Elections

Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican of Wyoming whose polling remains far behind her Trump-endorsed primary challenger as her House committee’s Jan. 6 hearings continue, is urging Democrats in her home state to switch parties to support her in the Aug. 16 primary.In the last week, Wyoming Democrats have received mail from Ms. Cheney’s campaign with specific instructions on how to change their party affiliation to vote for her. Ms. Cheney’s campaign website now has a link to a form for changing parties.Ms. Cheney has begun mailing instructions to Democratic voters in Wyoming that explain how they can change their party status to vote for her in the upcoming Republican primary.Cheney for WyomingJoseph Barbuto, the chairman of the Wyoming Democratic Party, was among those who received Ms. Cheney’s instructions. Mr. Barbuto said that over the last week, his social media feeds have been flooded with Democrats — and only Democrats — posting about receiving mailers from the Cheney campaign.“I haven’t had any Republicans share online or tell me that they received it,” Mr. Barbuto said on Thursday.Recruiting Democratic support has been a sensitive topic for Ms. Cheney since she voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. She has cast her August primary contest with Harriet Hageman, who is allied with and endorsed by Mr. Trump, as a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. Recruiting Democrats to that fight could undermine those efforts.In a February interview in Cheyenne, Wyo., Ms. Cheney dismissed the possibility that she would make a concerted effort to reach out to Democrats asking them to change parties ahead of the primary.“That is not something that I have contemplated, that I have organized or that I will organize,” Ms. Cheney told The New York Times then, adding that she would “work hard for every single vote.”Her spokesman, Jeremy Adler, said on Thursday that Ms. Cheney was “proud to represent all Wyomingites and is working hard to earn every vote.”Ms. Hageman’s campaign said Ms. Cheney’s attempt to recruit Democrats represented a political flip-flop.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 6Making a case against Trump. More

Readers discuss a guest essay weighing factors such as the likelihood of conviction and the political repercussions.Attorney General Merrick Garland.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressDrew Angerer/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “What Garland Needs to Decide Before Charging Trump,” by Jack Goldsmith (Opinion guest essay, June 22):If Professor Goldsmith is right, American democracy has already lost. In spelling out the difficulties that Attorney General Merrick Garland must overcome in order to prosecute Donald Trump in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, Mr. Goldsmith all but concludes that the task is impossible. Prosecution will be portrayed as a political vendetta. Proving Mr. Trump’s guilty intent will be exceedingly hard, making an acquittal likely. And an acquittal will be seen by Mr. Trump and his supporters as a vindication.At the same time, Mr. Goldsmith concedes that a decision not to prosecute Mr. Trump will effectively place the president above the law. This bodes ill should Mr. Trump or someone like him again occupy the Oval Office.Is this really Mr. Garland’s only choice: a trial that threatens to tear an already divided nation apart, or allowing Mr. Trump to get away scot-free at the cost of undermining the rule of law? For the sake of democracy, there must be another option.Stephen NewmanTorontoThe writer is an associate professor of politics at York University.To the Editor:Jack Goldsmith is right to praise Attorney General Merrick Garland for “gathering as much information as possible” before deciding whether to prosecute former President Donald Trump for defrauding the American people and interfering with the work of Congress.Professor Goldsmith is wrong, however, to suggest that Mr. Garland’s decision to indict Mr. Trump would be “a cataclysmic event from which the nation would not soon recover.” The cataclysm is already here, and it is of Mr. Trump’s making, not Mr. Garland’s.Once and for all, we must stop Donald Trump’s big lies, his intimidation of anyone who opposes him and his thinly veiled calls to violence. The only solution is to impose the forceful countermeasures of the law.Mr. Trump rode the whirlwind, and he must now reap the consequences if our democracy is to survive.Eric W. OrtsPhiladelphiaThe writer is a professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.To the Editor:I’m so tired of hearing about the damage we may inflict on the nation and the presidency by holding Donald Trump to the same standard as any other citizen. Such concerns must be weighed against the very real damage caused by future presidents following the precedent he has established, operating the White House like a mob boss and pardoning his cronies when they do his bidding.This is a crossroads for America. We can have only one standard for justice. Afford Donald Trump the same justice as any other citizen and let