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    Judge Rejects Hunter Biden Claim of Selective Prosecution in Gun Case

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    Judge Maryellen Noreika declined to dismiss the charges against the president’s son, saying Mr. Biden’s lawyer failed to show prosecutors had been motivated by animus.The federal judge presiding over Hunter Biden’s gun case in Delaware on Friday rejected Mr. Biden’s claim that he was being subjected to selective prosecution, saying it was “nonsensical” that the Biden Justice Department would target the president’s son.Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, has filed a flurry of motions in the Delaware gun case and a separate indictment in California on tax charges, accusing the government of unfairly singling out his client at the instigation of Republicans and seeking to dismiss the charges. None of those challenges have been successful so far.Judge Maryellen Noreika, who scuttled a plea deal reached between prosecutors and Mr. Biden last summer, said that Mr. Lowell failed to provide evidence that prosecutors had been motivated by animus against Hunter Biden.The “defendant’s claim is effectively that his own father targeted him for being his son, a claim that is nonsensical under the facts here,” Judge Noreika wrote in her 25-page decision.The judge also rejected Mr. Lowell’s claim that David C. Weiss, the special counsel and U.S. attorney in Delaware, had only decided to bring charges against Hunter Biden because of pressure from Republicans in Congress who claimed attempts to reach a plea agreement last year were a “sweetheart deal” intended to protect the Bidens.“Regardless of whether congressional Republicans attempted to influence the executive branch, there is no evidence that they were successful in doing so,” she wrote.A federal grand jury in Wilmington indicted Hunter Biden in September on charges that he lied about his drug use on an application for a Colt pistol in 2018.In response to a question on the form about whether he was using drugs, Mr. Biden said he was not, an assertion that prosecutors concluded was false. Mr. Biden has publicly acknowledged his struggles with addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol and had been in and out of rehab around the time of the gun purchase.If convicted, Mr. Biden could face up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines. But nonviolent first-time offenders who have not been accused of using the weapon in another crime rarely get serious prison time for the charges.The decision to file criminal charges against President Biden’s troubled son was an extraordinary step for the Justice Department and Mr. Weiss after the last-minute collapse of a deal that would have granted Hunter Biden broad immunity from future prosecution on gun and tax charges without serving prison time.In December, a separate federal grand jury in Los Angeles charged the president’s son with a scheme to evade federal taxes on millions in income from foreign businesses.Hunter Biden faces three counts each of evasion of a tax assessment, failure to file and pay taxes, and filing a false or fraudulent tax return, according to the 56-page indictment.Both trials are scheduled to begin in June, although the schedules are subject to change. More

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      Ex-FBI Informant, Accused of Biden Lies, Said He Had Russian Contacts

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      Federal prosecutors portrayed the former informant, Alexander Smirnov, 43, as a serial liar incapable of telling the truth about even the most basic details of his own life.A former F.B.I. informant accused of making false bribery claims about President Biden and his son Hunter — which were widely publicized by Republicans — claimed to have been fed information by Russian intelligence, according to a court filing on Tuesday.In the memo, prosecutors portrayed the former informant, Alexander Smirnov, 43, as a serial liar incapable of telling the truth about even the most basic details of his own life. But Mr. Smirnov told federal investigators that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.Those disclosures, including Mr. Smirnov’s unverifiable claim that he met with Russian intelligence officials as recently as three months ago, made him a flight risk and endangered national security, Justice Department officials said. Mr. Smirnov had been held in custody in Las Vegas, where he has lived since 2022, since his arrest last week.He was released from custody on Tuesday on a personal recognizance bond after a detention hearing, said his lawyers, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld.Prosecutors did not specify which story Russian intelligence is said to have been fed to Mr. Smirnov, an Israeli citizen. But they suggested they could not believe anything he said. And they had many tales to choose from.The memo describes Mr. Smirnov as a human hall of mirrors: He fed the F.B.I. bogus information about the Bidens and misled prosecutors about his wealth, estimated at $6 million, while telling them he worked in the security business, even though the government could find no proof that was true.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Even in Washington, Weasel Words Will Only Get You So Far

