Elections

Several weeks after the 2020 election, as Donald J. Trump worked to overturn his defeat, he called a Republican lawmaker in Michigan with an urgent request. Mr. Trump had seen a report that made wild claims about rigged voting machines in a rural northern county in the state. He wanted his allies to look into it.The president told the lawmaker that a Michigan lawyer, Matthew DePerno, had already filed a lawsuit and that it looked promising, according to the lawmaker and two others familiar with the call.For that lawmaker, the lawyer’s name set off alarms. Mr. DePerno, a trial attorney from Kalamazoo, was well known in the Legislature for representing a former legislator embroiled in a sex scandal. Mr. DePerno had spent years unsuccessfully accusing lawmakers and aides of devising a complex plot to bring down his client, complete with accusations of collusion, stalking, extortion, doctored recordings and secretive phone tapping. Federal judges dismissed the cases, with one calling a conspiracy claim “patently absurd.”Mr. DePerno’s involvement will only undermine your cause, the lawmaker, who along with the others asked for anonymity to discuss the private conversation, told the president. Mr. Trump seemed to dig in: If everyone hates Mr. DePerno, he should be on my team, Mr. Trump responded, according to two of the people.Donald Trump endorsed the candidacy of Matthew DePerno, who pushed a conspiracy theory about the vote count in a rural Michigan county.Emily Elconin/ReutersBolstered by his association with the former president, Mr. DePerno on Saturday was nominated as the G.O.P. candidate for attorney general, the top legal official in the state, at a state party convention. He is among a coterie of election deniers running for offices that have significant authority over elections, worrying some election experts, Democrats and some Republicans across the country.This month, the Michigan attorney general’s office released documents that suggest Mr. DePerno was a key orchestrator of a separate plot to gain improper access to voting machines in three other Michigan counties. The attorney general, Dana Nessel, the Democrat Mr. DePerno is challenging for the office, requested that a special prosecutor be appointed to pursue the investigation into the scheme and weigh criminal charges. Mr. DePerno denies the allegations and called them politically motivated.Mr. DePerno played a critical role in the report mentioned by Mr. Trump about that rural county, Antrim. The report turned a minor clerical error into a major conspiracy theory, and was later dismissed as “idiotic” by William P. Barr, an attorney general under Mr. Trump, and “demonstrably false” by Republicans in the Michigan Senate.For some who have watched his career, there are parallels between Mr. DePerno’s dive into election conspiracies and his recent legal record. He has at times used the legal system to advance specious claims and unfounded allegations detailed in a blizzard of lengthy filings, according to an examination of court records in some of his cases and interviews with attorneys and judges.“The playbook is the same,” said Joshua Cline, a former Republican legislative aide whom Mr. DePerno sued as part of the conspiracy allegations involving the legislature. The case was dismissed in court. “It’s trying to play to a base of people and trying to get them to buy into something that when you put the magnifying glass to it, it falls apart,” Mr. Cline said. “It’s more than terrifying.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsThe Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.New Women Voters: The number of women signing up to vote surged in some states after Roe was overturned, particularly in states where abortion rights are at risk.Sensing a Shift: Abortion rights, falling gas prices, legislative victories and Donald J. Trump’s re-emergence have Democrats dreaming again that they just might keep control of Congress. But the House map still favors Republicans.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Mr. DePerno declined to be interviewed. In response to written questions, he stood by his claims and defended his legal tactics.“If you are criticizing me on being a bulldog of a lawyer who is well-versed in the law and procedure and who defends his client to the best of his ability, I take that criticism with pride,” he said in a statement.At least five times, Mr. DePerno’s clients or legal colleagues have asked Michigan’s Attorney Grievance Commission to investigate his conduct, according to records reviewed by The New York Times. Three requests have not been previously reported: The commission keeps the filings and investigations private unless they result in formal disciplinary complaints.Three of the five investigations were closed without disciplinary actions, the records showed. In at least one of those closed cases, however, the commission did find Mr. DePerno’s conduct — baselessly accusing a judge of taking a bribe — worthy of a private “admonishment,” according to a 2021 letter viewed by The Times. Mr. DePerno said a fourth inquiry, regarding the Michigan Legislature cases, also closed privately, and another, related to the Antrim County case, is still open. Mr. DePerno did not respond to a request for records confirming his account.Asked about the grievances, Mr. DePerno said: “I have never been disciplined. The reality is that any person at any time can file any garbage they want” with the commission.One of the completed investigations involved former clients who sued Mr. DePerno over malpractice, claiming he had taken actions without their consent, overcharged them and tried to foreclose on their home as payment. A federal magistrate judge also expressed concerns about Mr. DePerno’s conduct in the case, at one point sanctioning him for obstructing a deposition and coaching a witness. In the same hearing, the judge also said Mr. DePerno had “arrogantly tried to justify the unjustifiable” in a brief, and falsely and unethically accused another lawyer of being unprofessional.