Elections

Two reports shed light on the issues driving Hispanic voters and why their support of the Democratic Party is eroding.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.Of all the 2020 hangovers, perhaps none is as befuddling to Democrats as the party’s eroding support among Latino voters.And Democrats have plenty of reason to worry: For years, they have relied on Latinos as a crucial part of a winning coalition and held fast to the belief that the coalition would only grow along with new voters. Former President Donald J. Trump’s policies and rhetorical attacks on immigrants, many Democrats reasoned, would drive Hispanic voters to their party like no other candidate could.But Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign blew that theory out of the water: Hispanic support for him actually increased in 2020, particularly — but not only — in South Florida and South Texas. And two new reports this week show why Democrats should be worried.The first, by Equis Research, a Democratic-leaning group that focuses on Latinos, relies on polls and focus groups conducted over the year since the election. It found that the economy became the top issue for Latinos all over the country, replacing immigration for many voters.The report also found that fears of Democrats embracing socialist policies drove a large number of voters toward Mr. Trump, and that those fears persist even among Democratic voters.And in new polling by Way to Win, a Democratic-aligned group, the economy was seen as the most important issue among Latino voters. More alarming for Democrats though, is that half of all Hispanic voters polled in four key states said that they believed the country was going in the wrong direction.The poll surveyed 1,000 Latino voters in Texas, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona last month in both English and Spanish, and found that 58 percent of independent voters believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. Still, 60 percent of all Latino voters surveyed said they had a favorable opinion of President Biden and the Democratic Party.But that level of support won’t be enough to hold on to the House or Senate in the midterms, said Tory Gavito, the president of Way to Win.“To win next November, we need to have Latinos at the 70 mark for Democrats, so we’ve got to move for these folks,” Ms. Gavito said in an interview. “Right now we see the support, but it’s soft.”Kristian Ramos, the campaign manager for Way to Win’s midterm message research project, said: “We could easily lose them to the couch. This administration has done 10 times more on Covid, has done miraculous work on the economy, but Latinos have no idea. And the economic anxiety in this group is off the charts.”Half of those polled by Way to Win said that they trusted the Democratic Party more on the issues of jobs and the economy, while 54 percent said they approved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy. Among those who have an unfavorable view of the party, 22 percent say it is too liberal or socialist, according to the poll.Yet the majority of those surveyed said they wished that Mr. Biden could have enacted more change than he has so far, which pollsters tied to “deep anxiety about the economy.”“They don’t really care ideologically, as long as someone is speaking to those pain points,” Mr. Ramos said.The Equis report found that Latinos who may have been otherwise inclined to vote for Mr. Trump in 2016 withheld their support in that campaign because of his hard-line stance on immigration and the “importance of the Hispanic identity.” But by the middle of 2020, neither of those issues clearly differentiated Trump supporters and Democratic voters. Instead, the impact of the pandemic appeared to drive a larger number of voters, and the Trump administration’s approach to reopening the economy was embraced by a majority of them.The Equis research found that Democrats are losing ground to Republicans on issues relating to the economy. Asked which party they find more accurately described as valuing hard work, better for the American workers and the party of the American dream, Latino voters were roughly evenly divided.“The challenge is that 2020 hasn’t ended, the same dynamics haven’t ended,” said Carlos Odio, the co-founder of Equis. If there is a moral to the story, Mr. Odio added, it is that less partisan Latinos moved toward the candidate they trusted more on their top issue. “So competing for the vote can pay off.”On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. More

Phil Waldron has been under scrutiny since a 38-page PowerPoint he circulated was turned over to the panel by former President Donald J. Trump’s last chief of staff.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol issued a subpoena on Thursday for Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel with a background in information warfare who had circulated a detailed and extreme plan to overturn the 2020 election.The committee has been scrutinizing Mr. Waldron’s role in spreading false information about the election since a 38-page PowerPoint presentation he circulated on Capitol Hill was turned over to the panel by Mark Meadows, President Donald J. Trump’s last chief of staff, who denied having anything to do with it.“The document he reportedly provided to administration officials and members of Congress is an alarming blueprint for overturning a nationwide election,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee, said.Waldron said he had not yet seen the subpoena and declined to comment.The PowerPoint — titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN” — recommended that Mr. Trump declare a national emergency to cling to power and included the false claim that China and Venezuela had obtained control over the voting infrastructure in a majority of states.On Jan. 4, associates of Mr. Waldron spoke to a group of senators and informed them about the allegations of election fraud in the PowerPoint, Mr. Waldron told The New York Times recently in an interview. On Jan. 5, he said, he personally briefed a small group of House members whom he did not identify; that discussion also focused on baseless claims of foreign interference in the election. He said he had made the document available to the lawmakers.Mr. Waldron told The Washington Post that he had contributed to the creation of the document and had visited the White House several times after last year’s election, and spoken with Mr. Meadows “maybe eight to 10 times.”Mr. Waldron, who specialized in psychological influence operations and once was deployed to Iraq, retired from the military in 2016 after 30 years of service. He appears to lead a quieter life these days, describing himself on his LinkedIn page as the founder, forklift driver and floor sweeper at One Shot Distillery and Brewery in Dripping Springs, Texas.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?But almost as soon as the 2020 polls closed, he joined a wide-ranging effort to persuade the public and key Republican politicians that the vote count had been marred by rampant fraud.By mid-November, Mr. Waldron was in contact with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, who at the time was overseeing challenges to the election. Mr. Waldron fed Mr. Giuliani information about alleged attempts by foreign powers to hack American voting machines and about suspected left-wing operatives who were working for the vote tabulation company Dominion Voting Systems. Some of these baseless claims ultimately made their way into federal lawsuits attacking Dominion’s role in the election that were filed by the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.