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      In France, a Victory and a Warning

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      More from our inbox:Church Support of the ‘Big Lie’When Tragedy Strikes, Grandma and Grandpa Are ThereReturning to AustraliaRussian Disinformation, Then and NowHandwritten Archives, to Capture HistoryCampaign posters featuring Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, in the French town of Roye, where two out of three voters backed Ms. Le Pen.James Hill for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “In France, Macron Defeats Le Pen for Presidency” (front page, April 25):That the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen came as close as she did to defeating Emmanuel Macron in France is further confirmation that extremists are successfully normalizing autocrat-friendly nationalist messaging.Ms. Le Pen, a longtime sympathizer of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, said in her concession speech, “The ideas we stand for are reaching new heights,” Le Monde reported.As chilling as that sounds, she’s correct, and the world should pay closer attention. But for now, those in the West who embrace free thinking, democracy and even just a scintilla of globalism can breathe a very brief sigh of relief.Cody LyonBrooklynTo the Editor:My dear French friends, you may have won a battle by re-electing Emmanuel Macron, but you are losing the war. So long as the reach of the bigoted right wing grows, France is losing.When in the midst of a gunfight, and with the other side getting stronger, dodging one bullet is no reason to celebrate.Peter MailleLa Grande, Ore.To the Editor:Has anyone noticed that Marine Le Pen, the loser, has actually accepted the results of the election and conceded? What a novel idea!And Vive la France!Irene Bernstein-PechmèzeQueensTo the Editor:I recall an earlier election when another Le Pen made it to the second round. In 2002, Marine’s father, Jean-Marie, was crushed 82 percent to 18 percent by the conservative Jacques Chirac. Leftist voters did their republican duty, voting against those who would put an end to democracy itself.The French do not like Emmanuel Macron. But they remember fascism. Perhaps if Americans had such memories, they would better defend the democracy that they are losing, bit by bit, every day.Bob NelsonYuma, Ariz.Church Support of the ‘Big Lie’ Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Stolen-Election Falsehood Goes to Church” (front page, April 25):You report that some evangelical pastors are hosting events dedicated to Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen and promoting the cause to their congregations.To the extent that such a charge is true, do these churches still retain any semblance of a religious exemption from federal and state taxes, which prohibits political campaign activity? Just wondering.Michael PeskoeMiami BeachTo the Editor:How do church leaders who preach from the new King James Version of the Bible — “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” John 8:32 — perpetuate a lie?Talk about cognitive dissonance.Harriet VinesChapel Hill, N.C.To the Editor:Of all the scary articles in The Times about Ukraine, Russia, wildfires, climate change, Marine Le Pen, Ron DeSantis and more, I found the one about evangelical pastors by far the scariest.Ellen SchafferPalm Coast, Fla.When Tragedy Strikes, Grandma and Grandpa Are ThereMia Scala, 6, hugs her grandfather Angelo Conti, 74, while waiting for a Girl Scouts meeting to start.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesTo the Editor:“When Parents Are Lost to Covid, Grandparents Step In,” by Paula Span (news article, April 14), not only recognizes the role that grandparents are playing in the wake of Covid, it also acknowledges that “extended family has always been the first line of defense in the wake of such tragedies.”For my book on the history of American grandmothers, many of the 75 women I interviewed told about a 1950s grandmother who stepped up — took the grandchildren into her home or went to live in the grandchild’s home — when things fell apart because of parents’ death, divorce or illness.None of the grandmothers had anticipated this refilling of their empty nests, all of them struggled with the responsibility, and all of their granddaughters-turned-grandmothers now look back with awe at what their grandmothers did for them.One notable change from then to now: Grandfathers in the 1950s were not active in their care the way older men are today, another example of how feminism has improved family life.Engagement with grandchildren is not just a delightful extra in family life, it is also a serious form of insurance. Should a tragedy mean that grandchildren must live with grandparents, that painful transition is eased if the elders and the kids have experience with one another aside from holidays and have built trust over time.No grandparent wants the custodial job, but every grandparent should consider time with grandchildren as an investment in their security.Victoria Bissell BrownHavertown, Pa.The writer, a retired professor of American history at Grinnell College, is working on a book titled “The Nana Project.”Returning to AustraliaFamilies reuniting at the Sydney International Airport.To the Editor:Re “A Post-Lockout Reunion of Yearning and Dread,” by Isabella Kwai (Sydney Dispatch, April 10):The last time I had been home to Australia to see my