the chips fall where they may. When in doubt, perhaps it’s time to just default to doing the right thing.Lawrence LobertGrosse Pointe Park, Mich.To the Editor:Jack Goldsmith suggests that, in weighing whether to indict Donald Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland must consider “whether the national interest would be served by prosecuting Mr. Trump.” It is, he argues, “a judgment call about the nature, and fate, of our democracy.”Quite so. And that is why Mr. Goldsmith errs in suggesting that the judgment should be made by Mr. Garland. Rather, it should be made by President Biden in deciding whether to pardon Mr. Trump. That is how the issue was resolved when President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, a compelling precedent for the current situation.Douglas M. ParkerOjai, Calif.The writer served in the White House Counsel’s Office during the Watergate investigations.To the Editor:Jack Goldsmith’s masterful exposition of the problems arising from seeking to hold Donald Trump criminally liable highlights the tragedy of the failure to remove him through the impeachment process. History will judge craven senators like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton as the villains responsible for an American tragedy. They knew better but refused to risk their personal political ambitions.How sad for America that the lessons of “Macbeth” elude so many United States senators.Allan RothAuburndale, Mass.The writer is a lawyer and a retired professor from Rutgers law and business schools.To the Editor:Jack Goldsmith identifies very legitimate concerns facing Attorney General Merrick Garland as he wades through the complexities of indicting, charging and prosecuting Donald Trump. And yet, it seems to me unconscionable and immoral to let Mr. Trump slither away from accountability given the mountain of evidence proving beyond any doubt that he very intentionally attempted to subvert the 2020 election.A possible Plan B? The district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, must move forward immediately and indict and prosecute Mr. Trump under that state’s laws. With the addition of the fruits of the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation, there is now more than enough evidence to charge Mr. Trump with state felony offenses that would likely land him behind bars and prevent him from ever running for public office again, which is the very least of what he deserves and this country needs.Laurie KorenbaumBrooklynThe writer is a former federal prosecutor.To the Editor:The nation is being held hostage by a sore loser. If Donald Trump is not held accountable for the events of Jan. 6, the precedent is set for every future election when the loser doesn’t agree with the outcome. We would invite anarchy in every election.I think it’s a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situation, but the lack of consequences to bad behavior encourages more of the same.Fran HochmanGreat Neck, N.Y. More

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, made securing the 2020 U.S. election a top priority. He met regularly with an election team, which included more than 300 people from across his company, to prevent misinformation from spreading on the social network. He asked civil rights leaders for advice on upholding voter rights.The core election team at Facebook, which was renamed Meta last year, has since been dispersed. Roughly 60 people are now focused primarily on elections, while others split their time on other projects. They meet with another executive, not Mr. Zuckerberg. And the chief executive has not talked recently with civil rights groups, even as some have asked him to pay more attention to the midterm elections in November.Safeguarding elections is no longer Mr. Zuckerberg’s top concern, said four Meta employees with knowledge of the situation. Instead, he is focused on transforming his company into a provider of the immersive world of the metaverse, which he sees as the next frontier of growth, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly.The shift in emphasis at Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, could have far-reaching consequences as faith in the U.S. electoral system reaches a brittle point. The hearings on the Jan. 6 Capitol riots have underlined how precarious elections can be. And dozens of political candidates are running this November on the false premise that former President Donald J. Trump was robbed of the 2020 election, with social media platforms continuing to be a key way to reach American voters.Election misinformation remains rampant online. This month, “2000 Mules,” a film that falsely claims the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump, was widely shared on Facebook and Instagram, garnering more than 430,000 interactions, according to an analysis by The New York Times. In posts about the film, commenters said they expected election fraud this year and warned against using mail-in voting and electronic voting machines.Voters casting their ballots in Portland, Maine, this month.Jodi Hilton for The New York TimesOther social media companies have also pulled back some of their focus on elections. Twitter, which stopped labeling and removing election misinformation in March 2021, has been preoccupied with its $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, three employees with knowledge of the situation said. Mr. Musk has suggested he wants fewer rules about what can and cannot be posted on the service.