“Colonel in the military, great war record,” Mr. Giuliani later said of Mr. Waldron in a deposition he gave in a defamation lawsuit brought by a Dominion employee. “I’ve had substantial dealings with him and he’s very, very thorough and very experienced in this kind of work.”Mr. Giuliani said his legal team put up a “big whiteboard” that laid out its strategies while he and fellow lawyers, including Ms. Powell and Jenna Ellis, ran operations as “really active supervisors.”Mr. Giuliani said another lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, was focusing on fraud allegations in Nevada and Arizona, while Mr. Waldron was investigating conspiracies related to Dominion voting machines.“If I were to think of Dominion, I would think of Sidney carrying the ball on that, with everybody else helping, and Phil was the investigator,” Mr. Giuliani said.Mr. Waldron also participated in meetings at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in early January to plan ways to challenge the election results, according to the committee.Key Aspects of the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 8The House investigation. More

Capitol attack panel subpoenas author of PowerPoint plan for coupTrump operative who outlined ‘Options for 6 Jan’ met with the president’s chief of staff repeatedly before the Capitol riot The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Thursday subpoenaed Trump operative Phil Waldron, the retired colonel whose PowerPoint recommending Donald Trump declare a national emergency to return himself to office was sent to the White House chief of staff.The subpoena to Waldron, demanding documents and testimony, marks the select committee’s focus on the PowerPoint and the extent that the document’s recommendations – as reported by the Guardian – were considered by the White House or the former president himself.Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said in the subpoena letter he wanted to depose Waldron as part of their inquiry into the 6 January insurrection and determine the precise nature of his repeated contacts with Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows.Thompson said the select committee was pursuing Waldron’s cooperation to also establish the nature of his visits to the White House, his briefings to members of Congress, and his participation in meetings held at the Willard hotel in Washington DC just before 6 January. “The document he reportedly provided to Administration officials and Members of Congress is an alarming blueprint for overturning a nationwide election,” Thompson said of the PowerPoint. “The Select Committee needs to hear from him.”The select committee subpoenaed Waldron after he emerged as an author of the PowerPoint titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan”, which ended up in Meadows’ personal email inbox – and he met with Meadows repeatedly before the Capitol attack.The PowerPoint recommended in brazen terms that Trump declare a national security emergency on the basis of lies about election fraud, and that then-vice president Mike Pence abuse his ceremonial role to stop Biden’s certification on 6 January, the Guardian first reported.The fact that Meadows was in possession of a PowerPoint that outlined steps to stage a coup, and met with its lead author almost a dozen times before the Capitol attack, is significant as it suggests the Trump White House knew of plans to stop Joe Biden’s certification.Senators and members of Congress should first be briefed about foreign interference, the PowerPoint said, at which point Trump could declare a national emergency, declare all electronic voting invalid, and ask Congress to agree on a constitutionally acceptable remedy.The PowerPoint also outlined three options for then vice-president Mike Pence to abuse his largely ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress on 6 January, when Biden was to be certified president, and unilaterally return Trump to the White House.In a letter to Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger, the select committee noted that among the 6,000 documents Meadows produced was an email accompanying the PowerPoint that indicated it was to be “presented on the Hill”, a reference to Congress.The contents of the PowerPoint was ultimately briefed to a number of Republican members of Congress on 4 January, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Washington Post reported that GOP senator Lindsey Graham was briefed by Waldron himself.The new subpoena for Waldron comes days after the select committee voted to recommend criminal prosecution for Meadows for his refusal to testify pursuant to a subpoena, and Waldron was unmasked in media reports as the lead author of the coup PowerPoint.In a statement, Terwilliger said that Meadows’ involvement with the PowerPoint did not go beyond the receipt of the presentation in his inbox, though Waldron’s claims that he met with Meadows numerous times at the White House appear to undercut that characterization.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

In a riveting new documentary, Camilla Nielsson follows the first democratic election in Zimbabwe since 1980.Eight months after Robert Mugabe, who ruled Zimbabwe autocratically for nearly 30 years starting in 1980, was ousted in a 2017 coup, the nation was set to elect a new president in its first democratic election since the start of Mugabe’s rule.Camilla Nielsson gives viewers a front-row seat to that July 2018 election in “President,” a riveting documentary that follows Nelson Chamisa, a charismatic 40-year-old lawyer, as he runs against Emmerson Mnangagwa, the strongman who unseated Mugabe.Nielsson’s access to Chamisa allows for an intimate look at the Catch-22 of establishing a democracy amid state-sanctioned violence and corruption, and the grit of those fighting for it. The juxtaposition of the candidates’ strategies is apparent when, as both sides arrive at a courthouse for a pivotal case, the camera pans first to the pile of papers with which the opposition will make its case and then to the police stockpiling nightsticks.Chamisa says repeatedly that he is willing to die for his cause. His charisma and connection to the people make him an excellent anchor for the film, reflecting and representing Zimbabwe’s decades-long struggle for a fair democracy. The film includes harrowing images of citizens being beaten, hosed down and shot at by the military and police for demonstrating in support of Chamisa.President Mnangagwa claims victory in the election, despite allegations of vote rigging that are raised by the opposition. It’s a somber end to a film that opens with and is undergirded by Zimbabweans’ hope for change.PresidentNot rated. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