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      Gail Collins: Hey, Bret, would you hate it if I asked for a couple of predictions for 2024?Bret Stephens: Gail, it would be better if you asked me for my prediction for the year 2112. That way, hardly anybody will remember how wrong I was and I won’t be around for them to remind me. But here’s my 2024 prediction anyway: Trump is elected president again, and we become neighbors in Toronto.Now your turn.Gail: OK, Donald Trump is going to be campaigning for president while on trial for an astonishing range of crimes. Meanwhile, we’ll shiver with fear every time Joe Biden coughs. But in the end, I predict the nation will square its collective shoulders and elect the better man, even if he’s beginning to look like an old 81.Bret: Biden has a 37 percent approval rating, according to Gallup, and Trump is running four points ahead of him in the latest Wall Street Journal poll — or six points, if you factor in third-party and independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. This is beginning to have the makings of an epochal disaster, not just for the country but for Western civilization. Yet Democrats are driving at high speed toward a rock wall because they don’t want to tell Grandpa that he no longer should be allowed to get behind the wheel or even suggest he replace his vice president with someone more … confidence-inducing.Gail: Here’s a pre-new year prediction: In stores around the nation, children — and their parents — will stand in line to sit on Santa’s lap and beg him to bring them a different presidential race.Bret: Nikki Haley against Gretchen Whitmer — how much fun would that be? But we are where we are. Pass the absinthe.Changing the subject: Did you watch the testimony of the university presidents?Gail: Yeah, Claudine Gay of Harvard is probably going to be haunted for the rest of her life for having said “it depends on the context” when asked whether calling for genocide of the Jews violated Harvard’s rules against bullying and harassment.Bret: Along with Elizabeth Magill, the now-former president of Penn, and Sally Kornbluth, the president of M.I.T. Just imagine the reaction to any university president saying “it depends on the context” as to whether calling for the genocide of, say, Black or Asian people is permissible. It was heartening to see Democrats and Republicans alike taking them to task for such colossally stupid answers, even if it’s hard to find myself on the same side with an election denier like Elise Stefanik.Gail: In the world of higher education, free speech is a cardinal virtue and leaders learn how to get past questions that would force them to call for anything that sounds like censorship.Magill framed her answer in what sounded like a weaselly dodge, but I’m sorry she felt compelled to resign.Bret: I’m against cancel culture on principle, so I hope Gay, who apologized for her remarks, and Kornbluth, who hasn’t — at least as far as I know — don’t follow Magill out the door. There needs to be space for contrition and learning.I’m also a fervent believer in free expression, including at private universities that don’t have a legal obligation to abide by the strictures of the First Amendment. The problem is that universities like Harvard often enforce rules against hate speech when it comes to heinous statements against some minority groups, but they invoke free speech when it comes to heinous statements about Jews. That double standard lies at the root of the antisemitism that pervades too many campuses. If colleges were truly serious about free speech, they would work a lot harder to pierce the left-wing bubble that so many college campuses have become.The other big national story from last week is Hunter Biden’s indictment on tax evasion charges. Your thoughts?Gail: Well, we’ve been down this road before. Hunter is certainly in a ton of trouble on the tax front, but I don’t believe voters will hold his problems against his father.Bret: We’ll see.Gail: Joe Biden is a man who, early in his political career, lost his wife and daughter in a terrible car accident. Then later he lost a beloved son — the star of the next generation of Bidens in the political world — to cancer.Hunter was the offspring who was always getting into trouble. Many families have one and God knows he’s caused his father a lot of grief. The message the country should be getting from all this is that our president is a leader who can work through incredible personal pain for the common good.Bret: I think we both recognize that the president has suffered through a lot — and having a surviving son with a longstanding drug habit has been part of the suffering. He has my sympathy.But Joe’s political problem is that Hunter’s story keeps getting worse — and parts of it suggest attempts to conceal the full truth. Before the election, Joe claimed that Hunter’s lost-and-found laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. False. He said he knew nothing about his son’s business dealings and never got involved. False. David Weiss, the special counsel appointed by Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general, was about to give Hunter a sweetheart plea bargain. The judge rejected it, and now Hunter has been hit with tax evasion charges that could end up in a long prison sentence.Gail: The last was a punishment for being Joe’s son. A normal defendant would have had no problem getting that deal approved. A normal well-lawyered defendant, anyway.Bret: He’s accused of evading more than $1 million in taxes and spending it on drugs and, uh, companionship. And Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that paid Hunter a fortune to sit on its board when Joe was vice president — with a special responsibility to help clean up Ukrainian corruption — cut Hunter’s salary in half after Obama left office.Gail: Don’t think even the Bidens’ best friends believed Burisma hired Hunter for his depth of knowledge on energy issues in post-Soviet republics. But let’s just say it’s not unusual for the children of powerful men and women to get jobs because of their names.If there were serious stories about Joe using his political muscle to, say, get Burisma a special government contract, that would be a different matter.Bret: At a minimum, all of this will help Trump neutralize some of the ethical and legal charges against him, at least with some wavering voters, the way Bill Clinton’s record of sexual misconduct neutralized Trump’s vulnerabilities on that score. But if there are other shoes to drop, it will turn into an even bigger political liability for an already vulnerable president.Gail: Praying all the shoes are already on the floor. But I think the Republicans are flirting with trouble when they tie all this into an impeachment crusade. Just gonna remind the public that Trump was the only president in American history to be impeached twice.Bret: Do they even remember? Stalin supposedly said that the death of one man is a tragedy but the death of a million is a statistic. I propose a corollary for Trump: A single criminal indictment against a former president is a disgrace, but 91 counts is a blur.Gail: OK, gonna quote that one in 2024.Bret: Gail, we’ve made it a December tradition to mention charities we admire and support. Do you have a recommendation for our readers?Gail: First, can I say kudos to the many readers who provide ongoing support for projects that help the poor, educate the neglected, protect the environment and do so many other great things?Bret: You may indeed.Gail: I’m happy to recommend La Mision Children’s Fund in El Cajon, Calif. It fights hunger and works to improve education in impoverished communities in Mexico near the California border. With all the current hysteria over border politics, it’s a particularly good time to encourage something so sensible.Your turn.Bret: Rails-to-Trails conservancy. It has been around since the 1980s, working for the creation of biking and walking trails across the country, including a trail that will eventually connect Washington, D.C., to the state of Washington. Conservatives and liberals will always have differences, but we should be able to agree on the importance of conservation, of urban and rural renewal, and creating great public spaces that can be enjoyed by everyone.Gail: Once again we’re in accord. Although the disaccords are always fun, too. Happy holidays on both fronts, Bret.Bret: Gail, before we go, I want to put in a word for our colleague Megan Stack’s brilliantly reported and beautifully written essay on life for Palestinians in the West Bank. I’ve known Megan for more than 20 years, when we both worked in Jerusalem. And while we are on opposite sides of this subject, politically speaking, I have nothing but respect for the deep sense of humanity she brings to everything she writes. We need to preserve our intellectual humility by paying attention to those with whom we disagree, sometimes passionately. The alternative really is the abyss.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Hunter Biden Charged With Evading Taxes on Millions From Foreign Firms

