Elections

If Trump is indicted, this week will be unlike any other in American politics.Shortly before a grand jury in New York State indicts somebody, the person typically gets a chance to testify to the jury. The opportunity is a sign that the investigation is wrapping up and that prosecutors are giving the target a chance to tell his or her side of the story. Typically, the target declines to do so and waits to mount a defense until later.In recent weeks, Manhattan prosecutors invited Donald Trump to testify to a grand jury that is looking into his undisclosed payment of hush money during the 2016 campaign to Stormy Daniels, a porn star with whom he allegedly had an affair. Many legal observers interpreted that step as a sign that the jury could indict Trump soon. Over the weekend, Trump said that he expected to be arrested this week.If that happens, it would be an unprecedented event. No other U.S. president, sitting or former, has ever been charged with a crime.In today’s newsletter, we’ll help you prepare for a week that may be unlike any other in American political history. We will walk you through the issues in the Manhattan case and examine the arguments for and against charging Trump. We’ll also lay out the potential political consequences for him, the other 2024 Republican candidates and President Biden.Hush money, the detailsShortly before the 2016 presidential election, Daniels received a $130,000 payment in return for staying silent about a decade-old claim of an affair with Trump. The payment came from Michael Cohen, then Trump’s lawyer, and Trump reimbursed Cohen with personal checks while Trump was president. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to crimes related to the payment and served a prison sentence.(Here’s the fuller story behind the payoff, by our colleague Michael Rothfeld.)If the grand jury does bring charges against Trump, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, will oversee the case. And Bragg will likely accuse Trump of covering up the reimbursements to Cohen. Falsifying business records can be a felony in New York if done to conceal another crime. In this case, the other crime could be a violation of election law: Cohen’s payment to Daniels. The most likely charge Trump faces is punishable by up to four years in prison.Why charge him?There are two main arguments for doing so: the evidence and the larger context of Trump’s behavior.The evidence that Trump broke the law seems substantial: It includes testimony from Cohen and others, as well as Trump’s personal checks to Cohen. The hush money and the cover-up of it, in the final weeks of a close presidential race, seem to have been a brazen violation of campaign finance rules. To overlook the violation could encourage future candidates to ignore the law, too.It’s true that prosecutors have typically treated presidents with deference, but Trump is not like any other former president. He has repeatedly shown disdain for laws and traditions that predecessors from both parties followed: He told thousands of lies while in office; refused to participate in a peaceful transfer of power; used the power of the presidency to benefit his company; pressured a foreign leader to smear a political rival; and much more. At a certain point, the rule of law becomes meaningless if anybody can repeatedly ignore it.Why not charge him?There are also two main arguments for not charging Trump in the New York case:This case would rely on combining two charges — falsifying business records to cover up a campaign finance violation — that New York prosecutors have never before combined in this way. “The case is not a slam dunk, to be sure,” said our colleague Ben Protess, who has been covering the case. (But Ben added that the charges could resonate with a Manhattan jury.) Some legal experts believe that the first criminal charges filed against a former president should not depend on a novel prosecutorial approach.The federal government has a process — honed over decades, by both Democratic and Republican lawyers — for investigating presidents and candidates. (Trump, of course, is also a 2024 presidential candidate.) Local prosecutors have spent far less time thinking about the legal and political impact of doing so. In today’s polarized political environment, it’s not hard to imagine that an indictment in this case could lower the bar for partisan local prosecutors to bring future cases against national politicians.The political impactIn the short term, an indictment seems likely to help Trump politically. It will draw attention to him, and he often performs best when he has a foil.As our colleague Maggie Haberman told us: “I do think an indictment, if it happens, will galvanize his supporters. He will describe the case as trivial, a point some Democrats have argued, and he will insist it’s all part of a broader Democratic Party conspiracy against him to help President Biden in his re-election effort. He’s already fund-raising off it, and he will make selling this to his supporters as another instance of him being victimized central to his campaign.”Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, agreed: “Many G.O.P. elites will defend Trump, and there may even be some limited short-term upside here,” Nate said.But Nate also thinks the risks to Trump’s 2024 campaign ultimately seem bigger than the potential benefits. An indictment — on top of Trump’s 2020 loss and the poor performance of his allies in the 2022 midterms — could become one more reason for some Republican voters to look for an alternative. “I think there’s plainly much more downside for Trump than upside,” Nate said.When Maggie asked Liam Donovan, a veteran Republican strategist, for his view, he made a different but related point: An indictment may help Trump in the primary and hurt him in a campaign against Biden. “Legal escalation would be a significant blow in a general election where he needs to broaden his support, but any event that polarizes the primary in terms of pro- or anti-Trump sentiment only serves to harden his core support,” Donovan said.For moreThe grand jury may hear today from a critic attacking Cohen’s credibility.Republicans, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are rushing to Trump’s defense.Trump’s allies are pressuring Ron DeSantis, his rival, to speak out or risk alienating Republicans.New York officials are drafting security plans for potential protests. But McCarthy has urged people to stay calm if Trump is arrested, Politico reports.Trump is also facing a few other inquiries: into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia; his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol; and his potential obstruction of an investigation into classified documents.Here are charges, including contempt of court and bookkeeping fraud, that could arise from the investigations.THE LATEST NEWSEconomyThe Credit Suisse headquarters in Zurich.Lea Meienberg for The New York TimesThe Swiss bank UBS will buy its rival Credit Suisse for $3.2 billion. Switzerland brokered the agreement to try to contain a growing economic crisis.Investors said the deal valued Credit Suisse so cheaply that it could prompt a reassessment of other banks’ value.The Fed and other countries’ central banks are working together to steady the global financial system by making the dollar available for lending.In the years before Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, it received repeated warnings from the Fed.InternationalA photograph released by state media when Vladimir Putin met Xi Jinping in Beijing last year.Sputnik, via ReutersXi Jinping, China’s leader, is visiting Russia today. He said he wants to broker peace with Ukraine, but the West sees the visit as a show of support for Vladimir Putin.The U.S. is trying to limit Russia’s growing influence in Africa, starting with Chad.America invaded Iraq 20 years ago today. The war haunts the U.S. government as a lesson in failed policymaking.Sulaiman Fayadh Sulaiman, who was shot and paralyzed as a 3-year-old in Iraq, belongs to a generation of Iraqis traumatized by the war. Read their stories.Other Big StoriesAvalanches killed two people in Colorado.Burning space-station equipment lit up the sky in California as it re-entered the atmosphere.A woman named an Olympic rowing legend in a sex abuse accusation. OpinionsGail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Silicon Valley Bank and Ron DeSantis’s views on Ukraine.Banking is a critical form of public infrastructure that we pretend is a private act of risk management, Ezra Klein writes.MORNING READSGolf between calls: Working from home has created an afternoon-fun economy.Metropolitan Diary: A woman in a feather hat feeding her Pomeranian cannoli.Quiz time: Take our latest news quiz and share your score (the average was 8.3).Advice from Wirecutter: How to find the best running shoes for you.Lives Lived: Cruz Miguel Ortíz Cuadra was a food historian and Puerto Rico’s leading gastronomy expert, defining the island’s cuisine. He died at 67.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICMississippi forward Madison Scott, right, shooting.Josie Lepe/Associated PressAn upset: Stanford fell to Ole Miss in the women’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournament yesterday. It’s the first time a No. 1 seed has missed the Sweet 16 since 2009.Familiar loss: Kansas State knocked Kentucky out of the men’s tournament, fueling simmering resentment between Kentucky’s coach and fan base.Team U.S.A. advances: The Americans will face either Mexico or Japan in the World Baseball Classic final after last night’s 14-2 romp over Cuba. A win would give Team U.S.A. back-to-back titles.ARTS AND IDEAS Ice in Menomonie, Wis.Erinn SpringerThe sound of meltingScientists who study the climate often record the sounds that ice makes, like the roar of glaciers as they glide and contract. The sounds are so intense that they have become a music genre, one that researchers and artists hope can help people understand global warming in a visceral way.“When people like me start talking about melting ice, it seems so far-off and unconnected from our everyday lives,” said Grant Deane, a researcher at the University of California‌‌, San Diego. “Music can make those connections.”Hear it: Listen to a Spotify playlist of ice music.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJohn Kernick for The New York TimesSticky tomato meets crisp cheese in this cheesy white bean-tomato bake. It’s one of the recipes that kids love, a collection of dishes nominated by parents.What to Read“The Nursery” paints an honest, frightening and claustrophobic picture of new motherhood.TravelHotels designed for a spring getaway.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was bullfrog. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Tremble (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. The original World Cup soccer trophy was stolen 57 years ago today in London. A dog named Pickles found it wrapped in newspaper on the ground a week later.Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about TikTok.Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at [email protected] up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

