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    Biden’s Center-Leaning Budget Bends to Political Reality

    With his party facing potentially gale-force headwinds in the midterm elections, President Biden released a budget on Monday that tacks toward the political center, bowing to the realities facing endangered Democrats by bolstering defense and law enforcement spending and tackling inflation and deficit reduction in service of what he called a “bipartisan unity agenda.”Under the plan, the left wing’s hopes for a peace dividend at the end of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be scotched in favor of a new Great Powers military budget that would bring the Defense Department’s allocation to $773 billion, an increase of nearly 10 percent over the level for fiscal 2021. Rather than cuts, Mr. Biden pledges to bolster the nation’s nuclear weapons program, including all three legs of the nuclear “triad”: bombers, land-based intercontinental missiles and submarines.“We are at the beginning of a decisive decade that will determine the future strategic competition with China, the trajectory of the climate crisis, and whether the rules governing technology, trade and international economics enshrine or violate our democratic values,” the budget states, justifying large increases to project U.S. military and diplomatic strength globally.Far from defunding the police and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, two popular slogans on the left, the budget robustly funds both. Customs and Border Protection would receive $15.3 billion, ICE $8.1 billion, including $309 million for border security technology — a well-funded effort to stop illegal migration. The nation’s two primary immigration law enforcement agencies would see increases of around 13 percent.The budget even includes $19 million for border fencing and other infrastructure.Federal law enforcement would receive $17.4 billion, a jump of nearly 11 percent, or $1.7 billion over 2021 levels. And the president, acknowledging widespread concerns that are driving Republican attacks against Democrats, vows to tackle the rise in violent crime.The proposals track with some of the main attack lines Republicans are using against Democrats in the run-up to the November contests, as they portray Mr. Biden and his allies in Congress as weak on security, soft on crime and profligate with federal spending to the point of damaging the economy.Liberal Democrats would see some of their priorities addressed, including “through substantial funding for climate programs and “environmental justice” initiatives, as well as changes to incarceration policy. But many on the left will be disappointed. In lieu of broad student debt forgiveness, an executive order that many Democrats have been pressing for since Mr. Biden’s inauguration, the Education Department’s student lending services would receive a huge increase, 43 percent, to $2.7 billion.Swing-district Democrats who have been pressing Mr. Biden to address widespread concerns about rising prices would be able to point to a number of programs to combat inflation, the biggest issue weighing down their prospects. The president promises large-scale efforts to unclot supply-chain bottlenecks that are raising costs and large-scale deficit reduction that could cool the economy. More

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    Ted Cruz Knows Which Side He’s On

    Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I think many Americans would give President Biden reasonably high marks for his handling of the war in Ukraine so far. His speech in Poland, in which he said, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” may have been provocative, and it might have his advisers scrambling to soften it, but it was right, and the right message to send about what should become of Vladimir Putin’s foul regime.Yet Biden still reminds me of George H.W. Bush, who handled the big foreign policy crises of his day with aplomb but wound up as a one-termer. What do you think of the comparison?Gail Collins: Hey, isn’t it interesting to recall that when Bush was fighting to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991, the big American ally was Russia? Those were the days, I guess. Just noticed that a Gallup poll found that right after the war, Bush had an 89 percent approval rating.Bret: Bush had the advantage of not having to face down a nuclear-armed adversary — thanks to an Israeli strike on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor a decade earlier.Gail: And yet he got defeated for a second term by Bill Clinton. We could discuss the possibility of Biden suffering a similar fate — perceptions of a bad economy trump strong foreign policy. Except that Clinton’s genius was in portraying himself as a Democrat who normal Republicans didn’t have to fear. Very, very doubtful the next Republican presidential nominee is going to be able to turn that trick.Do you really think Biden would be walloped if people actually had to compare him to Trump, one on one, presuming the two of them ran again?Bret: I continue to have a hard time believing that Biden intends to run again, when he’s 81. I also don’t think Trump’s going to run — he’s damaged himself more deeply than he probably realizes with his imbecile praise of Putin and his continued election denialism.Gail: This scenario presumes Trump bows to reality. Hehehehehe. Sorry, continue.Bret: Fair point.Assuming your hypothetical turns out to be right, I’d probably place a small bet on Trump winning a rematch, awful as that is. I know Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were able to turn their presidencies around after difficult starts. But both men were naturally gifted political figures in a way Biden just isn’t. Both men were in touch with the center of American politics in a way Biden should be, but isn’t, because he steered too far to the left in his first year. And both men were sailing into calmer seas, economically speaking, as they prepared their re-election campaigns, whereas I don’t see inflation being tamed except at the price of a very steep recession.Would you bet on Biden in a rematch?Gail: Yeah, but I don’t think Biden is going to run. Although he’d be crazy to formally announce this soon and turn the bulk of his presidency into a lame-duck limp.Bret: Don’t agree that he should wait to announce, but that’s an argument for another time.Gail: And I don’t think his problem is steering too far to the left. His problem is that he doesn’t — never did have — that political genius for selling the country, or even his supporters, on a big message.Bret: Give ’em hell, Harry, he is not. But it looks like he’s trying with his plan to tax the very rich. Which … well, what do you think of it?Gail: Ah, Bret, our most reliable, perpetual disagreement. Yeah, given the fact that the richest Americans are now paying an effective tax rate around 8 percent, I would say a minimum of 20 percent on households worth more than $100 million is not a burden.Bret: Probably won’t get past the Senate, may be ruled an unconstitutional wealth tax by the Supreme Court and is reminiscent of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was supposed to hit only a handful of high-flyers in the 1970s but wound up taxing far less wealthy people. But the proposal could still be … popular. Anything else you’d like to see him do?Gail: I’d also be happy to see him lead a quest to control prescription drug prices: Let Medicare negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry and cap the cost of certain medications, like insulin. It’d be a debate people could really get into.Bret: I think job No. 1 for Biden is to make sure Putin experiences unmistakable defeat in Ukraine. A stalemated truce in which Russia steals more of Ukraine’s coastline, ports and energy riches will only entice Putin to create further crises so that he can “solve” them in exchange for Western concessions. I also think we should accept more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees; we should welcome as many who want to come here with open arms.Gail: We should talk more about the refugees long term, but of course the immediate challenge is to support them in every way possible.Bret: If Romania can take in more than half a million refugees, we can take in at least as many.Gail: Not going to argue, but right now back to domestic matters …Bret: Biden’s other big task is doing what he can to ease the burden of inflation. We both know that’s mainly a job for the Fed. But the government can still ease all kinds of regulatory burdens that constrict supply chains, like employing members of the National Guards to make up for the trucker shortage. I’m also in favor of the proposal from Maggie Hassan and Mark Kelly — both Democratic senators — to suspend the federal tax on gasoline for the rest of the year, though I would only reinstate it once the price of gasoline falls below $3.50 a gallon, no matter whether that happens before November or after. Gas taxes are really regressive once you stop to think of the bite they take out of the pockets of working-class people who drive back and forth to work.Gail: Short-term gas price relief would be great, as long as it’s combined with long-term plans to fight climate change with energy-efficient cars and more mass