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      The Justice Department charged President Biden’s son after a long-running and wide-ranging investigation with substantial political repercussions.A federal grand jury charged Hunter Biden on Thursday with a scheme to evade federal taxes on millions in income from foreign businesses, the second indictment against him this year and a major new development in a case Republicans have made the cornerstone of a possible impeachment of President Biden.Mr. Biden, the president’s son, faces three counts each of evasion of a tax assessment, failure to file and pay taxes, and filing a false or fraudulent tax return, according to the 56-page indictment — a withering play-by-play of personal indulgence with potentially enormous political costs for his father.The charges, filed in California, came five months after he appeared to be on the verge of a plea deal that would have avoided jail time and potentially granted him broad immunity from future prosecution stemming from his business dealings. But the agreement collapsed, and in September, he was indicted in Delaware on three charges stemming from his illegal purchase of a handgun in 2018, a period when he used drugs heavily and was prohibited from owning a firearm.The tax charges have always been the more serious element of the inquiry by the special counsel, David C. Weiss, who began investigating the president’s son five years ago as the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware. Mr. Weiss was retained when President Biden took office in 2021.Mr. Biden “engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019,” Mr. Weiss wrote.“Between 2016 and Oct. 15, 2020, the defendant spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes,” he added.If convicted, he could face a maximum of 17 years in prison, Justice Department officials said.Read the Tax Indictment Against Hunter BidenThe president’s son was indicted on nine counts accusing him of evading federal taxes on millions of dollars he has made in his work with foreign companies.Read Document 56 pagesThe charges, while serious, were far less explosive than ones pushed by Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans, who have been angry with the department for failing to find wider criminal wrongdoing by the president’s son and family.But the failure of Mr. Biden’s lawyers to reach a new settlement after talks with Mr. Weiss fell apart has now subjected Mr. Biden to the perils of two criminal proceedings in two jurisdictions, with unpredictable outcomes.Many of the facts laid out in Thursday’s indictment were already widely known, and the litany of Mr. Biden’s actions tracks closely with a narrative he drafted with prosecutors in the plea deal that collapsed over the summer under the withering scrutiny of a federal judge in Delaware.Prosecutors said that he “subverted the payroll and tax withholding process of his own company,” Owasco PC, by withdrawing millions from the coffers that he used to subsidize “an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills.” They also accused him of taking false business deductions.Mr. Weiss called out Mr. Biden for failing to pay child support and his reliance on associates, including the Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris, to pay his way. Prosecutors included a chart that tracked the cash he siphoned from Owasco’s coffers — $1.6 million in A.T.M. withdrawals, $683,212 for “payments — various women,” nearly $400,000 for clothing and accessories, and around $750,000 for restaurants, health and beauty products, groceries, and other retail purchases.Throughout the document, Mr. Weiss presented an unflattering split-screen of Mr. Biden, scooping up millions in income and gifts from friends while stubbornly refusing to pay his taxes. That pattern even persisted into 2020, after he had borrowed money to pay off his tax liabilities from the previous few years, prosecutors wrote.“Defendant spent $17,500 each month, totaling approximately $200,000 from January through Oct. 15, 2020, on a lavish house on a canal in Venice Beach, Calif.,” they wrote, adding that “the I.R.S. stood as the last creditor to be paid.”In a statement, Abbe Lowell, Mr. Biden’s lawyer, said Mr. Weiss had “bowed to Republican pressure” and accused him of reneging on their previous agreement. He said the special counsel had not responded to his request for a meeting a few days ago to discuss the details of the case.“If Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought,” he said.The indictment includes a more detailed description of Mr. Biden’s activities and tangled business deals than the government had previously made public. Taken in its totality, the filing paints a damning portrait of personal irresponsibility by a man who leveraged his last name to finance his vices while willfully ignoring his tax liabilities.The Hunter Biden case sits at the crowded intersection of America’s colliding political and legal systems. There is now a very real prospect that President Biden’s son will be defending himself in two federal criminal trials during a presidential election year — as former President Donald J. Trump, his father’s likely opponent, confronts the possibility of two federal criminal trials in his classified documents and election interference cases.The additional charges come on the cusp of a vote by the Republican-led House to formalize its impeachment inquiry into President Biden, which is largely based on unsubstantiated allegations that he benefited from his son’s lucrative consulting work for companies in Ukraine and China.Republican leaders in the House released draft text of a procedural impeachment resolution against President Biden on Thursday, just hours before word of the new charges started to percolate through official Washington. It is not clear what effect the indictment will have on their inquiry.The indictment contains no reference to President Biden. But prosecutors pointed out that Hunter Biden’s compensation from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, dropped from $1 million a year in 2016, when his father was still in office, to $500,000 in March 2017, two months after he left office.The decision to indict the president’s troubled son was an extraordinary step for Mr. Weiss, who was named a special counsel in August by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.The Justice Department has been investigating Mr. Biden since at least 2018. Despite examining an array of matters — including Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma, ties to oligarchs and business deals in China — the investigation ultimately narrowed to questions about his taxes, like his failure to file his 2017 and 2018 returns on time, and the gun purchase.The special counsel, David C. Weiss, has been investigating an array of issues surrounding Hunter Biden.Will Oliver/EPA, via ShutterstockThe investigation appeared to have come to a conclusion in June when Mr. Weiss and Mr. Biden’s lawyers announced that Mr. Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges.As part of the deal, prosecutors charged Mr. Biden with lying about whether he was using drugs but, under a so-called pretrial diversion agreement, agreed not to prosecute Mr. Biden on that. In return, Mr. Biden agreed to admit that he had used drugs at the time of the purchase and the deal remained contingent on him remaining drug free for the next two years.But the deal abruptly imploded.At a hearing in July, Judge Maryellen Noreika of the Federal District Court in Wilmington, Del., sharply questioned elements of the deal, telling the two sides repeatedly that she had no intention of being “a rubber stamp.”One objection centered on a provision that would have offered Mr. Biden broad insulation against further prosecution on matters under scrutiny during the federal inquiry. Mr. Weiss’s prosecutors and Mr. Biden’s lawyer at the time, Christopher J. Clark, disagreed on whether that shielded him from being prosecuted in connection with his foreign business dealings.The other objection had to do with the diversion program on the gun charge, under which the judge would play a role in determining whether Mr. Biden was meeting the terms of the deal.Judge Noreika said she was not trying to sink the agreement, but to strengthen it by ironing out ambiguities and inconsistencies. But by the end, the sides had splintered, prosecutors filed paperwork indicating they would proceed with a prosecution and the embattled Mr. Weiss requested to be named special counsel, which requires him to file a report at the conclusion of the investigation.Since taking control of the House in January, top Republicans have used their new investigative power to push the narrative that the president has been complicit in an effort engineered by Hunter Biden to enrich his family by profiting from their positions of power, especially through business and investment transactions abroad.The investigation has become a central focus of House Republicans, and of Mr. Trump, who has seized upon it as a counter to his own legal woes. Earlier this year, two former I.R.S. agents who worked on the investigation testified before a House committee that they had been discouraged from fully investigating interactions of Hunter Biden and his father, and that Mr. Weiss had complained that he did not have the authority to expand the investigation to other jurisdictions.Mr. Weiss denied those claims.On Thursday, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the chairman of the House oversight committee, credited the “two brave I.R.S. whistle-blowers” for forcing Mr. Weiss to abandon plea negotiations and file charges.“The Department of Justice got caught in its attempt to give Hunter Biden an unprecedented sweetheart plea deal,” Mr. Comer said in a statement, adding that the men should be applauded “for their courage to expose the truth.”Luke Broadwater More

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      Trump Seeks to Use Trial to Challenge Findings That 2020 Election Was Fair

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      The former president’s lawyers in his federal trial on charges of trying to overturn the election are asking to collect a wide range of evidence — including on unrelated issues like Hunter Biden.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump said in court papers that they planned to question the findings of several government agencies that the 2020 election was conducted fairly as part of their efforts to defend Mr. Trump against federal charges that he sought to overturn the results of the race.The lawyers also suggested in the papers that they intended to raise a host of distractions as part of their defense, indicating that they want to drag unrelated matters like Hunter Biden’s criminal prosecution and the investigation into former Vice President Mike Pence’s handling of classified documents into the election interference case.The twin filings by Mr. Trump’s lawyers late on Monday were formal requests to the prosecution to provide them with reams of additional material that they believe can help them fight the conspiracy indictment accusing Mr. Trump of seeking to subvert the lawful transfer of presidential power three years ago and stay in office despite his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr.Criminal defendants routinely make such requests in what are known as motions to compel discovery, but many of those made in Mr. Trump’s two filings were long-shot efforts that are likely to be rejected. Ultimately, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the election interference case, will have the power to decide which, if any, of the records Mr. Trump will get.But even if his lawyers get far less than what they asked for, the scope of their requests can be read as a kind of outline of how they plan to fight the case, which is set to go to trial in March in Federal District Court in Washington.At the heart of their strategy, the court papers say, is a plan to call into question findings made by the intelligence community, the F.B.I. and other federal agencies that the election was not marred by widespread fraud.The lawyers intend to argue that government reports upholding the integrity of the election were in fact a “partisan effort to provide false assurances to the public.” By questioning the consensus that the election was secure, the lawyers are hoping to show that Mr. Trump was acting in good faith when he spread lies that the vote count had been rigged — a move that could weaken the prosecution’s attempts to prove his criminal intent.To make that argument, Mr. Trump’s legal team has asked Judge Chutkan to force the special counsel, Jack Smith, who is prosecuting the federal cases against the former president, to give it any internal government records that cut against the dominant view that the election had been conducted fairly.Those requests were only some of the 59 separate demands for records made in more than 70 pages of court papers submitted by Mr. Trump’s legal team. Looking for anything that could help them prove the race was not secure, the lawyers made additional requests for information about how federal officials assessed cyberattacks around the time of the election and about attempts by foreign governments to interfere in it.Suggesting yet another defense strategy, the lawyers also asked for any records that could help them undermine Mr. Smith’s contention that Mr. Trump was responsible for the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They specifically asked Judge Chutkan to allow them access to any information about security measures implemented at the Capitol before the attack and about the presence of federal agents or informants who were on the ground during the riot.Almost from the moment the election interference indictment was handed up in August, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have tried to paint the case as a direct attempt by Mr. Biden to sabotage the man who is likely to be his chief rival in the 2024 election. They have advanced that argument not only without any evidence, but also in spite of the fact that the charges were filed by Mr. Smith, an independent prosecutor.The lawyers have specifically accused Mr. Biden of seeking to have Mr. Trump indicted in retaliation for the investigation of Hunter Biden, who was indicted in September on federal gun charges in a separate prosecution. And the discovery filings on Monday suggested that Mr. Trump’s lawyers would like nothing better than to muddy the waters of the election interference case by introducing evidence at trial about Hunter Biden.To that end, the lawyers requested any information concerning “coordination” between the Justice Department and the Biden administration or Mr. Biden’s family.In another far-fetched request, the lawyers asked for any records concerning dealings that the Justice Department had with Mr. Pence, who was investigated earlier this year after he returned to federal officials several classified documents he had kept when he left office.In their filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers suggested without citing any evidence that Mr. Pence, who is likely to be a key government witness at the election interference trial, had “an incentive to curry favor with authorities” because of the potential charges he faced in his classified documents inquiry.Judge Chutkan will not issue a ruling on Mr. Trump’s requests until after prosecutors working for Mr. Smith respond to them next month. And her eventual decree about discovery is only one of several important decisions she will have to make in coming days.She is poised to issue an order about Mr. Trump’s claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election charges because the indictment arose from official actions he took while in the White House. She is also expected to decide whether to allow cameras into her courtroom and televise the trial. More