Douglass Mackey tried to trick Black people into thinking they could vote by text in the Clinton-Trump presidential election, prosecutors said.The images appeared on Twitter in late 2016 just as the presidential campaign was entering its final stretch. Some featured the message “vote for Hillary” and the phrases “avoid the line” and “vote from home.”Aimed at Democratic voters, and sometimes singling out Black people, the messages were actually intended to help Donald J. Trump, not Hillary Clinton. The goal, federal prosecutors said, was to suppress votes for Ms. Clinton by persuading her supporters to falsely believe they could cast presidential ballots by text message.The misinformation campaign was carried out by a group of conspirators, prosecutors said, including a man in his 20s who called himself Ricky Vaughn. On Monday he will go on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn under his real name, Douglass Mackey, after being charged with conspiring to spread misinformation designed to deprive others of their right to vote.“The defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution,” Nicholas L. McQuaid, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in 2021 when charges against Mr. Mackey were announced. Prosecutors have said that Mr. Mackey, who went to Middlebury College in Vermont and said he lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, used hashtags and memes as part of his deception and outlined his strategies publicly on Twitter and with co-conspirators in private Twitter group chats.“Obviously we can win Pennsylvania,” Mr. Mackey said on Twitter, using one of his pseudonymous accounts less than a week before the election, according to a complaint and affidavit. “The key is to drive up turnout with non-college whites, and limit black turnout.”That tweet, court papers said, came a day after Mr. Mackey tweeted an image showing a Black woman in front of a sign supporting Ms. Clinton. That tweet told viewers they could vote for Ms. Clinton by text message.Prosecutors said nearly 5,000 people texted the number shown in the deceptive images, adding that the images stated they had been paid for by the Clinton campaign and had been viewed by people in the New York City area.Mr. Mackey’s trial is expected to provide a window into a small part of what the authorities have described as broad efforts to sway the 2016 election through lies and disinformation. While some of those attempts were orchestrated by Russian security services, others were said to have emanated from American internet trolls.People whose names may surface during the trial or who are expected to testify include a man who tweeted about Jews and Black people and was then disinvited from the DeploraBall, a far-right event in Washington, D.C., the night before Mr. Trump’s inauguration; a failed congressional candidate from Wisconsin; and an obscure federal cooperator who will be allowed to testify under a code name.As the trial has approached, people sympathetic to Mr. Mackey have cast his case as part of a political and cultural war, a depiction driven in part by precisely the sort of partisan social media-fueled effort that he is accused of engineering.Mr. Mackey’s fans have portrayed him as a harmless prankster who is being treated unfairly by the state for engaging in a form of free expression. That notion, perhaps predictably, has proliferated on Twitter, advanced by people using some of the same tools that prosecutors said Mr. Mackey used to disseminate lies. Mackey supporters have referred to him on social media as a “meme martyr” and spread a meme showing him wearing a red MAGA hat and accompanied by the hashtag “#FreeRicky.”Some tweets about Mr. Mackey from prominent figures have included apocalyptic-sounding language. The Fox personality Tucker Carlson posted a video of himself on Twitter calling the trial “the single greatest assault on free speech and human rights in this country’s modern history.”Joe Lonsdale, a founder of Palantir Technologies, retweeted an assertion that Mr. Mackey was being “persecuted by the Biden DOJ for posting memes” and added: “This sounds concerning.” Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, replied with a one word affirmation: “Yeah.”Mr. Mackey is accused of participating in private direct message groups on Twitter called “Fed Free Hatechat,” “War Room” and “Infowars Madman” to discuss how to influence the election.Prosecutors said people in those groups discussed sharing memes suggesting that celebrities were supporting Mr. Trump and that Ms. Clinton would start wars and draft women to fight them.One exchange in the Madman group centered on an image that falsely told opponents of Brexit that they could vote “remain” in that British referendum through Facebook or Twitter, according to investigators. One participant in the group asked whether they could make something similar for Ms. Clinton, investigators wrote, adding that another replied: “Typical that all the dopey minorities fell for it.”Last summer, defense lawyers asked that Mr. Mackey’s case be dismissed, referring to Twitter as a “no-holds-barred-free-for-all” and saying “the allegedly deceptive memes” had been protected by the First Amendment as satirical speech.They wrote to the court that it was “highly unlikely” that the memes had fooled any voters and added that any harm was in any event “far outweighed by the chilling of the marketplace of ideas where consumers can assess the value of political expression as provocation, satire, commentary, or otherwise.”Prosecutors say that Mr. Mackey focused on “intentional spreading of false information calculated to mislead and misinform voters about how, where and when to cast a vote in a federal election.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesProsecutors countered that illegal conduct is not protected by the First Amendment merely because it is carried out by language and added that the charge against Mr. Mackey was not based on his political viewpoint or advocacy. Rather, they wrote, it was focused on “intentional spreading of false information calculated to mislead and misinform voters about how, where and when to cast a vote in a federal election.”Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis ruled that the case should continue, saying it was “about conspiracy and injury, not speech” and adding that Mr. Mackey’s contention that his speech was protected as satire was “a question of fact reserved for the jury.”The prosecution’s star witness is likely to be a man known as Microchip, a shadowy online figure who spread misinformation about the 2016 election, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.Microchip was a prominent player in alt-right Twitter around the time of the election, and Judge Garaufis allowed him to testify under his online handle in part because prosecutors say he is helping the F.B.I. with several other covert investigations. Sunday, the case was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly.In court papers filed last month, prosecutors said they intended to ask the witness to explain to the jury how Mr. Mackey and his allies used Twitter direct messaging groups to come up with “deceptive images discussing the time, place, and manner of voting.”One of the people whom Microchip might mention from the stand is Anthime Gionet, better known by his Twitter name, Baked Alaska; he attended the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017. He was barred from the DeploraBall after sending a tweet that included stereotypes about Jews and Black people.In January, Mr. Gionet was sentenced to two months in prison for his role in storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. More