transit. Although I know the latter tends to cause many conservative conservatives to shudder.On a completely different but totally fascinating topic: Ginni Thomas. Wife of a Supreme Court justice and now revealed as a very aggressive, deeply crazy activist in the Trump-really-won sideshow.Should we worry about her? Is she dangerous or just astonishingly weird?Bret: Depends on whether you think that being a fever-swamp conservative is dangerous, weird or just the depressing new normal. “All of the above” is also a possibility. Mrs. Thomas attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. She urged the Trump team to feature Sidney Powell, the lawyer with bizarro theories about voting machine fraud. And she wrote Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, some texts right after the election was called for Biden, telling him to “stand firm” against “the greatest Heist in our History.”All of which says to me that I’m glad I’m not the one who gets to hang with Ginni Thomas, but de gustibus non est disputandum, as they used to say. Do you think her behavior should require Clarence Thomas to recuse himself in some cases?Gail: If they get an overturn-the-election case, or even anything relating to the Jan. 6 riots, I would say he’d either have to recuse or be impeached. Otherwise it’s hard to imagine enough pressure building. But I’d be happy to hear I’m wrong. What do you think?Bret: He’d have to recuse himself in those kinds of cases, because the appearance of a conflict of interest is now overwhelming. That said, if every public official were on the hook for nutty things done or said by spouses or family members, it would probably have unintended consequences nobody would like. For instance: Hunter Biden.Gail: I will refrain from dipping back into our Hunter Biden argument except to point out that some experts think he’s getting a reasonable price for his artwork these days. Lips sealed …Bret: But speaking of the Supreme Court, did you watch the Senate hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson? How do you think she did?Gail: Better than great.Bret: Agree. I don’t think her confirmation is in any doubt, especially now that Joe Manchin has come out in her favor, but I enjoyed watching her politely making mincemeat of Ted Cruz, who is a one-man reminder of why sentient people hate politicians. If Republicans were wiser, they’d register their disagreements with some of her positions but vote to confirm her on the principle that she’s fully qualified to serve on the high court. But … they won’t.Gail: Also watching the dreaded Marsha Blackburn asking Jackson to define “woman.” Glad we agree that Republicans aren’t wise.Bret: In the meantime, Gail, it looks like we have a new superinfectious sub-variant of Covid to keep us awake at night. Forget Omicron, now we’ve got Omigod.Gail: I’m going with Dr. Fauci’s theory that it’s not something to get frazzled about. Unless, of course, you haven’t been vaccinated, in which case there’s probably not any point in having a conversation.But I am appalled that Congress didn’t approve the $15.6 billion Biden wanted for tests, treatments and research on vaccines for new variants. If I’m going to side with the throw-away-masks crowd, I’m also going to side with the fund-the-support-system gang.Bret: If we’re going to start thinking of Covid as a relatively normal illness, maybe we need to stop treating it like a national emergency. What do you say we argue about this another day?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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    Democrats Are Making Life Too Easy for Republicans

    As the 2022 midterms draw into view, the question arises: To what degree are Democratic difficulties inevitable?Ruy Teixeira, a co-editor of The Liberal Patriot, argues in an email that “the cultural left has managed to associate the Democratic Party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech and, of course, race and gender that are quite far from those of the median voter. That’s a success for the cultural left, but the hard reality is that it’s an electoral liability for the Democratic Party.”Teixeira went on: “The current Democratic brand suffers from multiple deficiencies that make it somewhere between uncompelling and toxic to wide swaths of American voters who might potentially be their allies.”In Teixeira’s view, many Democrats have fallen victim to what he calls the “Fox News fallacy.”“This is the idea,” Teixeira said. “If Fox News criticizes the Democrats for X, then there must be absolutely nothing to X, and the job of Democrats is to assert that loudly and often.” He wrote, “Take the issue of crime. Initially dismissed as simply an artifact of the Covid shutdown that was being vastly exaggerated by Fox News and the like for their nefarious purposes, it is now apparent that the spike in violent crime is quite real and that voters are very, very concerned about it.”In an analysis of the complexity of the current Democratic predicament, Sarah Anzia, a professor of public policy and political science at Berkeley, addressed the preponderance of urban voters in the Democratic coalition: “The Democrats have a challenge rooted in political geography and the institution of single-member, first-past-the-post elections.” Citing Jonathan Rodden’s 2019 book “Why Cities Lose,” Anzia argued that the density of Democratic voters in cities has both geographically isolated the party and empowered its most progressive activist wing:They need to find ways to compete in more moderate or even conservative districts if they hope to have majorities of seats in the U.S. Congress or state legislatures. But large numbers of their voters are concentrated in cities, quite progressive and want the party to move further left in its policy positions — and not just on social-cultural issues.Anzia contended that Democrats “have collectively staked out positions that have alienated certain supporters,” which is “related to the built-in challenge I just described.”The murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer and fall of 2020, Anzia continued,brought policing reform to the agenda in a way that it hadn’t been before, even after Ferguson, but suddenly the conversation jumped to “defund the police.” However one defines the specifics of what that should mean, I do think it sounded extreme and scary to a lot of people outside of places like Berkeley, Seattle, Minneapolis.According to Anzia’s analysis, Democratic elected officials and teachers’ unions weakened the party by closing schools for in-person instruction for too long:It made sense to have remote instruction early in the pandemic, but in many places, kids were in Zoom school until April of 2021 or even until the end of the academic year. Anyone could see that this was going to have some really negative consequences for kids.Multiple studies, Anzia wrote,show that this was more common — schools remained in remote learning longer — in more Democratic places with stronger teachers’ unions. This is an issue that affects people’s lives very directly. It handed Republicans an issue to run on.Some experts in American elections make the case that Joe Biden was elected by voters seeking a return to regular order after the tumultuous Trump years but that instead of steering a moderate course, Biden sought to become a transformative president in the mold of Franklin Roosevelt — the problem being that because his party held razor-thin majorities in Congress, he lacked the mandate to do it.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, wrote in an email thatthe structural problem here is that Democrats’ success in winning unified party control in the Georgia Senate runoffs in 2021 hugely inflated the expectations of Democratic base voters about what could be achieved. At that time, it was even bandied about that Joe Biden was going to be the next F.D.R. Democrats passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution that envisioned a transformational domestic policy agenda. But Democrats have not been able to deliver on most of these policy goals.“Democrats,” Lee continued,have not been able to achieve that unanimity on issues of critical importance to the party’s base: voting rights, Build Back Better, minimum wage, police reform. Democratic base voters are very frustrated and disappointed right now. Considering that the policy outcomes of trifecta control of national government have been so disappointing, it is hard to see how Democrats can fire up their base to turn out again. It is difficult to see anything changing on this front between now and the 2022 midterms.Eric Schickler, a political scientist at Berkeley, described the most likely outcome of the 2022 elections as part of “a cycle of disappointment and recrimination” that not only has plagued Biden’s first two years in office but also dogged his two most recent Democratic predecessors — Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010.The pattern:Republicans provided unified opposition to Democrats’ agenda, Democrats struggled to corral all of their members behind their program, and the party’s own voters grew frustrated by the disappointing results compared to their expectations.At the moment, there is widespread pessimism among those on the left end of the political spectrum. Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at Brookings, replying by email to my inquiry, wrote that for predictable reasons, “Democrats face an uphill battle in both 2022 and 2024.”But, she went on, “the problems are much deeper. First, the white working class that used to vote Democratic no longer does.” Sawhill noted that when shestudied this group back in 2018, what surprised me most was their very negative attitudes toward government, their dislike of social welfare programs, their commitment to an ethic of personal responsibility and the importance of family and religion in their lives. This large group includes some people who are just plain prejudiced but a larger group that simply resents all the attention paid to race, gender, sexual preference or identity and the disrespect they think this entails for those with more traditional views and lifestyles.Messages coming from the more progressive members of the Democratic Party, Sawhill warned, “will be exploited by Republicans to move moderate Democrats or to move no-Trump Republicans in their direction.”Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, is highly critical of the contemporary Democratic Party, writing by email:Misguided focus on unpopular social policies are driving voters away from the Democratic Party and are mobilizing Republicans. Democrats used to be the party of the working class, but today they are instead seen as a party defined by ostensibly legalizing property crime, crippling the police and injecting social justice into math classes.As a result, Westwood continued,It is no surprise that this doesn’t connect with a working family struggling to pay for surging grocery bills. By abandoning their core brand, even Democrats who oppose defunding the police are burdened by the party’s commitment to unpopular social policy.The traditional strategy in midterm elections, Westwood wrote, is to mobilize the party base. Instead, he contended, Democratshave decided to let the fringe brand the party’s messaging around issues that fail to obtain majority support among the base. Perhaps the most successful misinformation campaign in modern politics is being waged by the Twitter left against the base of the Democratic Party. The Twitter mob is intent on pushing social policies that have approximately zero chance of becoming law as a test of liberalism. Even if you support reducing taxes on the middle class, immigration reform and increasing the minimum wage, opposing defunding the police or the legalization of property crime makes you an unreasonable outcast.Along similar lines, John Halpin, who works with Teixeira as a co-editor of The Liberal Patriot, emailed to say thatthe biggest problem ahead of the 2022 midterms is that voters don’t think Biden and the Democrats are focused on the issues that matter most to them. If you look at the most recent Wall Street Journal poll, Democrats are currently suffering double-digit deficits compared to Republicans on perceptions about which party is best able to handle nearly all of the issues that matter most to voters: for example, rebuilding the economy (–13), getting inflation under control (–17), reducing crime (–20) and securing the border (–26). Democratic advantages on issues like education are also down considerably from just a few years ago.There are political analysts who differ strongly from Westwood and Teixeira in their critiques of Democratic strategy.Will Bunch, a liberal columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, argues that Democrats should adopt a full-speed-ahead, damn-the-torpedoes approach. In a March 3 column, Bunch contended that the Reagan revolution of the 1980s still casts “a cloud of self-doubt over the Democratic Party” and thatparty messaging largely remains dominated by reaction and fear rather than boldness. Those fears seem rooted in a panic that progressive values will be seen as less American — when the reality is that ideas like academic freedom, preventing censorship and a belief in inquiry, including science, are the core beliefs of this nation. It’s past time for President Biden and other leaders of the Democratic Party to approve this message.I asked Bunch how a Democratic candidate should appeal to white working-class voters and socially conservative Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters. He replied by email:The white working class is a much more diverse group than commentators from all sides tend to credit. Remember the large turnouts for Black Lives Matter marches in isolated Rust Belt and rural communities in 2020, for example, and many in the working class remain zealously pro-union. I think the greatest cause of resentment is lack of educational and related career opportunities that have shut out the working class of all races. The Democrats are philosophically wired to expand these opportunities — through free community college and trade school, for example — yet have failed to make these a priority, ensuring a continued sense that Dems are now the party of self-enlightened degree holders looking down on them. That cycle can and must be broken.I also asked how a Democrat should counter Republicans who exploit critical race theory, defunding the police, affirmative action, transgender rights and other politically divisive issues.Bunch replied:It’s important to reframe the conversations, so that the debate about schools, for example, isn’t about critical race theory (a construction that’s only taught in law schools) but about book banning or blocking teachers from discussing even Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks, which most voters in the vast middle vehemently oppose. Likewise, Democrats need to make clear that their goal is making streets safer and ending the heartbreak of homicide, but the way to do that is by thoughtfully building safer communities, not throwing more taxpayer dollars at failed methods of policing. The best strategy on affirmative action, at least in education, is to again make higher ed a public good and eliminate the current “Hunger Games” of college admissions.Dan Froomkin, a media critic who writes at Press Watch, argued in an email that Republicans are using a collection of contrived issues with little substantive merit. On critical race theory, for example, he wrote:It’s a phony issue. What far-right Republicans mean by “critical race theory” is that white children are being taught at public schools that they should be ashamed of being white. This is a made-up issue that serves as a stalking horse for inciting white grievance. Like so many of the far-right accusations against their opponents, it really couldn’t be less true. The reality is that public schools writ large don’t teach nearly enough about the sordid aspects of American history or culture, as you well know. As a press critic, I have been horrified at how credulously many political reporters have written about Republican lies — and how impressed they were at their alleged (but entirely unproven) effectiveness. They wrote about it as if it were a real problem, rather than an obvious, bad-faith attempt to manufacture white panic.The prospect of Democratic losses in the House will have ideological consequences for both parties.Halpin pointed out that the Democrats who lose seats in Congress in 2022 are certain to be disproportionately drawn from the moderates who face the most difficulty winning re-election in purple districts:If the Democrats get clobbered this fall, it will mostly be frontline members — those who are more moderate and centrist — who lose their seats, thus paving the way for a minority Democratic Party to become even more left wing. This would be a disaster for Democrats, but no one in the party seems willing to confront it.Matt Bennett, the executive vice president of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, cited a major difference now compared to past midterm elections, writing in an email:Republicans at every level are openly plotting to steal the presidency in 2024, as we detail here. An essential element of their plot is winning control of Congress. That means the future prospects of both the Democratic Party and American democracy could be severely damaged by a loss in 2022.The congressional Republicans, Bennett continued,who stood up to Trump’s assault on democracy now number in the single digits, and most of them are retiring or likely to lose in primaries. The candidates who would give them their majorities are, almost to a person, fully committed to the big lie that Trump won in 2020. Almost all have run on a set of authoritarian messages that include fear of the mythical deep state, disregard for constitutional and legal protections (other than the Second Amendment) and contempt for vital norms of governing. Worst of all, they have committed themselves to unyielding support for Donald Trump, who has staked his entire postpresidency and comeback effort on an assault on voting. Putting his acolytes in charge of Congress could send us careening toward the cliff, endangering the future of the world’s oldest and sturdiest democracy.Bennett warned:While the economy continues to impact voter behavior most, Republicans have been able to weaponize culture war issues in ways that significantly damage Democrats. In a major retrospective on the 2020 congressional elections that Third Way ran