“Mr. DePerno, you get an F,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph G. Scoville said, according to a transcript.Mr. DePerno called the federal magistrate’s comments “overly harsh and unwarranted.” The malpractice lawsuit, which was first reported by Bridge Michigan, was later settled.A Scandal in the State HouseMr. DePerno also faced criticism in a far more prominent case. In 2015, he was hired by Todd Courser, a freshman state House member and Tea Party activist who was accused of trying to cover up an extramarital affair with a fellow legislator by producing a “false-flag” email, according to court filings and articles in The Detroit News.Mr. DePerno called in forensic experts to argue that audio recordings used by local media in reporting on the scandal had been doctored. He claimed that legislative leaders and aides had conspired to wiretap Mr. Courser and fabricate and destroy evidence. He lodged accusations of lying and bias against the lawyers and judges. He sued aides, lawmakers, The Detroit News, the Michigan State Police, the attorney general and even the hotel chain where Mr. Courser and the other lawmaker met.The legal blitz was not successful. Some claims were dismissed for procedural reasons; others were found to have no merit. One federal district judge, Gordon Quist, called the conspiracy claim “not only implausible, but absurd on its face.” Judge Quist did reject a request to sanction Mr. Courser and Mr. DePerno for filing claims with no basis in fact. An appeals court ruling also noted that one of his theories was “not entirely implausible,” but still found there was no merit to that claim.Another federal appeals court panel wrote that Mr. Courser spent “more time enumerating claims than developing arguments.”Mr. DePerno, left, with Todd Courser during a hearing in 2016. Mr. Courser was accused of trying to cover up an extramarital affair with a fellow legislator.David Eggert/Associated PressA state circuit court judge imposed a nearly $80,000 sanction against Mr. DePerno and Mr. Courser in a defamation lawsuit against The Detroit News, finding Mr. DePerno “does not have a reasonable basis that the underlying facts are true as represented,” according to a transcript of a state court hearing in 2019. Mr. DePerno later sued that judge in federal court, accusing him of bias. He eventually dropped the case against the judge and agreed to a settlement with the news organization that cut the payment to $20,000.The Courser cases became a legal morass, with criminal charges filed against Mr. Courser and a barrage of civil suits. The cases dragged on for years, exasperating lawyers and clients. Michael Nichols, a Michigan lawyer who represented a co-defendant in a related criminal case, said Mr. DePerno often seemed to be more interested in pushing his theory about political bias against Tea Party-aligned Republicans than defending his client against the criminal charges.“I think he wanted to make this all about getting attention as the doll of the Tea Party movement,” Mr. Nichols said.In August 2019, Mr. Courser pleaded no contest to willful neglect of duty by a public officer, a misdemeanor.Mr. Courser in a recent interview stood by his longtime contention that he is the victim of a conspiracy by the legislative aides, legislators and others.He said Mr. DePerno “did everything he had to do to defend his client against the tyranny and unjust prosecution.”“I have nothing but great praise and admiration,” Mr. Courser said. “He’s going to be a great attorney general.”2020 Election ClaimsShortly after Mr. Trump lost the presidential election in Michigan, Bill Bailey, a real estate agent in the state’s lower peninsula, noticed some anomalies in the initial vote count from his local county, Antrim.The results in the conservative county had suddenly, and briefly, been reported as a win for Joseph R. Biden Jr., owing to an error in the clerk’s office. Mr. Bailey connected with Mr. Trump’s legal team, which advised him to get a Michigan lawyer, according to an associate of the legal team.He found Mr. DePerno, who got a court order granting him access to data from Antrim County’s voting machines. That information became the basis for the Antrim report and also gave Mr. DePerno a place in the loose collection of Trump associates, self-proclaimed data gurus and lawyers who were searching for evidence that could propel the fiction that Mr. Trump won the race. Mr. DePerno, along with the others, have continued that quest.Mr. DePerno in October 2021, at an event calling for an “audit” of the 2020 election in Michigan, which Mr. Trump lost.Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal, via Associated PressAs his work in Antrim County gained national attention, he began raising money. By December 2020, Mr. DePerno had set up multiple donation links on his website under the banner of “The 2020 Election Fraud Defense Fund.” One was hosted by a Michigan resident and has raised $62,000 to date. Another was started by Mr. DePerno, and has raised more than $400,000, according to a live tracker on the site.Mr. DePerno eventually added a direct PayPal invoice button urging people to “Donate via PayPal.” The link went directly to his law firm’s website. Asked about the PayPal link, Mr. DePerno said it was meant for clients to pay their legal bills.Mr. DePerno has refused to answer further questions about how he has used the money. In June, Republicans in the State Senate asked the attorney general to investigate how people have used the Antrim County theory “to raise money or publicity for their own ends,” though they did not single out Mr. DePerno.By spring, as it became clear that Mr. DePerno was flirting with a run for attorney general, Republicans in Michigan grew fearful that his candidacy could be a drag on the entire ticket, according to multiple former members of the state party and others familiar with the state party discussions. They encouraged another Republican to run and tried — and failed — to head off a potential endorsement from Mr. Trump.In September, Mr. Trump issued an endorsement praising Mr. DePerno for being “on the front lines pursuing fair and accurate elections, as he relentlessly fights to reveal the truth.”Kitty Bennett More