Prosecutors in New York, Georgia and the Justice Department face complex choices about what crimes to charge if they decide to indict Donald Trump.WASHINGTON — Prosecutors like to say that they investigate crimes, not people. The looming decision by the Manhattan district attorney about whether to indict former President Donald J. Trump on charges related to an alleged hush money payment to a porn actress is highlighting the complexity of the legal calculations being made by prosecutors in New York, Georgia and the Justice Department as they examine Mr. Trump’s conduct on a number of fronts.The investigations — which also focus on Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents after leaving office — are confronting prosecutors with tough choices. They must decide whether and how to charge not just Mr. Trump, but also associates who could face jeopardy for actions to which he was not a direct party, like mail or wire fraud for communications that he did not participate in.The publicly known understanding of the evidence is incomplete. It is not clear, for example, in several instances what facts investigators have been able to gather about Mr. Trump’s personal knowledge, directions and intentions related to several of the matters.Here is a look at some of the criminal laws that different prosecutors appear to be weighing and how they might apply to Mr. Trump’s actions.Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000.Markus Schreiber/Associated PressThe Stormy Daniels Hush Money PaymentOverviewAlvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, appears to be nearing a decision about whether to charge Mr. Trump with a crime related to his $130,000 hush money payment just before the 2016 election to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who has said they had an extramarital affair. Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, sent the money to Ms. Daniels, and the Trump Organization reimbursed him over the course of 2017, according to a 2018 federal court filing in Mr. Cohen’s case. Mr. Trump’s business concealed the true purpose of the payments, the filing said, by recording them as having been for a legal retainer that did not exist.Potential charge: Bookkeeping fraudThe New York Times has reported that the case may include a potential charge of falsifying business records under Article 175 of the New York Penal Law. A conviction for a felony version of bookkeeping fraud carries a sentence of up to four years.To prove that Mr. Trump committed that offense, prosecutors would seemingly need evidence showing that he had knowingly caused subordinates to make a false entry in his company’s records “with intent to defraud.” For the action to be a felony rather than a misdemeanor, prosecutors would also need to show that Mr. Trump falsified the business records with the intention of committing, aiding or concealing a second crime.The public understanding of Mr. Bragg’s theory of the case remains murky and incomplete. The district attorney’s office has reportedly weighed invoking alleged campaign-finance violations as that intended second crime, which could raise complications. Among other things, presidential elections are governed by federal law, and it is not clear whether Mr. Bragg has found a theory by which a state campaign law covered Mr. Trump’s actions, or if a state prosecutor can cite a law over which he lacks jurisdiction. It remains possible that Mr. Bragg has obtained nonpublic evidence of some other intended offense, like if there was any initial intention to deduct the payments as a business expense on state tax returns.Bookkeeping fraud has a two-year statute of limitations as a misdemeanor and a five-year one as a felony, both of which would normally have expired for payments made to Mr. Cohen in 2017. But New York law extends those limits to cover periods when a defendant was continuously out of state, as when Mr. Trump was while living in the White House or at his home in Florida. In addition, during the pandemic, New York’s statute of limitations was extended by more than a year.Mr. Trump has claimed — without evidence — that he declassified all the files taken to Mar-a-Lago.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesThe Mar-a-Lago DocumentsOverviewJack Smith, a special counsel for the federal Justice Department, is investigating matters related to Mr. Trump’s handling of several hundred documents marked as classified that he kept at his Florida club and home, Mar-a-Lago, after leaving office, and how Mr. Trump resisted efforts by the government to retrieve all of those files. After the Justice Department obtained a subpoena for all remaining files marked as classified, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, M. Evan Corcoran, turned over some while helping to draft a statement falsely saying those were all that remained. In August, the F.B.I. executed a search warrant and found 103 more, including in Mr. Trump’s desk.Prosecutors last week persuaded a federal judge that Mr. Corcoran should be compelled to answer more questions from a grand jury investigating the documents matter, notwithstanding attorney-client privilege. That means the judge agreed with prosecutors that the situation met the threshold for an exception for lawyer communications or work that apparently helped further a crime.Potential charge: Unauthorized retention of national security documentsOne of the charges the F.B.I. listed in its affidavit for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was Section 793(e) of Title 18, a provision of the Espionage Act. Prosecutors would have to show that Mr. Trump knew he was still in possession of the documents after leaving the White House and failed to comply when the government asked him to return them and then subpoenaed him. The theoretical penalty is up to 10 years per such document.Prosecutors would also have to show that the documents related to the national defense, that they were closely held and that their disclosure could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary. Although Mr. Trump has claimed — without evidence — that he declassified all the files taken to Mar-a-Lago, prosecutors would not need to prove that they were still classified because the Espionage Act predates the classification system and does not refer to it as an element..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Potential charge: ObstructionAnother charge in the F.B.I. affidavit was Section 1519 of Title 18, which makes it a crime to conceal records to obstruct an official effort. Prosecutors would need to show that Mr. Trump knew he still had files that were responsive to the National Archives’ efforts to take custody of presidential records and the Justice Department’s subpoena for files marked as classified, and that he intentionally caused his subordinates to fail to turn them all over while leading officials to believe they had complied. The penalty is up to 20 years per offense.Potential charge: Mishandling official documentsA third charge in the affidavit was Section 2071 of Title 18, which criminalizes the concealment or destruction of official documents, whether or not they were related to national security. Among other things, former aides to Mr. Trump have recounted how he sometimes ripped up official documents, and the National Archives has said that some of the Trump White House paper records transferred to it had been torn up — some of which were taped back together and some of which were not reconstructed. The penalty is up to three years per offense plus a ban on holding federal office, although the latter is most likely unconstitutional, legal experts say.Potential charge: Contempt of courtSection 402 of Title 18 makes it a crime to willfully disobey a court order, like the grand jury subpoena Mr. Trump received in May 2022 requiring him to turn over all documents with classification markings remaining in his possession. It carries a penalty of a fine of up to $1,000 and up to six months in prison. To bring this charge, prosecutors would need evidence showing he knew that he was still holding onto other files with classification markings during and after his representatives purported to comply with the subpoena.Potential charge: Conspiracy to make a false statementSection 1001 of Title 18 makes it a crime to make a false statement to a law enforcement officer about a fact material to the officer’s investigation, and Section 371 makes it a crime to conspire with another person to break that or any other law. It carries a penalty of up to five years. Prosecutors would need to be able to show that Mr. Trump and Mr. Corcoran knew and agreed that the lawyer should lie to the Justice Department about there being no further documents responsive to the subpoena.Ballots being recounted in Atlanta, which is part of Fulton County, in 2020.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe Georgia Election Law InvestigationOverviewFani T. Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Ga., is investigating events related to Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn President Biden’s narrow victory in that state in the 2020 election. Among other things, in a phone call that was recorded and leaked, Mr. Trump called Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and pressured him to “find” enough additional votes for him to flip the outcome.Ms. Willis is also investigating Trump associates’ efforts to get 16 of his supporters to falsely declare themselves to be an alternative slate of electors from Georgia, which helped lay the groundwork for Mr. Trump’s push to get Vice President Mike Pence to reject the true results when Congress met to certify the election on Jan. 6, 2021.Potential charges: Election code violationsMost elections offenses in Georgia’s code are misdemeanors, but there are several felony charges that Ms. Willis may be considering, based on the same basic set of facts. These include Section 21-2-603, which makes it a crime to conspire with another person to violate a provision of the election code, and Section 21-2-604, which makes it a crime to solicit another person to commit election fraud.To bring such a charge against Mr. Trump, prosecutors would need to cite another election law whose violation was his alleged goal. It is possible, for example, that they might be considering contending that Mr. Trump’s pushing Mr. Raffensperger to “find” additional votes amounted to implicitly asking him to violate a provision that makes it a felony for the secretary of state to alter official election records, but Mr. Trump’s language was not explicit.Potential charge: RacketeeringMs. Willis has indicated that she is considering bringing charges under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. So-called RICO laws are tools that were developed to make it easier to go after organized criminal enterprises, and can be used against members of any group that engaged in a pattern of criminal activities with a common purpose. A conviction would carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.To convict Mr. Trump under Georgia’s RICO law, Section 16-14-4, prosecutors would need to show that as part of his efforts with associates to overturn Georgia’s election results, he conspired with others or engaged in two or more offenses from a list of several dozen offenses, most of which are violent crimes but which include things like solicitation, forgery and making materially false statements to state officials.The House Jan. 6 committee made a criminal referral of Mr. Trump and others to the Justice Department.