entire family was in May 2019. At one point, over Zoom, my sister told me that it was as if I had flown to the moon and never returned.The plane home in January was completely full of anxious expats and earnest American grandparents eager to see newly minted Aussie grandbabies. All the arrival hugs were tighter and longer than they had ever been. The smiles were wider and the welcomes longer — even from the custom officials! And maybe the accents were even broader!And … yes … if I could have bottled the dawn laughter from the troop of cheeky kookaburras camped outside my Brisbane window just days before I returned to the U.S., I would have.Patricia RyanWest Lafayette, Ind.Russian Disinformation, Then and NowTo the Editor:The state-sponsored disinformation spread to the Russian people is an old game. In the 1930s my father traveled to Russia. As was required, he had an Intourist guide with him at all times. As they became more friendly, she started to ask him about life in the U.S.“You live in New York,” she said. “Tell me about the skyscrapers that fall down.” He could not convince her that such things were not happening. She told him that all Russians knew about the frequently falling skyscrapers and was disappointed that he couldn’t be more candid with her about it.The acceptance of such nonsense appears to be embedded by a long history, though the current pernicious version is surprising in an era of greater access to outside information.Ty DillardSanta Fe, N.M.Handwritten Archives, to Capture HistoryTo the Editor:Re “Preserving a Couple’s ’60s Insights,” by Douglas Brinkley (Arts pages, April 19):Doris Kearns Goodwin sums up the special role of archives in the last lines of this excellent and informative article:“Oh, how I love old handwritten letters and diaries. I feel as if I’m looking over the shoulder of the writer. History comes alive!”How sad that in today’s world of computers and “no paper,” the progression from draft to final speech or report will no longer exist in many cases. The “delete” key has replaced crossing out, rewriting by hand and literally cutting and pasting.Some of us fear that using only the computer means that there will be no file of marked-up notes or previous drafts for historians to see and then give us that looking-over-the-shoulder feeling. That will keep history from coming alive.Sally DorstNew YorkThe writer is a retired magazine editor. More

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      U.T. Austin Acquires Archives That Give Insight Into the 1960s

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      Doris Kearns was an assistant professor of history at Harvard University in 1972, teaching a class on the American presidency and starting the book that would mark the start of her extraordinary career as a popular historian, “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream,” when Richard N. Goodwin walked into her office.A legendary speechwriter for presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, Goodwin flopped himself down, she recalled, and asked, “Hi, are you a graduate student?”“So I earnestly told him all about the presidency class I was teaching, and then quickly realized he was just teasing me,” she said. “We had dinner that night and engaged in conversation about L.B.J., J.F.K., the Red Sox and the ’60s. And I floated home that evening and told two close friends that I had met the man I wanted to marry.”Doris Kearns married Goodwin on Dec. 14, 1975. Among those who attended were Boston Mayor Kevin H. White, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Norman Mailer, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and Hunter Thompson.Photo by Marc Peloquin. Courtesy of Doris Kearns GoodwinDick-and-Doris, as they were colloquially known, as if a single entity, married in 1975, raised three boys and dedicated themselves to work that made them luminaries in their fields. He wrote about politics and society; she became the United States’ premier presidential historian on the strength of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “No Ordinary Time,” (1994) about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and six other best sellers.For decades, the couple kept their archives, including more than 300 boxes of diaries, letters, scrapbooks, memos and speech drafts that Goodwin had saved, especially from his White House days in the 1960s, stored in the two-story barn on their Concord, Mass., property.When he died in 2018, Kearns Goodwin sought an appropriate home for his papers: Spanning 1950 to 2014, they offer unique insight into 1960s policies and debates, and are a comprehensive record of Goodwin’s professional career. On Thursday, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas in Austin announced the acquisition of the Goodwin papers for $5 million, with Kearns Goodwin’s own archive donated to live alongside her husband’s.Secret Letters Throughout HistoryFor centuries, people have exchanged information in writing. Science is now casting new light on what was once meant to be private.Cracking the Case: A letter Charles Dickens wrote in a mystifying shorthand style went unread for over a century. Computer programmers recently decoded it.Uncensored: Using an X-ray technique, scientists have revealed the content of redacted letters between Marie Antoinette and Count von Fersen, her rumored lover.Original Encryption: To safeguard their missives against snoops, writers through the ages have employed a complicated means of security: letterlocking.Breaking the Seal: To read the “locked” letters without tearing them apart, researchers have turned to virtual reality.