Elections

Mark McCloskey and Patricia McCloskey of Missouri will pay a total of nearly $3,000 in fines and give up the weapons used in the confrontation.A St. Louis couple who gained national notoriety last year after they were filmed pointing guns at demonstrators walking near their home each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge on Thursday and agreed to pay a total of nearly $3,000 in fines. The couple, both lawyers, also agreed to give up the guns they had brandished in the confrontation.Patricia McCloskey pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment and will pay a $2,000 fine. Her husband, Mark, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat from Missouri, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault and will pay a $750 fine.As part of the plea deal, Ms. McCloskey gave up the Bryco handgun she brandished during the June 2020 confrontation, and Mr. McCloskey agreed to relinquish ownership of the weapon he used, an AR-15 rifle. Neither will face jail time under the plea deal.In a brief interview, Joel J. Schwartz, a lawyer for the McCloskeys, said, “They are very happy with the disposition of the case and will have the fine paid as early as possible and look forward with moving on with their life and focusing on his campaign for the U.S. Senate.”Outside the courthouse, Mr. McCloskey agreed with prosecutors that he had put the protesters in danger. “That’s what the guns were there for, and I’d do it again anytime the mob approaches me,” he said.Patricia McCloskey and her husband, Mark, aimed firearms at protesters who marched through their neighborhood last June.Lawrence Bryant/ReutersRichard Callahan, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, said in a statement that the plea agreement was reasonable, in part, because no shots had been fired, nobody had been injured and the McCloskeys had called the police. “The protesters, on the other hand, were a racially mixed and peaceful group, including women and children, who simply made a wrong turn on their way to protest in front of the mayor’s house,” Mr. Callahan said.On June 28, 2020, protesters, many of whom were Black, marched past the McCloskeys’ home, which is on a private street, on their way to the home of Mayor Lyda Krewson, a Democrat, who lives nearby. Ms. Krewson had angered local residents after she went on Facebook Live and read the names and addresses of people who had said the police should be defunded.The McCloskeys said they had felt they were in imminent danger from the protesters. Images of the couple pointing their weapons at protesters circulated widely, garnering national attention.The day after the protest, President Donald J. Trump retweeted a video of the gun-toting couple. In July, the Circuit Attorney’s Office in St. Louis filed felony charges against them. In August, they spoke at the Republican National Convention.The couple maintained that they had acted in self-defense, in order to prevent the demonstrators from entering their home and harming them. “I really thought it was storming the Bastille, that we would be dead and the house would be burned and there was nothing we could do about it,” Mr. McCloskey told KSDK, a local television station, last year. In an interview on Fox News, Mr. McCloskey said, “We chose to stop them from coming in.” Mr. McCloskey also told KSDK, “My wife doesn’t know anything about guns” but had felt compelled to defend their home.Republicans and conservatives rallied to the couple’s defense. Mr. Trump later said the prosecution of the couple was “a disgrace.” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Republican, had said the case against the McCloskeys “is a politically motivated attempt to punish this family for exercising their Second Amendment rights.”The attention helped catapult Mr. McCloskey into politics. Last month he announced he would run as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Roy Blunt, a Republican, who earlier announced he would not seek re-election next year. More

The candidates remained focused on crime on the campaign trail, while Andrew Yang was criticized by his rivals for comments he made on the debate stage.Andrew Yang faced criticism over his debate-stage comments about people with mental illness on Thursday as the New York City mayoral candidates sharpened their focus on public safety during the race’s final days.Mr. Yang said during Wednesday’s Democratic primary debate, the final matchup before next week’s election, that he wanted people with mental health problems off the streets — comments that several of his rivals blasted as insensitive.“Yes, mentally ill people have rights, but you know who else have rights? We do! The people and families of the city,” said Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate. “We have the right to walk the street and not fear for our safety because a mentally ill person is going to lash out at us.”Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, said he was “really disturbed” by the remarks and that Mr. Yang was trying to “demonize” people with mental health problems.Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, said that Mr. Yang lacked empathy and suggested he was fearmongering for votes.“I thought it was deeply disturbing, deeply lacking in compassion,” she said.One of Ms. Wiley’s advisers, Ifeoma Ike, went further and said Mr. Yang was “anti-Black” because mental health problems and homelessness disproportionately affect Black people. She told voters not to rank Mr. Yang on their ballots.The candidates have focused on public safety in the final weeks of the campaign — an issue that New Yorkers cite as their top concern. As the race’s dynamics continue to shift, Ms. Wiley has tried to consolidate support among left-leaning voters, Kathryn Garcia has shown signs of momentum, and Mr. Adams, who leads in the polls, has faced questions over his real estate holdings.Mr. Yang was trying to highlight voters’ fears over safety at the debate, but he moved quickly to clarify his comments shortly after it concluded. “Full context here was mental illness is behind half of anti-Asian hate crimes,” he said on Twitter. “We need to get them compassionate, comprehensive care — and not let them languish on our streets.”At a news conference in the Bronx on Thursday to highlight his cash relief plan for poor New Yorkers, Mr. Yang refused to say whether he regretted his comments.“Everyone agrees that people who are struggling with mental illness on our streets should be in better, more caring environments where they can get what they need,” he said.Ms. Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, also remained focused on public safety on Thursday, holding a news conference at a Manhattan subway station where a 64-year-old man was slashed and robbed last month.She called for more police officers on the subway, accompanied by her cousin Clark Gregg, an actor who played a government agent in the Marvel Avengers series.