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AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyManafort Can’t Be Prosecuted in New York After Trump Pardon, Court RulesThe Court of Appeals let stand a lower-court ruling that the Manhattan district attorney’s prosecution of Paul Manafort was barred by the double jeopardy rule.Mr. Manafort was serving a sentence of seven and a half years in federal prison after being convicted at a 2018 financial fraud trial.Credit…Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesFeb. 8, 2021Updated 6:52 p.m. ETThe Manhattan district attorney’s attempt to prosecute former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman was dealt a final blow when New York’s highest court said quietly last week it would not review lower court rulings on the case.The court’s decision brings to an end the district attorney’s quest to ensure that the campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, will face state charges for mortgage fraud and other state felonies, crimes similar to those for which he was convicted in federal court and then pardoned by Mr. Trump.When the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, first brought charges against Mr. Manafort in March 2019, it was widely understood that he was doing so to make sure that Mr. Manafort would face prosecution even if Mr. Trump decided to pardon him.At the time, Mr. Manafort was serving a sentence of seven and a half years in a Pennsylvania federal prison after being convicted at a 2018 financial fraud trial by prosecutors working for the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.In October, a New York appeals court found that Mr. Vance’s efforts to try Mr. Manafort violated the state’s double jeopardy law. Mr. Vance took the case to the Court of Appeals.Then, in December, Mr. Trump did pardon Mr. Manafort, 71, who had been released to home confinement in Northern Virginia, after his lawyers argued that he was at risk of contracting the coronavirus.A lawyer for Mr. Manafort, Todd Blanche, said that he had received the high court’s one-paragraph decision Monday and that he was happy with the ruling. “Mr. Manafort is similarly pleased with the result,” he said.A spokesman for Mr. Vance’s office declined to comment.The charges that Mr. Vance brought against Mr. Manafort were the result of an investigation, started in 2017, into loans the campaign chairman had received. Mr. Vance ultimately accused Mr. Manafort of having falsified business records in order to obtain the loans.At the time, Mr. Vance said that Mr. Manafort had not “been held accountable” for the charges at hand. But in a ruling in December 2019, a judge threw out the charges, finding that they violated the double jeopardy law, which says a defendant cannot be tried twice for the same offense.The judge, Justice Maxwell Wiley, said at the time that “the law of double jeopardy in New York State provides a very narrow window for prosecution.”Mr. Vance’s office has taken action against other associates of Mr. Trump whom the former president has pardoned in federal cases. Last week, The New York Times reported that Manhattan prosecutors had opened an investigation against Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House strategist who was pardoned by Mr. Trump during the president’s final hours in office.But the double jeopardy defense is unlikely to help Mr. Bannon in the same way it helped Mr. Manafort, because Mr. Bannon had not yet been tried, let alone convicted.“The basis for the prosecution being improper doesn’t in any way apply to Mr. Bannon as far as I can tell,” Mr. Blanche said.While the U.S. Constitution bars being tried twice for the same crime, the Supreme Court has long held that there is one exception: Federal and state prosecutions for the same conduct are allowed because the federal government and states are understood to be independent sovereigns. In 2019, the court affirmed that exception.That year, the state legislature in New York passed a measure that lawmakers argued was necessary in order to check Mr. Trump’s pardon power and to ensure that his associates were not permitted to escape justice. The law, signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in October 2019, allows state prosecutors to pursue charges against individuals who have been granted presidential pardons for similar crimes.State Senator Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat and former federal prosecutor who sponsored the bill, said that the Manafort case drove home the need for the legislation.“It really underscored why we had to take legislative action that we did so that states can pursue their own path even if there is a federal pardon,” he said. The law would make it easier for state prosecutors to pursue those on Mr. Trump’s pardon list.The law passed too late to apply to Mr. Manafort’s case. The result, Mr. Kaminsky said, was that Mr. Vance’s office had to contort itself to try to show that the acts that Mr. Manafort had been charged with in federal court were not the same as those they were pursuing. It is possible, though unlikely, that Mr. Manafort may still face federal charges. Last month, Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor from the special counsel’s office, argued that the wording of Mr. Trump’s pardons had been “oddly” drafted. Rather than relieving those who had been pardoned from all potential liability for their actions, Mr. Weissmann argued, the language only narrowly covered their convictions. In Mr. Manafort’s case, that might leave the door open to new charges, including on crimes that Mr. Manafort admitted he was guilty of as part of a plea deal. Those include 10 counts of financial crimes, as well as other offenses.William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

