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      Michigan Officials Push to Investigate Matthew DePerno in 2020 Election Scheme

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      In early 2021, with the turmoil of a bitterly contested presidential contest still fresh, several election clerks in Michigan received strange phone calls.The person on the other end was a Republican state representative who told them their election equipment was needed for an investigation, according to documents from the Michigan attorney general’s office.They obliged. Soon, the machines were being picked apart in hotels and Airbnb rentals in Oakland County, outside Detroit, by conservative activists hunting for what they believed was proof of fraud, the documents said. Weeks later, after the equipment was returned in handoffs in highway car-pool lots and shopping malls, the clerks found that it had been tampered with, and in some cases, damaged.The revelations of possible meddling with voting machines have set off a political tsunami in Michigan, one of the most critical battleground states in the country.The documents detail deception of election officials and a breach of voting equipment that stand out as extraordinary even among the volumes of public reporting on brazen attempts by former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters to scrutinize and undermine the 2020 results.But one of the most politically striking elements of the case is the identity of one of the people implicated in the scheme by the office of the attorney general: Matthew DePerno, who is now the presumptive Republican nominee for that very post.Mr. DePerno, a lawyer who rose to prominence challenging the 2020 results in Antrim County and has been endorsed by Mr. Trump, is vying to unseat Dana Nessel, a Democrat who is Michigan’s top law enforcement official and who fought attempts to undermine the state’s election.Now, evidence provided by her office places Mr. DePerno at one of the “tests” of voting equipment and suggests that he was a key orchestrator of “a conspiracy” to gain improper access to machines in three counties, Roscommon and Missaukee in Northern Michigan and Barry, a rural area southeast of Grand Rapids. The tampering resulted in physical damage, but the attorney general’s office indicated that there was no evidence that there was “any software or firmware manipulation” of the equipment.Even before the new accusations, the prospective race between Ms. Nessel and Mr. DePerno was one of the most closely watched contests for attorney general in the country.During his campaign, Mr. DePerno has continued to falsely claim that mail voting is rife with fraud and that voting records were deleted or destroyed after the election, and he has pledged to “prosecute the people who corrupted the 2020 election.” He has also said he would begin inquiries of Ms. Nessel, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, all Democrats.His candidacy has worried election experts, Democrats and even many Republicans, who fear that he could use his powers to carry out investigations based on fraudulent claims or engage in other forms of meddling in elections.Mr. DePerno has pledged to carry out inquiries of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Ms. Nessel and Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, all Democrats.Jake May/The Flint Journal, via Associated PressYet because Mr. DePerno is the likely Republican nominee — he clinched the state party’s endorsement this year and is expected to be formally nominated later this month — any investigation by Ms. Nessel is politically fraught and risks a conflict of interest. With that in mind, her office on Friday requested that a special prosecutor be appointed to continue the investigation and pursue potential criminal charges.The allegations against Mr. DePerno and eight others — including Daire Rendon, a Republican state representative, and Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Barry County — were detailed in a letter sent on Friday from the deputy attorney general to Ms. Benson, and in a petition from Ms. Nessel’s office requesting the special prosecutor. The Detroit News first reported the letter, and Politico first reported the petition. Reuters first reported Mr. DePerno’s alleged involvement. More

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      Arizona Attorney General Debunks Trump Supporters’ Election Fraud Claims

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      Accusations that hundreds of ballots were cast in Arizona in 2020 in the name of dead voters are unfounded, the state’s Republican attorney general said on Monday in a sharply worded letter to the president of the Arizona Senate, who has advanced false claims of voter fraud.The attorney general, Mark Brnovich, wrote in his letter to Senator Karen Fann that his office’s Election Integrity Unit had spent “hundreds of hours” investigating 282 allegations submitted by Ms. Fann, as well as more than 6,000 allegations from four other reports. Some of them “were so absurd,” he wrote, that “the names and birth dates didn’t even match the deceased, and others included dates of death after the election.”The claims in Ms. Fann’s complaint stemmed from a heavily criticized audit of the 2020 election that the company Cyber Ninjas conducted last year in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa. That audit found no evidence for former President Donald J. Trump’s claims that the election had been stolen from him; in fact, it counted slightly fewer votes for Mr. Trump and more for Joseph R. Biden Jr. than in the official tally. A subsequent report from election experts accused Cyber Ninjas of making up its numbers altogether.Nonetheless, Ms. Fann sent the accusations of dead voters to Mr. Brnovich’s office in a September 2021 complaint.“Our agents investigated all individuals that Cyber Ninjas reported as dead, and many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased,” Mr. Brnovich wrote in his letter. His office concluded, he wrote, that “only one of the 282 individuals on the list was deceased at the time of the election.”Mr. Biden won Arizona by a little over 10,000 votes.In a statement on Monday evening, Ms. Fann thanked Mr. Brnovich for his “tireless work” in “answering some tough questions from voters and lawmakers who had grave concerns over how the 2020 general election was conducted in Arizona.”“They asked us to do the hard work of fact finding, and we are delivering the facts,” she said, calling the investigation “critical to restoring the diminished confidence our constituents expressed following the last election” and praising “the increased voter integrity measures put in place after the audit revealed weaknesses in our election processes,” though the audit did not reveal weaknesses in Arizona’s election processes.Spencer Scharff, an election lawyer in Arizona and a former voter protection director for the Arizona Democratic Party, said that while there was value to a public statement from a Republican official that the allegations were unfounded, it would not undo the damage done by the original lies, and by the willingness of so many elected Republicans to entertain and promote them.