“New Yorkers need to feel safe on the subway if they’re going to get back on the subway,” she said, adding the subways were “vital” to the city’s comeback.Kathryn Garcia appeared at a news conference with her cousin Clark Gregg, an actor who played a government agent in the Marvel Avengers series.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesMs. Garcia also released a new ad claiming that as an experienced crisis manager, she was the best choice to make the city safer.“We fought Covid only to endure a new epidemic of crime,” she said in the ad.At the debate, the candidates were asked if there should be more officers on the subway. Five raised their hands, including Ms. Garcia and Mr. Adams. Three candidates said they opposed adding more officers, including Ms. Wiley, who is running to the left of the field.Ms. Wiley, too, started running new ads on Thursday, though hers featured Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the city’s most high-profile progressive. One ad features Ms. Ocasio-Cortez speaking in front of City Hall on the day she endorsed Ms. Wiley and shows the two women embracing.“We have an option of a candidate that has a lifetime of dedication to this — racial justice, economic justice and climate justice,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said.Separately, Ms. Wiley appeared to rule out making a cross-endorsement of any other candidate in the mayoral race, a day after Mr. Yang focused attention on the issue by nodding to the prospect of a cross-endorsement.“I am not going to do any cross-endorsements in this mayor’s race,” she said.At a news conference at his Harlem headquarters, Mr. Adams made fun of the appearance by Ms. Garcia’s cousin.“Public safety is not a bumper sticker,” Mr. Adams told reporters. “It is not a television program. What are we going to do next? We’re going to pick our police commissioner from ‘C.S.I. Miami?’”But Mr. Adams also danced with those gathered and said he was having fun in the final days of the campaign.“I am just an ordinary cat,” Mr. Adams said. “I am going to put cool back into being mayor.”Eric Adams, receiving endorsements in Harlem, has argued that he has the broadest coalition of supporters among the leading candidates for mayor.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressMr. Adams announced new endorsements from two prominent Black leaders — David A. Paterson, the former governor, and Keith L.T. Wright, the leader of the New York County Democrats.He has continued to face criticism over his real estate portfolio, including in a story this week by The City about a co-op apartment he owns in Brooklyn with a “good friend.” Mr. Adams has said that he gave his shares to Sylvia Cowan, a woman whom he bought the property with in 1992..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}But an email, obtained by The New York Times, suggests that Mr. Adams still owned his shares in the apartment as recently as last month — days before Politico raised questions about his residency and his tax and campaign-disclosure filings.The email, sent by Ms. Cowan on May 28, asked the co-op board to approve the transfer of Mr. Adams’s shares to her and named a person who could “represent the Board, Eric and me for the transaction” — suggesting that at that point, the transfer had not yet occurred.Mr. Adams has not declared the home on any campaign filings since he began running for office in 2005, documents show. Ms. Cowan also owns a unit in a tower in Fort Lee, N.J., on the floor below an apartment that Mr. Adams co-owns with his partner, Tracey Collins.His campaign insists that Mr. Adams has not owned any part of the Brooklyn property since 2007, when he took office as a state senator. State ethics guidelines at that time asked officeholders to disclose assets they had held in the previous two years but did not require that they do so.“Sylvia is the owner and has been the owner for some time,” Evan Thies, a campaign spokesman, said on Wednesday.Mr. Adams said on Wednesday that it was Ms. Cowan’s responsibility to formalize his transfer of the property to her in city records. Ms. Cowan could not be reached for comment.At a news conference later Thursday, Ms. Wiley laced into Mr. Adams.“If you want to be the most powerful person in this city, show this city that you can manage your financial affairs,” Ms. Wiley said.“It is right and appropriate to have transparency,” Ms. Wiley said, brandishing her own tax returns.Ms. Wiley said New Yorkers should consider questions including, “Have you engaged in tax fraud, or have you stayed on the right side of the law? I don’t know, show us your tax returns. ”The Adams campaign has said that the borough president would release his amended tax returns, but he has yet to do so.The latest payments from the city’s matching funds program were also made on Thursday, giving Ms. Garcia and Ms. Wiley in particular significant sums to spend on additional television advertising in the closing days of the race. Ms. Garcia received $2.1 million; Ms. Wiley received $1.1 million.Fernando Mateo, a Republican entrepreneur, qualified for public matching funds for the first time, giving him more than $2 million to compete against his only rival, Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels.“Now we have the money to get our message out that we are the best candidate to save and revitalize New York City unlike never-Trumper Curtis Sliwa,” Mr. Mateo said, in reference to Mr. Sliwa saying that he did not vote for President Donald J. Trump in 2016 or 2020.Anne Barnard, Michael Rothfeld, Michael Gold, Katie Glueck and Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting. More