The Georgia secretary of state’s office opened an investigation on Monday into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, according to a new report.The office of Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, had faced calls to open an investigation after Trump was recorded in a 2 January phone call pressuring Raffensperger to overturn the state’s election results based on unfounded voter fraud claims.“The secretary of state’s office investigates complaints it receives,” said Walter Jones, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, describing the investigation as “fact-finding and administrative”, Reuters reported.“Any further legal efforts will be left to the attorney general,” he said.Legal experts said Trump’s phone calls might have violated at least three state criminal election laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, and intentional interference with performance of election duties.The felony and misdemeanor violations are punishable by fines or imprisonment.In the 2 January phone call, Trump urged Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to “find” enough votes to overturn his Georgia loss to Joe Biden.The transcript quotes Trump telling Raffensperger: “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes,” which is the number Trump needed to win.Trump made another phone call in December to Georgia’s chief elections investigator, Raffensperger’s office told Reuters.Additionally, two Democratic members of Congress – Kathleen Rice, of New York, and Ted Lieu, of California – have asked in a 4 January letter to the FBI for a criminal investigation into Trump’s call to Raffensperger.On 6 January – the day of the US Capitol riots – Trump bragged about the call in a speech to supporters: “People love that conversation because it says what’s going on,* he said. “These people are crooked.”The push for investigations is one illustration of the legal perils facing Trump since he lost the constitutional protections that shield sitting presidents from prosecution.Trump now faces nearly a dozen legal battles, including a criminal inquiry by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, into his business dealings, and several civil lawsuits.Trump has described the investigations into his family business as politically motivated.David Worley, the lone Democrat on Georgia’s state election board, had planned to introduce a motion at Wednesday’s board meeting urging the state attorney general, Chris Carr, and Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, to open a criminal investigation into Trump’s phone calls with election officials.He said such a move would be unnecessary if the secretary of state’s office had opened an investigation. “If they’ve done this, I won’t need to make my motion,” Worley said.“This is the normal thing that should happen when a complaint is filed. If a complaint is filed, an investigation is started. That’s how it works.” More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRichard Shelby, Veteran Senator From Alabama, Won’t Seek 7th TermMr. Shelby, Alabama’s longest-serving senator, will retire after a career in which he headed four congressional committees and directed billions of dollars to his home state.“I didn’t mean to stay there that long,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, who was first elected to the House from Tuscaloosa in 1978 and the Senate in a strong year for Democrats in 1986.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFeb. 8, 2021Updated 5:44 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Senator Richard C. Shelby, a shrewd force in the Senate for more than 30 years and a longtime political powerhouse in his home state of Alabama, said on Monday that he would not seek a seventh term.Mr. Shelby, 86, a onetime conservative Democrat who switched to the Republican Party in 1994, had been hinting that he would not run again next year, and said in an interview that he had decided to bring his time in Washington to a close.“There is a season for all of this, and I recognize that,” he said. “I had a good run, and I still have a couple of years left.”“I didn’t mean to stay there that long,” added Mr. Shelby, who was first elected to the House from Tuscaloosa in 1978 and the Senate in a strong year for Democrats in 1986.His retirement will touch off an intramural scramble for the open seat among Republicans, but Democrats have little chance of picking off a seat in deep-red Alabama, particularly in a midterm election with a Democrat in the White House. He is the fourth Senate Republican to disclose he will not run in 2022, joining Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.During his long career, Mr. Shelby achieved the rare feat of becoming chairman of four Senate committees: Banking, Intelligence, Rules and, finally, Appropriations, a perch he used to direct billions of federal dollars back home for space and law enforcement-related facilities as well as transportation projects that provided jobs and other opportunities for Alabamians.