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe 2020 Election and Jan. 6OverviewMr. Smith, the special counsel, is also conducting a broader federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and the events of Jan. 6. The House committee that carried out the investigation into the riot last year made a criminal referral of Mr. Trump and others to the Justice Department. While that was of largely symbolic value — the department already had an investigation open and Congress has no authority to prosecute — the analysis in the panel’s final report sets out possible charges that Mr. Smith could also consider.Potential charge: Obstruction of an official proceedingOne criminal accusation the Jan. 6 committee leveled against Mr. Trump was the attempted corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, under Section 1512(c) of Title 18. It is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors have used this law to charge about 300 ordinary Jan. 6 defendants — people who rioted — and an appeals court is currently weighing whether that charge has been appropriately applied in those cases. But even if the judiciary upholds use of the charge, such a case against Mr. Trump would be very different since he did not physically participate in the riot.The Jan. 6 committee argued that he could be charged with it based on two sets of actions. First, it argued that his summoning of supporters to Washington and urging them to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” violated that law. Mr. Trump’s defense team would surely seek to raise doubt about whether he intended for his supporters to riot, including because he also told them to protest “peacefully.”Second, the committee portrayed as criminal obstruction the scheme to recruit so-called fake electors from various states and pressuring Mr. Pence to cite their existence as a basis to delay certifying the election. The panel stressed how Mr. Trump had been told that there was no truth to his claims of a stolen election, which it said proved his intentions were corrupt. Among other things, Mr. Trump’s defense team would surely argue that because a lawyer, John Eastman, advised him to take those steps, there is no proof he understood that doing so was illegal.Potential charge: Conspiracy to defraud the United StatesA second criminal accusation leveled by the Jan. 6 committee was Section 371 of Title 18, which makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to conspire with another person to defraud the government. The panel cited an array of evidence about Mr. Trump’s interactions with various lawyers and aides in pursuit of his effort to prevent the certification of Mr. Biden’s electoral victory. The committee also argued that prosecutors could prove Mr. Trump intended to be deceitful via evidence that he was repeatedly told that his allegations of widespread voter fraud were baseless.Potential charge: Conspiracy to make a false statementThe Jan. 6 committee highlighted the efforts to submit slates of fake electors to Congress and to the National Archives. As with other such potential charges, a key challenge for prosecutors would be proving Mr. Trump’s intentions and understanding beyond a reasonable doubt.Potential charge: InsurrectionThe committee also pointed to Section 2383 of Title 18, which makes it a crime to incite, assist or “aid and comfort” an insurrection against the authority and laws of the federal government. The panel emphasized in particular how Mr. Trump refused for hours to take steps to call off the rioters despite being implored by aides to do so, and an inflammatory tweet he sent about Mr. Pence in the midst of the violence.While the committee said the events of Jan. 6 met the standard for an insurrection, it is notable that prosecutors have not accused any of the Jan. 6 defendants to date of that offense — even those they charged with seditious conspiracy. More

The effort previews how an indictment would jolt the still-nascent race for the Republican presidential nomination — and perhaps already has.Former President Donald J. Trump’s political operation is trying to use the news of his expected indictment by a Manhattan grand jury to turn the strident base of the Republican Party against his expected rival for the 2024 presidential nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Immediately after the former president predicted on Saturday that his arrest was imminent, Mr. Trump’s operatives and friendly media outlets began publicly pressuring Mr. DeSantis to condemn the law enforcement officials in New York, portraying his silence on the matter as bordering on treason.Jason Miller, the former president’s senior adviser, said on Twitter that the Trump team was taking note of Mr. DeSantis’s “radio silence” about the likely indictment.And the Trump campaign’s “War Room” account posted on Sunday: “It has been over 24 hours and some people are still quiet. History will judge their silence.”Mr. Trump’s most influential online allies disseminated the message fast and deep into right-wing online networks. Jack Posobiec, a far-right political activist with a large social-media following, was especially vocal in the pressure campaign.“I’m taking receipts on everyone,” Mr. Posobiec said in a brief interview. “For DeSantis to make that post yesterday, talking about the Hurricane Ian response and nothing from the personal account whatsoever about the arrest — it was a message that was received.”An aide to Mr. DeSantis did not respond to a request for comment.The effort previews how an indictment would jolt the still-nascent race for the Republican presidential nomination — and perhaps already has. Mr. Trump has used the possibility of charges, which would stem from an investigation into hush money Mr. Trump’s lawyer paid to a porn actress before he was elected in 2016, to cast himself as a victim of political persecution.Although his rivals largely want to keep a distance, Mr. Trump’s team is bent on pushing them to choose sides, risking the wrath of Republicans loyal to the former president.The former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., amplified Mr. Posobiec’s message, writing: “Pay attention to which Republicans spoke out against this corrupt BS immediately and who sat on their hands and waited to see which way the wind was blowing.”And the Gateway Pundit, a conspiratorial website with a large far-right following that often pushes narratives helpful to Mr. Trump, declared “The Silence is Deafening” in its headline about Mr. DeSantis’s avoidance of the matter..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.But even as many leading Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have rallied to Mr. Trump’s aid, the comments from the field of declared and potential G.O.P. presidential candidates has been muted.Some — including Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Vice President Mike Pence — have decried the prospect of an indictment that relies on what would be a novel legal theory.“I called on my fellow GOP candidates @RonDeSantisFL and @NikkiHaley to join me in condemning the potential Trump indictment because those of us *running against Trump* can most credibly call on the Manhattan DA to abandon this disastrously politicized prosecution,” Mr. Ramaswamy wrote in a message on Twitter.Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor who entered the presidential race last month, and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina have not said a word.But Mr. DeSantis’s silence is more freighted.He is the governor of the state where Mr. Trump resides, which, should Mr. Trump be charged and refuse to surrender, could lead Mr. DeSantis to play a role in efforts by New York to extradite the former president.As a purely political matter, Mr. DeSantis is Mr. Trump’s closest rival in every public opinion poll of Republicans about the 2024 presidential primary. He is expected to announce his intentions in May or June. But his hopes depend on appealing to a coalition of voters that includes both supporters and critics of Mr. Trump.And Mr. Trump’s allies believe that a refusal by Mr. DeSantis to condemn an expected indictment — one that even some of Mr. Trump’s fiercest critics have questioned — could make Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to peel away Trump supporters more difficult.Republicans who have seized on news of the anticipated indictment to demonstrate their allegiance to Mr. Trump include House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.Few seized the opportunity faster than Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the third-ranking House Republican, who is widely seen as angling to be chosen as Mr. Trump’s running mate.By midday on Saturday, Ms. Stefanik had issued a statement calling the expected indictment “unAmerican” and an example of the “Radical Left” reaching “a dangerous new low of Third World countries.” More