“Companies should be growing their efforts to get prepared to protect the integrity of elections for the next few years, not pulling back,” said Katie Harbath, chief executive of the consulting firm Anchor Change, who formerly managed election policy at Meta. “Many issues, including candidates pushing that the 2020 election was fraudulent, remain and we don’t know how they are handling those.”Meta, which along with Twitter barred Mr. Trump from its platforms after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has worked over the years to limit political falsehoods on its sites. Tom Reynolds, a Meta spokesman, said the company had “taken a comprehensive approach to how elections play out on our platforms since before the U.S. 2020 elections and through the dozens of global elections since then.”Mr. Reynolds disputed that there were 60 people focused on the integrity of elections. He said Meta has hundreds of people across more than 40 teams focused on election work. With each election, he said, the company was “building teams and technologies and developing partnerships to take down manipulation campaigns, limit the spread of misinformation and maintain industry-leading transparency around political ads and pages.”Trenton Kennedy, a Twitter spokesman, said the company was continuing “our efforts to protect the integrity of election conversation and keep the public informed on our approach.” For the midterms, Twitter has labeled the accounts of political candidates and provided information boxes on how to vote in local elections.How Meta and Twitter treat elections has implications beyond the United States, given the global nature of their platforms. In Brazil, which is holding a general election in October, President Jair Bolsonaro has recently raised doubts about the country’s electoral process. Latvia, Bosnia and Slovenia are also holding elections in October.“People in the U.S. are almost certainly getting the Rolls-Royce treatment when it comes to any integrity on any platform, especially for U.S. elections,” said Sahar Massachi, the executive director of the think tank Integrity Institute and a former Facebook employee. “And so however bad it is here, think about how much worse it is everywhere else.”Facebook’s role in potentially distorting elections became evident after 2016, when Russian operatives used the site to spread inflammatory content and divide American voters in the U.S. presidential election. In 2018, Mr. Zuckerberg testified before Congress that election security was his top priority.“The most important thing I care about right now is making sure no one interferes in the various 2018 elections around the world,” he said.The social network has since become efficient at removing foreign efforts to spread disinformation in the United States, election experts said. But Facebook and Instagram still struggle with conspiracy theories and other political lies on their sites, they said.In November 2019, Mr. Zuckerberg hosted a dinner at his home for civil rights leaders and held phone and Zoom conference calls with them, promising to make election integrity a main focus.He also met regularly with an election team. More than 300 employees from various product and engineering teams were asked to build new systems to detect and remove misinformation. Facebook also moved aggressively to eliminate toxic content, banning QAnon conspiracy theory posts and groups in October 2020.Around the same time, Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $400 million to local governments to fund poll workers, pay for rental fees for polling places, provide personal protective equipment and other administrative costs.The week before the November 2020 election, Meta also froze all political advertising to limit the spread of falsehoods.But while there were successes — the company kept foreign election interference off the platform — it struggled with how to handle Mr. Trump, who used his Facebook account to amplify false claims of voter fraud. After the Jan. 6 riot, Facebook barred Mr. Trump from posting. He is eligible for reinstatement in January 2023.Last year, Frances Haugen, a Facebook employee-turned-whistle-blower, filed complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission accusing the company of removing election safety features too soon after the 2020 election. Facebook prioritized growth and engagement over security, she said.In October, Mr. Zuckerberg announced Facebook would focus on the metaverse. The company has restructured, with more resources devoted to developing the online world.The team working on elections now meets regularly with Nick Clegg, Meta’s president for global affairs.Christopher Furlong/Getty ImagesMeta also retooled its election team. Now the number of employees whose job is to focus solely on elections is approximately 60, down from over 300 in 2020, according to employees. Hundreds of others participate in meetings about elections and are part of cross-functional teams, where they work on other issues. Divisions that build virtual reality software, a key component of the metaverse, have expanded.What Is the Metaverse, and Why Does It Matter?Card 1 of 5The origins. More