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      Ukraine Indicts Officials Linked to Efforts to Investigate the Bidens

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      Three officials were accused of operating at the behest of Russian intelligence when they aligned with efforts by Rudolph W. Giuliani to tie the Biden family to corruption in Ukraine. Ukrainian police and prosecutors have accused two politicians and a former prosecutor of treason, saying they colluded with a Russian intelligence agency in aiding an effort by Rudolph W. Giuliani several years ago to tie the Biden family to corruption in Ukraine.Those accused include Kostyantyn Kulyk, a former Ukrainian deputy prosecutor general who had drafted a memo in 2019 suggesting Ukraine investigate Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, for his role serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Also implicated were a current member of Ukraine’s Parliament, Oleksandr Dubinsky, and a former member, Andriy Derkach, who had publicly advocated for an investigation in Ukraine into Hunter Biden. They had also promoted a spurious theory that it was Ukraine, and not Russia, that had meddled in the 2016 presidential election in the United States.The three were indicted on charges of treason and belonging to a criminal organization. The charges refer to “information-subversive activities” and focus on actions in 2019 before the American presidential election. They do not say if or when the activity stopped. In the run-up to the 2020 election in the United States, Mr. Giuliani and later former President Donald J. Trump had encouraged Ukrainian officials to follow up on the allegations against Hunter Biden. The effort included a phone call by Mr. Trump to President Volodymyr Zelensky in July of 2019 urging an investigation into the Bidens, at a time when the Trump administration was withholding military aid for the Ukrainian Army. Andriy Derkach attends a news conference in Kyiv in 2019.Gleb Garanich/ReutersCritics say that pressure to investigate the Bidens was politically motivated, aimed at harming the elder Mr. Biden’s chances against Mr. Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani denied that there was anything inappropriate about their contact with Ukrainian officials, with Mr. Trump describing his phone call to Mr. Zelensky as “perfect.” The administration said military aid to Ukraine was withheld over concerns about corruption in the Ukrainian government. The events led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment in the House of Representatives. He was acquitted in the Senate.Ukrainian media on Tuesday suggested the indictments, too, had a political component for Mr. Zelensky: that they were intended to send a signal to Mr. Biden now, as his administration is pressing Congress for military assistance to Ukraine, that Kyiv will root out accused Russian agents, including those who had promoted accusations against his family.In statements released on Monday, Ukrainian police and the country’s domestic intelligence agency said all three men were members of a spy network established inside the Ukrainian government and handled by Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the G.R.U.The intelligence agency’s statement said the Russians paid members of the group $10 million. An aide to Mr. Derkach, Ihor Kolesnikov, was detained earlier and convicted on treason charges.Two members of the group, Mr. Derkach and Mr. Kulyk, fled Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the statement said. Mr. Dubinsky was remanded to pretrial detention in a Ukrainian jail on Tuesday.Mr. Dubinsky, in a statement posted on the social networking site Telegram, said that the prosecutors had “not presented one fact” to support the accusations, and that the charges were retribution for criticizing Mr. Zelensky’s government in his role as a member of Parliament. He said that he testified a year and a half ago as a witness in a treason investigation of Mr. Derkach but at the time had not been accused of any wrongdoing. Mr. Dubinsky was expelled from Mr. Zelensky’s political party, Servant of the People, in 2021 after the United States sanctioned him for meddling in the American political process. The Ukrainian intelligence agency’s statement said that Mr. Kulyk had used his position in the prosecutor general’s office to promote investigations that worked “in favor of the Kremlin,” without specifying any cases.In late 2018, Mr. Kulyk compiled a seven-page dossier asserting that Ukrainian prosecutors had evidence that “may attest to the commission of corrupt actions aimed at personal unlawful enrichment by former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden,” according to a copy leaked by a Ukrainian blogger.The dossier suggested that Mr. Biden, when he had served as vice president, had tried to quash a corruption investigation into the natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, where his son served on the board. Former colleagues of Mr. Kulyk at the prosecutor’s office confirmed he had written the document, which helped set in motion an effort by Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Mr. Giuliani, and other supporters to press for an investigation in Ukraine.In a phone call with Mr. Zelensky that became central to the impeachment case, Mr. Trump had asked the Ukrainian president to investigate supposed conflicts of interest by Mr. Biden when he was vice president, according to White House notes of the call. Mr. Trump denied he had linked military aid to Ukraine to the investigation of the Biden family.Allegations of corruption and ties to Russia had trailed Mr. Kulyk for years in the Ukrainian media and among anti-corruption watchdog groups before he compiled the dossier.In 2016, he was indicted in Ukraine on charges of illegal enrichment for owning apartments and cars that seemed beyond the means of his modest official salary. One car, a Toyota Land Cruiser, had been bought by the father of a military commander fighting on the Russian side in the war in eastern Ukraine. More

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      G.O.P. Eyes Bribery and Abuse of Power Impeachment Charges for Biden