“When I saw how Dick saved everything from his lengthy and notable career, I was blown away,” said Don Carleton, the executive director of the Briscoe Center. “But I also told Doris that it should be a package deal. Doris is a hugely important cultural figure. Her own archive is valuable for scholars studying Lincoln, the Roosevelts, J.F.K., L.B.J. and so much more. I thought they belonged together, in the same building.”What impressed Kearns Goodwin, in turn, was that the Briscoe Center sponsors and facilitates original research projects based on its archival holdings. “I was gratified that Dick’s papers wouldn’t lie dormant at Briscoe in a vault,” she said.The first page of Goodwin’s draft of President Johnson’s “Great Society” speech, delivered on May 22, 1964, at Ann Arbor, Michigan.Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at AustinShe also agreed to serve as an ambassador and adviser for the Briscoe Center, and to lecture periodically at the university. After working for Johnson as a White House Fellow, Kearns Goodwin accompanied him to Texas to work on his memoir; she said she was thrilled to return to Texas Hill Country, where Johnson’s ranch is now a National Park Service unit.Goodwin’s archive encompasses his public service as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, his work as a House subcommittee investigator into the rigged game show “Twenty-One” (a story adapted into the 1994 film “Quiz Show”), as well as notes and memos that show how he helped shape national and international policies during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His archive illuminates critical issues in 1960s history, including Kennedy’s New Frontier, Johnson’s Great Society, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement.From a historian’s perspective, Goodwin’s speech drafts from 1960 to 1968 are a revelation. His command of history and literature became the cornerstone of Kennedy’s 1960 campaign speeches. It was Goodwin who invented the phrase “Alliance for Progress” to describe Kennedy’s Latin American policy. One draft of a long-forgotten speech in Alaska ended with Goodwin’s line: “It is not what I promise I will do, it is what I ask you to join me in doing.” Years later, material included in the collection shows, Jacqueline Kennedy wrote Goodwin to say that it was this wordplay that her husband recycled in his famous “Ask Not” inaugural address.Goodwin with Jacqueline Kennedy and her lawyer, Simon H. Rifkind, rear, in Manhattan in 1966. Goodwin was for years identified with the Kennedy clan.Jack Manning/The New York TimesThe documents reveal the wide berth Kennedy gave Goodwin. When the president noticed that there wasn’t a single Black recruit in the U.S. Coast Guard contingent during his inaugural parade, he tasked Goodwin with investigating. The resulting memorandum, included in the collection, led to the racial integration of the Coast Guard in 1962.After Goodwin secretly met in Uruguay with Che Guevara, Fidel Castro’s closest confidant, he drafted a long psychological profile of the Marxist revolutionary for the president. “Behind the beard,” it begins, “his features are quite soft, almost feminine, and his manner is intense.” Among Goodwin’s memorabilia acquired by the University of Texas is a wooden cigar box from Guevara.Che Guevara gave Goodwin this cigar box when they met, in August 1961.Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at AustinGoodwin’s diaries of Kennedy’s assassination brim with ticktock detail. He was among a small group in the White House when the president’s body arrived from Texas. His diary grapples with whether the coffin should be open or closed, the search for historical information about President Abraham Lincoln lying in state in the East Room, and where the 35th president should be buried. Working directly with Jacqueline Kennedy, Goodwin helped to bring to the grave site an eternal flame modeled after the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris.In January 1964, Goodwin kept extensive notes during travels with the Peace Corps in East Africa, Iran, and Afghanistan. Then, in March, he was called to recast a speech on poverty for Johnson. Five drafts, all part of the collection, evolved into the special message to Congress on March 19, in which the phrase “war on poverty” struck a responsive chord. Goodwin now had a hot hand, and Johnson sought to bring him to the White House as his domestic affairs speechwriter.Goodwin consulted his friend Robert F. Kennedy about whether he should take the job and recounted the attorney general’s advice in his diary, now at the Briscoe Center. “From a selfish point of view — you can think selfishly once in a while — I wish you wouldn’t, but I guess you have to,” Kennedy said to Goodwin. Although anything that makes Johnson “look bad, makes Jack look better, I suppose. But I guess you should do it. If you do, you have to do the best job you can, and loyally, there’s no other way.”Goodwin, Bill Moyers, and President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office, ca. 1965.LBJ Presidential LibraryThe archival material allows students of politics to follow the paper trail from a Goodwin draft to a Johnson speech, then to a Congressional bill, and finally to federal