A hearing at 3 p.m. Thursday will feature the former acting attorney general and other top officials at the department during the Trump era as witnesses.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans to unveil new evidence on Thursday about how President Donald J. Trump tried to manipulate the Justice Department to help him cling to power after he lost the 2020 election, aides said on Wednesday.At its fifth public hearing this month, scheduled for 3 p.m. on Thursday, the panel plans to hear testimony from three former top Justice Department officials who are expected to lay out the ways in which Mr. Trump tried to misuse the attorney general’s office to overturn his defeat, an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with the nation’s law enforcement apparatus for his own personal ends.Committee aides said the panel would detail how Mr. Trump unsuccessfully pushed department officials to falsely declare that there was widespread fraud in the election, file lawsuits to benefit his campaign and appoint a conspiracy theorist as a special counsel to investigate the election. It will also trace his failed efforts to send false letters to state officials to subvert the election results and, finally, to replace the acting attorney general, who refused to go along with his plans.Mr. Trump ultimately backed off after agency officials threatened mass resignations, but the committee is presenting his actions as a critical strand in a multilayered effort by the former president to subvert the election.The witnesses scheduled to testify are Jeffrey A. Rosen, the former acting attorney general; Richard P. Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general; and Steven A. Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.Day Three: Mr. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing.Day Four: The committee used its fourth hearing to show how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors and highlight the pressure that state officials faced to overturn the election.Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a member of the committee, is expected to play a central role in the questioning of witnesses and presentation of evidence. He has hinted that the hearing could reveal more information about members of Congress who sought pardons after Jan. 6.The story of how Mr. Trump attempted to intervene in the workings of the Justice Department to keep himself in office has been well documented by both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Jan. 6 committee, but aides to the House inquiry said Thursday’s hearing will contain new revelations.Time and again, department officials told Mr. Trump after the election that his claims of widespread fraud were false, and prompted him to back down from some of his most extreme propositions.One dramatic moment came in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 3, 2021, when Jeffrey Clark, a little-known department lawyer who had been strategizing about how to keep Mr. Trump in power, suggested that the agency issue a legal opinion to Vice President Mike Pence advising him as to what actions he could take during the joint session of Congress set for three days later, when lawmakers were to meet for the official electoral count that would confirm Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.“That’s an absurd idea,” Mr. Engel interjected, according to testimony he provided to the committee. “It is not the role of the Department of Justice to provide legislative officials with legal advice on the scope of their duties.”Mr. Trump then spoke up and told the Justice Department officials, who repeatedly told him his claims of widespread fraud were false, that they were not to speak to Mr. Pence.“Nobody should be talking to the vice president here,” Mr. Trump said, according to Mr. Engel.Mr. Trump would go on to repeatedly push Mr. Pence to try to overturn the election results.Also at that meeting, Mr. Trump proposed firing Mr. Rosen, who was advising him that the 2020 election was not stolen, and replacing him with Mr. Clark, who was willing to do his bidding.“Sir, I would resign immediately,” Mr. Donoghue spoke up, according to a deposition he gave. “There is no way I’m serving one minute under this guy,” he said of Mr. Clark.Mr. Trump then turned to Mr. Engel and said, “Steve, you wouldn’t resign, would you?” Mr. Engel replied: “Absolutely I would, Mr. President. You’d leave me no choice.”The Justice Department officials were also witnesses to interactions between Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, and Mr. Trump. The committee has called for Mr. Cipollone to testify publicly, but he has so far refused.Mr. Cipollone pushed back against a plan put forward by Mr. Clark, who wanted to distribute official letters to multiple state legislatures falsely alerting them that the election may have been stolen and urging them to reconsider certified election results.