Karla Hernández-Mats, head of the largest teachers union in the region, criticized the Republican governor for attacking educators. “This is what dictators do,” she said.MIAMI — In choosing the head of the largest teachers union in the Southeast as his running mate, Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee for Florida governor, said he found a partner to embody the caring and empathy that he argues Gov. Ron DeSantis sorely lacks.Mr. Crist named Karla Hernández-Mats, the president of the United Teachers of Dade, as his lieutenant governor pick on Saturday, casting the former middle school special education science teacher — who is unknown to the vast majority of Florida voters — as a passionate parent and advocate ready to govern at his side, despite her lack of experience in elective office.Ms. Hernández-Mats has “a good heart,” Mr. Crist said in a brief interview, the first after making his decision. “That moves me more than anything, always.”The daughter of Honduran immigrants, Ms. Hernández-Mats taught for a decade in Hialeah, a working class, heavily Cuban American and heavily Republican city northwest of Miami. In 2010, she was named Florida’s teacher of the year. Her mother was a secretary, she said, and her father a farmworker who cut sugar cane and picked tomatoes until he landed a union job as a carpenter.“It epitomizes the American dream,” Ms. Hernández-Mats said of her life in a separate interview, her first since becoming Mr. Crist’s running mate.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsThe Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.New Women Voters: The number of women signing up to vote surged in some states after Roe was overturned, particularly in states where abortion rights are at risk.Sensing a Shift: Abortion rights, falling gas prices, legislative victories and Donald J. Trump’s re-emergence have Democrats dreaming again that they just might keep control of Congress. But the House map still favors Republicans.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Mr. Crist said he would continue to emphasize how unaffordable the state has become under Mr. DeSantis and how the governor has restricted people’s rights, including by opposing abortion, which is now illegal in Florida after 15 weeks of pregnancy.But in selecting a teachers union leader, Mr. Crist has ensured, for better or worse, that the governor’s race will remain focused at least in part on matters of education, a topic that Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, has seized as an electoral strength in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.Mr. DeSantis, who gained a national following for bucking public health experts and reopening Florida businesses and schools sooner than other states, has made “parents’ rights” a centerpiece of his message. He has waged cultural battles against the teaching of gender identity and racism in schools. And he campaigned for 30 school board candidates, almost all of whom won or made it into runoffs in Tuesday’s primary election. Two of the winners were in Miami-Dade County.The Republican Party of Florida wasted no time in criticizing Mr. Crist’s pick, saying before the campaign officially named Ms. Hernández-Mats that she represented “another slap in the face to Florida’s parents.”“It confirms how out of touch Crist is with Florida families,” the party said in a statement on Friday.Mr. Crist dismissed the notion that voters would agree with the criticism that sharing the ticket with a teachers union chief would somehow put him in opposition to parents.“I believe that parents being involved is incredibly important, and teachers should also be respected for their expertise,” he said. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”Democrats argued that Ms. Hernández-Mats could relate to voters as a working mother who understands the challenges inside classrooms. And, as a Spanish speaker, she can reach Hispanic voters whom the party has struggled to win.“Hispanic voters are obviously immensely critical to building a winning coalition for Democrats,” said Christian Ulvert, a Democratic political consultant in Miami who is Nicaraguan American. “The best way to go toe-to-toe is if you have someone in the community to fight back.”In the interview, the energetic Ms. Hernández-Mats seemed eager to fulfill a running mate’s frequent role in attacking the opposing candidate.“The state is stripping away freedoms,” she said. “Governor DeSantis doesn’t want women to choose or have autonomy over their bodies or health care. They take away one freedom and then they take away more freedom.”“Just a few months ago, people were like, ‘Teachers are amazing!’” she added, recalling how teachers were praised for teaching online early in the pandemic. “And now we have a governor that attacks teachers and public education. To what end? This is what dictators do.” More