New details shed light on the federal investigation into the conservative group’s acquisition last year of a journal kept by the president’s daughter.In the final two months of the 2020 campaign, President Donald J. Trump, his grip on power slipping because of his handling of the pandemic, desperately tried to change the narrative by attacking the business dealings of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter, invoking his name publicly over 100 times.At the same time, another effort was underway in secret to try to expose the contents of a diary kept the previous year by Mr. Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden, as she underwent treatment for addiction.Now, more than a year later, the Justice Department is deep into an investigation of how the diary found its way into the hands of supporters of Mr. Trump at the height of the campaign.Federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents are investigating whether there was a criminal conspiracy among a handful of individuals to steal and publish the diary. Those being scrutinized include current and former operatives for the conservative group Project Veritas; a donor Mr. Trump appointed to a political position in the final days of his administration; a man who once pleaded guilty in a money laundering scheme; and a financially struggling mother of two, according to people familiar with federal grand jury subpoenas and a search warrant who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.Extensive interviews with people involved in or briefed on the investigation and a review of court filings, police records and other material help flesh out elements of a tale that is testing the line between investigative journalism and political dirty tricks.The investigation has focused new attention on how Mr. Trump or his allies sought to use the troubles of Mr. Biden’s two surviving children to undercut him.The inquiry has also intensified the scrutiny of Project Veritas. Its founder, James O’Keefe, was pulled from his apartment in his underwear and handcuffed during a dawn raid last month by the F.B.I., two days after a pair of his former employees had their homes raided.The group — which purchased the diary but ultimately did not publish it and denies any wrongdoing — has assailed the investigation. And it has been making a case in court and to Congress that, despite its use of undercover stings and other deceptive tactics, it is practicing a form of journalism that deserves the same legal and constitutional protections afforded news organizations.Asked a list of specific questions related to the investigation, a lawyer for Project Veritas, Paul A. Calli, responded with a statement from Mr. O’Keefe criticizing The New York Times.Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Ms. Biden, declined to comment.The episode has its roots in the spring of 2020, as Ms. Biden’s father was closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination. Ms. Biden, who has kept a low profile throughout her father’s vice presidency and presidency, had left a job the year before working for a criminal justice group in Delaware.She was living in Delray Beach, Fla., a small city between Miami and West Palm Beach, with a friend who had rented a two-bedroom house lined with palm trees with a large swimming pool and wraparound driveway, according to people familiar with the events. Ms. Biden, who had little public role in her father’s campaign, had earlier been in rehab in Florida in 2019, and the friend’s house provided a haven where she could avoid the media and the glare of the campaign.But in June, with the campaign ramping up, she headed to the Philadelphia area, planning to return to the Delray home in the fall before the lease expired in November. She decided to leave some of her belongings behind, including a duffel bag and another bag, people familiar with the events said.Weeks after Ms. Biden headed to the Northeast, the friend who had been hosting Ms. Biden in the house allowed an ex-girlfriend named Aimee Harris and her two children to move in. Ms. Harris was in a contentious custody dispute and was struggling financially, according to Palm Beach County court records. At one point in February 2020, she had faced eviction while living at a rental property in nearby Jupiter.Shortly after moving into the Delray home, Ms. Harris — whose social media postings and conversations with friends suggested that she was a fan of Mr. Trump — learned that Ms. Biden had stayed there previously and that some of her things were still there, according to two people familiar with the matter.September 2020: Project Veritas Obtains the DiaryExactly what happened next remains the subject of the federal investigation. But by September, the diary had been acquired from Ms. Harris and a friend by Project Veritas, whose operations against liberal groups and traditional news organizations had helped make it a favorite of Mr. Trump.In a court filing, Project Veritas told a federal judge that around Sept. 3, 2020, someone the group described as “a tipster” called Project Veritas and left a voice message. The caller said “a new occupant moved into a place where Ashley Biden had previously been staying and found Ms. Biden’s diary and other personal items.”The “diary is pretty crazy,” the tipster said on the voice mail, according to a Project Veritas court filing. “I think it’s worth taking a look at.”In a statement after the investigation became public, Mr. O’Keefe said: “Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner.” The lawyer who took Ms. Biden’s belongings to the police in Florida described them as “crap” and that he was “fine” with officers throwing the bags away.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesIn a recent letter to Congress, a lawyer for Project Veritas said it had been told the items had been abandoned in a room where Ms. Biden had stayed.Project Veritas has acknowledged buying the diary, through an unnamed proxy, from two people it identified in court filing as “A.H.” and “R.K.,” but said it was told they had acquired the diary lawfully.People involved in the case have identified “A.H.” as Ms. Harris and “R.K.” as Robert Kurlander. Mr. Kurlander, a self-described venture capitalist, is a longtime friend and former housemate of Ms. Harris. In October 2020, days before the election, Mr. Kurlander said on Twitter: “Where are Biden’s two kids?” adding, “Ashley and Hunter are disasters. Reflection of the parents.”In 1994, Mr. Kurlander pleaded guilty in federal court in Florida to a conspiracy count in a drug-related money laundering scheme that also led to a guilty plea from David Witter, the grandson of the founder of the investment firm Dean Witter. Mr. Kurlander was sentenced to 40 months in prison.Ms. Harris “is fully cooperating with the investigation and will remain responsive to the government’s requests for evidence and for her version of events,” her lawyer, Guy Fronstin, said in an email. “When the facts emerge it will be clear that my client has information relative to the investigation but no culpability.”Outside his house last month near a golf course in Jupiter, Fla., Mr. Kurlander declined to comment, but a woman with him acknowledged they had been dealing with the matter and wanted to avoid public attention. She provided the name of their lawyer, who declined to comment.A Possible Link to Trump SupportersMr. Kurlander also provides a potential link to the possible role of a number of Trump supporters. Among those whose conduct is being scrutinized in the investigation is a woman with ties to