“That letter that this guy wants to send — that letter is a murder-suicide pact,” Mr. Cipollone told Mr. Trump, according to Mr. Donoghue. “It’s going to damage everyone who touches it. And we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don’t ever want to see that letter again.”The panel is planning at least two more hearings for July, according to its chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi. Those sessions are expected to detail how a mob of violent extremists attacked Congress and how Mr. Trump did nothing to call off the violence for more than three hours. More

DoJ seeks delay in Proud Boys case as it collides with parallel January 6 inquiryTwo cases had managed to steer clear of each other as the justice department and House panel pursued the same ground The US justice department’s criminal investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack collided with the parallel congressional investigation, causing federal prosecutors to seek a delay in proceedings in the seditious conspiracy case against the far-right Proud Boys group.The two January 6 inquiries had largely managed to steer clear of each other even as both the justice department and a House select committee pursued the same ground. But it all came to head on Wednesday.At a hearing in federal court in Washington, federal prosecutors and defendants in the justice department’s seditious conspiracy case asked a federal judge to delay the August trial date of the former Proud Boys national chairman Henry Tarrio, AKA Enrique Tarrio, and other top members of the far-right group.January 6 panel to focus on Trump’s relentless pressure on justice departmentRead more“It is reasonably foreseeable that information relevant to the defendants’ guilt (or innocence) could soon be released,” assistant US attorney Erik Kenerson wrote on Tuesday. “Inability to prepare their respective cases … is potentially prejudicial – to all parties.”The request was granted “reluctantly” by US district judge Timothy Kelly, who said the trial will now start in December, agreeing that the select committee’s report and witness transcripts that are slated to be made public in September could upend preparations.The justice department has run into the issue that because it is conducting a criminal investigation, its federal prosecutors are bound by strict rules requiring high standards of proof before they start issuing subpoenas and collecting evidence.By contrast, the select committee, in conducting a congressional investigation examining the circumstances surrounding the Capitol attack, can issue subpoenas for documents and testimony whenever and however it likes, given the approval of a majority of its members.That has meant the panel has amassed more than 1,000 transcripts of closed-door depositions conducted with key witnesses related to the January 6 inquiries, some of which the justice department believes are relevant to its cases but the panel had declined to share.In a letter last week, Matthew Graves, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, and assistant attorneys general Kenneth Polite and Matthew Olsen complained their inability to access transcripts was hampering criminal investigations, including in the Proud Boys case.“The select committee’s failure to grant the department access to these transcripts complicates the department’s ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” they wrote in the letter.The select committee relented and suggested it would not even wait until September but start making transcripts public as early as July. But lawyers for the Proud Boys took issue with both dates, saying the contents of the transcripts could bias a jury ahead of trial.Not all of the defendants sought a delay. Tarrio opposed the request because “an impartial jury will never be achieved in Washington DC whether the trial is in August, December, or next year”. Ethan Nordean, another prominent Proud Boys figure, opposed the request unless he was freed from pre-trial detention.The potential for the transcripts to influence a jury pool has been a recurring complaint for the Proud Boys lawyers, who argue the January 6 hearings – which started three days after Tarrio and others were charged with seditious conspiracy – will irreparably taint a jury.Federal prosecutors have pushed back, contending that people in Washington were no more likely to have seen the hearings than people in New York or Miami. Still, the government agreed for the need for breathing space between the trial and transcripts being made public.The justice department, meanwhile, has its own concerns with the transcripts’ release and would seemingly prefer to get the transcripts in private to compare what witnesses have told the select committee and what they have secretly told a grand jury.At least two members of the Proud Boys have testified before the select committee in closed-door depositions: Tarrio, who has