The grand jury considering the hush-money case against Mr. Trump might hear the testimony of lawyer Robert J. Costello, a critic of the ex-president’s fixer.A Manhattan grand jury that is expected to vote soon on whether to indict Donald J. Trump may hear testimony Monday attacking the prosecution’s star witness, according to people with knowledge of the matter.The testimony would come from a lawyer, Robert J. Costello, who would appear at the request of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, the people said. Mr. Costello was once a legal adviser to Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, who has been a key witness for the Manhattan district attorney’s office.Mr. Costello and Mr. Cohen had a falling out, and Mr. Costello would appear solely to undermine Mr. Cohen’s credibility, the people said.Under New York law, a person who is expected to be indicted can request that a witness appear on his or her behalf. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have asked that Mr. Costello testify, but the final decision rests with the grand jury; it is unclear whether they have made a decision. The grand jury has been hearing evidence about the former president’s involvement in a hush money payment to a porn star.Mr. Costello’s appearance would come soon after Mr. Cohen concluded his own grand jury testimony. If Mr. Costello testifies, there is also a chance that Mr. Cohen will be asked to return to rebut some of Mr. Costello’s assertions.A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment, as did Mr. Costello. A lawyer for Mr. Cohen, Lanny J. Davis, declined to comment.The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, is expected to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump as soon as this week. There have been several signals that charges may be imminent: The prosecutors gave Mr. Trump an opportunity to testify, a right given to people who will soon face indictment. They have now questioned nearly every major player in the hush money saga in front of the grand jury.Mr. Cohen made the $130,000 hush money payment to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, to bury her story of an affair with Mr. Trump.Michael D. Cohen arriving at 80 Centre Street for his 19th appearance being interviewed by the District Attorney’s office in New York this month.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesThe payment came in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, and Mr. Trump subsequently reimbursed Mr. Cohen. Prosecutors are expected to accuse Mr. Trump of overseeing the false recording of the reimbursements in his company’s internal records. The records falsely stated that the payments to Mr. Cohen were for “legal expenses.”Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing, as well as having had an affair with Ms. Daniels, and has blasted the investigation as politically motivated. He has also called Mr. Bragg, a Democrat and the first Black person to serve as the district attorney, a “racist.”Mr. Costello’s appearance in the grand jury on Monday would likely kick off a string of attacks from Mr. Trump’s lawyers on Mr. Cohen’s credibility. If the case goes to trial, they are expected to highlight that Mr. Cohen himself pleaded guilty to federal crimes in 2018 stemming from the hush money payment, and to bring up other episodes from the former fixer’s personal history.But prosecutors may counter that Mr. Cohen was lying about the hush money payment on Mr. Trump’s behalf, and has been consistent in the telling of his story in recent years.Mr. Costello is likely to argue that Mr. Cohen can’t be trusted. In 2018, as Mr. Cohen was facing the federal investigation into the hush money, a mutual friend introduced the two men. Mr. Costello offered to represent Mr. Cohen, and they spent hours meeting and speaking by phone.As a Republican lawyer with ties to Mr. Trump’s legal team, Mr. Costello offered to serve as a bridge between Mr. Cohen and the president’s lawyers. At one point, Mr. Costello contacted one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers to ask if the president might pardon Mr. Cohen.But the pardon never came, and Mr. Cohen never formally retained Mr. Costello. Mr. Cohen later waived their attorney-client privilege, Mr. Costello has said.Their relationship worsened as Mr. Cohen broke from Mr. Trump, and became one of his primary antagonists.“We will not be involved in that journey,” Mr. Costello wrote Mr. Cohen in a 2018 email, adding that his law firm “will be sending you a bill.” When it came, Mr. Cohen refused to pay. More

Manhattan prosecutors investigating a payout to Stormy Daniels may be poised to make Donald J. Trump the first former president ever to be criminally indicted.At the time, it all was more tawdry than momentous. A reality star invited a porn actress half his age to a hotel room after a round in a celebrity golf tournament. She arrived in a spangly gold dress and strappy heels. He promised to put her on television and then, she says, they slept together.Yet the chain of events flowing from the 2006 encounter that the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, has said she had with the television personality, Donald J. Trump, has led to the brink of a historic development: the first criminal indictment of a former American president.The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has signaled he is preparing to seek felony charges against Mr. Trump; Mr. Bragg is expected to accuse him of concealing a $130,000 hush-money payment that Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s lawyer and fixer, made to Ms. Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.A conviction would be likely to hinge on prosecutors’ proving that Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen and falsified business records when he did so, possibly to hide an election law violation.It would not be a simple case. Prosecutors are expected to use a legal theory that has not been assessed in New York courts, raising the possibility that a judge could throw out or limit the charges. The episode has been examined by both the Federal Election Commission and federal prosecutors in New York; neither took action against Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump has denied having sex with Ms. Daniels and said he did nothing wrong. The former president, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the White House, has made it clear that he will cast the indictment as a political “witch hunt” and use it to rally his supporters. On Saturday, he predicted he would be arrested on Tuesday and called for protests.The prosecutors’ chief witness would be Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations in August 2018, admitting he helped arrange the Daniels payment — and another to a former Playboy model — to aid Mr. Trump’s presidential bid at the behest of Mr. Trump.Any indictment of Mr. Trump brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, would rely on a legal theory that has not been tested in New York courts, making its success far from assured.Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesAn indictment would mark another extraordinary episode in the Trump era: The former president — whose tenure closed with a riot at the Capitol, who tried to overturn a fair election and who is under investigation for failing to return classified material — may face his first criminal charge for paying off a porn star.A Lake Tahoe encounterMs. Daniels, born Stephanie Gregory and raised mostly in a ramshackle ranch house in Baton Rouge, La., was 27 in July 2006, when she met Mr. Trump, then 60, at the celebrity golf tournament in Nevada.As a child, she wrote in her 2018 memoir, “Full Disclosure,” she felt ashamed and motivated after overhearing a friend’s father refer to her as “white trash.” Attracted by the money she could make, Ms. Daniels started as an exotic dancer even before she finished high school, working at a local joint called Cinnamon’s. At 23, she began acting in pornographic movies and soon married the first of her four husbands: Bartholomew Clifford, who directed adult films under the name “Pat Myne.”When he met Ms. Daniels, Mr. Trump had largely transitioned from real estate mogul to reality star; he had traveled to the tournament without his third wife, Melania, who remained behind with their newborn son. Mr. Trump and Ms. Daniels crossed paths on the golf course and later in the gift room, where they were photographed together at a booth for her porn studio, Wicked Pictures. He invited her to dinner.As they chatted that night in Mr. Trump’s penthouse at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe — she has said he wore black silk pajamas and slippers — he told her that she should be on “The Apprentice,” an NBC reality show. She doubted he could make it happen. He assured her he could, she said.Afterward, he would phone her occasionally from a blocked number, calling her “Honeybunch.” They saw each other at least twice more in 2007, at a launch party for the short-lived Trump Vodka and at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where they watched “Shark Week.” But they did not sleep together again. And Mr. Trump never put her on “The Apprentice.” Still, he kept calling, she has said. Eventually, she stopped answering.Selling storiesStormy Daniels, an adult film star, was paid $130,000 by Mr. Trump’s fixer in exchange for her silence.Shannon Stapleton/ReutersSince 2000, Mr. Trump had staged long-shot presidential runs that more resembled publicity stunts than serious bids for office. He kicked off another in 2011, promoting conspiracy theories that then-President Barack Obama had been born outside the United States. As he did so, Ms. Daniels, still bitter, began working with an agent to see if she could sell the story of their liaison.They negotiated a $15,000 deal with Life & Style, a celebrity magazine, telling its reporter that Ms. Daniels believed Mr. Trump’s offer to make her a contestant had been a lie, according to a transcript later published online.