“The thing that I think is most unfortunate is that it comes long after these allegations were made, and they weren’t clearly refuted by individuals who had the ability to refute them immediately,” Mr. Scharff said, noting that, by contrast, officials in Maricopa County debunked many of Cyber Ninjas’ claims months ago.Mr. Brnovich sent the letter one day before Arizonans go to the polls for another election — one in which he himself is running. He is a candidate in the Republican Senate primary, the winner of which will challenge Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, in November. The front-runner in public polling is Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who has Mr. Trump’s endorsement and has promoted the former president’s false claims of election fraud.Mr. Brnovich has sought to walk a fine line on Mr. Trump’s lies — refusing to call for overturning the 2020 election results, but rarely explicitly rejecting the claims. He publicly defended Arizona’s vote count shortly after the election, and Mr. Trump blasted him in June and endorsed Mr. Masters instead. But he has also suggested that 2020 revealed “serious vulnerabilities” in the electoral system, and said cryptically on the former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast in April, “I think we all know what happened in 2020.” More

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      Prosecute Trump? Put Yourself in Merrick Garland’s Shoes

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      The evidence gathered by the Jan. 6 committee and in some of the federal cases against those involved in the Capitol attack pose for Attorney General Merrick Garland one of the most consequential questions that any attorney general has ever faced: Should the United States indict former President Donald Trump?The basic allegations against Mr. Trump are well known. In disregard of advice by many of his closest aides, including Attorney General William Barr, he falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and stolen; he pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count certified electoral votes for Joe Biden during the electoral count in Congress on Jan. 6; and he riled up a mob, directed it to the Capitol and refused for a time to take steps to stop the ensuing violence.To indict Mr. Trump for these and other acts, Mr. Garland must make three decisions, each more difficult than the previous, and none of which has an obvious answer.First, he must determine whether the decision to indict Mr. Trump is his to make. If Mr. Garland decides that a criminal investigation of Mr. Trump is warranted, Justice Department regulations require him to appoint a special counsel if the investigation presents a conflict of interest for the department and if Mr. Garland believes such an appointment would be in the public interest.The department arguably faces a conflict of interest. Mr. Trump is a political adversary of Mr. Garland’s boss, President Biden. Mr. Trump is also Mr. Biden’s likeliest political opponent in the 2024 presidential election. Mr. Garland’s judgments impact the political fate of Mr. Biden and his own possible tenure in office. The appearance of a conflict sharpened when Mr. Biden reportedly told his inner circle that Mr. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, and complained about Mr. Garland’s dawdling on the matter.Even if conflicted, Mr. Garland could keep full control over Mr. Trump’s legal fate if he believes that a special counsel would not serve the public interest. Some will argue that the public interest in a fair-minded prosecution would best be served by appointment of a quasi-independent special counsel, perhaps one who is a member of Mr. Trump’s party.But no matter who leads it, a criminal investigation of Mr. Trump would occur in a polarized political environment and overheated media environment. In this context, Mr. Garland could legitimately conclude that the public interest demands that the Trump matter be guided by the politically accountable person whom the Senate confirmed in 2021 by a vote of 70-30.If Mr. Garland opens a Trump investigation and keeps the case — decisions he might already have made — the second issue is whether he has adequate evidence to indict Mr. Trump. The basic question here is whether, in the words of Justice Department guidelines, Mr. Trump’s acts constitute a federal offense and “the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.”These will be hard conclusions for Mr. Garland to reach. He would have to believe that the department could probably convince a unanimous jury that Mr. Trump committed crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. Mr. Garland cannot rest this judgment on the Jan. 6 committee’s one-sided factual recitations or legal contentions. Nor can he put much stock in a ruling by a federal judge who, in a civil subpoena dispute — a process that requires a significantly lower standard of proof to prevail than in a criminal trial — concluded that Mr. Trump (who was not represented) “more likely than not” committed a crime related to Jan. 6.Instead, Mr. Garland must assess how any charges against Mr. Trump would fare in an adversarial criminal proceeding administered by an independent judge, where Mr. Trump’s lawyers will contest the government’s factual and legal contentions, tell his side of events, raise many defenses and appeal every important adverse legal decision to the Supreme Court.Attorney General Merrick Garland.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressThe two most frequently mentioned crimes Mr. Trump may have committed are the corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding (the Jan. 6 vote count) and conspiracy to defraud the United States (in working to overturn election results). Many have noted that Mr. Trump can plausibly defend these charges by arguing that he lacked criminal intent because he truly believed that massive voter fraud had taken place.Mr. Trump would also claim that key elements of his supposedly criminal actions — his interpretations of the law, his pressure on Mr. Pence, his delay in responding to the Capitol breach and more — were exercises of his constitutional prerogatives as chief executive. Mr. Garland would need to assess how these legally powerful claims inform the applicability of criminal laws to Mr. Trump’s actions in what would be the first criminal trial of a president. He would also consider the adverse implications of a Trump prosecution for more virtuous future presidents.If Mr. Garland concludes that Mr. Trump has committed convictable crimes, he would face the third and hardest decision: whether the national interest would be served by prosecuting