WASHINGTON — It’s nice to see that the Democrats are back on track.It only took an upheaval turning women into second-class citizens, the possibility that the Orange Menace could be re-elected, and an out-of-control Supreme Court.With all that, the Dems seem to be pulling even.There’s still a better than even chance that they could lose the House. If they’re lucky, they’ll hold onto the Senate; and for that they would have to thank the Republicans for putting forward horrible candidates.President Biden’s ratings have gone up, from very bad to not good, with the base cheering on Dark Brandon. But the really positive news is that most Democratic Senate candidates are more popular than he is.The Democrats have managed to come alive in the last few weeks, actually passing stuff in Congress. After watching the country drown and burn, Joe Manchin freaked out that he would be single-handedly blamed for climate change and made a deal with Chuck Schumer.But the Democrats are still barely keeping their heads above water.They just can’t match the Republican crazy. Unfortunately, a considerable chunk of this country is acting insane, believing that Democrats are all pedophiles who are drinking babies’ blood.Democrats have to stop fighting a conventional war. It’s just not a conventional time.Ironic that Friday was Women’s Equality Day, designated so by Congress in the ’70s. At a time when women all over the world should be blossoming, we’re seeing stunning setbacks. There’s a bizarre trend of punishing women, Saudi-style, for their sexuality.Sanna Marin, Finland’s 36-year-old prime minister, is under fire for dancing with her friends in a country that always gets named “the happiest country in the world” in the United Nations-sponsored World Happiness Report. What a grim, still-sexist world this is, when Marin is forced to tearfully apologize — and take a drug test — after video leaked of her letting loose.The Helsinki Times tut-tutted that she was the “Prom Minister” and dismissed the music she was dancing to as “plebeian.” But the amazing Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, defended her Finnish counterpart, asking, “How do we constantly make sure that we attract people to politics, rather than — perhaps as has been historically the case — put them off?”Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, tweeted about the double standard: The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was cheered for chugging beers at a public concert while Marin was under fire for dancing at a private party. “Everyone just back off!” Emanuel wrote.“She’s getting hit for being immature,” Emanuel told me. “But she’s mature enough to lead Finland into NATO. That’s a hard day’s work. I’d need a little party, too!”Joe Biden seemed to see how abnormal things were when, at a rally in suburban Washington the other night, he got bold enough to denounce the MAGA gang for a philosophy that is “almost like semi-fascism.”But, keening about Roe’s reversal, he oddly said of Mitch McConnell: “Even if he’s not as extreme as some,” he “was able to, quote, ‘pack the court’ legitimately.”It is wrong to say McConnell acted legitimately just because he didn’t break the law. McConnell bent and broke the rules; he held off an Obama nominee for a year and then, with a week to go before the 2020 election, jammed the religious zealot Amy Coney Barrett onto the court.Barrett was a “handmaid” in a Christian group called “People of Praise,” in which men are decision makers over their wives. Now, Barrett is making decisions for all the women in the country, and it’s an outrage. The Guardian reported on another leaked video of a recent get-together — far more scary than Marin’s. It shows the wife of the tyrannical leader of “People of Praise” saying that some women in the group cried so intensely because of their subservient roles, they had to wear sunglasses.Women who thought that Roe would never really get tossed out, or if it did, it wouldn’t have that much impact, are now realizing what an earthquake this is.Tudor Dixon, a Donald Trump acolyte who is the Republican nominee for governor in Michigan, told a local Fox station that abortion should be illegal even in the case of minors who are raped. She suggested that having the baby could be “healing.”Many women are angry and many are registering to vote. Trump seems nervous, but he has wiggled out of a lot of jams. Democrats can’t rely on his spontaneous combustion. Just as women boosted Biden into the White House, now women have to rescue us again, from a bunch of crazy conservatives determining our health care — and how we live our lives. And maybe soon, whether we can be Dancing Queens.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

Jared Kushner, who spent his years in the White House evading responsibility for his father-in-law’s most extreme moves, has had to answer for some of them on his book tour.WASHINGTON — Making the rounds promoting his new memoir, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald J. Trump, this week ran into the question he has managed for months to avoid commenting on publicly: Did he agree with Mr. Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen?“I think that there’s different words,” Mr. Kushner told the talk show host Megyn Kelly during a friendly interview on SiriusXM. He added, “I think there’s a whole bunch of different approaches that different people have taken, and different theories.”Pressed to say whether Mr. Trump lost, Mr. Kushner demurred. “I believe it was a very sloppy election,” he said. “I think that there’s a lot of issues that I think if litigated differently may have had different insights into them.”In reality, the words that election officials have used to describe the 2020 contest are “the most secure in American history,” and judges across the country rejected nearly all of the several dozen lawsuits that allies of Mr. Trump filed alleging fraud.Mr. Kushner’s reluctance to concede as much reflected the contortions he is now attempting as he tries to sell a book whose success hinges on his close ties to Mr. Trump. At the same time, he is seeking to keep his distance from the lies and misdeeds that paved the way for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Like the memoir itself, titled “Breaking History,” the task involves a highly selective narrative that casts Mr. Kushner as a young star getting things done in the White House without getting his hands dirty.