“Just to impress you, to try to sleep with you?” the reporter asked. “Yeah,” Ms. Daniels responded. “And I guess it worked.”When the magazine contacted the Trump Organization for comment, Michael Cohen returned the call. A lawyer who had joined the company four years earlier, Mr. Cohen had become Mr. Trump’s fixer, diving headlong into resolving thorny problems for his boss and the Trump family. Mr. Cohen threatened to sue, the magazine killed the story, and Ms. Daniels did not get paid.Mr. Trump, for his part, dropped out of the race and continued hosting “The Apprentice.”That October, Ms. Daniels’s story about Mr. Trump surfaced briefly after her agent leaked it to a gossip blog called “The Dirty,” trying to gin up interest from a paying publication. A couple of media outlets followed up, but none offered payment. Ms. Daniels denied the story, and her agent had a lawyer in Beverly Hills, Calif., Keith Davidson, get the post taken down.As Mr. Obama prepared to leave office in 2015, Mr. Trump decided to run for president once more. That August, he sat in his office at Trump Tower with Mr. Cohen and David Pecker, the publisher of American Media Inc. and its flagship tabloid, The National Enquirer.Mr. Pecker, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump’s, had used The Enquirer to boost Mr. Trump’s past presidential runs. He promised to publish positive stories about Mr. Trump and negative ones about opponents, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Pecker also agreed to work with Mr. Cohen to find and suppress stories that might damage Mr. Trump’s new efforts, a practice known as “catch and kill.”The National Enquirer, a tabloid run by David Pecker, played a central role in efforts to “catch and kill” negative stories about Mr. Trump.Marion Curtis, via Associated PressIn spring 2016, Ms. Daniels attempted through her agent to sell her story again — this time for more than $200,000. But the publications she approached all passed, including The Enquirer.Around the same time, Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model, began exploring how to monetize her own tale of sleeping with Mr. Trump. Ms. McDougal, Playboy’s 1998 Playmate of the Year, has said she had an affair with Mr. Trump starting in 2006, when she was 35. They had spent time together in his Trump Tower apartment and at the same golf tournament where Ms. Daniels encountered him. But Ms. McDougal ended the relationship in 2007, she has said. Mr. Trump has denied the affair.In 2016, with her modeling career flagging, Ms. McDougal hired Mr. Davidson, the same lawyer who had helped Stormy Daniels remove the 2011 blog post.Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, said she also had an affair with Mr. Trump and was paid by The National Enquirer for her story, which was never published.Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for BacardiThe lawyer approached The Enquirer’s editor, Dylan Howard, about buying Ms. McDougal’s story, and Mr. Howard and Mr. Pecker both briefed Mr. Cohen, three people with knowledge of the discussions have said. In late June, Mr. Trump personally appealed to Mr. Pecker for help in keeping Ms. McDougal quiet, according to an account Mr. Pecker gave federal prosecutors.But the tabloid did nothing until Ms. McDougal was about to give an interview to ABC News. In early August, American Media agreed to pay Ms. McDougal $150,000 for the exclusive rights to her story about Mr. Trump, camouflaging the real purpose of the deal by guaranteeing she would appear on two magazine covers, among other things, five people familiar with the events have said.American Media would later admit, in a deal to avoid federal prosecution, that the principal purpose of the agreement was to suppress Ms. McDougal’s story, which the company had no intention of publishing.Stormy Daniels, meanwhile, still had not found any takers for her story. Her luck changed in early October.‘It could look awfully bad’Mr. Trump’s fixer, Michael D. Cohen, right, went to prison in part for campaign finance violations related to hush-money payments. He has turned against the former president and could testify against him.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesThe news hit the presidential race like a bomb. On Oct. 7, 2016, The Washington Post published what would become known as the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump, unwittingly on a live microphone, was recorded describing in lewd terms how he groped women.The people surrounding Stormy Daniels immediately realized that Mr. Trump’s new vulnerability made her more of a threat — and thus gave her story value.Mr. Davidson, the Los Angeles lawyer, was also friendly with Ms. Daniels’s agent, Gina Rodriguez, and with The Enquirer’s editor, Mr. Howard. On the day after the “Access Hollywood” tape emerged, Mr. Davidson and Mr. Howard texted about the damage it had done to Mr. Trump’s campaign. Then Mr. Howard asked Ms. Daniels’s agent to send another pitch for his boss, Mr. Pecker.The Enquirer executives alerted Mr. Cohen; Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Pecker for help containing it.Mr. Howard haggled with Ms. Daniels’s agent, but when he presented Mr. Pecker with an offer to buy the story for $120,000, the publisher refused.“Perhaps I call Michael and advise him and he can take it from there,” Mr. Howard wrote.Dylan Howard, the editor of The National Enquirer, connected Mr. Cohen to a lawyer for Ms. Daniels to discuss a payment for the story of her tryst with Mr. Trump.Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for American MediaThat night, Mr. Cohen spoke by phone to Mr. Trump, Mr. Pecker and Mr. Howard, according to records obtained by federal authorities. Mr. Howard connected him to the lawyer, Mr. Davidson, who would negotiate the deal for Ms. Daniels.Three days after the “Access Hollywood” tape’s release, Mr. Cohen agreed to pay $130,000 in a deal that threatened severe financial penalties for Ms. Daniels if she ever spoke about her affair with Mr. Trump. The contract used pseudonyms: Peggy Peterson, or “P.P.,” for Ms. Daniels, and David Dennison, or “D.D.,” for Mr. Trump. Their identities were revealed only in a side letter.Ms. Daniels signed her copy on the trunk of a car near a porn set in Calabasas, Calif. Mr. Cohen signed on Mr. Trump’s behalf.But Mr. Cohen delayed paying. He has said he was trying to figure out where to get the money while Mr. Trump campaigned. According to Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump had approved the payment and delegated to him and the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer the task of arranging it. They considered options for funneling the money through the company, Mr. Cohen said, but did not settle on a solution.Ms. Daniels began to believe that Mr. Trump was trying to stall until after the Nov. 8 election; if he lost, her story would lose its value. In mid October, after Mr. Cohen had blown two deadlines, Ms. Daniels’s lawyer canceled the deal, and the porn actress again began shopping the story. The next week, Mr. Howard texted Mr. Cohen that if Ms. Daniels went public, their work to cover up the sexual encounter might also become known.“It could look awfully bad for everyone,” Mr. Howard wrote.Mr. Cohen agreed to make the payment himself. He spoke briefly by phone with Mr. Trump, twice. Then he transferred about $130,000 from his home equity line of credit into the account of a Delaware shell company and wired it to Ms. Daniels’s lawyer.Mr. Davidson circulated a new hush-money agreement. Ms. Daniels signed and notarized it at a UPS store near a Walmart Supercenter in Forney, Texas, near her home.“I hope we are good,” Mr. Cohen texted Mr. Davidson afterward.“I assure you we are very good,” the lawyer replied.Ms. Daniels remained silent. A week and a half later, Mr. Trump won the election.Once he was in the White House, Mr. Trump handled one more piece of business related to Stormy Daniels. He signed checks to reimburse Mr. Cohen for paying her off.Jonah E. Bromwich More

Ron DeSantis has an enemies list, and you can probably guess who’s on it.There’s the “woke dumpster fire” of the Democratic Party and the “swamp Republicans” who neglect their own voters. There’s the news media, with modifiers like “legacy” or “corporate” adding a nefarious touch. There’s Big Tech, that “censorship arm of the political left,” and the powerful corporations that cave to the “leftist-rage mob.” There are universities like Harvard and Yale, which DeSantis attended but did not inhale. There’s the administrative state and its pandemic-era spinoff, the “biomedical security state.” These are the villains of DeSantis’s recently published book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” and its author feels free to assail them with a fusillade of generically irate prose.There is one more antagonist — not an enemy, perhaps, but certainly a rival — whom DeSantis does not attack directly in his book, even as he looms over much of it. The far-too-early national polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination show a two-person contest with Donald Trump and DeSantis (who has yet to announce his potential candidacy) in the lead, and the Haleys, Pences and Pompeos of the world fighting for scraps. During his 2018 governor’s race, DeSantis aired an obsequious ad in which he built a cardboard border wall and read Trump’s “Art of the Deal” with his children, one of whom wore a MAGA onesie. Now DeSantis no longer bows before Trump. Instead, he dances around the former president; he is respectful but no longer deferential, critical but mainly by implication.Yes, there is a DeSantis case against Trump scattered throughout these pages. You just need to squint through a magnifying glass to find it.In the 250-plus pages of “The Courage to Be Free,” for instance, there is not a single mention of the events of Jan. 6, 2021. DeSantis cites Madison, Hamilton and the nation’s founding principles, but he does not pause to consider a frontal