Mr. Trump, Elizabeth Fago, a Florida businesswoman and Trump donor who was nominated by Mr. Trump in December 2020 to the National Cancer Advisory Board.Ms. Fago appears to know Mr. Kurlander. A picture on social media shows them dining together in July 2020. Investigators are also looking at the role of Ms. Fago’s daughter, Stephanie Walczak.Ms. Fago visited the Trump White House at least twice. Her son, Joey Fago — a real estate agent who this year worked with Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberley Guilfoyle on their purchase of a $9.7 million Florida mansion — posted a video of him and his mother at the White House on election night in 2020 and at a Christmas party the next month, where they can be seen in the West Wing.Elizabeth Fago in 2018. Ms. Fago, a donor to former President Donald J. Trump who visited the White House at least twice, is among a number of individuals being scrutinized by federal investigators, according to people familiar with the matter. Nick Mele/Patrick McMullan via Getty ImagesShe and her son also met Mr. Trump on the tarmac of the West Palm Beach airport in 2019 and another picture shows the two together. In 2016, she co-hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Trump at his club at Mar-a-Lago.That year Ms. Fago gave $15,400 to pro-Trump fund-raising committees and an additional $7,600 to the Republican National Committee after Mr. Trump won the party’s nomination. In October 2020, she gave $500 to pro-Trump committees.It remains unclear how Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander made contact with Project Veritas and what role others might have played in facilitating the transaction.Ms. Fago did not respond to requests for comment. Ms. Walczak declined to comment.Spokesmen for the F.B.I. and Justice Department declined to comment.Using the Diary as LeverageLess than a month before Election Day, in an Oct. 12, 2020, email that Project Veritas included in a court filing, Mr. O’Keefe told his team that he had made the decision not to publish a story about the diary, adding: “We have no doubt the document is real” but that reactions to its publication would be “characterized as a cheap shot.”But Project Veritas was still trying to use the diary as leverage. On Oct. 16, 2020, Project Veritas wrote to Mr. Biden and his campaign that it had obtained a diary Ms. Biden had “abandoned” and wanted to question Mr. Biden on camera about its contents that referred specifically to him.“Should we not hear from you by Tuesday, October 20, 2020, we will have no choice but to act unilaterally and reserve the right to disclose that you refused our offer to provide answers to the questions raised by your daughter,” Project Veritas’ chief legal officer, Jered T. Ede, wrote.In response, Ms. Biden’s lawyers accused Project Veritas of threatening them as part of “extortionate effort to secure an interview” with Mr. Biden in the campaign’s closing days.Ms. Biden’s lawyers refused to acknowledge whether the diary belonged to Ms. Biden but told Mr. Ede that Project Veritas should treat it as stolen property — the lawyers suggested that “serious crimes” might have been committed — and that any suggestion that the diary was abandoned was “ludicrous.”Ultimately, one of Ms. Biden’s lawyers, Roberta Kaplan, told Mr. Ede: “This is insane; we should send to SDNY.” Shortly thereafter Ms. Biden’s lawyers alerted prosecutors at the United States Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which is now overseeing the case.In the midst of this exchange, a conservative website, National File, published excerpts from the diary on Oct. 24, 2020, and the full diary two days later, though it got little attention. The site said it had obtained the diary from someone at another organization that was unwilling to publish it in the campaign’s final days.Mr. O’Keefe’s lawyers said in a court filing last month that Project Veritas arranged for Ms. Biden’s items to be delivered in early November to the police in Florida, not far from the house where she had left them. As the investigation came to light last month, Mr. O’Keefe said in a statement that “Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner.”Adam Leo Bantner II, a Florida lawyer, delivered bags belonging to Ashley Biden to the police in Delray Beach the day after her father was declared the victor in the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Bantner’s interaction with an officer was recorded on a body camera.Delray Beach Police DepartmentBut a Delray Beach Police Department report and an officer’s body camera video footage tell a somewhat different story. On the morning of Sunday, Nov. 8 — 24 hours after Mr. Biden had been declared the winner of the election — a lawyer named Adam Leo Bantner II arrived at the police station with a blue duffel bag and another bag, according to the police report and the footage. Mr. Bantner declined to reveal the identity of his client to the police.Project Veritas has said in court filings that it was assured by the people who sold Ms. Biden’s items to the group that they were abandoned rather than stolen. But the police report said that Mr. Bantner’s client had told him that the property was “possibly stolen” and “he got it from an unknown person at a hotel.”The video footage, which appears to be a partial account of the encounter, records Mr. Bantner describing the bags as “crap.” The officer can be heard telling Mr. Bantner that he is going to throw the bags in the garbage because the officer did not have any “information” or “proof of evidence”“Like I said, I’m fine with it,” Mr. Bantner replied.But the police did examine the contents of the bag and quickly determined that they belonged to Ms. Biden. The report said the police contacted both the Secret Service and the F.B.I., which later collected the items.Patricia Mazzei More

This article is part of Times Opinion’s Holiday Giving Guide 2021. For other ideas on where to donate this year, please see the rest of our guide here.What did Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham say about the Jan. 6 rioting at the United States Capitol — and when did they say it?Were they suitably censorious of the violence? At the time, did their public remarks match their private horror?Those questions have been heatedly and extensively hashed out over the days since a House committee released text messages from Jan. 6 in which Hannity and Ingraham, the popular hosts of prime-time shows on Fox News, separately implored President Donald Trump’s chief of staff to get Trump to say and do something to disperse the protesters and quell the violence. Hannity and Ingraham knew that he had stirred those protesters and could sway them, more so than they ever acknowledged on-air, according to their critics. According to Hannity and Ingraham, they’re just the victims — yet again! — of left-wing media smears.You can delve into the weeds of this or you can pull back and survey the whole ugly yard. And what you see when you do that — what matters most in the end — is that Fox News has helped to sell the fiction that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and there’s a direct line from that lie to the rioting. There’s a direct line from that lie to various Republicans’ attempts to develop mechanisms to overturn vote counts should they dislike the results.That lie