“Before I came into office,” the unelected Mr. Kushner said on Tuesday, settling into the “Fox & Friends” couch, the “conventional thinking” had been that there could never be peace between Israel and Arab nations “until you have peace with the Palestinians.”In that interview, Mr. Kushner, who was a senior adviser in the Trump White House, credited himself with helping to bring an “outsider’s point of view” to the world’s intractable problems.“Before I came into office,” Mr. Kushner said, the “conventional thinking” had been that there could never be peace between Israel and Arab nations “until you have peace with the Palestinians.”Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesIn another interview, he noted that his father-in-law had “asked me to take lead on building the wall.”During a virtual book event, Mr. Kushner even suggested he might be immortal, saying that he had prioritized exercising since leaving the White House because his generation could be “the first generation to live forever.”When it comes to Jan. 6 and the election lies that spurred the riot, Mr. Kushner is less sure-footed. In the interview with Ms. Kelly, he labored to defend Mr. Trump’s feverish obsession with the 2020 election.“What’s happened over the last year is that there has been a debate that’s been badly needed in this country about election integrity,” he said. More

The district attorney in Atlanta is seeking to build a broad conspiracy case that encompasses multifaceted efforts by Trump allies to disrupt and overturn the 2020 election.The day after Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, a small group working on his behalf traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga., about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta.One member of the group was Paul Maggio, an executive at a firm based in Atlanta called SullivanStrickler, which helps organizations analyze and manage their data. His company had been hired by Sidney Powell, a conspiracy theorist and lawyer advising Mr. Trump, who was tasked with scouring voting systems in Georgia and other states. It was part of an effort by Trump allies in a number of swing states to access and copy sensitive election software, with the help of friendly election administrators.“We are on our way to Coffee County, Georgia, to collect what we can from the election/voting machines and systems,” Mr. Maggio wrote to Ms. Powell on the morning of Jan. 7, 2021, according to an email exchange that recently emerged in civil litigation. Weeks later, Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area Trump supporter and bail bondsman who traveled to Coffee County on a chartered plane, described what he and the group did there.“We scanned every freaking ballot,” he said in a recorded phone conversation in March 2021. Mr. Hall said that the team had the blessing of the local elections board and “scanned all the equipment, imaged all the hard drives and scanned every single ballot.”This week, court filings revealed that the Coffee County data breach is now part of the sprawling investigation into election interference being conducted by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., which encompasses most of Atlanta.Though Coffee County is well outside of her jurisdiction, Ms. Willis is seeking to build a broad conspiracy and racketeering case that encompasses multifaceted efforts by Trump allies to disrupt and overturn the lawful election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. On Aug. 16, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation also confirmed that it was working with the Georgia secretary of state’s office on an investigation into the Coffee County data breach, court records show. Many of the details of the Coffee County visit were included in emails and texts that surfaced in civil litigation brought by voting rights activists against Georgia’s secretary of state; news of the breach was reported earlier by The Washington Post.A Trump supporter protested election results at the Georgia State Capitol in 2020.Audra Melton for The New York TimesSimilar breaches coordinated by Trump allies played out in several swing states. This month, Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, sought the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate data breaches there. She is seeking to remove herself from the case because one of the people potentially implicated in the scheme is her likely Republican election opponent, Matthew DePerno. Ms. Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.SullivanStrickler, in a statement released by a law firm representing the company, said it “has never been part of a ‘pro-Trump team’ or any ‘team’ whose goal is to undermine our democracy,” adding that it was a “politically agnostic” firm that was hired to “preserve and forensically copy the Dominion voting machines used in the 2020 election.” The statement said it was “categorically false” that SullivanStrickler was part of an effort that “illegally ‘breached’ servers” or other voting equipment, adding that it was retained and directed by “licensed, practicing attorneys.”