Mr. Trump. This is not a question that lawyerly analysis alone can resolve. It is a judgment call about the nature, and fate, of our democracy.A failure to indict Mr. Trump in these circumstances would imply that a president — who cannot be indicted while in office — is literally above the law, in defiance of the very notion of constitutional government. It would encourage lawlessness by future presidents, none more so than Mr. Trump should he win the next election. By contrast, the rule of law would be vindicated by a Trump conviction. And it might be enhanced by a full judicial airing of Mr. Trump’s possible crimes in office, even if it ultimately fails.And yet Mr. Garland cannot be sanguine that a Trump prosecution would promote national reconciliation or enhance confidence in American justice. Indicting a past and possible future political adversary of the current president would be a cataclysmic event from which the nation would not soon recover. It would be seen by many as politicized retribution. The prosecution would take many years to conclude; would last through, and deeply impact, the next election; and would leave Mr. Trump’s ultimate fate to the next administration, which could be headed by Mr. Trump.Along the way, the prosecution would further enflame our already-blazing partisan acrimony; consume the rest of Mr. Biden’s term; embolden, and possibly politically enhance, Mr. Trump; and threaten to set off tit-for-tat recriminations across presidential administrations. The prosecution thus might jeopardize Mr. Garland’s cherished aim to restore norms of Justice Department “independence and integrity” even if he prosecutes Mr. Trump in the service of those norms. And if the prosecution fails, many will conclude that the country and the rule of law suffered tremendous pain for naught.Mr. Garland’s decisions will be deeply controversial and have consequences beyond his lifetime. It is easy to understand, contrary to his many critics, why he is gathering as much information as possible — including what has emerged from the Jan. 6 committee and the prosecution of the higher-ups involved in the Capitol breach — before making these momentous judgments.Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a co-author of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why the Jan. 6 Investigation Is a Test for Biden and Merrick Garland

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      WASHINGTON — Immediately after Merrick B. Garland was sworn in as attorney general in March of last year, he summoned top Justice Department officials and the F.B.I. director to his office. He wanted a detailed briefing on the case that will, in all likelihood, come to define his legacy: the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.Even though hundreds of people had already been charged, Mr. Garland asked to go over the indictments in detail, according to two people familiar with the meeting. What were the charges? What evidence did they have? How had they built such a sprawling investigation, involving all 50 states, so fast? What was the plan now?The attorney general’s deliberative approach has come to frustrate Democratic allies of the White House and, at times, President Biden himself. As recently as late last year, Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments. And while the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.Speaking to reporters on Friday, Mr. Garland said that he and the career prosecutors working on the case felt only the pressure “to do the right thing,” which meant that they “follow the facts and the law wherever they may lead.”Still, Democrats’ increasingly urgent calls for the Justice Department to take more aggressive action highlight the tension between the frenetic demands of politics and the methodical pace of one of the biggest prosecutions in the department’s history.“The Department of Justice must move swiftly,” Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the House committee investigating the riot, said this past week. She and others on the panel want the department to charge Trump allies with contempt for refusing to comply with the committee’s subpoenas.“Attorney General Garland,” Ms. Luria said during a committee hearing, “do your job so that we can do ours.”This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people, including officials in the Biden administration and people with knowledge of the president’s thinking, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss private conversations.In a statement, Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said the president believed that Mr. Garland had “decisively restored” the independence of the Justice Department.“President Biden is immensely proud of the attorney general’s service in this administration and has no role in investigative priorities or decisions,” Mr. Bates said.A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.The Jan. 6 investigation is a test not just for Mr. Garland, but for Mr. Biden as well. Both men came into office promising to restore the independence and reputation of a Justice Department that Mr. Trump had tried to weaponize for political gain.For Mr. Biden, keeping that promise means inviting the ire of supporters who say they will hold the president to the remarks he made on the anniversary of the assault on the Capitol, when he vowed to make sure “the past isn’t buried” and said that the people who planned the siege “held a dagger at the throat of America.”President Biden and Mr. Garland are managing a relationship between the White House and the Justice Department unlike any other in American history. Doug Mills/The New York TimesComplicating matters for Mr. Biden is the fact that his two children are entangled in federal investigations, making it all the more important that he stay out of the Justice Department’s affairs or risk being seen as interfering for his own family’s gain.The department is investigating whether Ashley Biden was the victim of pro-Trump political operatives who obtained her diary at a critical moment in the 2020 presidential campaign, and Hunter Biden is under federal investigation for tax avoidance and his international business dealings. Hunter Biden has not been charged with a crime and has said he handled his affairs appropriately.Justice Department officials do not keep Mr. Biden abreast of any investigation, including those involving his children, several people familiar with the situation said. The cases involving Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden are worked on by career officials, and people close to the president, including Dana Remus, the White House counsel, have no visibility into them, those people said.Still, the situation crystallizes the delicate ground that Mr. Biden and Mr. Garland are navigating.When it comes to Jan. 6, Justice Department officials emphasize that their investigation has produced substantial results already, including more than 775 arrests and a charge of seditious conspiracy against the leader of a far-right militia. More than 280 people have been charged with obstructing Congress’s duty to certify the election results.And federal prosecutors have widened the investigation to include a broad range of figures associated with Mr. Trump’s attempts to cling to power. According to people familiar with the inquiry, it now encompasses planning for pro-Trump rallies ahead of the riot and the push by some Trump allies to promote slates of fake electors.The Justice Department’s Jan. 6 inquiry has led to more than 775 arrests. More than 280 people have been charged with obstructing Congress’s duty to certify the election results.