assault on America’s democratic institutions encouraged by a sitting president. The governor does not go so far as to defend Trump’s lies about the 2020 election; he just ignores them.However, DeSantis does write that an energetic executive should lead “within the confines of a constitutional system,” and he criticizes unnamed elected officials for whom “perpetuating themselves in office supersedes fulfilling any policy mission.” Might DeSantis ever direct such criticisms at a certain former president so willing to subvert the Constitution to remain in power? Perhaps. For the moment, though, such indignation exists at a safe distance from any discussion of Trump himself.When DeSantis explains how he chose top officials for his administration in Florida, he offers an unstated yet unsubtle contrast to Trump’s leadership. “I placed loyalty to the cause over loyalty to me,” DeSantis writes. “I had no desire to be flattered — I just wanted people who worked hard and believed in what we were trying to accomplish.” Demands for personal fealty have assumed canonical status in Trump presidential lore (who can forget his “I need loyalty” dinner with the soon-to-be-fired F.B.I. director James Comey?), and it is hard to recall another recent leader whose susceptibility to flattery so easily overpowered any possibility of political or ideological coherence.Where he describes his personal dealings with the former president, DeSantis jabs at Trump even as he praises him. In a meeting with Trump after Hurricane Michael struck Florida in late 2018, DeSantis asked for increased federal aid, particularly for northwestern Florida, telling the president that the region was “Trump country.” In the governor’s account, Trump responded with Pavlovian enthusiasm: “I must have won 90 percent of the vote out there. Huge crowds. What do they need?” DeSantis recalls how, after the president agreed to reimburse a large portion of the state’s cleanup expenses, Mick Mulvaney, then the acting White House chief of staff, pulled the governor aside and urged him to wait before announcing the help, explaining that Trump “doesn’t even know what he agreed to in terms of a price tag.”Even as DeSantis appears to thank Trump for assistance to Florida, he is showcasing an easily manipulated president who does not grasp the basics of governing.DeSantis boasts of how Florida stood apart from other states’ lockdown policies and how Tallahassee dissented from the federal response. Though he criticizes Trump-era federal guidelines, particularly early in the crisis, he rarely blames the president directly. “By the time President Trump had to decide whether the shutdown guidance should be extended beyond the original 15 days, there were reasons to question the main model used by the task force to justify a shutdown,” DeSantis writes, in his most pointed — yet still quite polite — disapproval.Rather than question the former president’s actions on Covid, DeSantis goes after Anthony Fauci, “one of the most destructive bureaucrats in American history,” an official whose “intellectual bankruptcy and brazen partisanship” turned major U.S. cities into hollowed-out “Faucivilles.” Fauci is the supervillain of DeSantis’s book, the destroyer of jobs and freedoms, the architect of a “Faucian dystopia.” Trump, it seems, was not in charge during the early months of Covid, but Fauci wielded unstoppable and unaccountable power — until a courageous governor had finally had enough. “As the iron curtain of Faucism descended upon our continent,” DeSantis writes, “the State of Florida stood resolutely in the way.”In “The Courage to Be Free,” DeSantis displays only enough courage to reprimand Trump by proxy.In fact, DeSantis’s broadest attack against Trump is also his most oblique. In the governor’s various references to Trump, the former president emerges less as a political force in his own right than a symptom of pre-existing trends that Trump was lucky enough to harness. Trump’s nomination in 2016 flowed mainly from the failure of Republican elites to “effectively represent the values” of Republican voters, the governor writes. DeSantis even takes some credit for Trump’s ascent: The House Freedom Caucus, of which DeSantis was a member, “identified the shortcomings of the modern Republican establishment in a way that paved the way for an outsider presidential candidate who threatened the survival of the stale D.C. Republican Party orthodoxy.”Trump has argued, not without reason, that he enabled DeSantis’s election as governor with his endorsement in late 2017 — and now DeSantis is suggesting he helped clear the path for Trumpism. The governor even notes the “star power” that Trump brought to American politics, the kind of thing critics used to say when dismissing Barack Obama as a celebrity candidate.If Trump’s success was not unique to him, but flowed from larger cultural or economic forces that rendered him viable, presumably someone else could channel those same forces, perhaps more efficiently, if only Republican voters had the courage to be free of Trump. And who might that alternative be?DeSantis pitches himself as not only a culture warrior, but a competent culture warrior. The culture warrior who stood up for parents and stood against Disney (yes, the Magic Kingdom rates its own chapter here). The culture warrior with the real heartland vibe (DeSantis’s family’s roots in Ohio and Pennsylvania come up a lot). The culture warrior who is “God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving” in the face of enemies who are oppressive, unbelieving, unpatriotic. The culture warrior who takes “bold stands,” displays “courage under fire,” is willing to “lead with conviction,” “speak the truth” and “stand for what is right.”The Free State of Florida, as DeSantis likes to call it, is not just the national blueprint of his book’s subtitle. It is “a beachhead of sanity,” a “citadel of freedom in a world gone mad,” even “America’s West Berlin.” (I guess the rest of us still live behind the Iron Curtain of Faucism.) No wonder Trump, who now says he regrets endorsing DeSantis for governor, has begun denigrating his rival’s achievements in the state where they both live.The governor’s prose can be flat and clichéd: Throughout the book, cautions are thrown to winds, less-traveled roads are taken, hammers are dropped, new sheriffs show up in town, dust eventually settles and chips fall wherever they may. (When members of Congress attempt to “climb the ladder” of seniority, he writes, they “get neutered” by the time they reach the top. That is one painful metaphor — and ladder.) And DeSantis’s red meat tastes a bit over overcooked. “Clearly, our administration was substantively consequential,” DeSantis affirms in his epilogue. Still, DeSantis’s broad-based 2022 re-election victory suggests there the competent culture warrior may have an appeal that extends beyond the hard-core MAGA base, even if Make America Substantively Consequential Again doesn’t quite fit on a hat.At times, DeSantis’s culture-war armor slips, as with his awkward ambivalence about his Ivy League education. He experienced such “massive culture shock” when arriving at the “hyper-leftist” Yale, he writes, that after graduating he decided to go on to … Harvard Law School? “From a political perspective, Harvard was just as left-wing as Yale,” DeSantis complains. Yes, we know. DeSantis informs his readers that he graduated from law school with honors, even if “my heart was not into what I was being taught in class,” and he mentions (twice) that he could have made big bucks in the private sector with a Harvard Law degree but instead chose to serve in the Navy. “I am one of the very few people who went through both Yale and Harvard Law School and came out more conservative than when I went in,” he assured voters during his 2012 congressional campaign.DeSantis wants both the elite validation of his Ivy League credentials and the populist cred for trash-talking the schools. Pick one, governor. Even Trump just straight-up brags about Wharton.Of course, whether DeSantis’s culture-war instincts are authentic or shtick matters less than the fact that he is waging those wars; the institutions, individuals and ideologies he targets are real regardless of his motives. But the blueprint of his subtitle implies a more systematic worldview than is present in this book. DeSantis’s professed reliance on “common sense” and “core” national values is another way of saying he draws on his own impulses and interpretations. It’s a very Trumpian approach.When DeSantis highlights his state’s renewed emphasis on civics education and a high-school civics exam modeled on the U.S. naturalization test — an idea that this naturalized citizen finds intriguing — it is a particularistic vision informed by the governor’s own political preferences. When DeSantis goes after Disney’s governance or tax status over its opposition to a Florida law over what can and cannot be taught in elementary schools, he is not making a statement of principle about business and politics; he just opposes the stance Disney has taken. When he brings up Russia more than two dozen times in his book, it never concerns Vladimir Putin’s challenges to America or war against Ukraine; it is always about DeSantis’s disdain for the “Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory.” (DeSantis’s subsequent dismissal of the war as a mere “territorial dispute” is therefore little surprise.) When he accuses the news media of pushing “partisan narratives,” he is not striking a blow for objective, independent coverage; he just prefers narratives that fit his own.DeSantis asserts that he has a “positive vision,” beyond just defeating his enemies on the left. But in “The Courage to Be Free,” defeating his enemies is the only thing the governor seems positive about. That may be enough to compete for the Republican nomination, but it’s not a blueprint for America. It’s not a substantive vision, even if it may prove a consequential one.