been charged with seditious conspiracy and other crimes, and Jeremy Bertino, who has been mentioned in court filings but is currently not charged.Also on Wednesday, the justice department issued new subpoenas to at least three people connected to the Trump campaign’s potentially illegal plan to send fraudulent election certificates to Congress as part of the effort to overturn the 2020 election results.The confirmed recipients of the grand jury subpoenas were Brad Carver, a Georgia Republican party official who was a Trump elector, Thomas Lane, a Trump campaign official in Arizona and New Mexico, and Sean Flynn, a Trump campaign aide in Michigan, the New York Times reported.TopicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsThe far rightHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Republican who livestreamed Capitol attack given three months in prisonWest Virginia lawmaker Derrick Evans, 37, who filmed self-incriminating footage, pleaded guilty to committing civil disorder00:43A West Virginia lawmaker who participated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol while livestreaming the deadly insurrection has been sentenced to three months in prison.Derrick Evans, 37, was arrested and charged shortly after the attack, in part thanks to self-incriminating video footage he shot of himself leading and egging on rioters who overwhelmed police at the Capitol.Feds seek delay in Proud Boys conspiracy case as it collides with parallel January 6 inquiryRead moreHe resigned, then pleaded guilty to the felony of committing civil disorder in March, but was given bail and appeared virtually from his home for sentencing on Wednesday.Evans, who had been sworn into the Republican-led legislature less than a month before the attack, is among 21 lawmakers known to have joined the rioters trying to overturn the 2020 election. He is the only one to be prosecuted so far.Evans had a penchant for broadcasting live on his Facebook page, Derrick Evans – The Activist, which had 32,000 followers, whom he encouraged to travel to Washington to “fight for Trump”, according to prosecutors.He documented his bus journey to the capital, and then headed straight for the east side of the Capitol. Donning a helmet, Evans shouted out updates to the growing crowd about the violence occurring on the west side of the Capitol, where rioters first breached the building, according to the sentencing memo.Evans narrated as the mob eventually overwhelmed the police and pushed through the Rotunda doors, according to video clips from his account played in court.“We’re taking this house, I told you today! Patriots stand up! … My people didn’t vote for me because I was a coward.” After breaching the building, he said, “We’re in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”He deleted the video later that day, but it had already been widely circulated.Evans is among at least 825 people so far charged in connection with the insurrection, of whom 310 have pleaded guilty.Before January 6, Evans had streamed live footage of himself outside West Virginia’s only abortion clinic, which led to a 10ft fence being built around the building and a clinic volunteer having to obtain a restraining order against him. Evans also broadcast his protests against Black Lives Matter and drag shows.On Wednesday Evans told the judge that he took responsibility for his actions and regretted that his actions would leave his kids “fatherless for months”.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsWest VirginiaRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

Federal prosecutors sought information from two men who had worked on behalf of the Trump campaign and a third who signed up as a Trump elector in Georgia, a state won by President Biden.The Justice Department stepped up its criminal investigation of a plan by President Donald J. Trump and his allies to create slates of so-called fake electors in a bid to keep Mr. Trump in power during the 2020 election, as federal agents delivered grand jury subpoenas on Wednesday to at least four people connected to the plan.One of those who received a subpoena, according to two people familiar with the matter, was Brad Carver, a lawyer and official of the Georgia Republican Party who claimed to be one of Mr. Trump’s electors in the state, which was won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.Another subpoena recipient was Thomas Lane, an official who worked on behalf of Mr. Trump’s campaign in Arizona and New Mexico, the people said.A third person, Shawn Flynn, a Trump campaign aide in Michigan, also got a subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter.A fourth subpoena was issued to David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, who also served as a fake elector for Mr. Trump.The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.Day Three: Mr. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing.Day Four: The committee used its fourth hearing to show how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors and highlight the pressure that state officials faced to overturn the election.Mr. Shafer’s lawyer declined to comment. None of the other three men could be reached for comment about the subpoenas.The issuance of new subpoenas was reported earlier by The Washington Post.The fake elector plan is the focus of one of two known prongs of the Justice Department’s broad grand jury investigation of Mr. Trump’s multiple and interlocking attempts to subvert the election. The other has focused on a wide cast of political organizers, White House aides and members of Congress connected in various ways to Mr. Trump’s incendiary speech near the White House that directly preceded the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.This latest round of activity in the Justice Department’s inquiry came amid the House Jan. 6 committee’s high-profile hearings into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse the outcome of the election.It also comes less than a month after an earlier round of grand jury subpoenas revealed that prosecutors were seeking information on any role that a group of pro-Trump lawyers might have played in the fake elector effort. Those lawyers included Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, James Troupis and Justin Clark. Although testimony to the House committee has presented evidence of the roles of some of them in the plan, including Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Chesebro, it is not clear what role, if any, some of the others might have played.The subpoenas, issued by a grand jury sitting in Washington, have also sought records and information about other pro-Trump figures like Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner and a longtime ally of Mr. Giuliani.Many of the lawyers named in the subpoenas were also mentioned on Tuesday at the House select committee’s public hearing exploring Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging pressure campaign to persuade state officials to help him stay in office.At the hearing, the committee for the first time directly connected Mr. Trump to the plan, introducing a recorded deposition from Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, in which she recounted how Mr. Trump called her and put Mr. Eastman on the phone “to talk about the importance of the R.N.C. helping the campaign gather these contingent electors.”The first subpoenas in the fake elector inquiry were largely sent to people in key swing states who almost took part in the plan but eventually did not for various reasons. This new round of subpoenas appears to be the first time that Trump campaign officials were brought into the investigation, marking a small but potentially significant step closer to Mr. Trump himself.The plan to create pro-Trump electors in states won by Mr. Biden was among the earliest and most expansive of several plots by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the election. It involved lawyers, state officials, White House and campaign aides, and members of Congress.The plan was developed as Mr. Trump and his allies sought to promote baseless assertions of widespread election fraud in key swing states and persuade state officials to reverse their certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. It aimed to have the pro-Trump slates in place by the time Vice President Mike Pence oversaw the official certification of electoral votes during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Trump and others close to him mounted a relentless effort in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6 to persuade Mr. Pence either to count the pro-Trump electors and hand Mr. Trump a victory in the Electoral College or to declare that the election was uncertain because competing slates of electors had been received in several states.The idea was to buy Mr. Trump more time to pursue his baseless claims of fraud or potentially to send the election to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation would get a single vote. Because more delegations were controlled by Republicans than by Democrats, Mr. Trump could have won.Adam Goldman More

The former Democratic nominee for Florida governor was indicted in a criminal case stemming from his time as Tallahassee mayor and statewide candidate.MIAMI — Andrew Gillum, the Democrat who lost the 2018 Florida governor’s race to Ron DeSantis, surrendered to federal authorities in Tallahassee on Wednesday after he and a close associate were charged with conspiracy and 19 counts of fraud over how they raised and used funds when he was mayor of Tallahassee and a candidate for governor.Mr. Gillum, 42, was also charged with making false statements to the F.B.I.He pleaded not guilty in a court appearance on Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Gillum, dressed in a navy suit with a dark tie and face mask, was cuffed around his wrists and ankles, with a chain around his waist. Inside the courtroom were some of his friends and a gaggle of news reporters. He left the courthouse after his release and gave no comment to the cameras and microphones waiting outside.The once-ascendant Democrat, Mr. Gillum came within 32,000 votes of the governorship in 2018 — which would have made him Florida’s first Black governor