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      The first hearing in the impeachment inquiry comes as Republicans are grasping for evidence tying President Biden to his son’s foreign business dealings.Top House Republicans are eyeing potential impeachment charges of bribery and abuse of power against President Biden, according to senior House officials familiar with their plans, as they push forward with an inquiry that seeks to tie him to his son’s foreign business dealings.Building up to the inquiry’s first hearing scheduled for Thursday, Republicans have stepped up their efforts to cast suspicion on Mr. Biden, releasing material they characterized as incriminating but which contained no proof of wrongdoing. The lawmakers have been grasping for months for evidence to fuel their impeachment case, which has yet to provide a basis for either potential charge they are considering.On Wednesday, they released records of wire transfers from a Chinese businessman to Hunter Biden in 2019 that listed his father’s Wilmington, Del., address, suggesting that was an indication that the elder Biden had profited off those transactions. But the home was Hunter Biden’s primary residence at the time.Later in the day, a powerful panel voted to release 700 more pages from the confidential tax investigation into Hunter Biden, including an affidavit from an I.R.S. agent who concluded that he and his business associates received potentially more than $19 million in foreign income, but who makes no allegation the income was illegal.The documents also include an email in which a prosecutor at the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware prohibited investigators from mentioning President Biden in a proposed search warrant in August 2020. Republicans argue that shows the Justice Department was biased in favor of Mr. Biden, but the warrant was being prepared months before the elections, during a period when the agency’s longstanding policy is to avoid taking high-profile actions against any political candidate.The G.O.P. has struggled so far to link Hunter Biden’s business activity to the president or get anywhere close to revealing proof of high crimes and misdemeanors. Despite their review of more than 12,000 pages of bank records and 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports, none of the material released so far shows any payment to his father.Leaders of the three panels carrying out the inquiry — the Judiciary, Oversight and Ways and Means Committees — hope to accumulate evidence that the elder Biden abused his office, accepted bribes or both, according to the officials familiar with it, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the details.The officials emphasized that the inquiry might never result in impeachment charges if the evidence they compile does not support such charges — or any other. And Republicans are privately cognizant that they currently lack enough support within their ranks to push charges through the House, and that any charges would be dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate.For Thursday’s hearing before the Oversight Committee — the first since Speaker Kevin McCarthy, under pressure from his right flank, announced the inquiry — Republicans have booked a trio of conservative legal analysts to opine about the Bidens and the law. The analysts are not, however, in a position to present new facts in the case.The Oversight panel is considered the lead committee, according to the officials, and will investigate any allegations of corruption against the president and his family. The Judiciary Committee will focus on the Justice Department, while Ways and Means will handle any sensitive tax information pertinent to the inquiry.Democrats have criticized Republicans for moving forward with an impeachment inquiry in the absence of any incriminating evidence against the president.“Haven’t we already been doing this for the last nine months?” asked Representative Jared Moskowitz, Democrat of Florida and a member of the Oversight Committee, in an interview. “They don’t have anything on Joe Biden.”With divisions among House Republicans threatening to lead to a government shutdown this weekend, Mr. McCarthy has explicitly tried to leverage his impeachment inquiry to persuade hard-right lawmakers to keep the government open. Thursday’s hearing is — at least in part — an attempt to make the case to right-wing lawmakers and voters that Republican-led committees are making progress in their investigation of Mr. Biden, the chief political rival of former President Donald J. Trump.Speaker Kevin McCarthy has explicitly tried to leverage his impeachment inquiry to convince hard-right lawmakers to keep the government open.Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times“It’s hard to grasp the complete derangement of this moment,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland and the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. “Three days before they’re set to shut down the United States government, Republicans launch a baseless impeachment drive against President Biden. No one can figure out the logic of either course of action.”Republicans are plowing ahead anyway. The inquiry is expected to stretch on for weeks, and Republicans believe it is beneficial to them politically to keep it active and grabbing news headlines to serve as a counterweight to the four criminal cases against Mr. Trump and the 91 felony counts he faces.Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the Oversight Committee, said in an interview that his staff would continue to work on the impeachment inquiry even during a government shutdown when many nonessential workers face furloughs.“We’ve got five staffers working on this, and they’re very passionate about it,” he said.On Tuesday, he said his committee had obtained two bank wires totaling $260,000 that demonstrate that Hunter Biden received money from Chinese nationals in which his address was listed as the Wilmington, Del., home of his father.Representative James R. Comer, the chairman of the Oversight Committee, said his staff would continue to work on the impeachment inquiry even during a government shutdown.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAt a news conference, Mr. McCarthy said the records showed that Mr. Biden “lied” when he claimed his family had not received money from China.Hunter Biden’s legal team said there was nothing nefarious in the transaction. The payment described by Mr. Comer was from a business partner for legitimate purposes, and Hunter Biden listed his father’s address because that was his primary residence at the time, his lawyer said.“We expect more occasions where the Republican chairs twist the truth to mislead people to promote their fantasy political agenda,” said Abbe Lowell, the younger Biden’s lawyer.Democrats have been planning a counteroffensive to the inquiry. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, met privately with Democratic lawmakers who led the two impeachments of Mr. Trump to discuss their strategy of how to defend Mr. Biden. One point of debate at the meeting: whether Democrats should attempt to defend Hunter Biden’s conduct or essentially cast him aside and make the case that while the son may have engaged in wrongdoing, his father had nothing to do with it.The Justice Department has investigated Hunter Biden’s taxes and international business dealings for five years and indicted him on felony gun charges stemming from his purchase of a firearm while being a drug user.Republicans have been investigating the unproven allegations against Mr. Biden with little success for years. Functionally, the House inquiry gives them no new investigative powers. But, they argue, it strengthens their argument in case the Bidens should fight them in court. Mr. Comer said he plans to issue subpoenas for the personal bank records of Hunter Biden, the president’s brother James Biden, and, eventually, the president himself. More

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      ‘Trump Is Scaring the Hell Out of Me’: Three Writers Preview the Second G.O.P. Debate