Looking ahead to the midterms, the G.O.P. is pushing a message that the country is in peril on numerous fronts.The coronavirus pandemic is receding. The economy is gradually climbing back. And according to recent surveys, a wide majority of Americans is feeling optimistic about the future.On Thursday, the Consumer Comfort Index, a polling measure of Americans’ confidence in the economy, hit its highest level since before the pandemic.But as our congressional correspondent Jonathan Weisman points out in a new article, House Republicans are pushing a much different interpretation of what’s going on. During a news conference they held on Tuesday, the buzzword was “crisis”: It was used about once every minute for nearly half an hour. Republican leaders are arguing that the economy, national security, the U.S.-Mexico border and more are all in peril.Such arguments are often used by the party out of power. But with Republicans leaning so hard into the message, the question is whether it will resonate enough to throw a wrench in President Biden’s efforts to advance his sweeping agenda — and if, over a year from now, it will have enough staying power to rile up the Republican Party’s base in the midterm elections.For his article, Jonathan spoke to a number of Republican elected officials, among others, about the G.O.P.’s new message. I caught up with him on Thursday to hear about what he’d learned.Hi Jonathan. As you outline in your article, House Republicans have begun to push a narrative about the country being in “crisis.” All kinds of crises, in fact. But polls seem to suggest that Americans’ spirits are rising as the pandemic recedes. Why this message from the G.O.P., and why now?It’s true that they don’t seem to be capturing the nation’s general postpandemic joy. But core Republican voters are apparently feeling unsettled by all this Bidenism — a huge pandemic relief bill; proposed social and infrastructure spending bills measuring in the trillions, not billions; about-faces on countless Trump policies.Republicans in Washington want to push that discomfort into panic mode, in hopes that the agitation spreads beyond the base to generalized anger in next year’s midterm season. Hence the mantra: crisis, crisis, crisis.How much would you say that the catastrophe narrative is a product of today’s polarized media landscape? Many of the arguments outlined in your piece sound like red meat for the Republican base — the kinds of folks who might click on a web ad bashing Biden, or donate to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene — but it seems less certain that they would resonate with middle-of-the-road voters. Is that a concern for Republican leaders?Oh, it is all about the polarized media landscape. Republican leaders will see their narrative echoed on Fox, One America News, Newsmax and Grandpa’s Facebook feed, and declare victory. They might not even notice that it is not getting much traction elsewhere.But for them, that’s OK. Historically, the party out of power in the White House scores big in midterm elections. That party’s base voters are usually smarting over their defeat in the presidential election and have something to prove. Voters for the party in the White House feel secure that their guy will stop anything awful from happening, and they relax.So turnout favors those out of power, and in this case, those out of power in Washington have enough leverage in key states — think Georgia, Texas and Florida — to redraw congressional districts in their favor. Republicans just need to keep their voters angry, agitated and ready to vote.The most prominent recent example of “crisis” messaging came on the immigration front. Soon after Biden took office, Republican officials and conservative commentators began hammering him for what they branded the “border crisis.” How effective have G.O.P. strategists found that message to be, and is it affecting their thinking going forward?One politician’s crisis is another politician’s bad situation. The border is at the very least a bad situation, with apprehensions of people crossing illegally at levels unseen since Bill Clinton was president.The problem for Republicans is that the bad optics have faded, with the Biden administration’s diligent efforts to get unaccompanied children out of Border Patrol jails and into less visible shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services. And unless you’re living near the border, you’re not seeing the “crisis.” So Republicans have moved on, throwing more visible spaghetti on the wall, like rising prices and labor shortages, to see what sticks.Perhaps the biggest actual political crisis of the past year has been one of Donald Trump’s making: His falsehoods led many of his supporters to lose faith in American democracy itself, with some even attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6. Today, G.O.P. legislators across the country are still re-litigating the election, passing voting restrictions and leading sometimes-chaotic recounts of the 2020 election results. Is there any concern among Republicans that sounding the “crisis” alarm could lead voters to think a little bit too hard about who is the real source of the problem?Good question. But if there is concern about that, they aren’t letting on. You could see much of the outrage machine’s output as a multipronged diversion from the crisis of faith in democracy.The other actual crisis is a once-in-a-century pandemic that has killed at least 600,000 people in the U.S. The effort to spin up outrage over the Wuhan lab-leak theory — to blame China entirely for all of those deaths — is clearly an effort to try to make Americans forgive Trump for his mishandling of the coronavirus by convincing them it was all a Chinese plot. For the most pro-Trump partisans, that’s a slam dunk. For everyone else, it’s probably a stretch.Even if it is somehow proved that the coronavirus was invented in a Chinese laboratory, its spread in the United States was far more the fault of Trump than of Xi Jinping.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

The Democratic candidates for New York mayor clashed at Wednesday night’s debate over how to help those who showed signs of untreated mental illness on city streets.Andrew Yang said it was crucial to get people with untreated mental illness off the streets, citing a series of attacks against Asian New Yorkers, many of which were committed by mentally ill people. He said the city should be able to identify people who need help — like people who are violent or unconscious — and get them medication, even in some cases where they don’t ask for help.“Yes, mentally ill people have rights, but you know who else have rights? We do: the people and families of the city,” Mr. Yang said. “We have the right to walk the street and not fear for our safety because a mentally ill person is going to lash out at us.”With the comments, Mr. Yang doubled down on remarks he had made earlier in the evening, when he was asked about people experiencing homelessness.“Mentally ill homeless men are changing the character of our neighborhoods,” he said, adding that families were leaving New York City because of their presence on the streets.“We’re talking about the hundreds of mentally ill people we see around us every day on the streets and the subways,” he said. “We need to get them off of our streets and our subways into a better environment.”Together, the comments reflected the aggressive rhetoric Mr. Yang has been using in recent days when talking about social issues and crime. His comments drew fire on social media from people who said they lacked empathy or understanding, and stigmatized people with mental illness. Many pointed out research that shows people with mental serious mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violent crime — not perpetrators.In a tweet on Thursday night, Mr. Yang responded to some of the criticism, saying he has “been an advocate for mental health and will continue” and that he had received counseling as a young person..