“I have tried to help Alabama on meritorious things,” said Mr. Shelby, saying that he wanted to create conditions where his constituents could have work and educational opportunities. “I have always thought just giving someone a check is short term.”Mr. Shelby was elected to the Senate in 1986, defeating Jeremiah Denton, a former Vietnam prisoner of war and one of a wave of Republicans elected on Ronald Reagan’s coattails in 1980. Mr. Shelby was considered a “boll weevil,” a group of conservative Southern Democrats who often formed a bloc with Republicans against liberal Democratic initiatives, named for a pest common in the South that destroys cotton crops and is difficult to eradicate.Mr. Shelby clashed repeatedly with President Bill Clinton after his election in 1992, drawing rebukes from the White House for his opposition, including when he responded to one of Mr. Clinton’s budget proposals with the phrase “the tax man cometh.” Mr. Clinton threatened to move NASA jobs from Alabama to Texas and also limited Mr. Shelby to a single pass for the White House ceremony honoring the University of Alabama’s national championship football team in 1992, a petty gesture but a cardinal sin in Crimson Tide terms.The morning after the 1994 Republican midterm sweep that gave Republicans control of the House for the first time in 40 years, Mr. Shelby announced with great fanfare that he was switching to the Republican Party. The high-profile move left his Democratic colleagues incensed but kept him on course for a long career in the Senate. Mr. Shelby intimidated would-be challengers by amassing a huge campaign war chest that typically deterred anyone considering a run.In 2017, Mr. Shelby injected himself into the state’s race for the Senate seat left vacant when Jeff Sessions became attorney general.In a television interview, Mr. Shelby made clear that he could not vote for the Republican nominee, Roy S. Moore, a former judge who had been accused of trying to establish relationships with teenage girls while he was in his 30s. Mr. Shelby’s rejection of him was considered a factor in Mr. Moore’s loss in the election to the Democrat Doug Jones, who was defeated last year in his bid for a full term.After Mr. Jones’s 20-point loss to the Republican Tommy Tuberville, the most intense action in Alabama will take place among Republicans, with a crowded primary field likely.Mr. Shelby has spoken highly of Katie Britt, one of his former aides who now runs Alabama’s most influential business lobby. Representative Gary Palmer or former Representative Bradley Byrne, who ran for Senate but lost in last year’s primary, may also enter the race.If the party remains on its populist trajectory, however, a candidate more in the vein of former President Donald J. Trump could emerge as the front-runner. Representative Mo Brooks, the hard-right conservative, may be that contender, and on Monday he expressed interest in the opening.But it was far from certain that he could secure the former president’s endorsement in the primary. Mr. Brooks infuriated some people in Mr. Trump’s inner circle by attempting to shift blame to the White House for his role in organizing the Jan. 6 rally in Washington that turned into a deadly mob attack on the Capitol.The broader challenge for any Republican in Alabama is that without Mr. Sessions, who had become a nemesis of Mr. Trump’s by the time he ran to reclaim his old Senate seat last year, in the field this time, the former president may be reluctant to intervene. Alabama is one of the few states where he had previously offered an endorsement in a contested primary only to see his candidate defeated, as former Senator Luther Strange was by Mr. Moore in 2017.Mr. Shelby will exit as his state’s longest-serving senator. Though he has had some health problems in the past, he said he is “spry” these days.“Although I plan to retire, I am not leaving today,” he said in a statement. “I have two good years remaining to continue my work in Washington. I have the vision and the energy to give it my all.”Jonathan Martin More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionTrump’s RoleKey TakeawaysExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGeorgia Officials Review Trump Phone Call as Scrutiny IntensifiesThe office of Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has initiated a fact-finding inquiry into Donald Trump’s January phone call to Mr. Raffensperger pressuring him to “find” votes.Former President Donald J. Trump boarding Air Force One on Jan. 12. He made several attempts to pressure top Republican officials in Georgia to help reverse the outcome of the election.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesRichard Fausset and Feb. 8, 2021Updated 5:33 p.m. ETATLANTA — The office of Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Monday started an investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the state’s election results, including a phone call he made to Mr. Raffensperger in which Mr. Trump pressured him to “find” enough votes to reverse his loss.Such inquiries are “fact-finding and administrative in nature,” the secretary’s office said, and are a routine step when complaints are received about electoral matters. Findings are typically brought before the Republican-controlled state board of elections, which decides whether to refer them for prosecution to the state attorney general or another agency.The move comes as Fani Willis, the Democratic district attorney of Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta, is weighing whether to begin a criminal inquiry of her own. A spokesman for Ms. Willis declined to comment on Monday.The January call was one of several attempts Mr. Trump made to try to persuade top Republican officials in the state to uncover instances of voting fraud that might change the outcome, despite the insistence of voting officials that there was no widespread fraud to be found. He also called Gov. Brian Kemp in early December and pressured him to call a special legislative session to overturn his election loss. Later that month, Mr. Trump called a state investigator and pressed the official to “find the fraud,” according to those with knowledge of the call.