along with the Collective PAC and Latino Victory Fund, we found that Republican attempts to brand Democrats as radicals worked devastatingly well. Of the 12 House Democratic freshmen who lost last cycle — on a ticket with a winning presidential candidate — all were seriously hurt by culture war attacks.This Democratic liability has become acute as politics have become nationalized, making all Democrats pay a price for what a small but prominent group pushes for:Members of Congress on the far left have taken a series of positions — like defunding the police, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, closing federal prisons, decriminalizing border crossings, etc. — that are politically toxic in swing districts. It is no longer the case that what happens in a deep blue district, where these kinds of ideas might be more palatable, stays there. The fact is that these kinds of ideas and slogans do create a perception among swing voters that Democrats are outside the mainstream.John Lawrence, who served as an aide in the House for 38 years, including eight as chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi, is the kind of party strategist hardly anyone outside Washington has heard of but who is exceptionally knowledgeable about the state of American politics.Lawrence replied by email to my inquiry:I think a lot of voters will use 2022 to remind Biden (and Democrats, since they can’t vote against him) that their vote in 2020 was a vote to return to normalcy, not a blank check to build on the New Deal and Great Society. Once in office — albeit with ridiculously narrow margins — Democrats used the crisis to swing for the stands, ignoring the historical lesson of the Senate’s moderating role. So they have created the worst of all worlds: a failure to enact what the base demanded (but they did not have the votes to deliver) and the appearance of having overreached and invited an electoral haircut by many 2020 supporters who never embraced such a sweeping agenda.The Russian invasion of Ukraine makes the future highly uncertain not only in Europe but throughout the world. Similarly, if less violently, the state of the economy, inflation and the trajectory of Covid are fuel for dissension and remain unpredictable.The historical pattern of midterm contests suggests that a rejection of the party in power is the customary order of business. But the consequences of a Republican takeover of the House or of both branches of Congress are unlikely to be routine. What we can be sure of is that the Democrats can’t go on forever with this much of a gulf between what the majority of progressive party activists think the party should stand for and what the majority of Americans think it should.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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    La historia detrás del diario de Ashley Biden

    Proyecto Veritas llamó a la hija del presidente para corroborar que era su diario. Las investigaciones judiciales revelan nuevos datos que muestran cómo fue que esa organización trabajó para divulgar información personal sobre la familia Biden.Un mes antes de las elecciones estadounidenses de 2020, la hija de Joe Biden, Ashley, recibió una llamada de un hombre que dijo que la quería ayudar. Con un tono amistoso, le aseguró que había encontrado un diario que creía que le pertenecía a ella, y quería devolvérselo.Es cierto que Ashley Biden había escrito un diario durante el año anterior mientras se recuperaba de una adicción y lo había guardado, junto con otras pertenencias, en la casa de un amigo en Florida donde había vivido hasta unos pocos meses antes. Si el contenido de ese diario personal se hubiese divulgado, podría haber significado una vergüenza o una distracción para su padre durante un momento crítico de la campaña.Biden acordó con el hombre que llamó que, al día siguiente, enviaría a una persona para que buscara el diario.Pero no estaba tratando con un buen samaritano.Esa persona trabajaba para el Proyecto Veritas, un grupo conservador que se había convertido en uno de los predilectos del presidente Donald Trump, según entrevistas con personas familiarizadas con la secuencia de eventos. Desde la sede del grupo en el condado de Westchester, Nueva York, y acompañado por otros miembros de la organización, el hombre buscaba engañar a Biden para que confirmara la autenticidad del diario, el cual Proyecto Veritas estaba a punto de comprarle a dos intermediarios por 40.000 dólares.El hombre que llamó no se identificó como alguien vinculado al Proyecto Veritas, según relatos de dos personas que conocen los detalles de la conversación. Al final de la llamada, varios integrantes del grupo que estuvieron presentes, que escucharon grabaciones de la llamada o que fueron informados sobre la conversación, creían que Biden había dicho más que suficiente para confirmar que era su diario.Los nuevos detalles sobre el esfuerzo del Proyecto Veritas para confirmar que el diario era de Biden, son elementos de una historia que sigue en proceso y que se enfoca en cómo algunos partidarios de Trump, y una organización conocida por sus operaciones encubiertas, trabajaron para exponer información personal sobre la familia Biden durante la campaña electoral de 2020.A través de entrevistas, y documentos judiciales y de otros tipos, la nueva información le agrega más detalles a lo que se sabe sobre un episodio que ha causado una investigación penal sobre el Proyecto Veritas por parte de fiscales federales, quienes sugirieron tener evidencia de que el grupo fue cómplice en el robo de la propiedad de Ashley Biden y el transporte de bienes hurtados a través de fronteras estatales.Además, al demostrar que el Proyecto Veritas utilizó el engaño en vez de técnicas periodísticas tradicionales cuando contactó a Biden —la persona que hizo la llamada se identificó con un nombre falso—, los nuevos testimonios podrían complicar aún más las afirmaciones que hizo la organización en documentos judiciales de que debería ser tratada como una editorial y recibir las protecciones consagradas en la Primera Enmienda. Con regularidad, el Proyecto Veritas lleva a cabo operaciones encubiertas, emboscadas para entrevistas y operativos de vigilancia, principalmente contra organizaciones y periodistas liberales.Al mismo tiempo, la nueva información sobre el caso sugiere que el esfuerzo por divulgar el diario provino de niveles más profundos del círculo de Trump de lo que se suponía.Un mes antes de que llamaran a Ashley Biden, el diario había sido compartido en un evento de recaudación de fondos de Trump en Florida, en la casa de una donante que ayudó a conseguir el diario y se lo entregó al Proyecto Veritas, y que luego fue nominada por Trump para el Consejo Nacional Consultivo de Cáncer. Entre los asistentes al evento se encontraba Donald Trump Jr., aunque no se sabe si leyó el diario.Los fiscales federales han estado investigando el modo en el que el Proyecto Veritas obtuvo el diario, y en otoño del año pasado realizaron allanamientos en las casas de tres de los agentes del grupo, incluida la de su fundador, James O’Keefe. En diversos documentos judiciales, los fiscales han sugerido que la organización fue cómplice en el robo de algunas pertenencias de Ashley Biden porque los testimonios muestran que el grupo obtuvo esos objetos al tiempo que intentaba confirmar la autenticidad del diario.El Proyecto Veritas —que demandó a The New York Times por difamación en otro caso— ha negado cualquier irregularidad o conocimiento de que alguna pertenencia haya sido robada. Se ha presentado como una organización de medios que está siendo injustamente investigada solo por ejercer periodismo, y ha atacado al Departamento de Justicia y al FBI por la manera en que han manejado el caso.Los fiscales han señalado que ven las circunstancias de otra manera; en un documento judicial en un tribunal casi desestimaron por completo los argumentos de la defensa del grupo que sostiene que actuaron como una organización de noticias. “La Primera Enmienda no brinda protección contra el robo y el transporte interestatal de propiedad robada”, afirmaron.En respuesta a una solicitud de comentarios al Proyecto Veritas, O’Keefe envió un correo electrónico criticando a The New York Times. “Imagínense escribir de forma tan divergente de la realidad y con un uso tan falaz de insinuaciones, que literalmente no exista ninguna expresión que no empeore la situación”, declaró.Los portavoces del FBI y de los fiscales federales que supervisan el caso en el distrito sur de Nueva York se negaron a hacer comentarios, al igual que Roberta Kaplan, abogada de Ashley Biden.Project Veritas se presenta como una organización de medios que está siendo investigada injustamente y ha atacado al Departamento de Justicia y al FBI por su manejo del caso.Stefani Reynolds para The New York TimesEl Times informó con anterioridad que la historia de la participación del Proyecto Veritas en el caso del diario comenzó en los meses previos al día de las elecciones.En julio de 2020, una madre soltera con dos hijos se mudó a la casa en alquiler de un exnovio en Delray Beach, Florida. La mujer, Aimee Harris, simpatizante de Donald Trump, le dijo al exnovio que tenía poco dinero, que no tenía dónde vivir y que estaba en disputa por la custodia de sus hijos. Poco después de mudarse a la casa en