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe Justice Department has given no public indication about its timeline or whether prosecutors might be considering a case against Mr. Trump.The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack can send criminal referrals to the Justice Department, but only the department can bring charges. The panel is working with a sense of urgency to build its case ahead of this year’s midterm elections, when Republicans could retake the House and dissolve the committee.Mr. Biden, a longtime creature of the Senate, is aghast that people close to Mr. Trump have defied congressional subpoenas and has told people close to him that he does not understand how they think they can do so, according to two people familiar with his thinking.Mr. Garland has not changed his approach to criminal prosecutions in order to placate his critics, according to several Justice Department officials who have discussed the matter with him. He is regularly briefed on the Jan. 6 investigation, but he has remained reticent in public.“The best way to undermine an investigation is to say things out of court,” Mr. Garland said on Friday.Even in private, he relies on a stock phrase: “Rule of law,” he says, “means there not be one rule for friends and another for foes.”He did seem to acknowledge Democrats’ frustrations in a speech in January, when he reiterated that the department “remains committed to holding all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law.”Quiet and reserved, Mr. Garland is well known for the job he was denied: a seat on the Supreme Court. President Barack Obama nominated him in March 2016 after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, but Senate Republicans blockaded the nomination.Mr. Garland’s peers regard him as a formidable legal mind and a political centrist. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal appeals court judge and Justice William J. Brennan Jr. of the Supreme Court before becoming a top official in the Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno. There, he prosecuted domestic terrorism cases and supervised the federal investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing.His critics say that his subsequent years as an appeals court judge made him slow and overly deliberative. But his defenders say that he has always carefully considered legal issues, particularly if the stakes were very high — a trait that most likely helped the Justice Department secure a conviction against Timothy J. McVeigh two years after the Oklahoma City attack.During the presidential transition after the 2020 election, Mr. Biden took his time mulling over candidates to be attorney general, according to a senior member of the transition team. He had promised the American people that he would reestablish the department as an independent arbiter within the government, not the president’s partisan brawler.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4Justice Department widens inquiry. More

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      Will Trump’s Nod Be Enough for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton?

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      Attorney General Ken Paxton is likely to end up in a runoff after the Republican primary on March 1. But it remains uncertain who among his big-name challengers will join him there.MIDLAND, Texas — The litany of political vulnerabilities facing the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, would appear to seriously imperil his bid for a third term.There is the indictment in state court for securities fraud. Accusations of bribery and corruption. Senior aides turned whistle-blowers. An ongoing federal investigation.Altogether, it has been enough to attract primary challenges from three heavy hitters in Texas Republican politics: George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and grandson of former President George H.W. Bush; Representative Louie Gohmert, the outspoken East Texas congressman; and Eva Guzman, a former Texas Supreme Court justice.But whether Mr. Paxton can survive the Republican primary may be the biggest test yet of the power still wielded with voters by an even better-known name: Donald J. Trump.Mr. Paxton has positioned himself as the most aligned with Mr. Trump in a field of opponents eager to claim closeness with the former president. The Texas attorney general unsuccessfully sued to overturn the results of the 2020 election in several states and spoke at Mr. Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.For his efforts, Mr. Paxton garnered Mr. Trump’s endorsement last year, and he had a speaking role at Mr. Trump’s massive rally of Republicans last month north of Houston.“An attorney general who has really led the way, somebody who has been brave and strong: Ken Paxton,” Mr. Trump effused during the rally at the Montgomery County fairgrounds. “Ken, brave and strong. And popular.”Well, not that popular.While polling better than any of his opponents, Mr. Paxton is facing the increasingly likely prospect of ending up in a runoff after the primary election on Tuesday. He has been below the 50 percent threshold in recent public polls, and his campaign is already preparing for another contest.Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general,  during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas last year.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesThat has left the three challengers scrambling for second place. They have been crisscrossing the state, appearing in Republican forums and debates hosted by local party groups. A common theme has been that Mr. Paxton is so embattled he could actually lose to a Democrat in November — a shudder-inducing prospect for Texas Republicans, who have not lost a statewide race since 1994.