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Full context here was mental illness is behind half of anti-Asian hate crimes,” he said. “We need to get them compassionate comprehensive care — and not let them languish on our streets.”His rhetoric also contrasted with the other candidates who emphasized reform of the way the city addresses mental health.Ray McGuire said he would make more use of Kendra’s law, which allows courts to compel those arrested to undergo psychiatric treatment when they are believed to be dangerous.Scott Stringer noted that a large percentage of 911 calls are not for crimes in progress but to report people with mental health issues. Last year, the police responded to 154,045 calls involving people deemed emotionally disturbed. Mr. Stringer recommended the city adopt a system used in Eugene, Ore., where mental health professionals respond to emergency calls.Dianne Morales made the issue personal. “Everyone on this stage has someone in their lives who has a mental health problem, if not themselves,” she said, adding that her daughter had “had mental health needs for years.” She said that despite being “someone who’s connected,” she had struggled to get her daughter appropriate care.Ms. Morales said the city needed to create “integrated community health clinics” where people could get access a “continuum of care ranging from peer counseling to much more intensive treatment.”Joseph Goldstein contributed reporting. More

Donald Trump has told Fox News he “didn’t win” the 2020 presidential election, and wishes Joe Biden well.The former president made the admission seven months after the election was called for his rival and five months after Biden’s inauguration, during a rambling phone interview with Fox show host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night.He did not drop his lie that the Democrat won thanks to electoral fraud.“We were supposed to win easily, 64m votes,” Trump said. “We got 75m votes and we didn’t win but let’s see what happens on that.”Biden won more than 7m more votes than Trump and won by 306-232 in the electoral college, a result Trump called a landslide when it was in his favour over Hillary Clinton in 2016.Nonetheless Trump has pursued his lie about electoral fraud both in court – where more than 80 lawsuits challenging the result have been thrown out – and in a speech which stoked the deadly attack on the US Capitol by supporters on 6 January.Trump was impeached a second time, for inciting an insurrection, but acquitted when only seven Republican senators voted to convict. GOP senators also blocked the establishment of an independent, 9/11-style inquiry into the attack on the Capitol.Republicans in the states have pursued Trump’s lie about electoral fraud – Arizona, one of the key states won by Biden, mounted a controversial audit of ballots in its most populous county.Republicans in state governments have introduced laws to limit ballot access among communities more likely to vote Democratic, and to make it easier to overturn election results.Trump also told Hannity he hoped Biden “has no problems” in office.“I want him to do well,” he said. “I think the election was unbelievably unfair, but I want this guy to go out and do well for our country.”Biden returned to the US on Wednesday from Geneva, where he met the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, at the end of a European tour.Trump told Hannity Biden “gave a very big stage to Russia, and we got nothing … I think it was a good day for Russia”.Trump held a summit with Putin in Helsinki in 2018 which most observers thought was a good day for Russia and a humiliating one for the US.Most were outraged when Trump sided with Putin over Russian interference in the 2016 US election. He told Hannity the investigation of that interference and links between him and Moscow “made it difficult to deal with Russia”.He also complained about reporting of the Russia investigation, which produced convictions of numerous Trump aides but which under then attorney general William Barr left Trump untouched despite extensive evidence of attempts to obstruct justice.Biden is 78. Hannity suggested his mental acuity was slipping. Trump turned 75 this week. Though he complained the US under Biden was in a “shocking state”, Trump said that for Biden, “age is not the problem”.Trump retains a firm grip on the Republican party, stoking its attacks on Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus and rescue package and similarly priced infrastructure proposals as dangerously and radically leftwing.“This is far worse than Bernie was ever going to be,” he said. “Bernie Sanders would have never thought to suggest some of the things that are happening right now.”Though the Trump administration fast-tracked development of Covid-19 vaccines and began distribution, Biden accelerated the effort. Though the US death toll from the coronavirus pandemic passed 600,000 this week, most states are in the process of reopening.Trump told Hannity he believed the theory Covid-19 escaped from a laboratory in China. US intelligence agencies are investigating that theory and others.Trump leads most polls of possible Republican nominees for 2024, has announced a return to large-scale public events and has done little to suggest he will not mount another run for the White House.He told Hannity he would “be making a decision on 2024” after midterm elections next year, “but if you look at the numbers, people are liking me more than ever before.“I think the reason is they are watching what is happening to our country, they are watching no energy independence, never has there been a scene like what is happening at the border and the death that is being caused … they are looking at the economy and inflation, looking at interest rates and gasoline prices, and I guess it is making me very popular.”Trump, who bequeathed Biden an economy cratered by Covid-19, has also proved popular with prosecutors, facing mounting legal problems over his business dealings.In Washington, Democrats are demanding accountability for justice department actions under his administration, including obtaining the private records of reporters and congressmen in leak investigations. More