and a future White House hopeful — only to lose his political direction and face personal struggles. In 2020, the police found him in a Miami Beach hotel room where another man was suffering from a possible drug overdose.Mr. Gillum entered rehab to seek treatment for alcoholism shortly after. He later came out as bisexual in an interview that also featured his wife.The charges appear to stem from a federal investigation into Tallahassee City Hall that began in 2015 and involved undercover F.B.I. agents posing as developers. Revelations from the investigation, including that Mr. Gillum had socialized with the undercover agents in New York, where they took a boat ride to the Statue of Liberty and saw the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton,” were an issue in the 2018 campaign. Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, said at the time that Mr. Gillum could not be trusted to run the state.Mr. Gillum, who did not disclose the gifts at the time as required by state law, paid a $5,000 Florida ethics fine in 2019.The 21-count indictment against Mr. Gillum shows that a grand jury filed the charges against him on June 7. Also charged was Sharon Lettman-Hicks, 53, a confidante of Mr. Gillum’s since he was in college. According to the indictment, she used her communications company to disguise fraudulent payments to Mr. Gillum as part of her payroll.In a statement, Mr. Gillum said he had run all of his political campaigns “with integrity.”“Make no mistake that this case is not legal, it is political,” he said. “There’s been a target on my back ever since I was the mayor of Tallahassee. They found nothing then, and I have full confidence that my legal team will prove my innocence now.”Ms. Lettman-Hicks, who is running as a Democrat for a State House seat in Tallahassee, was in a wheelchair when she appeared in court on Wednesday and pleaded not guilty. She declined to comment.The indictment covers events involving Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks from 2016 to 2019. The false statements charge against Mr. Gillum is related to his interactions with the undercover agents.According to the indictment, beginning in 2016, Mr. Gillum and two unnamed associates solicited campaign contributions from the undercover agents for Mr. Gillum’s newly formed Forward Florida political action committee. To keep the agents’ names private, the associates promised to funnel the contributions in other ways, including through Ms. Lettman-Hicks’s company, P&P Communications. In exchange, they were promised “unencumbered government contracts,” according to one of the unnamed associates.Mr. Gillum told one of the undercover agents that he “should separate in his mind the campaign contributions and the Tallahassee projects,” the indictment says, adding that Mr. Gillum also “indicated he looked favorably on” the undercover agent’s proposed development projects.The indictment says that when Mr. Gillum voluntarily spoke to F.B.I. agents in 2017, he “falsely represented” that the undercover agents posing as developers never offered him anything and that he had stopped communicating with them after they tried to link their contributions to support for potential Tallahassee projects.The fraud and conspiracy charges are related to Mr. Gillum’s dealings with Ms. Lettman-Hicks with regards to P&P Communications and Mr. Gillum’s campaign.In 2017, when he became a candidate for governor, Mr. Gillum resigned from his position with People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group whose Tallahassee office was leased from Ms. Lettman-Hicks. Mr. Gillum lost his annual $122,500 salary, and Ms. Lettman-Hicks lost $3,000 in monthly rent. Mr. Gillum was also paid about $70,500 a year as mayor, a position he held from 2014 to 2018.Mr. Gillum then became an employee of P&P Communications, where he was given a monthly salary of $10,000. According to the indictment, hiring Mr. Gillum was “only a cover used to provide him funds that he lost” after his resignation from People for the American Way.When Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks solicited $50,000 in grant funding from two unnamed organizations, the money was intended to be used for the Campaign to Defend Local Solutions, an effort by Mr. Gillum to fight state efforts to pre-empt local governments’ power. Instead, according to the indictment, that money ultimately went to P&P Communications to pay Mr. Gillum.In 2018, the indictment says, Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks defrauded an unnamed campaign donor who had given $250,000 intended for Mr. Gillum’s campaign. Instead, $150,000 of that was diverted to Mr. Gillum’s political action committee and to P&P Communications.According to the indictment, in November 2018, $130,000 from the campaign was supposed to go to “get out the vote” efforts. Instead, $60,000 went to P&P Communications and was used in part to pay Mr. Gillum $20,000 in “bonus” payments from Nov. 20 to 29, 2018.Eventually, it was listed falsely in Mr. Gillum’s campaign finance report as a reimbursement for “Get Out the Vote Canvassing.”Alexandra Glorioso More