoid charges that would not generally have been afforded to others,” he said in a statement. “Mr. Trump brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents, but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so.”All of this is typical. With vanishingly few exceptions, Republicans are unwilling to discipline Trump or withdraw their support for his political leadership or even just criticize him for his actions. The most we’ve seen, Romney aside, is a nod to the fact that these are serious charges. This is a “serious case with serious allegations,” said Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who nonetheless added that this prosecution represented a “double standard” and that “You can’t protect Democrats while targeting and hunting Republicans.”There are several ways to think about most Republicans’ reluctance to break with Trump in the face of his egregious lawbreaking and contempt for constitutional government, but I want to focus on two in particular.The first concerns something that exists wherever there is a relationship between an individual and an institution: the loyalty of the individual to the institution. Political parties in particular are designed to inculcate a sense of loyalty and shared commitment among their members. This is especially true for officeholders, who exist in a web of relationships and obligations that rest on a set of common interests and beliefs.Loyalty makes it less likely that a dissenter just walks away, especially when there isn’t a plausible alternative. Few Trump-critical Republicans, for instance, are willing to become Democrats. What’s more, as the economist A.O. Hirschman observed in his classic text, “Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States,” strong loyalty to an institution like a political party might lead a dissenting or disapproving individual to hold on to his or her membership even more tightly, for fear that exit might open the door to even worse outcomes.“The ultimate in unhappiness and paradoxical loyalist behavior,” Hirschman wrote, “occurs when the public evil produced by the organization promises to accelerate or to reach some intolerable level as the organization deteriorates; then, in line with the reasoning just presented, the decision to exit will become ever more difficult the longer one fails to exit. The conviction that one has to stay on to prevent the worst grows stronger all the time.”Assuming this is all true, how then do we explain the reluctance to criticize or condemn? For that, we can look to the history of the modern Republican Party, stretching back to Richard Nixon. And what do we see? We see a pattern of presidential criminality and contempt for the Constitution, backed in each instance by most Republican officeholders and politicians.For Nixon, it was Watergate. For Ronald Reagan, it was Iran-contra. For George W. Bush, it was the sordid effort to fight a war in Iraq and the disgraceful use of torture against detainees. For Donald Trump, it was practically his entire presidency.Most things in life, and especially a basic respect for democracy and the rule of law, have to be cultivated. What is striking about the Republican Party is the extent to which it has, for decades now, cultivated the opposite — a highly instrumental view of our political system, in which rules and laws are legitimate only insofar as they allow for the acquisition and concentration of power in Republican hands.Most Republicans won’t condemn Trump. There are his millions of ultra-loyal voters, yes. And there are the challenges associated with breaking from the consensus of your political party, yes. But there is also the reality that Trump is the apotheosis of a propensity for lawlessness within the Republican Party. He is what the party and its most prominent figures have been building toward for nearly half a century. I think he knows it and I think they do too.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