“When you look at folks like A.O.C., for example, who come to Texas and say Texas is about to turn blue — well, she’s right if we nominate the wrong people as a party,” said Mr. Bush in an interview, referring to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.A Guide to the Texas PrimaryThe 2022 midterm elections begin with the state’s primary on March 1.Governor’s Race: Gov. Greg Abbott’s rightward shift will face a test in November. His likely challenger, Beto O’Rourke, is haunted by his 2020 presidential bid.Switching Parties: Democrats have long held local offices in a small West Texas town. Then top officials decided to leave the party.Politics of Abortion: The fight over abortion rights is changing the political fabric of South Texas, long a Democratic stronghold.Effect of New Voting Law: The law, which Republicans said would make it “easy to vote, hard to cheat,” has led to a jump in rejections of absentee ballot applications.The race for attorney general has become a referendum on the future of the Republican Party in Texas, with various power centers — the remnants of the Bush political dynasty in Texas, the tort reform business elite, the ascendant Trump-without-Trump wing — lining up in different corners.In the waning days of the campaign, attacks have flown freely. Mr. Paxton has traded barbs with Mr. Gohmert. Mr. Bush and Ms. Guzman have gone after each other. But many voters, even those dedicated enough to show up at candidate forums, are only glancingly familiar with the challengers. And accusations against Mr. Paxton are not a new development; he has weathered them for years.Mr. Paxton, who declined an interview request, has been facing state charges of felony securities fraud since 2015, stemming from his time as a member of the Texas House during which, prosecutors have said, he directed investments to a firm without disclosing he would be compensated for doing so. Mr. Paxton has denied the charges and said the prosecution was politically motivated, and successfully delayed the trial amid procedural wrangling over where it should take place.He was re-elected in 2018 by less than 4 percentage points, a narrow margin in a Texas general election.Voters at a forum featuring gubernatorial and attorney general candidates in Midland, Texas.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThen, in 2020, several of Mr. Paxton’s top aides — high-ranking lawyers in the attorney general’s office with conservative credentials — accused him of bribery and abuse of power in connection with his actions on behalf of a real estate developer and campaign donor. Some of the officials, who have since been fired or resigned, have said the developer, Nate Paul, also hired a woman recommended to him by Mr. Paxton.Last week, four of the former officials, who filed a whistle-blower suit against Mr. Paxton over their firing, said the attorney general had been lying about their allegations as he campaigns for re-election.A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Both Mr. Paul and Mr. Paxton have denied any wrongdoing.Even with the swirl of accusations, Mr. Paxton has not been as weak a candidate as some in Texas political circles thought he would be.“People thought that Paxton would be vulnerable,” said Nathan McDaniel, a Republican political strategist based in Austin. “But what I see voters want is a fighter, someone who is going to sue Google or the Biden administration” as Mr. Paxton has done, repeatedly in the case of President Biden. In recent days, Mr. Paxton also took aim at the parents of transgender adolescents, issuing a formal opinion that certain medical treatments should be investigated as child abuse.“I don’t think personal woes matter as much to the electorate as you might think they do,” Mr. McDaniel said. “Now, if he’s in prison, that’s a whole different thing. But is that going to happen? I don’t think so.”In an interview, Mr. Gohmert predicted that Mr. Paxton would face corruption charges in federal court soon after the primary, leaving Republicans without a chance to replace him before the November general election if he were to win the primary.In response, Mr. Paxton’s campaign sent a statement from the attorney general attacking Mr. Gohmert for “clearly relying on lies, scare tactics and intimidation to win.”U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert greeting voters after a candidate forum.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesPolitical strategists said Mr. Gohmert represents the biggest threat to Mr. Paxton’s base of conservative support. Mr. Gohmert entered the race later than the other candidates, in November, but he has already attracted negative campaign mailers, Facebook ads and a television spot from Mr. Paxton.Mr. Gohmert also has had a friendly relationship with Mr. Trump and was the only other person running for attorney general whom Mr. Trump spoke fondly of during the rally last month.“Louie Gohmert, what a wonderful guy,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, acknowledging Mr. Gohmert among the elected officials there. “This is a man who has been a friend of mine from day one.”Mr. Bush, who tried hard to get Mr. Trump’s endorsement, did not attend the event because of a scheduling conflict, his campaign said.“I definitely wanted that endorsement along with the support of his supporters. That’s why I continue to reach out to not only his followers but also to those who advise him here in Texas,” Mr. Bush said in the interview, adding of Mr. Trump: “I think he made a mistake on this race.”Ms. Guzman, for her part, has been running a targeted campaign, seeking to peel off voters in unexpected places.“I have seen an Eva Guzman commercial during ‘Jeopardy!’ for the last week or two,” said Mari Woodlief, a Dallas-based political consultant. “‘Jeopardy!’ and ‘Wheel of Fortune’ are two of the best kept secrets in politics because their audience is almost all 60-plus and they’re voters.”At a campaign forum this month, the three battled before a staunchly conservative audience in a theater on the oil-rich plains of West Texas between Midland and Odessa. Each vowed to take a harder line than Mr. Paxton on the border, on crime and on allegations of fraud in Texas elections.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThe hourlong debate began with Mr. Gohmert attacking Mr. Paxton for not doing more to investigate allegations of fraud in 2020 and ended with Mr. Bush vowing to fight liberal Democrats who “infest our local governments.” Along the way, Ms. Guzman held the crowd rapt with the story of her father’s killing “by an illegal immigrant” when she was 26.In an interview before the gathering, Ms. Guzman said the experience of seeing her father “covered in a yellow tarp” underscored for her how “these lawless borders are not victimless.” She said her experience on the bench made her better prepared for the job than any of her opponents.Ms. Guzman, who has the financial backing of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a perennial power player in Republican politics, downplayed Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Paxton. “Texans want to choose for themselves,” she said.After the debate in the lobby of the theater, Roger Barnhart, 74, of Odessa and his son said they still had not decided who they would vote for.“I like Gohmert the most,” said Mr. Barnhart, adding that he was also impressed by Ms. Guzman.“A long time ago it used to be good to have the last name Bush out here — not anymore,” added his son, Dax Barnhart, 47, who works with his father in the hardware business.Though he had yet to make up his mind, the elder Mr. Barnhart came away with one solid impression of the candidates: “Any of them would be better than Paxton.” More