With next year’s midterm elections seen as a referendum on Democratic rule, Republicans are seeking to create a sense of instability and overreach, diverting focus from their own divisions.WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders would like everyone to know that the nation is in crisis.There is an economic crisis, they say, with rising prices and overly generous unemployment benefits; a national security crisis; a border security crisis, with its attendant homeland security crisis, humanitarian crisis, and public health crisis; and a separate energy crisis.Pressed Tuesday on whether the nation is really so beleaguered, the No. 2 Republican in the House, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, thought of still more crises: anti-Semitism in the Democratic ranks, “yet another crisis,” he asserted, and a labor shortage crisis.“Unfortunately they’re all real,” he said capping a 25-minute news conference in which the word “crisis” was used once a minute, “and they’re all being caused by President Biden’s actions.”As Americans groggily emerge from their pandemic-driven isolation, they could be forgiven for not seeing the situation as quite so dire. They might also be a little confused about which of the many outrages truly needs their focus: the border, perhaps, but what about Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and the Wuhan lab leak theory, the teaching of critical race theory in the nation’s schools, the fact that some schools are not fully reopened, Representative Ilhan Omar, or all those transgender athletes competing in high school sports?But for divided House Republicans, outrage may be the tie that binds — at least their leaders hope so.“Look, our main crisis is we’re not the majority — that’s our top crisis,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma.House Republicans, still overwhelmingly in the thrall of Donald J. Trump, have learned over the last four years that grievance, loudly expressed, carries political weight, especially with their core voters. Mr. Trump certainly did not teach members of his party how to express anger over perceived injustices; many of them had been doing it for years. But the House Republican leadership has shifted to Trumpian expressions of outrage since the days of former Speaker Paul D. Ryan, a self-described “policy guy” with a happy-warrior image, and the backslapping bonhomie of his predecessor John A. Boehner.There is a method to all the remonstrance. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who took over as the message maestro of the Republican conference after the banishment of Representative Liz Cheney, hatched the crisis strategy as one of her first ventures, Mr. Cole said, distributing talking points this month on the perils facing the country.He thought the list had five crises; Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington, remembered four.The idea is that with Democrats in control of the White House, House and Senate, next year’s midterm elections will be a referendum on one-party control, not on Republican governing plans, said Mr. Cole, a former chairman of the House Republicans’ campaign arm. The Republicans, at least this early in the political cycle, need to seed a sense of instability, overreach and fear, he said.The strategy is also predicated on the adage that the best defense is a good offense. By focusing on an array of real or imagined disasters, Republicans avoid addressing the crisis in democracy created by Mr. Trump with his efforts to nullify the election, which he continues to stoke. On Tuesday night, 21 House Republicans voted against awarding congressional gold medals to the Capitol Police and other law enforcement officers who protected them when a mob of the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.David Winston, who has long worked with congressional Republicans on polling and messaging, said every new president faces an early challenge, and how he responds helps cement his image with curious voters. Republicans tried to make that early challenge the surge of migrants — including unaccompanied children — at the border.But there is a risk of throwing up too much chaff, he said. And eventually, Republican leaders are going to have to find a theme, like former Speaker John Boehner’s groan-worthy “Where are the jobs?” mantra. Its repetition might have annoyed reporters, but it was effective with voters.A group of migrants who recently crossed the border from Mexico into Yuma, Ariz., waiting to be taken to a processing center. Republican leaders have focused on a “crisis” at the border as well as several other issues.Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesRepublicans have long been better than Democrats at imparting a sense of crisis. They made Solyndra a household name, with heated news conferences, accusatory hearings and angry statements, when the solar company went bankrupt and left the Obama administration — and the taxpayers — the bill for a $535 million federal loan guarantee that was part of Barack Obama’s economic rescue plan. This week, an electric pickup truck plant in Lordstown, Ohio, midwifed by Mr. Trump, lost its top executives, its prototype burst into flames and it is on the brink of collapse — with hardly a Democratic peep.The deadly terrorist assault on Benghazi became a two-year ordeal for Hillary Clinton, thanks to the Republican outrage machine, while a botched military raid ordered by Mr. Trump in Niger, which left four Americans dead, has largely been forgotten — even after Mr. Trump fumbled the name of one of the dead and told a grieving widow her husband “knew what he signed up for.”Brad Woodhouse, a veteran Democratic operative, said some in the party had wanted to “Benghazi” the Niger raid, but, “It’s just not who most of the Dem Party and Dem Party leadership is.”“I guess you can say we don’t gin up phony crises, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” he added. “At some point, the public turns back to what they think is reasonable leadership.”Democrats have not been able to get the same traction even on the Capitol riot, which aimed to stop the official awarding of a presidential election to its victor, in part because Republican antics and accusations have disrupted hearings on the assault.Part of the Republican advantage is just a sheer will to muscle through, regardless of Democratic incredulity. One of this week’s outrages is Mr. Biden’s supposed weakness before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a “crisis” that seeks to send four years of Mr. Trump’s deference to the Russian leader down the memory hole.Veteran House Republicans say they have a traditional message to impart.