“The firm elected to cease any further new work on this matter after the Jan. 7 time period,” the statement said. “With the benefit of hindsight, and knowing everything they know now, they would not take on any further work of this kind.”Legal experts say the Fulton County investigation could be particularly perilous for Mr. Trump’s allies, and perhaps for Mr. Trump himself, given the phone call that Mr. Trump made as president to Georgia’s secretary of state on Jan. 2, 2021, asking him to “find” enough votes to help him overturn his election loss in the state.A special grand jury has been impaneled with the sole purpose of investigating election meddling in the state and has already heard testimony from more than 30 witnesses, including Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani is one of at least 18 people who have been notified by prosecutors that they could face indictment in the case.This week, prosecutors filed court documents indicating that they were seeking testimony from a number of other Trump allies, including Ms. Powell and Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. The petition seeking to compel Ms. Powell’s testimony notes that Ms. Powell coordinated with SullivanStrickler “to obtain elections data” from Coffee County, adding: “There is further evidence in the public record that indicates that the witness was involved in similar efforts in Michigan and Nevada during the same time period.”As a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump after the election, Ms. Powell made a number of specious claims about election fraud, including an assertion that Democrats had “developed a computer system to alter votes electronically.” Ms. Powell is among those who have been sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems, the company that provides the voting machines for Coffee County and the rest of Georgia. As part of that suit, lawyers for Ms. Powell have argued that “no reasonable person would conclude” that some of her wilder statements “were truly statements of fact.”Fulton County prosecutors are seeking to have Ms. Powell testify before the special grand jury next month. In their court filing this week, they said that she possessed “unique knowledge” about postelection meetings held at the South Carolina plantation of L. Lin Wood, a pro-Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist. Mr. Wood, prosecutors wrote, stated that he and a group of other Trump supporters, including Ms. Powell and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, met at the plantation to explore “options to influence the results” of the 2020 election “in Georgia and elsewhere.”President Donald J. Trump departed a campaign rally in support of Georgia’s Republican senators in 2020.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMs. Willis’s office cited the Coffee County data breach in its filing on Thursday seeking Ms. Powell’s testimony, which was the first time the matter had surfaced in connection with her investigation. It remains unclear to what extent Ms. Willis’s office will focus on the Coffee County matter in her inquiry, or what, if any, charges could flow from it.“There are a variety of avenues the state has to bring criminal charges,” said David D. Cross, a lawyer representing plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit brought by civic groups against the Georgia secretary of state’s office over election security. “There are specific laws in Georgia that prevent access to voting equipment in particular,” he said, as well as “general laws about accessing computer equipment that doesn’t belong to you.”Mr. Trump won nearly 70 percent of Coffee County, which is home to just 43,000 people. Trump officials most likely targeted the county’s voting system because the county was run by friendly officials who were eager to cooperate. Cathy Latham, who was chair of the local Republican Party at the time, was also one of 16 pro-Trump fake electors who convened in the Georgia State Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, despite Mr. Trump’s loss in the state. All of them, including Ms. Latham, have been identified as targets of Ms. Willis’s investigation.The costs of election security breaches have been onerous. In Antrim County, Mich., which was at the forefront of efforts to overturn the election, Sheryl Guy, the clerk, said on Thursday that officials had to rent voting equipment to replace equipment that is being held as evidence in civil litigation.In Colorado, the secretary of state’s office estimated that taxpayers incurred a bill of at least $1 million to replace voting equipment in Mesa County after a pro-Trump election supervisor was indicted on charges that she tampered with the equipment after the 2020 election. Election experts noted that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, recommended that the safest course of action was to decommission voting equipment that has been compromised.“We’re getting to the point where this is happening at an alarming rate,” Lawrence Norden, senior director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center, said in an interview on Thursday. “When election officials permit or facilitate untrustworthy actors in gaining access to the system without any oversight, that is in and of itself going to leave the public questioning whether they trust these systems.”Nick Corasaniti More

Unredacted portions of the affidavit point to a crime that has been overshadowed amid disputes over classified information.WASHINGTON — When the Justice Department proposed redactions to the affidavit underlying the warrant used to search former President Donald J. Trump’s residence, prosecutors made clear that they feared the former president and his allies might take any opportunity to intimidate witnesses or otherwise illegally obstruct their investigation.“The government has well-founded concerns that steps may be taken to frustrate or otherwise interfere with this investigation if facts in the affidavit were prematurely disclosed,” prosecutors said in the brief.The 38-page affidavit, released on Friday, asserted that there was “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at” Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound, indicating that prosecutors had evidence suggesting efforts to impede the recovery of government documents.Since the release of the search warrant, which listed three criminal laws as the foundation of the investigation, one — the Espionage Act — has received the most attention. Discussion has largely focused on the spectacle of the F.B.I. finding documents marked as highly classified and Mr. Trump’s questionable claims that he had declassified everything held at his residence.But by some measures, the crime of obstruction is a threat to Mr. Trump or