law. Goodwin had become Johnson’s indispensable White House wordsmith. “I want to put him in a hide-a-way over here,” Johnson told Secretary of State Dean Rusk, according to a March 21, 1964, taped White House conversation. “I’d just work him day and night.” So began an extraordinary partnership during the height of the Great Society — a time when the president summoned the Congress to pass one historic piece of legislation after another, legislation that would change the face of the country.Goodwin resigned in late 1965, believing that the energy and focus for the Great Society was being siphoned to the escalating war in Vietnam, as he wrote in his memoir, “Remembering America.” In the months that followed, his friendship with Robert Kennedy deepened. When Kennedy went to South Africa in June 1966, Goodwin helped craft his “Ripple of Hope” speech. (Words from that shimmering human rights appeal are carved on Kennedy’s gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery.) Goodwin joined Kennedy’s campaign for president and was with him in the Los Angeles hospital room when he died.After the assassination, Goodwin retreated to Maine, shattered by Kennedy’s death. Four years later, he met Kearns Goodwin at Harvard, and they went on to become a team of writers, each editing the other’s work.Goodwin in 1968. He called himself a voice of the 1960s — with justification.George Tames/The New York TimesWhen Vice President Al Gore wanted help drafting his presidential concession speech in 2000, after the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, he turned to Goodwin, still known as one of the most gifted speechwriters in the Democratic orbit.While Goodwin’s papers are a window into the inner workings of important presidencies, the Kearns Goodwin boxes are riveting to scholars with an interest in American history and the writing of it. Her well-organized trove of primary source material for all of her books, including “Team of Rivals” (2005) and “The Bully Pulpit” (2013) are eminently accessible. She saved “all the research and primary sources related to every book I had written,” she said, “from the original idea for how to tell the story, to the interviews, to the early outlines, the primary sources, copies of handwritten letters.”“Oh, how I love old handwritten letters and diaries,” she enthused. “I feel as if I’m looking over the shoulder of the writer. History comes alive!”Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University and the author of the forthcoming “Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, and the Great Environmental Awakening.” More

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      Biden ordena que se entreguen los registros de visitantes de Trump al Congreso

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      El presidente de EE. UU. informó a los Archivos Nacionales que deben entregar los registros solicitados por el comité del 6 de enero, que investiga el ataque contra el Capitolio, dentro de los próximos 15 días.El presidente de Estados Unidos, Joe Biden, ordenó a los Archivos Nacionales que entregaran una variedad de registros de visitantes de la Casa Blanca del expresidente Donald Trump al comité de la Cámara de Representantes que investiga el ataque al Capitolio del 6 de enero, con lo que rechaza el argumento de su predecesor de que el material está protegido por privilegio ejecutivo.La decisión impulsa los esfuerzos del comité para recopilar información sobre quién entraba y salía de la Casa Blanca, no solo el día del año pasado en el que ocurrió el ataque, sino también en los meses anteriores, cuando Trump buscaba anular la elección.El año pasado, Biden tomó una decisión similar al no apoyar el reclamo de privilegio ejecutivo de Trump sobre otros documentos y registros de la Casa Blanca que solicitó el comité. Trump acudió a un tribunal federal para bloquear la liberación de esos registros anteriores, pero perdió.En una carta enviada el martes a los Archivos Nacionales, la abogada de Biden en la Casa Blanca, Dana Remus, dijo que Biden rechazó las afirmaciones de Trump de que los registros de visitantes estaban sujetos al privilegio ejecutivo y que “en vista de la urgencia” del trabajo del comité, los archivos debían proporcionar los documentos en los próximos 15 días.El Archivista de Estados Unidos, David Ferriero, aseguró en una carta dirigida a Trump el miércoles que, a menos que lo prohíba un tribunal, los Archivos Nacionales entregarían los registros al comité el 3 de marzo.Trump no respondió públicamente y no está claro si volverá a acudir a los tribunales para intentar impedir o retrasar la publicación de los registros de visitantes.En parte refiriéndose al mismo razonamiento que en el caso anterior, Remus le dijo a los Archivos Nacionales que los documentos debían divulgarse de manera oportuna porque “el Congreso tiene una necesidad apremiante”. La funcionaria dijo que “las protecciones constitucionales del privilegio ejecutivo no deben usarse para ocultar, del Congreso o del público, la información que refleje un esfuerzo claro y aparente para subvertir la Constitución misma”.No hay claridad sobre qué es lo que pueden mostrar los registros de visitantes o qué tan extensos y completos están: la Casa Blanca de Trump incumplía rutinariamente las leyes federales sobre el modo de mantener los registros diseñados para documentar las actividades diarias del presidente y con quién se reunía.El año pasado, el comité