alquiler, Harris se enteró de que Ashley Biden —quien era amiga de su exnovio— había vivido en la casa durante ese año.Biden ya había regresado a Filadelfia en junio de 2020, por los días en que su padre había ganado la candidatura presidencial del Partido Demócrata. Guardó un par de bolsos con sus pertenencias en la casa de alquiler junto con su diario, y le dijo a su amigo, quien estaba rentando la casa, que planeaba regresar para llevarse sus cosas en el otoño.En agosto, Harris contactó a Robert Kurlander, un amigo suyo que en la década de 1990 fue sentenciado a 40 meses de prisión por fraude federal y que había expresado en línea su postura contra Biden, para decirle que había encontrado el diario. Ambos creían que podían venderlo, lo que ayudaría a Harris para pagar los abogados que la representaban en la disputa por la custodia.Nuevos detalles tomados de entrevistas y documentos han aclarado lo que sucedió después. Kurlander se puso en contacto con Elizabeth Fago, la donante de Trump que luego organizó el evento de recaudación de fondos al que asistió Donald Trump Jr. Cuando le hablaron por primera vez del diario, Fago afirmó haber pensado que podría ayudar a incrementar las posibilidades de que Donald Trump ganara las elecciones, según dos personas familiarizadas con el asunto.Richard G. Lubin, abogado de Fago, se negó a hacer comentarios.El 3 de septiembre, la hija de Fago alertó al Proyecto Veritas sobre la existencia del diario.Tres días después, Harris y Kurlander asistieron al evento de recaudación de fondos, donde también estaba presente Donald Trump Jr., en la casa de Fago en Jupiter, Florida, para ver si el equipo de la campaña de reelección del presidente podría estar interesado en el diario. Mientras estaba allí, Kurlander les mostró el diario a otras personas. No se sabe con claridad quiénes lo vieron.Después de que la investigación criminal sobre el Proyecto Veritas se hizo pública durante el otoño pasado, un destacado abogado republicano que cabildea en nombre de la organización y O’Keefe informó a un grupo de republicanos del Congreso sobre el caso, con el fin de instarlos a tratar de persuadir al Departamento de Justicia para que dejaran la investigación debido a que el grupo no había hecho nada malo, según una persona informada sobre el asunto.El presidente Donald Trump durante un discurso en Júpiter, Florida, en septiembre de 2020. Días antes, dos personas que luego le vendieron el diario a Project Veritas, lo llevaron a un evento de recaudación de fondos para la campaña de Trump.Doug Mills/The New York TimesEl abogado, Mark Paoletta, dijo que al enterarse de la existencia del diario en el evento de recaudación de fondos, Donald Trump Jr. no mostró ningún interés y dijo que quienquiera que lo tuviera debería informar al FBI. Pero poco después, Paoletta, quien se había desempeñado como el principal abogado del vicepresidente Mike Pence en la Casa Blanca, volvió a llamar a los republicanos del Congreso para decir que no estaba seguro de si la versión sobre la reacción de Donald Trump Jr. era precisa.Los archivos de cabildeo muestran que Paoletta recibió 50.000 dólares durante los últimos dos meses del año pasado para informar a los miembros del Congreso sobre la redada del FBI en la casa de O’Keefe. Paoletta y un abogado de Donald Trump Jr. no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios.Cuando el Proyecto Veritas se enteró de la existencia del diario a principios de septiembre, el grupo buscó adquirirlo. Aproximadamente una semana después del evento de recaudación de fondos, Harris y Kurlander volaron a Nueva York con el diario. Se reunieron con varios agentes del Proyecto Veritas en un hotel de Manhattan.Las dos partes comenzaron a negociar un acuerdo, pero no se llegó a un trato final. Como respuesta a la pregunta sobre qué pudo haberle pedido el Proyecto Veritas para ayudar a autenticar el diario, Kurlander, a través de su abogado Jonathan Kaplan, se negó a hacer comentarios.Pero Proyecto Veritas tuvo que dilucidar varios temas difíciles: ¿en realidad era el diario de Ashley Biden y no se trataba de una falsificación o una trampa? ¿Cómo es que Proyecto Veritas, una organización conocida por sus operaciones encubiertas, podría asegurarse de que no era víctima de sus propias tácticas engañosas?Uno de los subalternos de O’Keefe, Spencer Meads, fue enviado a Florida para investigar la autenticidad del diario.Lo que sucedió después aún no ha sido aclarado, y es uno de los grandes problemas de la investigación. El Proyecto Veritas ha dicho en documentos judiciales que sus agentes obtuvieron artículos adicionales pertenecientes a Biden que sus “fuentes” habían descrito como “abandonados”, sugiriendo así que no tenía conocimiento de ningún robo y que consiguieron las pertenencias de Biden de la misma manera en que los periodistas reciben información.“Poco después, las fuentes acordaron reunirse con el periodista de Project Veritas en Florida para darle artículos abandonados adicionales”, escribieron los abogados del grupo en un expediente judicial federal.Desde hace tiempo, los abogados de Proyecto Veritas habían advertido a los miembros que alentar o incentivar a las fuentes a robar documentos o artículos podría implicar al grupo en un delito. En un memorando dirigido a O’Keefe en 2017, uno de los abogados concluyó: “Bajo este precedente, PV disfruta de protecciones legales sustanciales para informar y divulgar material que puede haberse obtenido ilegalmente, siempre que no haya participado en el proceso para conseguirlo”.Sin embargo, al menos una de las “fuentes” les contó a otras personas que un agente del Proyecto Veritas le había preguntado si podía recuperar más artículos de la casa que pudieran ayudar a demostrar que el diario pertenecía a Ashley Biden, según una persona con conocimiento de la conversación. Una de las fuentes les informó a otras personas que procedió a sacar artículos adicionales de la casa y dárselos al integrante del grupo.En respuesta a las afirmaciones de la organización de que no había hecho nada malo y que su papel en el caso estaba protegido por la Primera Enmienda, los fiscales acusaron al grupo en los documentos judiciales de hacer declaraciones no juradas que son “falsas o engañosas y se contradicen directamente con la evidencia”. También declararon que incluso una organización de noticias legítima no sería protegida por la Primera Enmienda al adquirir materiales mediante robos u otros delitos.“En pocas palabras, incluso los miembros de los medios de comunicación ‘no pueden irrumpir con impunidad y entrar en una oficina o vivienda para recolectar noticias’”, dijeron los fiscales.Sin citar evidencia específica, los fiscales desafiaron directamente un argumento de Proyecto Veritas: la “reiterada afirmación del grupo de que no habían ‘participado’ en cómo se ‘adquirieron’ las pertenencias de la víctima”.El plan de Ashley Biden de que un amigo fuera a recuperar el diario, que tenía la persona que la llamó en octubre, fracasó. Y las versiones que Proyecto Veritas presentó en las últimas semanas, tanto en documentos judiciales como ante la policía local en Florida, sobre cómo obtuvo el diario dejan varias preguntas sobre el desarrollo de los eventos.El FBI obtuvo una orden y allanó la casa de James O’Keefe, el fundador del Proyecto Veritas.Cooper Neill para The New York TimesProyecto Veritas le dijo a un juez federal que el 12 de octubre, O’Keefe envió un correo electrónico diciéndole a su equipo que había tomado la decisión de no publicar la historia sobre el diario, aunque no tenían “ninguna duda de que el documento es real”. Sin embargo, sostenía que las reacciones a su publicación serían “calificadas como un golpe bajo”. La fecha del correo, proporcionada por O’Keefe, fue poco después de la llamada a Biden.Pero cuatro días después de que O’Keefe le dijera a su personal que no publicaría el diario, un importante abogado del Proyecto Veritas le dijo a la campaña de Joe Biden que tenía el diario y que quería entrevistarlo en cámara al respecto, según el Times reportó en diciembre.Menos de una semana después, Proyecto Veritas cerró un acuerdo por 40.000 dólares con Kurlander y Harris para comprar los derechos de publicación del diario, les transfirió el dinero y sugirió que el grupo planeaba publicarlo pronto, según una persona con conocimiento del caso.Al final, Proyecto Veritas decidió no publicarlo. En cambio, un sitio web de derecha publicó el diario en octubre, pero recibió muy poca atención antes de las elecciones. O’Keefe estaba furioso, y algunas personas dentro del Proyecto Veritas pensaron que uno de sus propios integrantes, frustrado por la falta de voluntad del grupo para publicar el diario, lo había filtrado.Proyecto Veritas decidió que uno de sus integrantes regresaría el diario, y las demás pertenencias de Biden, a Florida.Según un informe del Departamento de Policía de Delray Beach, un abogado se presentó en el departamento y le entregó los artículos a un oficial. El abogado, según las imágenes de la cámara corporal de la policía, dijo que los artículos fueron “posiblemente robados”.La policía alertó al FBI, que hizo que un agente recuperara el diario de Biden y otras pertenencias. Casi un año después, el FBI contactó a Harris y a Kurlander.Unas dos semanas después, agentes del FBI consiguieron órdenes para allanar las casas de O’Keefe y dos de sus colaboradores: Meads y Eric Cochran, quienes abandonaron la organización después del incidente del diario. En el caso de Meads, su abogado dijo que el FBI derribó la puerta de su apartamento. Los documentos judiciales indican que el FBI incautó 47 dispositivos, incluida una decena de teléfonos de Meads.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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    It’s Never a Good Time for the Hunter Biden Story