“The Secretary of State’s office investigates complaints it receives,” Walter Jones, a spokesman for the office, said in a statement on Monday. “The investigations are fact-finding and administrative in nature. Any further legal efforts will be left to the Attorney General.” David Worley, the sole Democrat on the state elections board, said Monday that administrative inquiries by the secretary of state’s office could result in criminal charges. “Any investigation of a statutory violation is a potential criminal investigation depending on the statute involved,” he said, adding that in the case of Mr. Trump, “The complaint that was received involved a criminal violation.” Mr. Worley said that now that an inquiry had been started by the secretary of state’s office, he would not introduce a motion at Wednesday’s state board of election meeting, as he had originally planned to do, in an effort to refer the case to the Fulton County district attorney’s office.Not long after the call to Mr. Raffensperger became public, several complaints were filed. One came from John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University law professor. Former prosecutors said Mr. Trump’s calls might run afoul of at least three state laws. One is criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, which can be either a felony or a misdemeanor; as a felony, it is punishable by at least a year in prison. There is also a related conspiracy charge, which can be prosecuted either as a misdemeanor or a felony. A third law, a misdemeanor offense, bars “intentional interference” with another person’s “performance of election duties.”Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, said in a statement: “There was nothing improper or untoward about a scheduled call between President Trump, Secretary Raffensperger and lawyers on both sides. If Mr. Raffensperger didn’t want to receive calls about the election, he shouldn’t have run for secretary of state.” Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia was reaffirmed after election officials recertified the state’s presidential election results in three separate counts of the ballots: the initial election tally; a hand recount ordered by the state; and another recount, which was requested by Mr. Trump’s campaign and completed by machines. The results of the machine recount show Mr. Biden won with a lead of about 12,000 votes.Mr. Biden was the first Democrat to win the presidential election in Georgia since 1992. Mr. Trump accused Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger, both Republicans, of not doing enough to help him overturn the result in the weeks after the election. Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger had each resisted numerous attacks from Mr. Trump, who called the governor “hapless” and called on the secretary of state to resign.Maggie Haberman More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCivil-Liberties Groups Ask Biden Justice Dept. to Drop Julian Assange CaseA Friday deadline in the London extradition case may force the Biden administration to decide whether to keep pursuing a Trump-era policy.The Trump administration had sought to have the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange extradited to the United States to face a trial on potentially precedent-setting Espionage Act charges.Credit…Matt Dunham/Associated PressFeb. 8, 2021Updated 3:58 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — A coalition of civil liberties and human rights groups urged the Biden administration on Monday to drop efforts to extradite the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain and prosecute him, calling the Trump-era case against him “a grave threat to press freedom.”The coalition sent a letter urging a change in course before a Friday deadline for the Justice Department to file a brief in a London court. American prosecutors are due to explain in detail their decision — formally lodged on Jan. 19, the last full day of the Trump administration — to appeal a ruling blocking their request to extradite Mr. Assange.The litigation deadline may force the new administration to confront a decision: whether to press on with the Trump-era approach to Mr. Assange, or to instead drop the matter.Democrats like the new Biden team are no fan of Mr. Assange, whose publication in 2016 of Democratic emails stolen by Russia aided Donald J. Trump’s narrow victory over Hillary Clinton. But the charges center instead on his 2010 publication of American military and diplomatic documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, and they raise profound First Amendment issues.“The indictment of Mr. Assange threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely — and that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do,” the letter said, adding: “News organizations frequently and necessarily publish classified information in order to inform the public of matters of profound public significance.”The Freedom of the Press Foundation organized the letter. Other signers — about two dozen groups — included the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Demand Progress, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Project on Government Oversight and Reporters Without Borders.