his close associates that is as much or even more serious. The version investigators are using, known as Section 1519, was part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a broad set of reforms enacted in 2002 after financial scandals at companies like Enron, Arthur Andersen and WorldCom.The heavily redacted affidavit provides new details of the government’s efforts to retrieve and secure the material in Mr. Trump’s possession, highlighting how prosecutors may be pursuing a theory that the former president, his aides or both might have illegally obstructed an effort of well over a year to recover sensitive documents that do not belong to him.To convict someone of obstruction, prosecutors need to prove two things: that a defendant knowingly concealed or destroyed documents, and that he did so to impede the official work of any federal agency or department. Section 1519’s maximum penalty is 20 years in prison, which is twice as long as the penalty under the Espionage Act.Julie O’Sullivan, a Georgetown University law professor who specializes in white-collar crime, said the emerging timeline of the government’s repeatedly stymied attempts to retrieve all the documents, coupled with claims by Mr. Trump that he did nothing wrong because he had declassified all the documents in his possession, raised significant legal peril for him.“He is making a mistake in believing that it matters whether it’s top secret or not,” she said. “He is essentially conceding that he knew he had them.” If so, she added, then not giving them back was “obstructing the return of these documents.”The cloud of potential obstruction carries echoes of the Russia investigation led by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. That inquiry ended up being as much about how Mr. Trump had sought to impede his work, as it was about scrutinizing Russia’s efforts to manipulate the 2016 election and the nature of myriad Russian links to people associated with Mr. Trump’s campaign.Explore Our Coverage of the Trump InvestigationsWhite House Documents: Mr. Trump kept more than 700 pages of classified documents, according to a letter from the National Archives. The Justice Department is said to have retrieved more than 300 classified documents from Mr. Trump since he left office.A Showdown in Georgia: Senator Lindsey Graham is fighting efforts to force him to testify before an Atlanta special grand jury investigating election interference by Mr. Trump and his allies in the state.Invoking the Fifth Amendment: Sitting for a deposition in the New York attorney general’s civil inquiry into his business practices, Mr. Trump repeatedly invoked his constitutional right against self incrimination.In a coincidence, the Justice Department on Thursday revealed an internal document commissioned by then-Attorney General William P. Barr that laid out purported justifications for his pronouncement in 2019 that Mr. Trump was cleared of obstruction suspicions, despite every episode recounted in the Mueller report. This time, however, the Justice Department is not overseen by a Trump loyalist.Because of the heavy redactions in the newly released affidavit, it remains unclear whether there is any other investigation or official agency effort that law enforcement officials think Mr. Trump or people in his circle might have obstructed in refusing to turn over the government documents. But at a minimum, it is clear that the government’s efforts to retrieve the records have repeatedly been impeded.The timeline laid out in the redacted affidavit, which fills in several gaps in the public understanding, traces back to May 6, 2021. On that day, as The New York Times reported this week, the general counsel for the National Archives first reached out to Mr. Trump’s designated representatives to the agency and asked for the return of about two dozen boxes of missing documents. More

Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, wore a Confederate uniform for a faculty photo at the Army War College that surfaced on Friday.The photo, from the 2013 to 2014 academic year, shows Mr. Mastriano wearing a gray military uniform, including a gray cap with yellow trim, and holding a Civil War-era firearm. It was first reported Friday evening by Reuters, which obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request.Mr. Mastriano — a retired Army colonel and now a state senator whose district includes Gettysburg, the site of the battle where the tide of the Civil War turned against the Confederacy — is running for governor against the Pennsylvania attorney general, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.Mr. Mastriano’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday evening. Neither did the Army War College, which Reuters reported had recently removed the photo from a wall of faculty portraits. Mr. Mastriano used to work for the college’s Department of Military Strategy, Plans and Operations.Some of the other faculty members in the photo also appear to be wearing historical outfits, though others are in regular attire. Mr. Mastriano is a leading figure on the far right in Pennsylvania, where he spearheaded efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and funded buses that took supporters of former President Donald J. Trump to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol.If elected in November, Mr. Mastriano would appoint Pennsylvania’s top elections official. He has suggested de-registering all of Pennsylvania’s roughly nine million registered voters and requiring them to register again.Mr. Mastriano was criticized in recent months for his ties to the founder of the far-right social media platform Gab, who has made antisemitic remarks. Mr. Mastriano’s campaign paid Gab a $5,000 consulting fee, and he did an interview with the founder, Andrew Torba, in which the two praised each other. In response to criticism, Mr. Mastriano said last month that he rejected antisemitism and that Mr. Torba “doesn’t speak for me or my campaign.” More