is the root of the terrible danger that we’re in, with Trump supporters being encouraged to distrust and undermine the democratic process. And that lie has often found a welcome mat at Fox News.The Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple is among the many attuned observers who have documented this, and a column of his from mid-January 2021 presented a compendium of inciting commentary on Fox News in the lead-up to Jan. 6. Interviewing Trump on Nov. 29, 2020, the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo declared: “We cannot allow America’s election to be corrupted. We cannot.” On Hannity’s show two days later, the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro vented an apocalyptic outrage about Joe Biden’s victory, saying: “This fraud will continue and America will be doomed for the next 20 years.” The Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich, the Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, Hannity himself — all of them got in on the action to some degree, stating or signaling that something about the 2020 election was terribly amiss.And their evidence? It was fugitive then, and no one has tracked it down since. That’s because it doesn’t exist. It’s a conspiracy-minded, ratings-driven hallucination. Just this week, The Associated Press published a review of “every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states” where Trump has disputed Biden’s victory. It found fewer than 475 cases.“Joe Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president,” the A.P. reported. “The disputed ballots represent just 0.15 percent of his victory margin in those states. The cases could not throw the outcome into question even if all the potentially fraudulent votes were for Biden, which they were not, and even if those ballots were actually counted, which in most cases they were not.”This mathematical analysis hardly supports the hysteria on the right — a hysteria that Fox News readily whips up. (I direct you to the so-called documentary “Patriot Purge” on Fox Nation, in which Tucker Carlson recasts Jan. 6 as evidence that a corrupt government is setting up and locking up Trump supporters, who are really political prisoners.) And this is no garden-variety partisan hysteria. It circles around and sometimes lands squarely on the contention that Biden is an illegitimate president and Trump is our rightful ruler, exiled to the Siberia of southern Florida.I know the pushback from the right: It was Democrats who refused to accept Trump’s legitimacy by insisting that he, in cahoots with Russia, cheated his way into the Oval Office. They rushed to judgment as more than a few sympathetic journalists indulged or floated rococo scenarios well beyond anything provable.But, but, but. Democrats weren’t passing or trying to pass laws in battleground states that would enable them to counter the popular will. Democrats weren’t trying to enshrine rule by the minority. Many Republicans are doing precisely that now.And they’re being motivated and cheered, both directly and obliquely, by what they see and hear on Fox News. I care less about Hannity’s and Ingraham’s precise words on Jan. 6 than about what they and their colleagues on Fox News said before and after, and what they’re saying now. It’s reckless. It’s subversive. And it’s scary.One Vision of GivingThe dance class at Visions.Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo go blind is to go back to school — the school of life.The simplest things, like cooking and dressing, are no longer simple, not at the start, because you once did them primarily with the sense of sight and must now rely on touch and sound and little prompts and tricks that weren’t necessary before. Often, someone has to teach you those tricks.Someone has to show you how to navigate the exit from your home and the re-entry; how to walk safely down the street; how to cross the street, a passage grown exponentially more perilous. Familiar tasks are suddenly unfamiliar, and independence must be forged anew.That’s where a group like Visions comes in.It’s a nonprofit rehabilitation and social services agency in New York that specifically helps people who are blind and visually impaired, and an overwhelming majority of those people have limited means — they can’t afford to pay for this help themselves. Visions is funded largely, but not entirely, by continuing government and foundation grants. But it depends, too, on individual contributions. It thrives when generous people give.I found my way to one of three centers that Visions runs after I was diagnosed with a rare disorder that threatens my own eyesight. I went there not as a client but as a journalist, curious to know more about the challenges that visually impaired people face. At this particular Visions center, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, I saw such people being coached through the use of special computer programs. I saw them in a dance class, which gave them an outlet for physical expression — and a safe space — that they can’t find elsewhere.But much of what Visions does is in people’s homes, to which it sends therapists and other helpers. One of those therapists told me about an elderly woman who despaired of being able to light the candles that she typically used for the Jewish sabbath. She learned anew, though she could no longer see the flame.Blind people live full lives, but they face challenges that the rest of us don’t. In my own holiday season giving over recent years, I’ve kept that in mind and been sure to include groups that directly serve visually impaired people or promote research into potential cures and treatments for blindness. Large and small organizations on my radar include the Foundation Fighting Blindness, the VisionServe Alliance, the Filomen M. D’Agostino Greenberg Music School and The Seeing Eye.I’ll long remember that dance class at Visions, not for the moves that its participants busted but for the contentment that they radiated. In a world that could often shut them out, they’d been invited in. In a society that often told them what they couldn’t do, they were doing something that they themselves hadn’t expected. They gave me something: hope.For the Love of SentencesBettmann via Getty ImagesComing up with new ways to express frustration about the crazily high number of Americans who refuse coronavirus vaccines is increasingly difficult, so I tip my hat to John Ficarra, in Air Mail, for this: “Yes, West Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But with your measly 49 percent double-vaccinated rate, he will be skipping most of your state.”In a recent re-examination of Greta Garbo’s career in The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot wrote: “Few other performers have ascended as quickly to mononymic status as Garbo did — she started off the way most of us do, with a first and last name, but the first soon fell away, like a spent rocket booster.” (Thanks to Ian Grimm, of Chapel Hill, N.C., and Stephanie Hawkins of Denton, Texas, for nominating this.)Per usual, there have been great sentences aplenty in The Times recently, including Eric Kim’s on one of the components of a divine holiday ham: “Sticky like tar and richly savory in taste, this glaze gets its body and spice from Dijon mustard, its molasses-rich sweetness from brown sugar and its high note, the kind