solicitó una serie de documentos que podrían incluir información de registro de visitantes sobre más de una decena de confidentes de Trump que podrían haber ido a la Casa Blanca entre abril de 2020 y el 20 de enero de 2021, cuando Trump dejó el cargo. Entre esos confidentes se encontraban figuras como Michael T. Flynn, exasesor de Seguridad Nacional de Trump; Roger Stone, antiguo asesor de Trump, y Enrique Tarrio, el líder de los Proud Boys.En la carta, Remus se rehusó a decir qué materiales específicos se entregarían, y solo reveló que en este caso los documentos “son entradas en los registros de visitantes que muestran información de citas para personas que siguieron el proceso para ingresar al complejo de la Casa Blanca, incluido el 6 de enero de 2021”.El comité de la Cámara de Representantes ha solicitado una gran variedad de materiales de la Casa Blanca de Trump en relación con el ataque del 6 de enero y los esfuerzos de Trump por permanecer en el cargo después de su derrota electoral. El comité está tratando de crear un relato definitivo de ese momento y está considerando si debe remitir sus hallazgos al Departamento de Justicia, una manera de crear presión para un posible proceso penal.La respuesta de Remus parecía indicar que Biden no haría valer el privilegio ejecutivo sobre ningún registro de visitantes que concerniera a los aspectos sobre los que el comité quiere saber más.Entre esas líneas de investigación están: la campaña de presión sobre el vicepresidente Mike Pence para retrasar la certificación del recuento del Colegio Electoral el 6 de enero, el plan para presentar listas alternativas de electores de Trump en los estados que perdió, el esquema considerado por Trump para confiscar máquinas de votación y los diversos procesos legales presentados por Trump y sus seguidores.En el gobierno de Biden y durante la gestión de Barack Obama, la Casa Blanca ha hecho públicos sus registros de visitantes, una medida que los defensores de la transparencia gubernamental han dicho que le da al público una mejor idea de quién tiene una conexión directa con los funcionarios más poderosos del país.Pero el gobierno de Trump anunció en abril de 2017 que esos registros deberían permanecer en secreto debido a “los graves riesgos de seguridad nacional y las preocupaciones por la privacidad de los cientos de miles de visitantes al año”. Como se impidió su divulgación, resultó mucho más difícil determinar qué donantes, cabilderos y activistas tenían acceso a Trump y sus colaboradores.En su carta a los Archivos Nacionales, Remus señaló que “la mayoría de los registros a los que el expresidente impuso el privilegio ejecutivo se harán públicos bajo” la gestión de Biden.La Casa Blanca al anochecer del 6 de enero de 2021. No se sabe cuál es la información del registro de visitas de ese día, y de ese periodo, o cuán extensos y completos son los datos que se registraron.Joshua Roberts/Getty ImagesEn las últimas semanas, los investigadores del comité han logrado algunos avances para determinar lo que Trump estaba haciendo en la Casa Blanca el 6 de enero de 2021 y quién lo visitó.Key Developments in the Jan. 6 InvestigationCard 1 of 3Piecing the evidence together. More

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      Biden Rejects Trump’s Claim of Privilege for White House Visitor Logs

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      The president informed the National Archives that it should turn over the logs sought by the Jan. 6 committee within 15 days.President Biden is opposing another effort by former President Donald J. Trump to withhold information from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, ordering the National Archives to hand over White House visitor logs the committee is seeking.In a letter to the National Archives, Mr. Biden’s White House counsel, Dana Remus, said Mr. Biden had rejected Mr. Trump’s claims that the visitor logs were subject to executive privilege and that “in light of the urgency” of the committee’s work, the agency should provide the material to the committee within 15 days.Mr. Biden had similarly decided last year not to support Mr. Trump’s claim of executive privilege over other batches of White House documents and records sought by the committee. Mr. Trump went to federal court to block the release of those earlier batches but lost.Citing in part the same reasoning as in the earlier case, Ms. Remus told the National Archives that the documents needed to be disclosed in a timely fashion because “Congress has a compelling need.” She said that “constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself.”It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will go to court again in an attempt to block or slow the release of the visitor logs.The White House sent the letter to David S. Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, on Tuesday, and planned to inform Mr. Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday morning. The New York Times obtained a copy of the letter.It is not clear what the visitor logs might show or how extensive and complete they are. In the letter, Ms. Remus said the records in this case “are entries in visitor logs showing appointment information for individuals who were processed to enter the White House complex, including on Jan. 6, 2021.”Under Mr. Biden and under President Barack Obama, the White House has made its visitor logs public, a move that proponents of government transparency have long said gives the public a greater sense of who has a direct pipeline to the country’s most powerful officials.But the Trump administration said in April 2017 that such logs should remain secret because of “the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.” Barring their disclosure made it far harder to determine which donors, lobbyists and activists had access to Mr. Trump and aides.In her letter to the National Archives, Ms. Remus pointed out that “the majority of the entries over which the former president has asserted executive privilege would be publicly released under” Mr. Biden’s policy.The White House at dusk on Jan. 6, 2021. It is not clear what the visitor logs from that day and the period around it might show or how extensive and complete they are. Joshua Roberts/Getty ImagesCommittee investigators have made some progress in recent weeks putting together a better portrait of what Mr. Trump was doing inside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, and who visited with him. In doing so, they have relied in part on lower-level staff members and Trump White House documents. Mr. Trump watched the protests from the West Wing on television, and according to letters released by the committee, initially refused pleas from aides to intervene to stop the crowd.Through testimony, the committee has learned that White House aides asked one of Mr. Trump’s daughters, Ivanka, “to intervene in an attempt to persuade President Trump to address the ongoing lawlessness and violence on Capitol Hill,” according to a letter the committee sent Ms. Trump last month requesting she sit for questioning.Key Developments in the Jan. 6 InvestigationCard 1 of 3Piecing the evidence together. More

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      Archives Found Possible Classified Material in Boxes Returned by Trump

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      The National Archives consulted with the Justice Department about the discovery after the former president sent back documents that he had improperly taken from the White House when he left office.The National Archives and Records Administration discovered what it believed was classified information in documents Donald J. Trump had taken with him from the White House as he left office, according to a person briefed on the matter.The discovery, which occurred after Mr. Trump returned 15 boxes of documents to the government last month, prompted the National Archives to reach out to the Justice Department for guidance, the person said. The department told the National Archives to have its inspector general examine the matter, the person said.It is unclear what the inspector general has done since then, in particular, whether the inspector general has referred the matter to the Justice Department.An inspector general is required to alert the Justice Department to the discovery of any classified materials that were found outside authorized government channels.Making a referral to the Justice Department would put senior officials in the position of having to decide whether to open an investigation, a scenario that would thrust the department into a highly contentious political matter.The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the National Archives had asked the Justice Department to examine Mr. Trump’s handling of White House records.Officials with the National Archives did not respond to messages seeking comment.In January, after a lengthy back and forth between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and the National Archives, Mr. Trump handed over more than a dozen boxes of materials, including documents, mementos, gifts and letters. Among the documents were the original versions of a letter that former President Barack Obama had left for Mr. Trump when he was first sworn in, and letters written to Mr. Trump by the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.Also included in the boxes was a map Mr. Trump famously drew on with a black Sharpie to demonstrate the track of Hurricane Dorian heading toward Alabama in 2019 to back up a declaration he had made on Twitter that contradicted weather forecasts.Mr. Trump in the Oval Office in September 2019. The map of a storm appears to have been altered with a marker to show Hurricane Dorian headed for Alabama.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe boxes had originally been sent to Mar-a-Lago from the White House residence, where a range of items — including clothes — were hastily packed up in Mr. Trump’s final days in office. Legally, Mr. Trump was required to leave the documents, letters and gifts in the custody of the federal government so the National Archives could store them.After the F.B.I., during the 2016 presidential campaign, investigated Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified material while she was secretary of state, Mr. Trump assailed her, helping make the issue pivotal in the outcome of that race. In that case, the intelligence community’s inspector general had made a national security referral to the F.B.I., prompting the investigation of Mrs. Clinton.But during Mr. Trump’s administration, top White House officials were deeply concerned about how little regard Mr. Trump showed for sensitive national security materials. John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, tried to stop classified documents from being taken out of the Oval Office and brought up to the residence because he was concerned about what Mr. Trump may do with them and how that may jeopardize national security.Similar to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter Ivanka used personal email accounts for work purposes. And even after being warned by aides, Mr. Trump repeatedly ripped up government documents that had to be taped back together to prevent him from being accused of destroying federal property.Now Mr. Trump faces questions about his handling of classified information — a question that is complicated because as president he had the authority to declassify any government information. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump had declassified materials the National Archives discovered in the boxes before he left office. Under federal law, he no longer maintains the ability to declassify documents after leaving office.He invoked the power to declassify information several times as his administration publicly released materials that helped him politically, particularly on issues like the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.Toward the end of the administration, Mr. Trump ripped pictures that intrigued him out of the President’s Daily Brief — a compendium of often classified information about potential national security threats — but it is unclear whether he took them to the residence with him. In one prominent example of how he dealt with classified material, Mr. Trump in 2019 took a highly classified spy satellite image of an Iranian missile launch site, declassified it and then released the photo on Twitter.If Mr. Trump was found to have taken materials with him that were still classified at the time he left the White House, prosecuting him would be extremely difficult and it would pit the Justice Department against Mr. Trump at a time when Attorney General Merrick B. Garland is trying to depoliticize the department.The department and the F.B.I. also still have significant scars from its investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton mishandled classified information, as the bureau was accused of unfairly tarnishing her and interfering in the 2016 election.Katie Benner More

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      Justice Dept. Is Reviewing Role of Fake Trump Electors, Top Official Says

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      Lisa O. Monaco, the deputy attorney general, told CNN that she could not “say anything more on ongoing investigations.”WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is investigating the fake slates of electors that falsely declared Donald J. Trump the victor of the 2020 election in seven swing states that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had in fact won, a top agency official said on Tuesday.“Our prosecutors are looking at those, and I can’t say anything more on ongoing investigations,” Lisa O. Monaco, the deputy attorney general, said in an interview with CNN.The false certificates appear to have been part of an effort by Mr. Trump’s allies to reverse his defeat in the presidential election. Even as election officials in the seven contested states sent official lists of electors who had voted for Mr. Biden to the Electoral College, the fake slates claimed Mr. Trump was the winner in an apparent bid to subvert the election outcome.Lawmakers, state officials and the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot have asked the Justice Department to look into the role played by those fake electors and the documents they submitted to the National Archives on Dec. 14, 2020.In some cases, top Republican Party officials in those seven states signed the false documents, according to copies posted online last March by American Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group.“The phony electors were part of the plan to create chaos on Jan. 6, as a pretext for a contingent election,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee.“The fake electoral slates were an effort to create the illusion of contested state results,” Mr. Raskin said. That, he added, would have given Mike Pence, who as vice president presided over Congress’s count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, “a pretext for unilateral rejection of electors.”In Michigan, Dana Nessel, the attorney general, gave federal prosecutors information from her yearlong investigation into the matter. She has said that she believes there is enough evidence to charge 16 Republicans in her state with submitting the fake certificates and falsely claiming that they were official electors for the state.And Hector Balderas Jr., the attorney general of New Mexico, and a local prosecutor in Wisconsin also asked the Justice Department to review the matter.If investigators determine that Mr. Trump’s allies created the fake slates to improperly influence the election, they could in theory be charged with falsifying voting documents, mail fraud or even a conspiracy to defraud the United States.It is unclear whether the Republican Party officials and others who submitted the false documents did so on their own or at the behest of the Trump campaign.“The people who pretended to be official electors in states that were won by Biden were undoubtedly guilty of fraud on the Constitution and on the democracy,” Mr. Raskin said. “It’s a trickier question whether they are guilty of either common-law fraud, state statutory fraud, federal mail fraud or some other offense.”Luke Broadwater More