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. 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Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott, vying for Republican support for 2024 in their home state, attended a South Carolina conservative forum on Saturday.NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — At a conservative forum on Saturday, South Carolina Republicans had a common refrain about two home-state political figures who are eyeing the White House in 2024, former Gov. Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott.“I like them both.”It was the first time Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott had attended the same event during the 2024 campaign, in a key battleground state that fueled their political rise and that will play a critical role as they prepare to square off for the Republican nomination for president, one officially and the other unofficially so far.The two allies have largely steered clear of each other as they have staked out their respective lanes early in a presidential primary in which the specter of former President Donald J. Trump looms large. And while Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott might not be fighting each other, they will almost certainly be fighting for the same voters.At the forum on Saturday in North Charleston, both Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott received standing ovations as they entered and left the stage. Each one drew whoops and claps in response to points they made about the teaching of race in schools and problems with the Biden administration. And each one drew a small crowd on the side of the room to jostle for a closer photo, hug or handshake.“It’s going to be virtually impossible to take two from the same state, but that we know,” said Elizabeth Lyons, who moved to Charleston from Connecticut in 2021. Her husband, Michael, chimed in: “I’ll bet you either one or the other of them is going to be the vice-presidential candidate in 2024.”It remains unclear if either Ms. Haley or Mr. Scott — or both — will generate momentum beyond their in-state stardom. Their toughest task will be winning over Republicans eager for a Trump alternative, as well as a portion of the former president’s hyper-conservative base. The dynamic, some say, has the air of the 2016 G.O.P. primary, in which a crowded field cleared a path for Mr. Trump to win.“They’re both very popular with Republicans in South Carolina,” said Chip Felkel, a veteran South Carolina political consultant who said he is remaining neutral in the primary. “The question is, does their popularity exceed that of the former president?”Many of those at the forum said they were still undecided as to whom they would nominate for president in 2024. Mary Catherine Landers, 63, was among them. A lifelong Republican voter who moved to Charleston from Indiana in 2018, Ms. Landers supported Mr. Trump in 2020. But she said she feared some conservatives would stay home if he were nominated again, and that Ms. Haley was the draw for her on Saturday.“I’m excited about both,” Ms. Landers said, though she added, “I think personally the one who would have the better chance at this point in time is going to be Nikki.”Nikki Haley spoke on Saturday at the same conservative forum in South Carolina that Mr. Scott also attended. Logan Cyrus/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMs. Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, launched her campaign for president in February. Mr. Scott, the junior senator from South Carolina, has yet to formally declare his candidacy, but he is widely expected to make a decision in the next few weeks.South Carolina is home to a varied conservative electorate — Libertarian-leaning Lowcountry voters, establishment insiders around Columbia’s State Capitol, staunch conservatives along its eastern coast upstate to the North Carolina border. How Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott ultimately fare in South Carolina will be decided at county party picnics, on the debate stage and, perhaps most importantly, at smaller platforms like the Saturday forum.The event drew a couple hundred of the party’s most faithful Christian conservative voters and activists to a convention center in North Charleston. Speakers stoked anxieties about social issues like abortion and transgender students, railing against what they saw as existential dangers that the next party nominee will be tasked with righting: China’s ascendance on the world stage, the war in Ukraine and ongoing economic uncertainty.An open question is whether the governor of a state to the south, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, will draw a large network of support. The governor has closely trailed Mr. Trump in polling and has amassed a fund-raising haul of more than $100 million.Jerry Dorchuck, a Florida-based pollster who has conducted polling for candidates in South Carolina, said the results of his polls in the state have followed a national trend: Mr. Trump still commands nearly half the Republican vote, followed closely by Mr. DeSantis. In South Carolina, both Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott have roughly equal support, floating at or below 10 percent.Right now, Mr. Dorchuck said, “It’s Trump’s race to lose, DeSantis’s race to win.”Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott benefit from household-name status in the state. Mr. Scott got his political start on Charleston’s City Council and is the only Black lawmaker to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Ms. Haley served for six years as a state representative in a district just outside Columbia before winning the governorship after a tough campaign in 2011. In fact, it was Ms. Haley who appointed Mr. Scott to his current Senate seat in 2012.Their campaigns — one established and one still under construction — have split some allegiances among the Palmetto State’s political class, albeit amicably. A handful of donors have given to both operations. A few, though, are waiting for their candidates of choice to enter the race.Chad Walldorf, a Charleston-area business owner and G.O.P. donor who has been a close ally of both Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott, said he would ultimately support Mr. Scott in a potential presidential bid.“It’s a difficult choice that I think many South Carolina Republicans are going to have to figure out in the coming months ahead, assuming that Tim does enter the race,” he said.Support for Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump has been mixed among South Carolina elected officials, with several waiting to take sides. Representatives Russell Fry, Will Timmons and Joe Wilson are on the former president’s leadership team in the state, as is Senator Lindsey Graham. Representative Ralph Norman has thrown his support behind Ms. Haley.Ms. Haley’s allies said that because she served in Mr. Trump’s administration, she could bring the knowledge of the former president’s policy goals without the bombast that turned off moderate conservatives. She has also won a handful of tough races, namely her run for governor.Mr. Scott, on the other hand, has not run in tough statewide races. His proponents have praised his conservative messaging that has often been overwhelmingly positive and peppered with Bible verses. And, if he does run, he will enter the race with more than $20 million already in the bank.Attendees at the conservative forum cheered as Mr. Scott spoke.Win McNamee/Getty ImagesBut with Mr. Scott not yet a declared candidate and Ms. Haley still building national momentum, some Republican leaders and strategists warn that both of them could crowd the field and clear a path for Mr. Trump to win the state.“Are they splitting the vote? Yeah, they certainly are,” said Katon Dawson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party who is supporting Ms. Haley. “Are they going to take any from Donald Trump? I don’t know yet.”Mr. Trump still commands a majority share of support among Republican voters in South Carolina. He did not attend Saturday’s event, though he was invited. Neither did Mr. DeSantis, who was also invited. Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who is still mulling a possible presidential bid and who attended the forum, told reporters on Saturday that the presence of Mr. Scott and Ms. Haley created “a little bit of a complicated arena.”Mr. Scott has been on a weekslong listening tour through early primary states, namely Iowa and South Carolina. Outside of the requisite engagements with voters and donors, Mr. Scott has paid particular attention to faith leaders and has held a handful of listening sessions with pastors. Ms. Haley, whose campaign has boasted that she has made nearly 20 campaign stops in the month she has been a candidate, plans to visit New Hampshire later in March.Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott are two Republicans of color in an overwhelmingly white party. Each one has used that distinction to flatten Democratic criticisms of systemic racism in America and to argue that the country remains a beacon of progress and opportunity.“America’s not racist, we’re blessed,” Ms. Haley said, a message she has emphasized repeatedly.Mr. Dawson, the former chairman of the state  Republican Party who is supporting Ms. Haley, offered another scenario. Instead of cannibalizing each other’s voters, Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott, he said, could consolidate their resources if one of them were to suspend their presidential bid to support the other. Such a move could strengthen one contender’s odds against a higher-polling candidate, such as Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis.“You team those two up on something, you got a problem,” Mr. Dawson said. “Because they like each other.” More