“Fake news” has gone from a hot buzzword popularized during the 2016 presidential campaign to an ever-present phenomenon known more formally as misinformation or disinformation.Whatever you call it, sowing F.U.D. — fear, uncertainty and doubt — is now a full-time and often lucrative occupation for the malign foreign actors and even ordinary U.S. citizens who try to influence American politics by publishing information they know to be false.Several of my colleagues here at The New York Times track the trends and shifting tactics of these fraudsters on their daily beats. So I exchanged messages this week with Sheera Frenkel, Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson, all three of whom spend their days swimming in the muck brewed by fake news purveyors here and abroad.Our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:This is a political newsletter, so let me ask my first question this way: What are you seeing out there that is new during this election cycle, in terms of tactics or topics?Sheera Frenkel: I’d say it’s the way misinformation has shifted slightly, in that you don’t have the same type of superspreaders on platforms like Twitter and Facebook that you did in the 2020 election cycle. Instead, you have lots of smaller-scale accounts spreading misinformation across a dozen or more platforms. It is more pervasive and more deeply entrenched than in previous elections.The most popular topics are largely rehashes of what was spread in the 2020 election cycle. There are a lot of false claims about voter fraud that we first saw made as early as 2016 and 2018. Newspapers, including The New York Times, have debunked many of those claims. That doesn’t seem to stop bad actors from spreading them or people from believing them.Then there are new claims, or themes, that are being spread by more fringe groups and extremist movements that we have started to track.Tiffany Hsu: Sheera first noticed a while back that there was a lot of chatter about “civil war.” And, quickly, we started to see it everywhere — this strikingly aggressive rhetoric that intensified after the F.B.I. searched Mar-a-Lago and with the passage of a bill that will give more resources to the I.R.S.For example, after the F.B.I. search, someone said on Truth Social, the social media platform started by Trump, that “sometimes clearing out dangerous vermin requires a modicum of violence, unfortunately.”We have seen a fair amount of “lock and load” chatter. But there is also pushback on the right, with people claiming without evidence that federal law enforcement or the Democrats are planting violent language to frame conservative patriots as extremists and insurrectionists.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsThe Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.New Women Voters: The number of women signing up to vote surged in some states after Roe was overturned, particularly in states where abortion rights are at risk.Sensing a Shift: Abortion rights, falling gas prices, legislative victories and Donald J. Trump’s re-emergence have Democrats dreaming again that they just might keep control of Congress. But the House map still favors Republicans.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Stuart A. Thompson: I’m always surprised by how much organization is happening around misinformation. It’s not just family members sharing fake news on Facebook anymore. There’s a lot of money sloshing around. There are lots of very well-organized groups that are trying to turn the attention over voter fraud and other conspiracy theories into personal income and political results. It’s a very organized machine at this point, after two years of organizing around the 2020 election. This feels different from previous moments when disinformation seemed to take hold in the country. It’s not just a fleeting interest spurred by a few partisan voices. It’s an entire community and social network and pastime for millions of people.Sheera, you’ve covered Silicon Valley for years. How much progress would you say the big social media players — Facebook/Meta, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube — have made in tackling the problems that arose during the 2016 election? What’s working and what’s not?Sheera: When we talk about 2016, we are largely talking about foreign election interference. In that case, Russia tried to interfere with U.S. elections by using social media platforms to sow divisions among Americans.Today, the problem of foreign election interference hasn’t been solved, but it is nowhere near at the scale it once was. Companies like Meta, which owns Facebook, and Twitter announce regular takedowns of networks run by Russia, Iran and China aiming to spread disinformation or influence people online. Millions have been spent on security teams at those companies to make sure they are removing foreign actors from spreading disinformation.And while it is not a done deal (bad actors are always innovating!), they’ve made a huge amount of progress in taking down these networks. This week, they even announced for the first time that they had removed a foreign influence op promoting U.S. interests abroad.A cutout of Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, dressed as the “QAnon Shaman” and cutouts of others involved in the Capitol riot before a House hearing last year.Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesWhat has been harder is what to do about Americans’ spreading misinformation to other Americans, and what to do with fringe political movements and conspiracies that continue to spread under the banner of free speech.Many of these social media companies have ended up exactly in the position they hoped to avoid — making one-off decisions on when they remove movements like the QAnon conspiracy group or voter fraud misinformation that begins to go viral. More