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      Judge Says States Can Investigate WinRed’s Fund-Raising Tactics

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      The Republican digital donation platform is facing inquiries from four state attorneys general into its use of prechecked boxes to withdraw donations automatically.A federal judge in Minnesota on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by WinRed, a company that processes online donations for Republicans, that sought to block state attorneys general from investigating fund-raising tactics that have triggered complaints of fraud.The attorneys general from four states — New York, Minnesota, Maryland and Connecticut — first sent letters to WinRed last April, asking for documents after a New York Times investigation revealed the company’s use of prechecked boxes to automatically enroll donors in recurring contribution programs. The boxes resulted in a surge in demands for refunds from supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.WinRed declined to provide the documents and instead went to federal court to argue that federal law should pre-empt any state-level consumer investigations. Chief Judge John R. Tunheim of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota ruled against the company on Wednesday.Judge Tunheim dismissed WinRed’s attempt to stop the attorneys general investigating outside Minnesota, ruling that he did not have jurisdiction. He ruled in favor of the Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, writing that federal law would not pre-empt a state inquiry.“The court has confirmed an important principle that has nothing to do with politics: State attorneys general can use the laws and investigatory tools of their states to protect the consumers of their states from harm, deception, and abuse,” Mr. Ellison said.Judge Tunheim also denied a request to block a subpoena from the attorneys general, which was issued last July 16, shortly after WinRed went to federal court, according to the ruling issued on Wednesday.“WinRed will appeal,” the company said in an emailed statement.WinRed has argued that the attorneys general, all Democrats, are politically motivated. However, the four also sent a similar request for documents last year to ActBlue, the leading Democratic donation-processing platform. ActBlue said on Wednesday that it had also received a subpoena and that it had shared the requested information.After the ruling Wednesday, Attorney General Brian Frosh of Maryland urged WinRed to cooperate with the inquiry.“Now that its case has been dismissed, it is our hope that WinRed moves from a strategy of attack, attack, attack and cooperates in the investigation of allegations that it deceived consumers around the nation,” he said in a statement.New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said, “It’s their responsibility to be honest and transparent with their services, and it’s the responsibility of the states to fight back against deceptive behavior in all its forms.”In the fall of 2020, the Trump campaign used prechecked boxes to get a donor’s permission to withdraw extra donations every week — then obscured that fact below extra text unrelated to the additional withdrawals. In the following weeks and months, demands for refunds increased sharply as supporters said they were duped into unwitting contributions.All told, the Trump operation, working with the Republican Party, refunded more than 10 percent of every dollar raised through WinRed in the 2020 campaign — a rate more than four times that of the Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s operation.The bipartisan Federal Election Commission voted unanimously last year to recommend that Congress outlaw the practice of prechecked recurring donation boxes. Legislation has since been introduced in both the House and the Senate.Kitty Bennett contributed research. More

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      Zephyr Teachout Will Run for New York Attorney General

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      The law professor, a darling of New York’s left wing, wants to be attorney general.In the three years since she last ran for office, Zephyr Teachout has taught, written a book (“Break ‘Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money”), stumped for progressive female candidates, advised Congress and prosecutors across the country on antitrust issues, given birth for the first time at the age of 47, and watched her adversary Andrew Cuomo expelled from the kingdom.If not for the last occurrence, her political career might have belonged to a vanished idealistic vision. But on Monday she plans to formally announce her candidacy for New York State attorney general, a turn she could not have foreseen a year ago when the former governor, with his Must See TV Covid briefings, was still holding on to a 65 percent approval rating, and the state’s top prosecutor, Letitia James, now making a bid for his old job, seemed happy to be exactly where she was.“The A.G.’s office is the best legal job in the country for people’s lawyering, and there’s no other job I would run for,” she told me recently. “I just didn’t expect it to open up for a long time.” Ms. Teachout made a play once before, when the job was last available in 2018, but it went to Ms. James, who had Mr. Cuomo’s support and who, in Shakespearean fashion, would later become central to his fall.At the moment, Ms. Teachout, seems to be one of the most obvious beneficiaries of that erasure, given that any political aspirations she had were unlikely to thrive while Mr. Cuomo remained in power, drinking thirstily from the spigot of retribution.Seven years ago, she emerged from relative obscurity as a legal academic with an expertise in corruption to help successfully shift state politics leftward when she challenged Mr. Cuomo’s re-election, receiving an astonishing third of the primary vote. Threatened by her showing and what it said about the magnitude of progressive sentiment, the governor eventually began supporting measures like a $15 an hour minimum wage and paid family leave. After years of pressure, he broke up a faction of independent Democrats in the State Senate who caucused with Republicans and stymied liberal lawmakers.Ms. Teachout is re-entering politics now in a much different position, with a national profile. At the same time the pendulum isn’t necessarily in the same place that it was in 2014 or even 2018. The latest election cycle, in which Democrats in New York found themselves stunned by losses to Republicans both upstate and down, suggests a challenging moment for progressives. Beyond that, Ms. Teachout has lost all three of the elections in which she participated.As the country has fallen deeper into the throes of polarization, both Democrats and Republicans have directed more hope and faith at state prosecutors to address grievances the federal government now seems impotent to resolve, creating increasingly ambitious agendas. On a recent morning, after her son was dropped off at day care and before her property law class was set to begin at Fordham, where she has taught for 12 years, Ms. Teachout conveyed her plans. She explained, for example, how she would expand the attorney general’s focus on worker safety, wage theft and issues of climate and environmental justice, making fossil-fuel companies liable for the damage they cause.