    Gail Collins: Bret, here’s one question I don’t think I ever asked you before: What do you think of daylight saving time?Bret Stephens: About the same way I feel about Volodymyr Zelensky. The light of the West.Gail: Your ability to have everything remind you of foreign affairs is awesome.I was sorta impressed the other day when the Senate voted unanimously to make daylight saving time permanent, year-round. What’s the last thing they agreed about that easily?Bret: Invading Afghanistan?Gail: I think switching back and forth is stupid. But many sleep scientists seem to think standard time — winter time — is healthier. So I’ll go with them, just to be difficult.Bret: This is a major difference between liberals and conservatives. Modern-day liberals are often quite happy to defer to the wisdom of experts, at least when it comes to subjects like public health or economics. Whereas those of us who are conservative tend to be — skeptical. We prefer the wisdom of crowds, or markets, to the wisdom of the purportedly wise. It goes back to William F. Buckley Jr.’s famous line that he’d rather “be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.”Gail: Do you happen to know what William F. Buckley Jr.’s position on daylight saving time was?Bret: Given that daylight savings was initially signed into law by Woodrow Wilson, I’d have to assume Buckley would have been against it.Gail: And you know, if the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory did take control, polls suggest we’d very likely be right in line for Medicare for all and universal early childhood education.Bret: Isn’t that because people love liberal policy ideas until you show them the price tag?On a gloomier subject, Joe Biden has now called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” a “murderous dictator” and a “pure thug.” Hard to disagree with the characterizations, but is it prudent?Gail: Well, in the grand scheme of things I’d say Biden could have been more … restrained.Bret: I’m happy he said it. It reminds me of Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” which liberals once considered provocative but had the benefit of being absolutely true.Gail: Ukraine’s troops seem to be doing way better than people expected, and even if average Russian citizens aren’t allowed to know about that, they can’t help noticing that their economy is cratering.So what happens next? I’m just terrified Putin will feel cornered and drop a nuclear bomb or do something else that’s planet-destructive. Am I being paranoid?Bret: The scary thing is that you’re being completely rational.Gail: Truly scary if I’m being rational on foreign affairs.Bret: If Russian forces are capable of firing on a nuclear power station, they’re capable of worse. And Russia’s battlefield incompetence, along with its mounting losses, is probably tempting Putin to use chemical weapons or even a tactical nuclear weapon to win a war his generals can’t.Gail: Yep, that’s my nightmare.Bret: On the other hand, it’s in Putin’s interest to make us think he’s capable of anything: It’s his version of Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” of international relations, in which a leader cultivates the appearance of being capable of anything in order to terrify his adversary into backing down. The best thing Biden can do is continue to provide our Ukrainian friends with all the means we can offer so they can defend themselves by themselves, without us getting into combat directly. I understand why Biden is reluctant to impose a no-fly zone, but I don’t get why he won’t supply the Ukrainian air force with fighter jets or any other equipment they ask for.Gail: Meanwhile, on the domestic front, have you been keeping an eye on the primary elections? There’s a big Republican fight coming up this spring in Georgia, where Donald Trump and his folks are trying to nominate Herschel Walker for a Senate race. Despite allegations of violent behavior toward his ex-wife and his recent demand to know why there are still apes if evolution works the way scientists say it does. And then there’s a primary this summer in Wyoming, where Liz Cheney is fighting to keep her House seat ….Bret: People often forget that Cheney actually supported Trump in the 2016 election, only to become a convinced anti-Trumper after she saw the guy in action. Her main challenger in this race, Harriet Hageman, went in the opposite direction: from fervent Never Trumper in 2016 to a fervent Trumper today. Cheney has a big campaign war chest and she could still pull off a win, at least if Wyoming Democrats switch parties to vote for her in the primary.Gail: Well, if Wyoming Republicans can reward Cheney for her independence, I promise to stop complaining that a state with a population of less than 600,000 has the same number of Senators as California, which has nearly 40 million.Bret: I feel just the same way about Vermont and Texas. But about Cheney’s chances, I wouldn’t bet on them. A party with a cult-of-personality problem is like a person with a substance abuse problem, meaning they’re going to ride the addiction to rock bottom.By the way: Did you read The Times’s account of the government’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax and foreign-business affairs? The news here has less to do with Hunter himself and more with the fact that those emails recovered from the discarded laptop were his, despite the best efforts by Twitter and other social media and news media companies to bury or not look closely enough at that fact on the eve of the 2020 election.Gail: I’m so glad our colleagues are still doing strong reporting on this story — Hunter Biden’s scummy business dealings shouldn’t be swept under the rug any more than anyone else’s.Bret: Not to mention those paintings he tried to sell for up to $500,000 a canvas in nontransparent sales. Nothing at all fishy there.Gail: That said, I have to admit I’ve never found Hunter’s behavior criminal — just very, very depressing. Fragile son in a family buffeted by tragedy, grows up to have a drug problem and makes a lot of money by working for companies that presumably like to have a famous American politician’s relative to trot around.Bret: The D.O.J.’s investigation will tell.Gail: Some of Hunter’s behavior was obviously unseemly in the extreme. Any new evidence needs to be carefully examined to see if Hunter’s behavior ever went past that into actual criminality — did he claim, for instance, that he could deliver favors from the government because he was Joe Biden’s son?So far I haven’t seen it, but whenever Hunter’s name comes up, I do find myself holding my breath.Bret: The book to read on this subject is “The Bidens,” by Politico’s Ben Schreckinger. It’s no right-wing hit job, which makes its description of Hunter’s business dealings that much more damning. But what really bothered me was the not-so-subtle media effort to bury the email story right before the election as some kind of “Russian disinformation” campaign. If someone had discovered that, say, Ivanka Trump had left a laptop at a repair shop stuffed with emails about 10 percent being held “for the big guy”— to use a reference that appears to be to Joe Biden, which comes from one of the emails found on Hunter’s computer — would the story have been treated with kid gloves?Gail: Well, Ivanka is a much tidier person. Your mentioning her does remind me that it’s never been clear to me exactly how much, if any, of the campaign donations Trump’s been piling up are going to his kids’ activities.Not trying to downplay the Hunter story, but in the grand scheme of things I still think his misdeeds are going to wind up as a sidebar on the Biden saga. Feel free to remind me I said that if half the family winds up indicted.Bret: I honestly hope not. The world needs another White House corruption scandal like I need a hole in my head, to borrow a line from one of the better songs of the 1990s.Gail: On another subject entirely — have you noticed that earmarks are back?Bret: Don Young dies but pork is forever. I don’t think pork is such a bad thing in the grand scheme of things. It brings projects to constituents who need them and makes politics a whole lot more fun to cover. What do you think?Gail: Makes me sorta sad remembering John McCain’s long, long battle to get rid of them. The biggest problem, as I remember, wasn’t lawmakers trying to get some special bridge overpass for their district; it was lawmakers trying to get a contract for some big, unnecessary project that would go to one of their donors.Now we’re stunned that the Senate can come together on daylight saving time. Guess things are just darker now than in the olden days.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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    Ashley Biden’s Diary Was Shown at Trump Fund-Raiser. Weeks Later, Project Veritas Called Her.