of flavor that floats on top like a finely tuned piccolo in an orchestra, from a touch of rice vinegar.” (Dan Lorenzini, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.)Here’s John McWhorter on how reliably language, including pronunciation, mutates: “Even with a word as quotidian as lox (with no disrespect intended to salmon, smoked or otherwise), you can bet that sooner rather than later, the passage of time will mash it with pestles and refract it through prisms to the point that it is all but beyond recognition.” (Barbara Sloan, Conway, S.C.)Here’s Pete Wells on the New York City restaurant that he liked best among the standouts that opened this year: “Half of Dhamaka’s success must have been its timing. New York was still coming out of a pandemic-shutdown fog when it opened in February, a period of glitchy video calls, undefined working hours, creeping anxiety, reheated leftovers and repressed pleasures. Life had gone prematurely gray. There’s nothing gray about the food at Dhamaka, though. Every dish comes at you as if it wants to either marry you or kill you.” (Kathleen Bridgman, Walnut Creek, Calif., and Donald Ham, Vallejo, Calif., among others)And here’s James Poniewozik on a recurring character in America’s culture wars: “There’s a rule in politics, or at least there should be: Never get into a fight with Big Bird. You end up spitting out feathers, and the eight-foot fowl just strolls away singing about the alphabet.” (Valerie Hoffmann, Montauk, N.Y.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.What I’m Watching (and Reading)Aunjanue Ellis (far left) and Will Smith with the actresses who play their daughters in “King Richard.”Warner BrosFor me, the holiday season is often about catching up on television series and movies that I didn’t have time to watch when they were first released. So I recently binged “Mare of Easttown,” which I enjoyed and admired every bit as much as its most ardent fans had told me I would, and “Hacks,” whose virtues redeemed its unevenness from episode to episode. “Mare” and “Hacks” have a common denominator: the actress Jean Smart, who has a supporting role in “Mare,” as the mother of the police detective (Kate Winslet) trying to solve a local murder, and the starring role in “Hacks,” as a stand-up diva terrified that she’s being put out to comedy pasture. Over the past two decades, Smart has become the Meryl Streep of the small screen. I’d pay to listen to her read the instructions for assembling an Ikea dresser. I’d pay to watch her assemble it. Heck, I’d assemble it for her, and I’m entirely thumbs.Speaking of great performances, the movie “King Richard,” about Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena, is chockablock with them. Will Smith’s work in the title role has received the most attention, but Aunjanue Ellis, as the tennis prodigies’ mother, Oracene, impressed me just as much if not more. “King Richard” itself is entertaining and skillfully made, especially in the way it captures the speed and breathtaking athleticism of the sport at its center.Seldom does a celebrity profile generate as much discussion as Michael Schulman’s of the actor Jeremy Strong (“Succession”) did. The article, published in The New Yorker, is very much worth reading on its own merits: It’s a model of exhaustive, detail-rich reporting. But you can have some extra fun by also checking out the reactions to it and figuring out your own answer to the question of whether Schulman stacked the deck against his subject.On a Personal NoteNina Simone in 1965, the year her version of “Feeling Good” was released.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)There are some songs that you hear so often across so many years that you no longer listen to them, not in any active sense. They wash over you. You hum without knowing it, tap your foot without engaging your brain. That’s the way it is with me and the unsurpassable Nina Simone version of “Feeling Good.” I swim in it without realizing I’m wet.But the other day, when it cycled onto some Pandora station of mine, I happened to pay close attention. I registered — really registered — the words: “Birds flying high/You know how I feel/Sun in the sky/You know how I feel.” “River running free,” “blossom on a tree,” “stars when you shine,” “scent of the pine” — all of them know how she feels. What a lovely take, and what a true one. When you’re indeed feeling as good and as free as the singer of this song, you’re not just in nature. You’re communicating with it, and it’s the expression of your own elation.The song, a declaration of emancipation, was written not by Simone but by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, for the 1964 musical “The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd.” No surprise that it comes from a stage production: As the tributes to Stephen Sondheim after his death a few weeks ago reminded us, musical theater is a treasure chest of grand and clever lyrics. And lyrics are my focus here — lyrics and what a joy it is to come across superior ones.Most popular songs nowadays are lyrical letdowns. They don’t try all that hard. They lean on catchy riffs and on clunky or banal rhymes. Sometimes the lyrics are inscrutable. Just as often they’re trite.But when they’re not? It’s a much bigger surprise than encountering stellar prose, and thus, for me, it’s an even bigger pleasure. It’s poetry that you can sing along to, eloquence with a beat. I have a terrible memory for many things, but play me a well-written song with well-turned words three or four times and those words are with me and in me forever.Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” for example. There are banal rhymes and then there are audacious ones. I put “yacht,” “apricot” and “gavotte” in the latter category — and they appear in the song’s first stanza. I can sing “You’re So Vain” from start to finish, not muffing a syllable, even if I haven’t heard it in a decade.And you? Where in popular music, especially current and recent popular music, have you struck lyrics gold? Tell me by emailing me here. Maybe I’ll spotlight and celebrate some of these examples in newsletters to come.This column is part of Times Opinion’s Holiday Giving Guide 2021. If you are interested in any organization mentioned in the giving guide, please go directly to its website. Neither the authors nor The Times will be able to address queries about the groups or facilitate donations. More