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Josh Barro, who writes the newsletter Very Serious, and Sarah Isgur, a senior editor at The Dispatch, to discuss their expectations for the second Republican debate on Wednesday night. They also dig into and try to sort out a barrage of politics around President Biden’s sagging approval numbers, an impeachment inquiry, a potential government shutdown and shocking political rhetoric from former President Trump.Frank Bruni: For starters, Josh and Sarah, Donald Trump is scaring the hell out of me. It’s not just his mooning over a Glock. It’s his musing that in what he clearly sees as better days, Gen. Mark Milley could have been executed for treason. Is this a whole new altitude of unhinged — and a louder, shriller warning of what a second term of Trump would be like (including the suspension of the Constitution)?Josh Barro: I don’t think people find Trump’s provocations very interesting these days. I personally struggle to find them interesting, even though they are important. I’m not sure this constitutes an escalation relative to the end of Trump’s service — the last thing he did as president was try to steal the election. So I’m not sure this reads as new — Trump is and has been unhinged, and that’s priced in.Bruni: Sarah, what do you make of how little has been made of it? Is Trump indemnified against his own indecency, or can we dream that he may finally estrange a consequential percentage of voters?Sarah Isgur: Here’s what’s wild. In one poll, the G.O.P. is now more or less tied with Democrats for “which party cares about people like me,” closing in on Democrats’ 13-point advantage in 2016 … and in another poll, the G.O.P. is leading Democrats by over 20 points on “dealing with the economy.” So how is Joe Biden even still in this race? And the answer, as you allude to, is Trump.Barro: Trump’s behavior has already estranged a consequential percentage of voters. If Republicans found a candidate who was both normal and law-abiding and a popularist, they’d win big, instead of trying to patch together a narrow Electoral College victory, like Trump managed in 2016 and nearly did again in 2020.Bruni: Sarah, you’re suggesting that Trump is a huge general election gift to Biden. To pivot to tonight’s debate, is there any chance Biden doesn’t get that gift — that he winds up facing Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis or someone else?Isgur: Possible? Sure. Every year for Christmas, I thought it was possible there was a puppy in one of the boxes under the tree. There never was. I still think Ron DeSantis is probably the only viable alternative to Trump. But he’s looking far less viable than he was in June. And the more voters and donors flirt with Tim Scott or Nikki Haley, it becomes a race for No. 2 (see this debate) — and the better it is for Trump. That helps Trump in two ways: First, it burns time on the clock and he’s the front-runner. Second, the strongest argument for these other candidates was that Trump couldn’t beat Biden. But that’s becoming a harder and harder case to make — more because of Biden than Trump. And as that slides off the table, Republican primary voters don’t see much need to shop for an alternative.Barro: These other G.O.P. candidates wouldn’t have Trump’s legal baggage and off-putting lawlessness, but most of them have been running to Trump’s right on abortion and entitlements. And if Trump isn’t the nominee, he’ll quite possibly be acting to undermine whoever is the G.O.P. nominee. So it’s possible that Republicans are actually more likely to win the election if they nominate him than if they don’t.Isgur: You talk to these campaigns, and they will readily admit that if Trump wins Iowa, this thing is over. And right now he’s consistently up more than 30 points in Iowa. Most of the movement in the polls is between the other candidates. That ain’t gonna work.Barro: I agree with Sarah that the primary is approaching being over. DeSantis has sunk in the polls and he’s not making a clear argument about why Trump shouldn’t be nominated.Bruni: Do any of tonight’s debaters increase their criticism of him? Sharpen their attacks? Go beyond Haley’s “Gee, you spent a lot of money” and Mike Pence’s “You were not nice to me on Jan. 6”? And if you could script those attacks, what would they be? Give the candidates a push and some advice.Barro: DeSantis has been making some comments lately about how Trump kept getting beat in negotiations by Democrats when he was in office. He’s also been criticizing Trump for throwing pro-lifers under the bus. The unsaid thing here that could tie together these issues and Trump’s legal issues is that he is selfish — that this project is about benefiting him, not about benefiting Republican voters. It’s about doing what’s good for him.That said, this is a very tough pitch for a party full of people who love Trump and who think he constantly faces unfair attacks. But it’s true, and you can say it without ever actually attacking Trump from the left.Isgur: Here’s the problem for most of them: It’s not their last rodeo. Sure, they’d like to win this time around. And for some there’s a thought of the vice presidency or a cabinet pick. But more than that, they want to be viable in 2028 or beyond. Trump has already been an electoral loser for the G.O.P. in 2018, 2020 and 2022, and it hasn’t mattered. They aren’t going to bet their futures on Trump’s power over G.O.P. primary voters diminishing if he loses in 2024, and if he wins, he’ll be limited to one term, so all the more reason to tread lightly with Trump’s core voters. Chris Christie is a great example of the alternative strategy because it is probably his last race — and so he’s going straight at Trump. But it hasn’t fundamentally altered the dynamics of the race.Barro: I think DeSantis’s star certainly looks dimmer than it did when he got into the race.Isgur: DeSantis is worse off. But this was always going to happen. Better to happen in 2024 than 2028. But Josh is right. Political operatives will often pitch their candidate on there being “no real downside” to running because you grow your national donor lists and expand your name recognition with voters outside your state. But a lot of these guys are learning what Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and Tim Pawlenty have learned: There is a downside to running when expectations are high — you don’t meet them.Bruni: Give me a rough estimate — how much time have Haley and her advisers spent forging and honing put-downs of Vivek Ramaswamy? And would you like to suggest any for their arsenal? Josh, I’m betting you do, as you have written acidly about your college days with Ramaswamy.Barro: So I said in a column (“Section Guy Runs for President”) that I didn’t know Ramaswamy in college, but I have subsequently learned that, when I was a senior, I participated in a debate about Social Security privatization that he moderated. That I was able to forget him, I think, is a reflection of how common the overbearing type was at Harvard.Bruni: Ramaswamy as a carbon copy of countless others? Now you’ve really put me off my avocado toast, Josh. Is he in this race deep into the primaries, or is he the Herman Cain of this cycle (he asked wishfully)?Barro: I think the Ramaswamy bubble has already popped.Bruni: Popped? You make him sound like a pimple.Isgur: Your words, Frank.Barro: He makes himself sound like a pimple. He’s down to 5.1 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average, below where he was just before the August debate. One poll showed his unfavorables going up more than his favorables after the debate — he is very annoying, and that was obvious to a lot of people, whether or not they share my politics.Isgur: Agree. He’s not Trump. Trump can weather the “take me seriously, not literally” nonsense. Ramaswamy doesn’t have it.Bruni: Let’s talk about some broader dynamics. We’re on the precipice of a federal shutdown. If it comes, will that hurt Republicans and boost Biden, or will it seem to voters like so much usual insider garbage that it’s essentially white noise, to mix my metaphors wildly?Barro: I’m not convinced that government shutdowns have durable political effects.Isgur: It seems to keep happening every couple years, and the sky doesn’t fall. It is important, though, when it comes to what the G.O.P. is and what it will be moving forward. Kevin McCarthy battling for his job may not be anything new. But Chip Roy is the fiscal heart and soul of this wing of the party, and even he is saying they are going to pay a political penalty.Barro: I find it interesting that Kevin McCarthy seems extremely motivated to avoid one, or at least contain its duration. He thinks the politics are important.Isgur: I’d argue the reason it’s important is because it shows you what happens when voters elect people based on small donor popularity and social media memes. Nobody is rewarded for accomplishments, which require compromise — legislative or otherwise. These guys do better politically when they are in the minority. They actually win by losing — at least when their colleagues lose, that is. That’s not a sustainable model for a political party: Elect us and we’ll complain about the other guys the best!Bruni: What about the impeachment inquiry? The first hearing is on Thursday. Is it and should it be an enormous concern for Biden?Isgur: I’m confused why everyone else is shrugging this thing off. I keep hearing that this doesn’t give the G.O.P. any additional subpoena powers. Yes, it does. We just did this when House Democrats tried to subpoena Trump’s financial records. The Supreme Court was very clear that the House has broad legislative subpoena power when what they are seeking is related to potential legislation, but that it is subject to a balancing test between the two branches. But even the dissenters in that case said that Congress could have sought those records pursuant to their impeachment subpoena power. So, yes, the tool — a congressional subpoena — is the same. But the impeachment inquiry broadens their reach here. So they’ve