    The right-wing group’s deceptive call to the president’s daughter a month before Election Day is among the new details that show how the organization worked to expose personal information about the Biden family.A month before the 2020 election, Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s daughter, Ashley, received a call from a man offering help. Striking a friendly tone, the man said that he had found a diary that he believed belonged to Ms. Biden and that he wanted to return it to her.Ms. Biden had in fact kept a diary the previous year as she recovered from addiction and had stored it and some other belongings at a friend’s home in Florida where she had been living until a few months earlier. The diary’s highly personal contents, if publicly disclosed, could prove an embarrassment or a distraction to her father at a critical moment in the campaign.She agreed with the caller to send someone to retrieve the diary the next day.But Ms. Biden was not dealing with a good Samaritan.The man on the other end of the phone worked for Project Veritas, a conservative group that had become a favorite of President Donald J. Trump, according to interviews with people familiar with the sequence of events. From a conference room at the group’s headquarters in Westchester County, N.Y., surrounded by other top members of the group, the caller was seeking to trick Ms. Biden into confirming the authenticity of the diary, which Project Veritas was about to purchase from two intermediaries for $40,000.The caller did not identify himself as being affiliated with Project Veritas, according to accounts from two people with knowledge of the conversation. By the end of the call, several of the group’s operatives who had either listened in, heard recordings of the call or been told of it believed that Ms. Biden had said more than enough to confirm that it was hers.The new details of Project Veritas’s effort to establish that the diary was Ms. Biden’s are elements of a still-emerging story about how Trump supporters and a group known for its undercover sting operations worked to expose personal information about the Biden family at a crucial stage of the 2020 campaign.Drawn from interviews, court filings and other documents, the new information adds further texture to what is known about an episode that has led to a criminal investigation of Project Veritas by federal prosecutors who have suggested they have evidence that the group was complicit in stealing Ms. Biden’s property and in transporting stolen goods across state lines.And by showing that Project Veritas employed deception rather than traditional journalistic techniques in the way it approached Ms. Biden — the caller identified himself with a fake name — the new accounts could further complicate the organization’s assertions in court filings that it should be treated as a publisher and granted First Amendment protections. Project Veritas regularly carries out undercover stings, surveillance operations and ambush interviews, mostly against liberal groups and journalists.At the same time, new information about the case suggests that the effort to make the diary public reached deeper into Mr. Trump’s circle than previously known.A month before the call to Ms. Biden, the diary had been passed around a Trump fund-raiser in Florida at the home of a donor who helped steer the diary to Project Veritas and was later nominated by Mr. Trump to the National Cancer Advisory Board. Among those attending the event was Donald Trump Jr., though it is not clear if he examined it.Federal prosecutors have been investigating how Project Veritas obtained the diary, and last fall carried out searches at the homes of three of the group’s operatives, including that of its founder, James O’Keefe. In court filings, prosecutors have suggested that the organization was complicit in the theft of some of Ms. Biden’s other belongings, which interviews show the group obtained as it was seeking to confirm the diary’s authenticity.Project Veritas — which is suing The New York Times for defamation in an unrelated case — has denied any wrongdoing or knowledge that the belongings had been stolen. It has portrayed itself as a media organization that is being unfairly investigated for simply doing journalism and has assailed the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for their handling of the case.Prosecutors have signaled that they view the circumstances very differently, all but dismissing in one court filing the group’s defense that it was acting as a news organization, saying that “there is no First Amendment protection for the theft and interstate transport of stolen property.”In response to a request to Project Veritas for comment, Mr. O’Keefe sent an email criticizing The Times. “Imagine writing so thoroughly divergent from reality and so mendacious with innuendo that there is literally no utterance that won’t make it worse,” he said.Spokesmen for the F.B.I. and for federal prosecutors overseeing the case in the Southern District of New York declined to comment, as did Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Ms. Biden.Project Veritas portrayed itself as a media organization that is being unfairly investigated, and has assailed the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for their handling of the case.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe Times has previously reported that the story of Project Veritas’s involvement with the diary began in the months leading up to Election Day.In July 2020, a single mother of two moved into the rented home of a former boyfriend in Delray Beach, Fla. The woman, Aimee Harris, a Trump supporter, told the former boyfriend that she had little money, had nowhere to live and was in a bitter custody dispute. Shortly after moving into the rental, Ms. Harris learned that Ms. Biden — also a friend of the former boyfriend — had been staying at the home earlier that year during the pandemic.Ms. Biden had moved back to the Philadelphia area in June 2020, around the time her father clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. She stored a couple of bags of her belongings at the rental house along with her diary, and she told her friend, who was leasing the home, that she planned to return to retrieve her things in the fall.In August, Ms. Harris reached out to Robert Kurlander, a friend who had been sentenced to 40 months in prison in the 1990s on a federal fraud charge and had expressed anti-Biden sentiments online, to say she had found the diary. The two believed they could sell it, allowing Ms. Harris to help pay for the lawyers representing her in the custody dispute.New details from interviews and documents have further fleshed out what happened next. Mr. Kurlander contacted Elizabeth Fago, the Trump donor who would host the fund-raiser attended by Donald Trump Jr. When first told of the diary, Ms. Fago said she thought it would help Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the election, according to two people familiar with the matter.Richard G. Lubin, a lawyer for Ms. Fago, declined to comment.On Sept. 3, Ms. Fago’s daughter alerted Project Veritas about the diary through its tip line.Three days later, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander — with the diary in hand — attended the fund-raiser attended by Donald Trump Jr. at Ms. Fago’s house in Jupiter, Fla., to see whether the president’s re-election campaign might be interested in it. While there, Mr. Kurlander showed others the diary. It is unclear who saw it.After the criminal investigation into Project Veritas became public last fall, a prominent Republican lawyer who was lobbying on behalf of the organization and Mr. O’Keefe briefed a group of congressional Republicans on the case, to urge them to try to persuade the Justice Department to back off the investigation because the group did nothing wrong, according to a person briefed on the matter.President Donald J. Trump delivering remarks in Jupiter, Fla., in September 2020. Days earlier, two people who later sold the diary to Project Veritas brought the diary to a Trump campaign fund-raiser nearby.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe lawyer, Mark Paoletta, said that upon learning about the diary at the fund-raiser, Donald Trump Jr. showed no interest in it and said that whoever was in possession of it should report it to the F.B.I. But shortly thereafter Mr. Paoletta, who had served as Vice President Mike Pence’s top lawyer in the White House, called back the congressional Republicans to say he was unsure whether the account about Donald Trump Jr.’s reaction was accurate.Lobbying filings show that Mr. Paoletta was paid $50,000 during the last two months of last year to inform members of Congress about the F.B.I. raid on Mr. O’Keefe. Mr. Paoletta and a lawyer for Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to messages seeking comment.Once Project Veritas learned about the diary in early September, the group sought to acquire it. About a week after the fund-raiser, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander flew to New York with the diary. The pair met with several Project Veritas operatives at a hotel on Manhattan’s West Side.The two sides began negotiating an agreement, but no final deal was struck at that stage and Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander returned to Florida. In response to questions about what Project Veritas may have asked him to do to help authenticate the diary, Mr. Kurlander, through his lawyer, Jonathan Kaplan, declined to comment.But Project Veritas had to confront tricky questions: Was the diary really Ashley Biden’s, and not a fake or a setup? How could Project Veritas, best known for its undercover sting operations, be sure it was not a victim of its own deceptive tactics?To authenticate the diary, one of Mr. O’Keefe’s top lieutenants, Spencer Meads, was dispatched to Florida to do more investigative work.What happened next is a matter of dispute and one of the major issues in the investigation. Project Veritas has said in court filings that its operatives obtained additional items belonging to Ms. Biden that their “sources” had described as “abandoned,” suggesting that it had no knowledge of any theft and that it had gotten access to Ms. Biden’s belongings in the same way that journalists receive information.“The sources arranged to meet the Project Veritas journalist in Florida soon thereafter to give the journalist additional abandoned items,” lawyers for the group wrote in a federal court filing.Project Veritas’s lawyers had long instructed its operatives that encouraging or incentivizing sources to steal documents or items could ensnare the group in a crime. In a memo to Mr. O’Keefe in 2017, one of the group’s lawyers concluded: “Under controlling precedent, PV enjoys substantial legal protections to report and disclose material that may have been illegally obtained provided it played no part in obtaining it.”But at least one of the “sources” told others that a Project Veritas operative had asked them whether they could retrieve more items from the home that could help show that the diary belonged to Ms. Biden, according to a person with knowledge of the exchange. Additional items were then taken out of the home and given to the operative, one of the sources has told others.In response to assertions from Project Veritas that it had done nothing wrong and that its role in the case was protected by the First Amendment, prosecutors accused the group in court filings of making unsworn statements that are either “false or misleading and are directly contradicted by the evidence.” They also stated that even a legitimate news organization would have no First Amendment defense for acquiring material through theft or another crime.