“I think it can be helpful to think of the A.G. as the largest public interest law firm in the country,” she wrote me later. “We all know that big pharma, polluters and fossil fuel companies cause enormous harm, and big landlords don’t provide healthy housing — people spend 90 percent of their time indoors; mold is a climate issue — but I don’t think people realize the awesome power of the office to make it too costly for these big companies to keep harming us.”Around the country, state prosecutors have been experimenting with ways in which oil and gas companies might be held accountable for climate change. The litigation relies, in part, on a successful model deployed by states in the 1990s which argued that the chronic and deadly illnesses caused by cigarettes significantly drove up public health costs. These types of suits are still uncharted territory when it comes to the fossil-fuel industry. New York State lost a related case two years ago when a judge determined that Ms. James’s office had failed to prove that Exxon had committed shareholder fraud in its statements around its accounting for the cost of climate-change regulation.Still, Ms. Teachout maintains it was the right case for the attorney general’s office to bring. “The evidence was strong — the industry had the science cases 30 years ago, and, like opioids, its clear that part of the business model of fossil fuel companies is lying for profit,” she said.Not long after he took office, Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, who later prosecuted Officer Derek Chauvin, brought suit against Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute over what he identified as “a campaign of deception” around the effects on climate. Although coming from academia is hardly considered an advantage in American politics, Mr. Ellison, who has known Ms. Teachout for years, pointed out that it is a particular kind of intellectual depth that is needed to pursue these new and increasingly complex frontiers in civil litigation. “It’s not always clear how to redress a tremendous wrong,” he said. From lead paint to guns, to oil and gas, there are cases that prosecutors don’t always have the most useful legal frameworks for, he said.Ms. Teachout, the daughter of a law professor and a judge, is likely to face off against several Democratic challengers that could include Brooklyn’s district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, as well as Daniel S. Goldman, a former federal prosecutor hired by House democrats to join the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. The New York state senator Shelley Mayer announced that she was running earlier this month.Never having held elected office, never having earned millions of dollars at a white-shoe firm, Ms. Teachout might proceed with a candidacy that serves as a test of just how much independence voters are — or aren’t — actually seeking. Driven by indignation more than ideology, in a kind of race where divisive culture-war issues are not especially relevant, she might speak to populists of all kinds — the world of people united in their hatred for Mark Zuckerberg.“I first really started paying attention to Zephyr when she took on Cuomo in that primary,’’ the environmentalist Bill McKibben told me. “Everybody had been working really hard on fracking in New York State. There was a wonderful citizens’ movement upstate, but because it was upstate no one really paid attention to it. Even I had not realized how big and deep it had gotten until Zephyr ran for governor. And she was really hitting it hard.”Though she fell short in her long-shot run for the nomination for governor, she swept certain upstate counties. “I was looking at the election returns that night and I said, ‘OK we’re going to have a ban on fracking in a few weeks.’” Gov. Cuomo, not long after, enacted one.“I’ve spent a lot of time with politicians, and there aren’t that many who are really that willing to take on, in serious ways, entrenched concentrations of power,” Mr. McKibben said. “It’s very hard to see a path where Congress and the judiciary stand up to Exxon or Facebook or forces like them,’’ he said, which makes the jobs of attorney general in New York and California some of the most influential in the country. “There are things that desperately need to change and she strikes me as a very useful crowbar.” More

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      Letitia James Is Running for Governor of New York

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      The attorney general, who oversaw the inquiry into sexual harassment allegations against Andrew Cuomo, will challenge Gov. Kathy Hochul for the Democratic nomination.Letitia James, the New York attorney general who oversaw the inquiry into sexual harassment claims against former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo that ultimately led to his resignation, declared her candidacy for governor on Friday, setting up a history-making, high-profile matchup in the Democratic primary.She begins the campaign as Gov. Kathy Hochul’s most formidable challenger, and her announcement triggers a start to what may be an extraordinarily competitive primary — a contest set to be shaped by issues of ideology, race and region in a state still battling its way out of the pandemic.Her announcement comes at a volatile moment in state politics, a day after Mr. Cuomo was charged in a sexual misconduct complaint based on the account of one of the women whose claims of sexual harassment were detailed in the attorney general’s report.That development, Ms. James said, validated “the findings in our report,” and to her allies it further cemented the case for her leadership. But it has also added fresh fuel to Mr. Cuomo’s suggestion that her investigation was politically motivated, a message that may resonate with some of the voters who still view him favorably.