“I think the biggest contrast right now with the Biden-Pelosi agenda is their goal to control from Washington so much of your daily life, from your paycheck to your health care decisions to everything else,” said Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas. “We stand for the opposite. We want to create more freedom for individuals with lower taxes, a stronger economy and a safer nation.”But that message has been lost amid a constantly shifting menu of crises and outrages. At the state level, Republican legislators have obscured very real efforts to curtail voting access by spotlighting cultural issues like blocking transgender athletes from high school competitions or stopping the teaching to children of “critical race theory,” a graduate school framework that explores how racism is infused in American institutions.But a drumbeat of cries for Vice President Kamala Harris to visit a southwestern border in crisis gave way to accusations that the nation’s gasoline supply was nearing collapse, which then subsided amid demands for the firing of the government’s leading virologist, Dr. Fauci, and an investigation of the theory that the coronavirus was engineered in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, then released on the world.Last week, the target of Republican outrage was Ms. Omar, after a tweet she posted that appeared to equate the actions of Israel and the United States with the human rights abuses of Hamas and the Taliban. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, called the tweet anti-Semitic — though it did not mention Jews or Judaism — and threatened to try to remove Ms. Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee, an action they have yet to take.Republicans are also pressing their case that the push by some progressive Democrats to “defund the police” has led directly to a very real surge in crime facing the nation’s cities.It can get difficult to keep up with all the catastrophizing. On Tuesday, minutes after Representative Michael McCaul, the lead Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, warned of Moscow’s aggressive cyber attacks and a looming Russian stranglehold over Europe’s power supply, Mr. Scalise said, “I don’t know if Vice President Harris understands the crisis is not in Europe, it’s at America’s southern border, and she and President Biden created it.”There are plans to put together some Republican policy proposals. Mr. McCarthy has assembled seven task forces: jobs and the economy; Big Tech censorship; the “Future of American Freedoms”; energy, climate and conservation; American security; “healthy future”; and China. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, who leads the big tech task force, said the panels will take a year to come up with legislative and policy responses to take into the midterm elections.“The goal is to be ready on Day 1,” should the Republicans take back the majority, she said.For now, even Republicans who have been critical of their leaders say they have time to formulate an agenda beyond the outrage machine they are eagerly feeding. Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, noted that Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America really didn’t emerge until September 1994, two months before Republicans’ resounding midterm sweep.“There’s night-and-day difference between Republicans and Democrats, say, on border security, where we’re fairly united that we need to secure the border, and I don’t think they care,” he said. “We’re watching small businesses unable to hire people because they’re paying people more not to work. We’re pretty united on those key differences. Thematically bringing all that together and how you message that the American people, I think that’s something you work on.”As for the Democrats, most simply don’t think the crisis talk is working, beyond spinning out clicks for right-wing media outlets and Facebook algorithms that thrive on outrage over such things as the decision by Dr. Seuss’s estate to cease publishing works that include egregious racial and ethnic stereotypes or the switch by Hasbro to a non-gendered brand name for its iconic plastic toy, now known as Potato Head.“President Biden, for all this angst, including Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head, has a plus-eight approval rating overall, a plus-four on the economy and a plus-28 approval on the pandemic,” Mr. Woodhouse said.As House Republican leaders were leaving the stage on Tuesday, Ms. Stefanik wanted to reiterate for one last time the state of a nation on the brink.“Thank you so much for embracing our effective messaging,” she told a small clutch of reporters, sitting in socially distanced seating. “America is in crisis.” More

[Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Thursday. Weather: Sunny again, with a high close to 80. Alternate-side parking: In effect through tomorrow. Suspended on Saturday for Juneteenth. WNBC-TV and NYC Campaign Finance BoardFive days of campaigning left.With Tuesday’s primary fast approaching, Democratic candidates for mayor of New York City sparred over matters of public safety, schooling and homelessness last night as they shared their closing arguments in the final debate before the vote closes.The early voting period lasts through Sunday, and the ranked-choice system has injected a large degree of unpredictability into the race. Still, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, remains a consistent front-runner in the sparse available polling.[Read more about the debate and the candidates’ visions for New York.]Here are a few of the standout moments:Attacks flew over an endorsementThis week, Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate, received the endorsement of the Captains Endowment Association, the union that represents police captains. When asked at the debate to explain why he was the candidate best equipped to tackle a rise in shootings, Mr. Yang pointed to the endorsement.“The people you should ask about this are Eric’s former colleagues in the police captains’ union,” Mr. Yang said.Mr. Adams tried to dismiss the endorsement, suggesting that he had not even asked for it. Mr. Yang accused him of lying.The discussion about homelessness became heatedMr. Yang sounded alarms around matters of mental health and homelessness, saying that the issues were impeding the city’s recovery and that homeless people needed to be introduced to a “better environment.” He said he would rebuild “the stock of psych beds in our city.”Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, shot back: “That is the greatest non-answer I’ve ever heard,” he said, discussing a need to create tens of thousands of units of “truly affordable housing.”‘The worst idea you’ve heard from another candidate?’The question encouraged contenders to sling a little mud, and Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams again targeted each other. Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, ripped the “defund the police” movement. Maya Wiley challenged Mr. Adams on policing.