opened the inquiry, they can get his financial records. Now it matters what they find.Barro: I agree with Sarah that the risk to Biden here depends on the underlying facts.Isgur: And I’m not sure why Democrats are so confident there won’t be anything there. The president has gotten so many of the facts wrong around Hunter Biden’s business dealings, I have no idea what his financial records will show. I am no closer to knowing whether Joe Biden was involved or not. But I’m not betting against it, either.Barro: I think the Hunter saga is extremely sad, and as I’ve written, it looks to me like the president is one of Hunter’s victims rather than a co-conspirator. I also think while there are aspects of this that are not relatable (it’s not relatable to have your son trading on your famous name to do a lot of shady business), there are other aspects that are very relatable — it is relatable to have a no-good family member with substance abuse and psychological issues who causes you a lot of trouble.Obviously, if they find some big financial scheme to transfer money to Joe Biden, the politics of this will be very different. But I don’t think they’re going to find it.Bruni: But let’s look beyond Hunter, beyond any shutdown, beyond impeachment. Sarah, Josh, if you were broadly to advise Joe Biden about how to win what is surely going to be a very, very, very close race, what would be your top three recommendations?Barro: The president’s No. 1 political liability is inflation, and food and fuel prices are the most salient aspect of inflation. He should be doing everything he can to bring price levels down. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a ton of direct control over this — if presidents did, they wouldn’t get tripped up by this issue. But he should be approving more domestic energy production and transmission, and he should be bragging more about doing so.U.S. oil production is nearing record levels, but Biden is reluctant to talk about that because it makes climate activists mad. If he gets attacked from the left for making gasoline too cheap and plentiful, great.Isgur: Make it a referendum on Trump. It’s what Hillary Clinton failed to do in 2016. When it’s about Trump, voters get squeamish. When it’s about Biden, they think of all of his flaws instead.Bruni: Squeamish doesn’t begin to capture how Trump makes this voter feel. Additional recommendations?Barro: Biden generally needs to be willing to pick more fights with the left. Trump has shown how this kind of politics works — by picking a fight with pro-life activists, he’s moderating his own image and increasing his odds of winning the general election. There’s a new poll out this week that says that voters see the Democratic Party as more extreme than the Republican Party by a margin of nine points. Biden needs to address that gap by finding his own opportunities to break with the extremes of his party — energy and fossil fuels provide one big opportunity, as I discussed earlier, but he can also break with his party in other areas where its agenda has unpopular elements, like crime and immigration.Isgur: The Republican National Committee handed Biden’s team a gift when they pulled out of the bipartisan debate commission. Biden doesn’t have to debate now. And he shouldn’t. The Trump team should want a zillion debates with Biden. I have no idea why they gave him this out.Bruni: I hear you, Sarah, on how Biden might bear up for two hours under bright lights, but let’s be realistic: Debates don’t exactly flatter Trump, who comes across as one part feral, two parts deranged. But let’s address the Kamala Harris factor. Josh, you’ve recommended replacing Harris, though it won’t happen. Maybe that’s your third? But you have to tell me whom you’d replace her with.Barro: Harris isn’t just a 2024 problem but also a 2028 problem. She is materially less popular than Biden is, and because of Biden’s age, he even more than most presidents needs a vice president who Americans feel comfortable seeing take the presidency, and the polls show that’s not her. I’ve written about why he should put Gretchen Whitmer on the ticket instead. What Biden needs to hold 270 electoral votes is to keep the Upper Midwest swing states where his poll numbers are actually holding up pretty well — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The popular governor of Michigan can do a lot more for him there than Harris can.Isgur: It is a big problem that voters don’t think Biden will make it through another term, so that the V.P. question isn’t will she make a good vice president but will she make a good president. Democrats are quick to point out that V.P. attacks haven’t worked in the past. True! But nobody was really thinking about Dan Quayle sitting behind the Resolute Desk, either. But I don’t think they can replace Harris. The cost would be too high with the base. I also don’t think Harris can get better. So my advice here is to hide her. Don’t remind voters that they don’t like her. Quit setting her up for failure and word salads.Bruni: I want to end with a lightning round and maybe find some fugitive levity — God knows we need it. In honor of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, I wonder: How many gold bars does each of you have in your basement or closet? Mine are in my pantry, behind the cashews, and I haven’t counted them lately.Barro: I understand Bob Menendez keeps tons of cash in his house because his family had to flee a Communist revolution. This is completely understandable. The only reason I don’t keep all that gold on hand is that I do not have a similar familial history.Isgur: Mine are made of chocolate, and they are delicious. (Dark chocolate. Milk chocolate is for wusses, and white chocolate is a lie.)Bruni: Are we measuring Kevin McCarthy’s remaining time as House speaker in hours, weeks or months, and what’s your best guess for when he subsequently appears in — and how he fares on — “Dancing With the Stars”?Isgur: Why do people keep going on that show?! The money can’t possibly be that good. I’ll take the over on McCarthy, though. The Matt Gaetz caucus doesn’t have a viable replacement or McCarthy wouldn’t have won in the first place … or 15th place.Barro: I also take the over on McCarthy — most of his caucus likes him, and unlike the John Boehner era, he hasn’t had to resort to moving spending bills that lack majority support in the conference. Gaetz and his ilk are a huge headache, but he won’t be going anywhere.Bruni: Does the confirmed November debate between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom — moderated by Sean Hannity! — represent reason to live or reason to emigrate?Barro: Ugh. I find Newsom so grating and slimy. All you really need to know about him is he had an affair with his campaign manager’s wife. He’s also been putting his interests ahead of the party’s, with this cockamamie proposal for a constitutional amendment to restrict gun rights. It will never happen, will raise the salience of gun issues in a way that hurts Democratic candidates in a general election and will help Newsom build a grass roots email fund-raising list.Isgur: Oh, I actually think this is pretty important. Newsom and DeSantis more than anyone else in their parties actually represent the policy zeitgeist of their teams right now. This is the debate we should be having in 2024. As governors, they’ve been mirror images of each other. The problem for a Burkean like me is that both of them want to use and expand state power to “win” for their team. There’s no party making the argument for limited government or fiscal restraint anymore. And there’s no concern about what happens when you empower government and the other side wins an election and uses that power the way they want to.Bruni: You’ve no choice: You must dine, one-on-one, with either Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Whom do you choose, and how do you dull the pain?Barro: Marjorie Taylor Greene, but we’d spend the whole time talking about Lauren Boebert.Isgur: Damn. That was a good answer. Can I pick George Santos? At least he’s got great stories.Bruni: Last question — we’ve been plenty gloomy. Name something or a few things that have happened over recent weeks that should give us hope about the country’s future.Barro: The Ibram Kendi bubble popped! So, that was good.More seriously, while inflation remains a major problem (and a totally valid voter complaint), the economy has continued to show resiliency on output and job growth. People still want to spend and invest, despite 7 percent mortgage rates. It points to underlying health in the economy and a reason to feel good about American business and living standards in the medium and long term.Isgur: I had a baby this month — and in fact, September is one of the most popular birth month in the United States — so for all of us who are newly unburdened, we’re enjoying that second (third?) glass of wine, deli meat, sushi, unpasteurized cheese and guilt-free Coke Zero. And the only trade-off is that a little potato screams at me for about two hours each night!But you look at these new studies showing that the overall birthrate in the United States is staying low as teen pregnancies drop and birth control becomes more available but that highly educated woman are having more kids than they did 40 years ago … clearly some people are feeling quite hopeful. Or randy. Or both!Bruni: Sarah, that’s wonderful about your little potato — and your sushi!Barro: Congratulations!Bruni: Pop not only goes the weasel but also the Ramaswamy and the Kendi — and the Barro, ever popping off! Thank you both. Happy Republican debate! If that’s not the oxymoron of the century.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.Josh Barro writes the newsletter Very Serious and is the host of the podcast “Serious Trouble.”Sarah Isgur is a senior editor at The Dispatch and the host of the podcast “Advisory Opinions.”Source photograph by ZargonDesign, via Getty Images.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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      in Elections