“Most of the charges against Assange concern activities that are no different from those used by investigative journalists around the world every day,” Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a separate statement. “President Biden should avoid setting a terrible precedent by criminalizing key tools of independent journalism that are essential for a healthy democracy.”For now, the Justice Department remains committed to appealing the denial of its request to extradite Mr. Assange, said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for its National Security Division.The deadline to either continue working to extradite Mr. Assange by filing the brief or drop the matter reflects a common legal policy dilemma when a new administration takes over and confronts matters inherited from its predecessor. Newly installed officials face too many issues to make careful decisions on all at once, so some get punted.But litigation calendars can force early decisions about whether to proceed or shift direction in some cases. It is often easier to stay the course, based on an argument that the issue can be revisited later when there is more time. But once the new administration has started down that path, it owns the policy as a matter of political and bureaucratic reality and so can effectively get locked in.Complicating matters for making any decision to keep or jettison the Trump-era policy to go after Mr. Assange with criminal charges, the Biden administration’s intended leadership team is not yet in place at the Justice Department. The Senate has yet to confirm Mr. Biden’s nominee to be attorney general, Judge Merrick B. Garland.In the meantime, the department is being temporarily led by a caretaker career official, Monty Wilkinson, the acting attorney general to whom the letter was addressed.After Mr. Assange published the documents provided by Ms. Manning in 2010, the Obama administration engaged in extensive deliberations under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. over whether to prosecute Mr. Assange but never charged him with a crime.By contrast, Ms. Manning, a low-level Army intelligence analyst who downloaded the archives of documents and sent them to WikiLeaks, was convicted at a court-martial trial in 2013 of leaking the documents and sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Barack Obama commuted most of the remainder of her sentence in 2017.But law enforcement officials under Mr. Obama shied away from bringing charges against Mr. Assange. They feared that there was no legally meaningful way to distinguish his actions from those of conventional investigative national-security journalism as practiced by mainstream news organizations like The New York Times. The Obama team did not want to create a precedent that could chill or cripple traditional journalism, according to people familiar with its deliberations.In March 2018, however, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Trump Justice Department obtained a grand jury indictment against Mr. Assange. It initially sidestepped press freedom issues by narrowly accusing him of participating in a hacking-related criminal conspiracy with Ms. Manning, rather than focusing on his publication of government secrets.That indictment was unsealed in April 2019, when Mr. Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and arrested. (He had taken refuge there in 2012, initially to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questions about sexual assault accusations, which he has denied. Sweden had rescinded its arrest warrant for Mr. Assange in 2017.)The Justice Department — by then under Attorney General William P. Barr — then obtained a superseding indictment expanding the charges against Mr. Assange to include allegations that his journalistic-style activities violated the Espionage Act. A second superseding indictment later added more allegations related to the notion of a hacking conspiracy.Notably, there is some overlap in personnel from earlier internal debates about the dilemma raised by Mr. Assange. The top national security official in the Trump Justice Department, John C. Demers, remains in place atop its National Security Division for now; the Biden transition asked him to temporarily stay on for continuity purposes even as most other Trump political appointees resigned.Mr. Demers’s predecessor from 2013 to 2016, John Carlin, has returned to the Justice Department and is currently serving as the acting deputy attorney general. Mr. Carlin’s predecessor, Lisa O. Monaco, who ran the National Security Division from 2011 to 2013, is Mr. Biden’s nominee to be deputy attorney general but has not yet been confirmed.The letter from the rights groups portrayed the Trump-era Justice Department’s decision to proceed against Mr. Assange as jeopardizing journalism “that is crucial to democracy” more broadly, and noted that the Trump administration had “positioned itself as an antagonist to the institution of a free and unfettered press in numerous ways.”They added: “We are deeply concerned about the way that a precedent created by prosecuting Assange could be leveraged — perhaps by a future administration — against publishers and journalists of all stripes.”Since the original indictment was unsealed, lawyers for Mr. Assange have fought the extradition request, arguing that the United States was prosecuting him for political reasons.A British judge in January largely rejected those arguments, holding that he had been charged “in good faith.” But she denied his extradition anyway — citing harsh conditions for security-related prisoners in American jails and the risk that Mr. Assange might be driven to commit suicide. It is that rationale that the brief due on Friday would appeal.Elian Peltier More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeMurder Charges?The Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyDealBook More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentliveLatest UpdatesWhere Each Senator StandsTrump ImpeachedHow the House VotedKey QuotesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTimes InsiderCovering a Trial for the Ages. Again.Nicholas Fandos, a congressional correspondent who is reporting on his second presidential impeachment, talks about what seems similar and what feels different.Nicholas Fandos, right, with Representative Adam Schiff of California in May 2019 after a meeting of House Democrats about the possibility of impeaching President Donald Trump.