“The worst idea I’ve ever heard is bringing back stop and frisk and the anti-crime unit from Eric Adams,” said Ms. Wiley, a civil rights lawyer. “Which, one, is racist; two, is unconstitutional; and, three, didn’t stop any crime; and, four, it will not happen in a Maya Wiley administration.”Mr. Adams responded that, if he was elected, the abuses of stop and frisk would not return.From The TimesMaya Wiley Takes Credit for Daniel Pantaleo’s Firing. Is That Justified?Barred From Her Own Home: How a Tool for Fighting Domestic Abuse FailsWhy New York Progressives Are Pinning Their Hopes on the City CouncilGoogle to Open Physical Store in New YorkNew York City Gets Another Major Marathon, in BrooklynSummer is here and New York City is reopening. Stay up to date on the best things to do, see and eat this season. Take a look at our latest newsletter on upcoming Juneteenth celebrations, and sign up here.Want more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingHow one after-school program in Brooklyn transformed into a neighborhood support system during the pandemic. [Chalkbeat New York]The mayor announced that a parade next month would be held in recognition of essential workers during the pandemic. But one group was disappointed not to be mentioned. [Gothamist]The annual Queens World Film Festival is returning to the borough next week. Here are more details on what it will look like. [QNS]And finally: Renaming 16 parks for Black historyA Black feminist writer from Harlem. The first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. An actress and singer who lived in Manhattan and broke ground for Black performers..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}New York City officials announced on Wednesday that 16 parks across the five boroughs would be named for those figures and other Black leaders who made significant contributions in areas from education and entertainment to civil rights and community relations.“Our goal is to represent the culture and diversity of New York City,” the city’s parks commissioner, Mitchell J. Silver, said at a news conference at Mullaly Park in the Bronx. The roughly 15-acre park in the Concourse neighborhood of the borough was a focus of local activism as protests arose to push for officials to change its title, citing concerns about the record of its namesake, who published attacks on the Emancipation Proclamation.“For years, the community has expressed discontent and a desire to rename this beloved green space,” Mr. Silver said. A new name that honors the Rev. Wendell Foster, the first Black elected city official in the Bronx, will be adopted in September 2022, he said.The move comes amid a larger push to change some names of monuments and landmarks in New York and elsewhere, sometimes to leave behind references to figures with racist pasts and at other times to honor Black New Yorkers. Several top Democratic mayoral candidates have suggested they would support renaming sites including streets named for slaveholders.As for park spaces, those that will take on new names include the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn (changing to Lena Horne Bandshell); Hell’s Kitchen Park in Manhattan (to become Lorraine Hansberry Park); and St. Albans Oval in Queens (to be renamed Musicians Oval in honor of influential Black jazz musicians).It’s Thursday — get outside.Metropolitan Diary: Waiting for Denzel Dear Diary:My mother loves Denzel Washington. So it was only natural that we would go see him in the “The Iceman Cometh” when she visited a few years ago.My legs were stiff and my mouth was dry after the four-hour production ended, and I was ready to go home. But my mother loves Denzel Washington. So we waited outside the stage door for the cast to emerge.My mother was easily the oldest person there, but she was grinning like a teenager about to meet her hero.“Do you have a pen?” she asked me nervously.“These actors always carry pens,” I said with confidence. “Don’t worry.”Soon, though, I was frantically asking everyone around us for a pen while my mother continued to wait for the star to emerge.When I got back to where she was standing, I overheard her chatting with other members of the cast.Denzel Washington never came out that night, but my mother still proudly tells everyone back home how she invited half the cast of a Broadway show to visit her in Colorado.I’m glad I didn’t have a pen.— Sid GopinathNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com. More

When she was the head of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, Ms. Wiley was criticized for not being more aggressive in pursuing discipline against officers.Maya Wiley’s bid to become mayor of New York City is based largely on her promise to overhaul the Police Department, and she often highlights her one-year stint as head of the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, as evidence of her commitment.In particular, she focuses on the agency’s role in the 2019 firing of Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death in 2014 — a flash point that became the impetus for the Black Lives Matter movement.But a review of her time leading the agency paints a more complicated picture of her actions in that case and of her experience holding officers accountable. Her critics say that the board felt more beholden to City Hall during her tenure, and they charge that the agency’s management and performance suffered.Ms. Wiley also faced criticism that she did not use her time at the board, where she was chairwoman from mid-2016 to mid-2017, to pursue cases more aggressively.In 2012, the agency recommended charges in about 70 percent of cases. The number declined steadily until 2016, when it was 12 percent. In 2017, it was 11 percent, according to agency reports.In the same period, the agency was much more likely to recommend training and instruction for officers, one of the least serious forms of discipline. That recommendation was issued in 5 percent of cases in 2012 and 44 percent in 2016.“The dramatic changes in C.C.R.B. recommendations over the last three years raise serious questions about the C.C.R.B.’s commitment to meaningful civilian oversight,” Christopher Dunn, then the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a 2017 letter to Ms. Wiley.Board leaders have said that they decided to seek lesser penalties in a bid to compel police officials to agree to impose discipline more often. Ms. Wiley added in an interview that the city had also expanded the array of disciplinary actions that could be recommended, allowing the review board to opt for less severe punishment.