      September Is the Cruelest Month? It Is if You’re Joe Biden.

      by

      Gail Collins: Bret, September is one of my favorite months, and I’ve always kinda wished Congress would stay out on vacation longer. They tend to be a leaky cloud on the horizon.Let’s start with — oh God, the impeachment inquiry. You’re in charge of the Republicans, no matter how you feel about Donald Trump. Give me your take.Bret Stephens: Gail, if this impeachment inquiry were any more premature, it would be a teenage boy.Gail: I’m stealing that line.Bret: I say that as someone who thinks that Hunter Biden’s business dealings — with his family’s alleged shell companies and his shady foreign partners and curiously high-priced artwork — stink to heaven. I also think we in the press need to dig deeper and harder into what his father knew about what his son was up to, whether Joe knowingly lent his name to the enterprise, and who, if anyone, in the wider Biden family benefited from Hunter’s activities. And it’s no excuse to say the Trumps did worse. Innocence isn’t established by arguing that the other guy is a bigger crook.But, as our colleague David French astutely pointed out last week, “Where is the blue dress?” Every modern impeachment inquiry, from Richard Nixon and the missing 18½ minutes of tape to Bill Clinton and his, er, DNA sample, to Trump’s phone call to Volodymyr Zelensky and then the Jan. 6 riot, started from smoking-gun evidence of wrongdoing. What we have here, at most, is secondhand smoke.Gail: Thirdhand, maybe. Hunter Biden broke the law when he filled out a false gun-purchase form, denying he had a drug use problem. That’s bad. He should be punished, but it certainly doesn’t have to be by doing time in the slammer.Bret: Agree. It would probably be enough to sentence Hunter to watch 100 hours of Josh Hawley questioning Senate witnesses. But that might vanquish his hard-earned sobriety.Gail: When you try to connect Hunter’s stupid misdeeds to his father, to argue it’s a reason to throw the duly elected president of the United States out of office — it’s like me demanding new antismoking laws in Manhattan because a guy in Canton, Ohio, is puffing on a cigar downtown.But we’re pretty much in concert on this, I think. Next what-about-the-Republicans inquiry: the budget. Is Kevin McCarthy leading — or not-leading — us into a government shutdown?Bret: I love the way McCarthy keeps getting kicked around by the ultra-MAGAites: It’s the most poetic bit of justice since Mr. Bumble, the sadist, married Mrs. Corney, the bigger sadist, in “Oliver Twist.”Gail: Yipee! A Dickens reference to Kevin McCarthy. Not as if we had great expectations for his speakership.Bret: Touché. My guess is that we’ll avoid a shutdown with a continuing resolution that funds the government past the end of the month. And I’m sure we’ll find a way to fund the Defense Department, too. The longer-term question is how McCarthy can manage a Republican circus in which Donald Trump is the ringmaster, Matt Gaetz cracks the whip, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is in charge of the clowns.And speaking of cracking the whip: Your thoughts on the autoworkers’ strike?Gail: You know, I’ve been out on strike a few times — mostly it worked out and got everybody to a decent settlement. Although once, long ago, it did cause the publisher of a small paper I was working on to just pull the plug.Bret: Uh oh.Gail: I’m generally on the union side in these things. Organized labor has been a key to the growth of a solid middle- and working-class America. But the U.A.W.’s lack of support for President Biden’s effort to move us to electric cars has definitely cooled me.Bret: Won’t surprise you that it’s the part of the strike I find most interesting: It shows the growing gap between the Democrats’ environmental commitments and the interests of working-class voters.Gail: Presuming you’re hanging with management?Bret: Er, yep.I don’t blame workers for wanting hefty raises: Inflation has really eaten away at purchasing power. But the U.A.W. wants to more than double the Big Three’s labor costs, to about $150 an hour from around $65 now, which is unsustainable against nonunionized competitors like Toyota, where it’s closer to $55. The union also wants to go back to the same kind of defined-benefit pension plan that practically bankrupted the Big Three a generation ago.I’m wondering about the politics of this, too. The administration is standing with the unions, though I’m not sure a long strike helps them as opposed to, say, Trump.Gail: I’m sure there’s a big gap between the ideal contract goals they espouse in public and their real-life targets. But the bottom line is that when profits are raising management pay spectacularly, workers also deserve an unusually nice, substantial raise.If there’s a long strike, which I doubt there will be, we’ll come back to it — this really is one of our most fundamental differences. But in the meantime: Mitt Romney. He’s retiring. What are your thoughts?Bret: You and I both have guilty consciences for being so hard on the guy back when he was running for president.Now, I think of him as the last good Republican. He was right about the threat posed by Russia back in 2012, when so many Democrats mocked him for it. He was the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial and one of only seven Republicans who voted for conviction in the second impeachment.Gail: Mitt Romney was a good governor in Massachusetts, where he proved a cost-conscious Republican could still build a much-needed state health care program. He’s been a fine senator who proved it’s possible for a Republican to have backbone in the age of Trump.Those were the arenas he was meant to star in. Sadly, as a presidential candidate, he was terrible. Suddenly retro: “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” And very, very boring. It predates your arrival at The Times, but you may remember that I made a thing out of mentioning, every time I wrote about Romney, that he once drove to Canada with the family dog on the roof of the car.Bret: May remember, Gail?Gail: It was just a game I’d worked up to rebel against the deep, deep dullness of his candidacy. Still getting pictures of dogs on car roofs from readers after all these years.But that shouldn’t be his political legacy. Mitt, I apologize.Bret: Me too, Mitt. And in choosing to retire from politics when he’s still fit in order to make way for the next generation, Romney’s showing that he’s right about life — in the sense that it’s good to bow out with grace.Gail: Bet I know what’s coming next.Bret: Wish I could say the same thing about Joe Biden. Which reminds me to ask your thoughts about David Ignatius’s column in The Washington Post that everyone in the chattering classes is talking about, particularly this line: “If he and Harris campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.”Gail: You and I both bemoaned Biden’s decision to run again. We wanted him to announce his planned retirement early so all the other Democratic options — many attractive possibilities from Congress and state government — could get out there and introduce themselves to the country.Didn’t happen. And Biden, alas, isn’t going to listen to critics unless he suffers some unexpected medical issue.Bret: That “unexpected medical issue” is the palpable sense of feebleness in Biden’s public performances. Not a good look for a guy who wants to spend five more years in the world’s most important job.Gail: But I’m not sure Biden’s age gives the race to Trump. And as I’ve pointed out a billion times, Trump will be 78 if he runs against Biden, and in way worse physical shape. Although he has now started to brag about his long-life genes.Bret: His awful dad lived to 93. I’ll assume his mom was a saint, and she died at 88.Gail: As to Kamala Harris, she’s certainly been improving during her vice presidency. I’d be happy to see her run as a candidate for president — up against a bunch of other smart, super-achieving Democrats.Bret: I suspect a lot of people would feel a lot better about voting for Biden next year if they had rock-solid confidence in his veep. Like Harris or not, her unfavorable ratings among voters is close to 56 percent, which makes her a huge drag on an already vulnerable ticket. I know a lot of Democrats feel Biden needs a minority woman as a running mate, so why not swap her out for someone like Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Hispanic governor of New Mexico, or Mellody Hobson, the superstar businesswoman, or Val Demings, the former congresswoman from Florida? I also think Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, would also be a great veep choice, even if she isn’t a minority woman, because she’s just incredibly talented. Remember that F.D.R. tossed out Henry Wallace for Harry Truman in 1944. That’s the historical analogy Biden ought to be thinking of now.Gail: Does sound very attractive. But Bret, you know that sort of thing isn’t done anymore. You don’t dump your loyal, hard-working vice president. Who also happens to be of Jamaican and Indian descent. Swapping for another minority woman just seems … tacky.If Biden bowed out, it’d be perfectly reasonable for all those other good candidates to jump in. But as things stand they are, sigh, as they are.Bret: I’ll grant you the tacky part. But I can think of something a lot worse: Donald Trump back in the White House. When those are the stakes, being tacky seems a small price to pay for national self-preservation.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