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 8, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETTimes Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.On Tuesday, the nation will begin only its fourth impeachment trial of a president, and Nicholas Fandos, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times, will cover his second. Mr. Fandos, who tracked every beat of the proceedings last year, will be reporting on the second trial of Donald J. Trump, who this time faces the charge of “incitement of insurrection” in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. In an edited interview, Mr. Fandos, who was in the building during that assault, discussed his work last year and the job ahead.Where will you be for the impeachment?Well, it’s probably going to work pretty differently than it did a year ago. I remember dozens of us crowding into the Senate press gallery talking about this virus coming out of China that was going to be a big story and nobody was going to care about the impeachment. And it kind of turned out to be true.This time around, I will probably be watching most of the proceedings from home in Washington because, like other news organizations, we’ve tried to limit our physical presence in the Capitol. Luckily, most of these proceedings are captured on C-SPAN or are livestreamed. Vaccinations are starting to get pretty common among lawmakers, but most reporters still don’t have them.How did covering the last impeachment prepare you to cover this one?It’s so wild. There have been three presidential impeachment trials in American history up to this point. So there’s a certain amount of specialized expertise you have to develop to understand the rules of impeachment and the different terms, not to mention the requirement that you have some mastery over a big, complicated political, legal and constitutional story. So, in some ways this time around, I’m lucky because I don’t need to learn the rules again.The last impeachment also involved a big investigation and learning a lot of esoteric things about Ukraine and actions by the president that happened out of public view. I was in the Capitol on Jan. 6, and I, like everybody else, had been watching as the president was trying to undermine and overturn the election results. In a lot of ways, I can understand the case more readily.What is it like to cover this trial when you were in the Capitol on Jan. 6?I have really visceral memories of that day. But as a journalist, I need to set those aside and cover the debates objectively. My own experience doesn’t have a role in that. Our job is always, at its most basic, to bear witness to events and describe what’s happening.Maybe it helps give me some additional access to the emotion and rawness that everybody that’s involved in this is experiencing. The Senate is the jury, and the members were themselves witnesses and victims, in a sense. Everybody’s in uncharted territory.What will you be doing during the trial?I’ll be following it instantaneously and also trying to step back and take a more considered look. That will include tweets, probably live chats and analysis, and short briefing items that we’ll put up on the website. Then at some point on most days, either I or my reporting partners will sit down and distill everything into a comprehensive article that will end up in the print paper the next day.What have you been doing to prepare?Both the prosecution and the defense have had to file lengthy written briefs that act as a preview of their arguments. I’m spending a lot of time trying to familiarize myself with those.I’ve also spent a lot of time going back and reading my own coverage from a year ago. It’s been really fascinating to see how many of the core issues are really the same but also different.What feels similar?The core charge against Donald Trump is in many ways the same. Essentially, he was accused of taking extraordinary, abusive steps to stay in office and to maintain his power at the expense of the Constitution and the country. And you’ll hear a lot of similar themes in the arguments this time. The defense of the president also seems similar. Basically, his lawyers are arguing that the charges are unconstitutional and unfair. I also think many of the political questions are the same. Are Republicans willing to punish and cross this figure, who may have committed these acts, but who is also the most popular figure in their party and commands a huge amount of loyalty? That political dynamic is amazingly unchanged.What feels different?Last year, this was playing out at the beginning of an election year with that momentous decision lingering. We thought then that if the Senate was a court of impeachment, then the November election was going to be the appeals court that was going to deliver the final verdict on Trump. Now that verdict has been delivered, and in a weird way the Senate is being asked to deliver another one on a slightly different question, which is whether Mr. Trump should be allowed to run for office again. It’s a similar question, but the timing changes the atmosphere and the immediacy of it.