Congressman Jim Jordan sent plans for Capitol attack to Mark MeadowsJordan forwarded a text to Meadows on 5 January, one of the congressman’s aides has confirmed, containing details of the plot The Ohio congressman Jim Jordan has been identified as the Republican who sent a message to Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows the day before the deadly 6 January US Capitol riots outlining a plan to stop Joe Biden – the legitimate winner of the presidential election – from reaching the White House.The House select committee investigating the insurrection has been looking at numerous messages sent to Meadows on and around that day, many of which were from Trump supporters urging the then-president to call off a mob of his supporters as they ransacked the Capitol building.Meadows, whose role in events has become a central plank of the investigation, and who provided many of the messages to the committee, is facing possible contempt of Congress charges for withdrawing his cooperation.Jordan, a staunch Trump ally whom Republicans originally wanted to sit on the committee, forwarded a text message to Meadows on 5 January, one of the congressman’s aides has confirmed, containing details of the plot to block Biden.The message was sent to Jordan by Joseph Schmitz, a former US defense department inspector general who outlined a “draft proposal” to pressure vice-president Mike Pence to refuse to certify audited election returns on 6 January.A portion of the message was shown by Democratic committee member Adam Schiff on Tuesday. It read: “On January 6, 2021, Vice-President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”The plotters falsely believed Pence had the constitutional authority to reject the election results and allow rival slates of electors from Republicans in states that Biden won to decide the outcome. Pence refused to do so, and has since been castigated by Trump and his allies.Jordan was one of five Republicans rejected from serving on the committee by Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker who instead appointed Trump critics Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Some commentators say the move “saved” the committee’s integrity.The panel has accelerated its inquiries in recent days and weeks, issuing dozens of subpoenas, interviewing more than 300 witnesses and reviewing more than 30,000 documents as it attempts to tie Trump to the events of 6 January.A clearer picture has emerged of the involvement of Trump loyalists, including senior Republican party officials such as Jordan, in the coup attempt, with questions swirling this week particularly over the role of Meadows.Trump’s former chief of staff is revealed to have received numerous messages on the day of the riot from Republican politicians, Fox News television personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and the president’s son Donald Trump Jr.The text from Trump Jr was succinct. “We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand. He’s got to condemn this shit asap.”Meadows replied: “I’m pushing it hard. I agree.”Schiff, a California Democrat who led the prosecution in the Senate at Trump’s second impeachment in January, has argued that Meadows was at the heart of the pressure campaign on Pence, and voted for him to face contempt charges for his refusal to explain it.“You can see why this is so critical to ask Mr Meadows about,” Schiff said during the committee’s presentation on Tuesday.“About a lawmaker suggesting that the former vice-president simply throw out votes that he unilaterally deems unconstitutional in order to overturn a presidential election and subvert the will of the American people.”TopicsUS Capitol attackMark MeadowsOhioHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansDonald TrumpUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

WASHINGTON — Two days after Christmas last year, Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, saw an unknown number appear on his phone.Mr. Donoghue had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt. The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous lawyers, conspiracy theorists, even the chief executive of MyPillow — and they were stoking his election lies.Mr. Trump had been handing out Mr. Donoghue’s cellphone number so that people could pass on rumors of election fraud. Who could be calling him now?It turned out to be a member of Congress: Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who began pressing the president’s case. Mr. Perry said he had compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations that the department needed to vet. Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who had found favor with Mr. Trump, could “do something” about the president’s claims, Mr. Perry said, even if others in the department would not.The message was delivered by an obscure lawmaker who was doing Mr. Trump’s bidding. Justice Department officials viewed it as outrageous political pressure from a White House that had become consumed by conspiracy theories.It was also one example of how a half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election, according to dozens of interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of congressional testimony about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, left, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., two days after the 2020 election.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe lawmakers — all of them members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus — worked closely with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose central role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn a democratic election is coming into focus as the congressional investigation into Jan. 6 gains traction.The men were not alone in their efforts — most Republican lawmakers fell in line behind Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud, at least rhetorically — but this circle moved well beyond words and into action. They bombarded the Justice Department with dubious claims of voting irregularities. They pressured members of state legislatures to conduct audits that would cast doubt on the election results. They plotted to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6 of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.There was Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the pugnacious former wrestler who bolstered his national profile by defending Mr. Trump on cable television; Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, whose political ascent was padded by a $10 million sweepstakes win; and Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona dentist who trafficked in conspiracy theories, spoke at a white nationalist rally and posted an animated video that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.Representatives Paul Gosar of Arizona, left, and Louie Gohmert of Texas spoke at a news conference this month expressing concerns about the treatment of those who had stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThey were joined by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, who was known for fiery speeches delivered to an empty House chamber and unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence over his refusal to interfere in the election certification; and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, a lawyer who rode the Tea Party wave to Congress and was later sued by a Democratic congressman for inciting the Jan. 6 riot.Mr. Perry, a former Army helicopter pilot who is close to Mr. Jordan and Mr. Meadows, acted as a de facto sergeant. He coordinated many of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office, including a plan to replace the acting attorney general with a more compliant official. His colleagues call him General Perry.Mr. Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina who co-founded the Freedom Caucus in 2015, knew the six lawmakers well. His role as Mr. Trump’s right-hand man helped to remarkably empower the group in the president’s final, chaotic weeks in office.In his book, “The Chief’s Chief,” Mr. Meadows insisted that he and Mr. Trump were simply trying to unfurl serious claims of election fraud. “All he wanted was time to get to the bottom of what really happened and get a fair count,” Mr. Meadows wrote.Congressional Republicans have fought the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation at every turn, but it is increasingly clear that Mr. Trump relied on the lawmakers to help his attempts to retain power. When Justice Department officials said they could not find evidence of widespread fraud, Mr. Trump was unconcerned: “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” he said, according to Mr. Donoghue’s notes of the call.Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, promoted several conspiracy theories as he fought the electoral process.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesNovemberOn Nov. 9, two days after The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Biden, crisis meetings were underway at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan huddled with senior White House officials, including Mr. Meadows; Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.According to two people familiar with the meetings, which have not been previously reported, the group settled on a strategy that would become a blueprint for Mr. Trump’s supporters in Congress: Hammer home the idea that the election was tainted, announce legal actions being taken by the campaign, and bolster the case with allegations of fraud.At a news conference later that day, Ms. McEnany delivered the message.“This election is not over,” she said. “Far from it.”Mr. Jordan’s spokesman said that the meeting was to discuss media strategy, not to overturn the election.On cable television and radio shows and at rallies, the lawmakers used unproved fraud claims to promote the idea that the election had been stolen. Mr. Brooks said he would never vote to certify Mr. Trump’s loss. Mr. Jordan told Fox News that ballots were counted in Pennsylvania after the election, contrary to state law. Mr. Gohmert claimed in Philadelphia that there was “rampant” voter fraud and later said on YouTube that the U.S. military had seized computer servers in Germany used to flip American votes.Mr. Gosar pressed Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, to investigate voting equipment made by Dominion Voting Systems, a company at the heart of several false conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies spread.Mr. Trump’s supporters protested at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix as ballots were being counted in November 2020.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMr. Gosar embraced the fraud claims so closely that his chief of staff, Tom Van Flein, rushed to an airplane hangar parking lot in Phoenix after a conspiracy theory began circulating that a suspicious jet carrying ballots from South Korea was about to land, perhaps in a bid to steal the election from Mr. Trump, according to court documents filed by one of the participants. The claim turned out to be baseless.Mr. Van Flein did not respond to detailed questions about the episode.Even as the fraud claims grew increasingly outlandish, Attorney General William P. Barr authorized federal prosecutors to look into “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities. Critics inside and outside the Justice Department slammed the move, saying it went against years of the department’s norms and chipped away at its credibility. But Mr. Barr privately told advisers that ignoring the allegations — no matter how implausible — would undermine faith in the election, according to Mr. Donoghue’s testimony.And in any event, administration officials and lawmakers believed the claims would have little effect on the peaceful transfer of power to Mr. Biden from Mr. Trump, according to multiple former officials.Mainstream Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Nov. 9 that Mr. Trump had a right to investigate allegations of irregularities, “A few legal inquiries from the president do not exactly spell the end of the Republic,” Mr. McConnell said.Mr. Gohmert unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence, center, in an attempt to force him to nullify the election results.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesDecemberOn Dec. 1, 2020, Mr. Barr said publicly what he knew to be true: The Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Mr. Biden was the lawful winner.The attorney general’s declaration seemed only to energize the six lawmakers. Mr. Gohmert suggested that the F.B.I. in Washington could not be trusted to investigate election fraud. Mr. Biggs said that Mr. Trump’s allies needed “the imprimatur, quite frankly of the D.O.J.,” to win their lawsuits claiming fraud.They turned their attention to Jan. 6, when Mr. Pence was to officially certify Mr. Biden’s victory. Mr. Jordan, asked if the president should concede, replied, “No way.”The lawmakers started drumming up support to derail the transfer of power.Mr. Gohmert sued Mr. Pence in an attempt to force him to nullify the results of the election. Mr. Perry circulated a letter written by Pennsylvania state legislators to Mr. McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, asking Congress to delay certification. “I’m obliged to concur,” Mr. Perry wrote.Mr. Meadows remained the key leader. When disputes broke out among organizers of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rallies, he stepped in to mediate, according to two organizers, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence.In one case, Mr. Meadows helped settle a feud about whether to have one or two rallies on Jan. 6. The organizers decided that Mr. Trump would make what amounted to an opening statement about election fraud during his speech at the Ellipse, then the lawmakers would rise in succession during the congressional proceeding and present evidence they had gathered of purported fraud.(That plan was ultimately derailed by the attack on Congress, Mr. Stockton said.)Mr. Trump at the rally outside the White House on Jan. 6. “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he told his supporters.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesOn Dec. 21, Mr. Trump met with members of the Freedom Caucus to discuss their plans. Mr. Jordan, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Meadows were there.“This sedition will be stopped,” Mr. Gosar wrote on Twitter.Asked about such meetings, Mr. Gosar’s chief of staff said the congressman and his colleagues “have and had every right to attend rallies and speeches.”“None of the members could have anticipated what occurred (on Jan. 6),” Mr. Van Flein added.Mr. Perry was finding ways to exert pressure on the Justice Department. He introduced Mr. Trump to Mr. Clark, the acting head of the department’s civil division who became one of the Stop the Steal movement’s most ardent supporters.Then, after Christmas, Mr. Perry called Mr. Donoghue to share his voter fraud dossier, which focused on unfounded election fraud claims in Pennsylvania.“I had never heard of him before that day,” Mr. Donoghue would later testify to Senate investigators. He assumed that Mr. Trump had given Mr. Perry his personal cellphone number, as the president had done with others who were eager to pressure Justice Department officials to support the false idea of a rigged election.Key Aspects of the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 8The House investigation. More