“It’s not really surprising that you would see charges going down as you had more tools, recommendations for those things that are the less extreme versions of some of those cases,” she said.Of all the cases that came before the review board, none was as highly charged or closely scrutinized as the death of Mr. Garner. It took five years for Mr. Pantaleo, who was never criminally charged in the case, to lose his job.Ms. Wiley, on the campaign trail and in candidate debates, has referenced her role in the process that ended with the firing of Mr. Pantaleo, and recently released an ad entitled “Breathe,” a reference to Mr. Garner saying repeatedly, “I can’t breathe” as officers tried to detain him.Gwen Carr, center, the mother of Eric Garner, at a 2019 protest following a decision by federal officials not to charge Daniel Pantaleo in her son’s death. Ms. Carr has endorsed Raymond J. McGuire for mayor.Byron Smith for The New York TimesIn the ad, Ms. Wiley said it was “time the N.Y.P.D. sees us as people who deserve to breathe.”At the time of Mr. Garner’s death, Ms. Wiley was serving as counsel to Mr. de Blasio. As such, she was one of his top two legal advisers, along with Zachary W. Carter, Mr. de Blasio’s corporation counsel.The de Blasio administration settled on a legal strategy of not pursuing its own administrative charges — a necessary prelude to firing a police officer — against Mr. Pantaleo, while the city deferred to the Staten Island district attorney and federal authorities, who were considering more severe criminal penalties.Mr. Carter said in an interview that City Hall did not want to initiate an internal Police Department trial at the N.Y.P.D. that might risk producing testimony that could muddy the state and federal cases.The decision allowed Mr. Pantaleo to remain on the city payroll for five years, as investigations by the district attorney’s office and the civil rights division of the Obama administration’s Justice Department wound down with no criminal charges ever filed.Mr. Carter defended the administration’s strategy and said that it was common procedure for local law enforcement agencies to defer to federal investigators.He said that when he was U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and prosecuting the Abner Louima police brutality case, he had similarly asked other authorities to suspend their investigations until he was done with his own. Justin Volpe, the officer who sodomized Mr. Louima, was not fired until the day that he pleaded guilty, Mr. Carter said.Mr. Carter said that Ms. Wiley was a “conscientious lawyer” who understands that lawyers have to respect the law, “when it favors you and when it doesn’t.”Despite her role in the administration, Ms. Wiley has faulted Mr. de Blasio for the city’s handling of the Garner case. During a mayoral forum held by WPIX-TV last month, she said that had she been mayor, “Daniel Pantaleo would have already been off the force.”But if she ever advised the mayor to more promptly fire Mr. Pantaleo while she was the mayor’s counsel, Ms. Wiley declined to say, citing attorney-client privilege.Two people who were in meetings with the mayor and his executive staff about the Garner case could not recall an instance in which Ms. Wiley argued for swifter discipline, though she might have done so privately.Anthonine Pierre, deputy director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, said that while Ms. Wiley worked to maintain relationships with police accountability organizers while leading the Civilian Complaint Review Board, Ms. Wiley was never “out of step with de Blasio.”“When we look at the fact that it took five years for Pantaleo to be fired and part of that time was under her watch, I think a lot of people should be asking her questions about what that was about,” Ms. Pierre said. “We’re not looking for another mayor who is good on rhetoric and bad on accountability.”Mina Malik, who was executive director for two years at the police review board until November 2016, accused Ms. Wiley of overstating her role in Mr. Pantaleo’s dismissal..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Frankly, for Maya to take credit for bringing Pantaleo to justice is not accurate,” she said. “The investigation, chokehold findings and recommendations were made before Maya came on board.”But other current and former agency board members defended Ms. Wiley, who has also taken credit for ensuring that the review board’s civilian prosecutors bring the administrative case, rather than the Police Department’s lawyers.Angela Fernandez, a former C.C.R.B. commissioner whose tenure overlapped with Ms. Wiley, said that the Pantaleo prosecution was the highlight of Ms. Wiley’s leadership.John Siegal, another C.C.R.B. commissioner, still remembers the day the police commissioner ratified an internal judge’s determination that Mr. Pantaleo should be fired.“I called Maya, and I said, ‘Congratulations, you were the one official in American who utilized her official responsibilities to move this case,’” he recalled. “‘The attorney general didn’t do it. The Justice Department didn’t do it, nobody else did it, you did it. And you are to be congratulated on that.’”Ms. Wiley’s leadership also came under fire for allowing the board to make decisions out of public view — a criticism that echoed similar assessments of her work as counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio.As counsel, Ms. Wiley argued that the mayor’s emails with a cadre of outside advisers did not have to be disclosed to the public because the advisers were acting as “agents of the city.” Thousands of pages of those emails were eventually released, to the mayor’s embarrassment.Under her watch at the review board, questions of transparency arose when a highly anticipated report on the use of Taser stun guns was released in October 2016.A draft report that had been leaked that spring said the police should prohibit the use of the stun guns on handcuffed subjects and highlighted that officers used the stun guns on people who were unarmed. But in the final version, released after the draft report had been circulated to City Hall and the Police Department, that language was absent — a change that officials said was part of the usual rewriting process.In February 2017, Mr. Dunn sent another letter to Ms. Wiley asserting that “the board has ceased to engage in any meaningful public business.”“In the 16 years I have been attending board meetings and monitoring the C.C.R.B., I have never seen the board abandon its public responsibilities as it has in the last eight months,” he wrote. In an interview, Ms. Wiley suggested that should an Eric Garner-like tragedy arise on her watch as mayor, she would defer to the Biden administration before taking action herself, much as Mr. de Blasio deferred to the Obama administration.“If for any reason, there was any indication that we were not going to get movement, then it would be a different story,” she said. “But look, we’ve got the A-Team in this Department of Justice on civil rights right now.” More