“I’m running for governor of New York because I have the experience, vision, and courage to take on the powerful on behalf of all New Yorkers,” Ms. James wrote on Twitter as she released her announcement video on Friday.In the video, a narrator said that Ms. James was running “for good-paying jobs, a health care system that puts people ahead of profits, to protect the environment, make housing more affordable and lift up our schools in every neighborhood.” The video did not mention Mr. Cuomo by name.Ms. James, a veteran Brooklyn politician and the first woman of color to be elected to statewide office in New York, is seeking to become the first Black female governor in the country; Ms. Hochul, who is white, is the state’s first female chief executive and the first governor in more than a century to have deep roots in western New York.The race may have even broader implications as a key barometer of the direction of the Democratic Party in the Biden era. Ms. Hochul, of the Buffalo area, was once known as a more conservative Democrat, but she has increasingly moved leftward.Ms. James, by turn, has plenty of connections to the relatively moderate Democratic establishment, but also has longstanding ties to the left-wing Working Families Party. It is not yet clear what issues she will use to differentiate herself politically from Ms. Hochul, but there is plainly the potential for vigorous clashes over how best to move the state and party forward.Her announcement came two days after The New York Times and other outlets reported that she and her team had begun informing key political players of her intentions.“Since she was first elected as a Working Families Party candidate nearly 20 years ago, Tish has been a courageous fighter for everyday New Yorkers,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the state director of the New York Working Families Party. “We expect that Tish will campaign with a clear progressive vision for New York.”Ms. James enters the race with a record that has drawn acclaim from many liberals in the state. As attorney general, she made headlines for suing the National Rifle Association, investigating President Donald J. Trump and presiding over the Cuomo inquiry, which was conducted by outside lawyers.“I’ve sued the Trump administration 76 times — but who’s counting?” she deadpanned in the video.She appeared to make several allusions to Mr. Cuomo. “I’ve held accountable those who mistreat and harass women in the workplace, no matter how powerful the offenders,” she said at one point.“I’ve spent my career guided by a simple principle: Stand up to the powerful on behalf of the vulnerable,” she said at another. “To be a force for change.”Ms. James’s allies believe that she could assemble a powerful coalition that includes Black voters of varying ideological views, a broad swath of left-leaning voters who welcomed her probes of Mr. Cuomo, national donors interested in her history-making potential, and a base in the most vote-rich part of the state.She has deep connections to some labor leaders, too; John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, declared minutes after Ms. James’s announcement that she “will be a governor that working New Yorkers can trust.” His union officially endorsed Ms. James a few hours later — the first union endorsement in the race for governor, her campaign noted.In recent weeks, Ms. James has moved to build out her political and fund-raising teams, and she begins the contest with significant New York City connections after serving on the City Council and as public advocate.She has also spent time traveling across New York — in her official capacity and for purely political outings — and she and her team have sounded out donors, labor leaders and elected officials as she moved toward a bid. Her team has begun seeking commitments for early endorsements that could help her build momentum quickly.But Ms. Hochul begins the race with her own significant advantages. She has been racing to cement an overwhelming fund-raising edge; receptive donors are one of the many benefits of incumbency.Ms. Hochul is strong upstate and already has several key endorsements.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesShe is likely to perform strongly upstate, and she has spent years building relationships on Long Island. Since becoming governor, she has maintained a breakneck public schedule heavily concentrated in the five boroughs, working to shore up her downstate strength and tapping a lieutenant governor, Brian A. Benjamin, who hails from Harlem.And she has already locked down significant institutional support from groups including the Democratic Governors Association and Emily’s List, the fund-raising powerhouse that backs female candidates who support abortion rights. She has been endorsed by county chairs across the state, the state Democratic chairman and the president of the N.A.A.C.P. New York State Conference.Many New Yorkers approve of the way she has handled the transition from a decade of Mr. Cuomo’s iron-fisted reign and appear inclined to give her more time to acclimate to the job — while some Democrats would prefer Ms. James to stay as attorney general to see through existing cases, including one involving Mr. Trump and his business dealings.Ms. Hochul and Ms. James are unlikely to be the only contenders for the nomination, and there is a real possibility of the kind of messy, crowded primary that some party leaders, wary of Democratic infighting, had hoped to avoid.Two of Ms. James’s fellow Brooklynites, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Jumaane D. Williams, the public advocate, are both taking steps toward campaigns for governor and could cut into her coalition in New York City.Jumaane D. Williams, the public advocate, has formed an exploratory committee ahead of a possible bid for governor.Thalia Juarez for The New York TimesRepresentative Thomas Suozzi, who represents Long Island and a sliver of Queens, has also been considering a run. Unlike the other possible contenders, he would seek to outflank Ms. Hochul as a moderate option in the race as she works to build strength in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Steven Bellone, the Suffolk County executive, is also weighing a campaign.But for months, the question of whether Ms. James would run was the defining issue of the nascent primary contest, with some allies describing her as deliberative, and others growing increasingly eager to learn her decision as other aspects of the race came into focus.Her answer goes a long way toward cementing the contours of the field.Now, perhaps the biggest unknown is the question of how Mr. Cuomo may seek to involve himself in the race. The former governor, who as of the most recent filings continued to maintain a large war chest, and his team have repeatedly sought to question Ms. James’s integrity, attacking her in emails and letters sent to onetime supporters.“The fact that the attorney general — as predicted — is about to announce a run for governor is lost on no one,” Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said in response to the complaint on Thursday.Ms. James, for her part, laced into those efforts at a recent speech in New York City as she defended her work.“No one is above the law,” she said. “Our state can do better.” More