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsA Look at the Race5 Takeaways From the DebateAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNo More Playing Nice: 5 Highlights From the Mayor’s RaceThe candidates make stronger attacks against one another, as a Republican enters the race hoping to court Hispanic voters.Maya Wiley criticized Andrew Yang over his campaign’s use of nondisclosure agreements.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesEmma G. Fitzsimmons, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Katie Glueck, Jeffery C. Mays and Feb. 8, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETWhen New Yorkers vote in the June mayoral primaries, they will get to pick up to five candidates, in ranked order of preference.No one knows exactly how the system, known as ranked-choice voting, might affect the outcome, but plenty of voters were still confused about how it worked when it was used in a special City Council election in Queens last week.The new approach to voting was expected to make candidates refrain from attacks, but the friendly sheen among them is starting to wear off. They are more directly criticizing one another at forums, seeking to highlight their differences.And a new Republican candidate joined the fray. Here are some key developments in the race:The candidates began to take the gloves offScott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, suggested that some of his rivals should exercise better judgment while campaigning during the pandemic.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe conventional wisdom around ranked-choice voting is that candidates should avoid insulting their opponents for fear of alienating those opponents’ supporters. After all, voters’ second choices could be critical.But now, less than five months before Primary Day, several of the mayoral candidates appear to be making a more straightforward calculation: The time for sharper contrasts has arrived.Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, laced into Andrew Yang over his campaign’s use of nondisclosure agreements, which he said had been discontinued, and highlighted complaints about the culture on his presidential campaign. Shaun Donovan pointedly raised Raymond J. McGuire’s Wall Street background. Mr. McGuire shot back by calling Mr. Donovan “Shaun Obama,” a dig at the former federal housing secretary’s regular mentions that he worked under President Barack Obama. Scott M. Stringer issued barely veiled rebukes of Eric Adams and Mr. Yang over their in-person campaigning during the coronavirus pandemic.And at a candidate forum on homelessness, Dianne Morales contrasted her experience with Mr. Stringer’s, calling him out by name.“Unlike Scott, I’ve actually been talking to the people that are homeless for the last 15 years,” Ms. Morales said. “I’ve been doing the work.”In the scheme of American political discourse, these were, at most, mild exchanges. But they reflect a growing recognition that there is limited time to break out of the pack — and that candidates cannot count on anyone else to negatively define their chief rivals for them.On Sunday, though, advisers to two top candidates certainly tried: Aides to Mr. Yang and Mr. Stringer broke into a sharply personal Twitter exchange tied to the issue of support from the real estate industry.The first ranked-choice election confused votersIt was the debut that wasn’t.A little-known special election in Queens became the testing ground for New York City’s ranked-choice voting system last week, the first time the new system was used ahead of the mayoral primary.How would voters welcome the ability to rank up to five candidates instead of picking just one? Would the system, which could trigger multiple rounds of vote tabulations, be a stumbling block for the traditionally dysfunctional Board of Elections?In the end, however, one candidate, the former councilman James Gennaro, seemed poised to receive more than 50 percent of the vote, making him the likely winner in the City Council’s 24th District. Were he to receive less than 50 percent, the last-place candidate would be eliminated, and that candidate’s votes would be redistributed to the second choices listed on the ballots of voters who favored the eliminated candidate. The process would be repeated until one candidate reached a majority of the vote.Still, the election served as a dry run for a new voting method that will require significant public education.Some voters said they were unfamiliar with exactly how ranked-choice worked, despite being contacted by the campaigns or receiving mailers explaining it.“It didn’t really quite sink in, and I really liked one candidate, so I just voted for him,” said Kanan Roberts, 71, who voted for Mr. Gennaro. Other voters were more aware of its intricacies and appreciative of the ability to vote for several candidates.“If you want to take a risk on a candidate that you don’t know whether they have a realistic shot of winning, but they’re your candidate of choice, they don’t have to be a spoiler anymore under ranked-choice voting,” said Peter Sullivan, 39. “You can pick them first, then pick the safer, ‘electable’ candidates second and third.”Could the city’s first Hispanic mayor be a Republican?Fernando Mateo in December, before he shaved his head last week during his mayoral launch.Credit…Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesA key question in the mayor’s race is which Democratic candidate will win support from the city’s sizable Hispanic community. Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president who is of Puerto Rican heritage, was viewed as a top contender before he dropped out of the race last year.But what if that candidate turned out to be a Republican?Fernando Mateo, who was born in the Dominican Republic, announced his mayoral campaign in an unusual video on Facebook last week where he shaved his head — a nod to new beginnings as New Yorkers look forward to the end of the pandemic.“I wanted to show my beauty,” he said in an interview. “I’m the cutest candidate in the race.”Mr. Mateo runs a restaurant, Zona de Cuba, in the Bronx and has led trade groups for livery drivers and bodega owners. He has been involved in politics for years but was also linked to a scandal over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s fund-raising.His campaign website boasts that he was once named “One of the Five Most Influential People in the Country” by The New York Times. That article, in 1994, reflected the results of a survey of senior executives shortly after Mr. Mateo had created a program to trade guns for toys.Mr. Mateo said he wants to to revisit bail reform, keep the jail on Rikers Island open and “re-fund the police” — instead of defunding the department. He distanced himself from former President Donald J. Trump and said he was embarrassed by the riot at the U.S. Capitol.“That’s not what the Republican Party is all about — that’s not what we’re about,” he said. “I’m an urban Republican. I believe in cities and immigration. I don’t believe in hatred.”There has been some debate over whether the city has already had a Hispanic mayor. John Purroy Mitchel, who was mayor from 1914 to 1917, was descended from Spanish nobility.A homeless expert on homelessness grills the candidatesShams DaBaron won praise for his aggressive questioning as a moderator at a mayoral forum on homelessness.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesTen mayoral candidates took part in a Zoom forum on homelessness Thursday night, but the standout speaker was one of the moderators: a homeless man who goes by the name Shams DaBaron.Mr. DaBaron, 51, who emerged last fall as the self-appointed spokesman for homeless men battling to remain in the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side over objections from neighbors, demonstrated a grasp of the issues that comes from having lived them.When the candidates were asked if they would disband the police unit that tries to move homeless people from street to shelter, one of them, Loree Sutton, said she would not, and that she would “team up police with peer-to-peer counselors.”Mr. DaBaron explained to her how “outreach” is practiced by the police. “Where they were telling me they were going to help me, and I submitted to the help, I ended up in handcuffs,” he said. “They brought me to a police station, made me take off my sneakers and threw me into a cell and then threatened to give me a ticket unless I entered the shelter system.”In response to a question about plans for the unsheltered people the city has placed in hotels during the pandemic, Shaun Donovan, a longtime government official, offered a mini-filibuster touting his college volunteering, his work with veterans under Mr. Obama and the importance of “reimagining the right to shelter as a right to housing.”Mr. DaBaron asked his co-moderator, Corinne Low of UWS Open Hearts, an organization that supports shelters on the Upper West Side, to pose the question to Mr. Donovan again, suggesting that the candidate had not really answered it.Mr. DaBaron, who tweets as Da Homeless Hero, garnered some raves on Twitter.One person praised him for “not letting any candidate talk about anything other than the content of the questions”; another suggested he might consider running for office.“@homeless_hero for mayor!” the user @SoBendito wrote.Maya Wiley chose Gracie Mansion over her own TV showTwo candidates had to abandon high-profile jobs as television pundits to run for mayor: Ms. Wiley, a legal analyst at MSNBC, and, Mr. Yang, a commentator at CNN.But for Ms. Wiley, the sacrifice might have been more substantial. Speaking to more than 170 women on a “Black Women for Maya” virtual event on Wednesday, Ms. Wiley said she had an opportunity to audition to replace Joy Reid’s weekend talk show “AM Joy” as Ms. Reid was being promoted to host her own prime-time show.Ms. Wiley, a civil rights lawyer, said that she “loved MSNBC” because “it felt like a family” and that she was proud of being a Black woman who was being paid to deliver legal analysis.After Ms. Reid “broke a Black glass ceiling” and received her own prime time show, “MSNBC knew one thing; They’d better put somebody Black in that seat, they knew it,” Ms. Wiley told the audience.She said that she decided not to take the network’s offer of an audition, because “as much joy and as big a paycheck as that MSNBC slot would have been, I knew we had so many treasures that could fill that seat.” She ultimately decided that “in this moment, to me, the greatest gift and privilege would be making people’s lives better.”Mr. Yang said he made a similar deliberation when deciding to leave his position at CNN.“I was very appreciative of my time at CNN. I made a lot of friends,” Mr. Yang said. “But I’m someone who is looking to help people at scale, and New York City is in a lot of pain right now. I’m more of a doer than an analyst.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More