“Put simply, even members of the news media ‘may not with impunity break and enter an office or dwelling to gather news,’” prosecutors said.Without citing specific evidence, prosecutors directly challenged one argument from Project Veritas in particular: the group’s “repeated claim that they had ‘no involvement’ in how the victim’s property was ‘acquired.’”The plan for Ms. Biden to have a friend retrieve the diary from the person who called her in early October fell through. And the accounts that Project Veritas has laid out in court papers and to the local police in Florida about how it obtained the diary and dealt with it in the final weeks leave open questions about how the events played out.The F.B.I. obtained a search warrant and raided the home of James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesProject Veritas told a federal judge that on Oct. 12, Mr. O’Keefe sent an email telling his team that he had made the decision not to publish a story about the diary, adding, “We have no doubt the document is real” but that reactions to its publication would be “characterized as a cheap shot.” The date provided by Mr. O’Keefe for the email was shortly after the call to Ms. Biden.But four days after Mr. O’Keefe told his staff that it would not publish the diary, a top lawyer for Project Veritas told Mr. Biden’s campaign that it had the diary and wanted to interview Mr. Biden on camera about it, The Times reported in December.Less than a week after that, Project Veritas finalized a deal with Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris to buy the rights to publish the diary for $40,000, wired them the money and signaled that the group planned to soon publish it, according a person with knowledge of the case.In the end, Project Veritas chose not to publish. Instead, an obscure right-wing website published the diary in late October, but it got little attention before the election. Mr. O’Keefe was furious, and some within Project Veritas thought that one of its own operatives, frustrated with the group’s unwillingness to publish the diary, had leaked it.Project Veritas decided to have one of its operatives take the diary and Ms. Biden’s other belongings back to Florida.According to a Delray Beach Police Department report, a lawyer showed up at the department and gave the items to an officer. The lawyer, according to police body camera footage, said the items were “possibly stolen.”The police alerted the F.B.I., which had an agent retrieve Ms. Biden’s diary and other belongings. Almost a year later, the F.B.I. approached Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander.About two weeks later, F.B.I. agents obtained search warrants to raid the homes of Mr. O’Keefe and two of his operatives: Mr. Meads and Eric Cochran, both of whom left the organization after the diary project. In the case of Mr. Meads, his lawyer said the F.B.I. broke down his apartment door. Court documents indicate that the F.B.I. seized 47 devices, including a dozen phones from Mr. Meads.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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    Republicans Once Silent on Russia Ratchet Up Attacks on Biden

    Even as they praise the bipartisan congressional response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Republicans are increasingly eager to blame President Biden for the devastation.WASHINGTON — The Senate Republican news conference on Wednesday was proceeding with the usual partisan criticism of President Biden and exhortations for him to do more — much more — to bolster Ukraine’s defense when the microphone went to Senator Ted Cruz.The Texas Republican, in a made-for-television voice, made a stark assertion: “This war didn’t have to happen — the most significant war in Europe since 1945, since the end of World War II,” he said, before telling reporters that Mr. Biden’s White House “caused this.”Lawmakers in both parties have described their shared determination to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia as the most remarkable consensus in Congress since the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “President Zelensky has managed not only to unite the West; to a large extent, he’s managed to unite the Congress,” Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.But the sense of common purpose has not translated into bipartisan backing for the commander in chief; if anything, it has sharpened Republicans’ lines of attack against Mr. Biden.Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the lead Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, emerged from Mr. Zelensky’s joint address to Congress on Wednesday to proclaim that the carnage depicted in a video that the Ukrainian president played for lawmakers was a direct result of a response by the Biden administration that had been “slow, too little, too late.”Mr. Kennedy traced Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion back to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, the failure to attack Syria after its leader used chemical weapons, and the Russian seizure of Crimea, all of which, he made sure to note, “happened when Joe Biden was either vice president or president.”Absent from that analysis were four years under President Donald Trump during which he repeatedly undermined NATO, sided with Mr. Putin over his own intelligence community on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and tried to bring Russia back into the community of developed economies. Also missing was Mr. Kennedy’s own trip, with seven other Senate Republicans, to the Kremlin on July 4, 2018, after a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee determined that Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf.A group of Republican senators visited Moscow in 2018, after a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee determined that Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election.Pool photo by Alexander ZemlianichenkoSenator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was also on that trip to the Kremlin, then launched an investigation of Hunter Biden in Ukraine that sparked warnings by Democrats that he was serving as a conduit of Russian disinformation. Mr. Johnson told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday: “The problem we have dealing with these tyrants is the Democrats, the Biden administration, all their policies are weakening America.”Democrats argue that such criticism shows how single-minded the Republican Party has become about tearing down its opponents.“Republicans have defaulted to attacking Joe Biden in a moment of national crisis,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. “There’s this infection in the Republican Party right now, in which power matters more than anything else, more than democracy, more than the peaceful transition of power, more than winning wars overseas.”Some Republicans have taken a different line of attack. On the far-right fringe, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, declared that an independent Ukraine only exists because the Obama administration “helped to overthrow the previous regime,” a reference to the popular uprising that took down a pro-Russian president of Ukraine — actually two Ukrainian governments ago.She, too, blamed the Biden administration, but said she opposed any intervention. Another far-right Republican, Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, was videotaped calling Mr. Zelensky “a thug,” a comment that Russian propagandists continue to use.On the other end of the spectrum, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, offered a more comprehensive historical analysis.“I wish we’d have armed Ukraine more than we did, but that’s true for not just Biden, but Trump and before him,” said Mr. Romney, who warned during the 2012 presidential debate of a looming threat from Russia. “But,” he added, “Vladimir Putin is responsible for what’s happened in Ukraine,” not Mr. Biden.Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had managed to unite Congress with his address to it on Wednesday.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesOne Republican House member, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of angering party leaders, said the war in Ukraine is likely to buoy the president’s standing with the public and could mitigate Democratic losses in the midterm elections.Democrats have blamed inflation and rising gasoline prices — problems that predated the invasion of Ukraine — on Mr. Putin. The growing ferocity of Republican criticism could truncate any natural rallying around the flag.But public opinion, three weeks into the war, is mixed. Nearly half of Americans, 47 percent, approve of the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis, while 39 percent disapprove, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. Opinion is even more divided on the U.S. role going forward: 42 percent say America should be providing more support to Ukraine, while 32 percent say the current level is about right. Just a sliver, 7 percent, take Ms. Greene’s position that the United States is already doing too much.Richard H. Kohn, professor emeritus of peace, war, and defense at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, noted that internal strife has been “vicious” in periods when war was raging but the United States was not engaged in combat, such as during the early years of the two world wars.The political consensus at the start of the Cold War was shattered by Vietnam, when Senator Barry Goldwater articulated a view still dominant in the G.O.P., that the military should be all in or all out. The vaunted unity after 9/11 broke down 18 months later with the invasion of Iraq.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4A key vote. More

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    How Likely Is Another Civil War?

    More from our inbox:Listen to Asian American VotersA Double Standard for Supreme Court NomineesHelping Students Fight DisinformationCovid’s Origins, and the Animal-Human LinkMr. Biden, Reach the HeartlandAt the Georgia State Capitol, demonstrating against the inauguration of President Biden on Jan. 20, 2021.Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Jamelle Bouie starts out by documenting the public feeling that the United States is indeed facing a second civil war. But he takes a wrong turn by suggesting that this conflict will not happen because today’s conditions do not mirror those of our 19th-century version (“Why We Are Not Facing the Prospect of a Second Civil War,” column, Feb. 17).However, we are in a very precarious position. Large portions of our population have adopted an antigovernment position, fueled by our former president and his minions. Racism is now out in the open, as evidenced by the rantings of anti-diversity proponents in raucous school board meetings throughout the country. The country is more armed than ever, and thousands of these citizens belong to organized militia.We learn more details every day about how close we came last year to a coup engineered by the former president. Too many elected officials no longer display commitment to our democratic principles. The organized campaign of disinformation that is destroying our country is buttressed every day by extreme-right media outlets and commentators.Contrary to Mr. Bouie’s piece, there is a serious risk that we will lose this precious experiment called American democracy. Yet there is still a modicum of hope it can be averted. But that will require that we all take responsibility by speaking up for our Republic.James MartoranoYorktown Heights, N.Y.To the Editor:The plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the continuing trumpeting of the lie that the election was stolen approach the criterion that Jamelle Bouie sets for a second civil war: “irreconcilable social and economic interests of opposing groups within the society.”In her book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” Barbara F. Walter, a professor of political science at the University of California San Diego, states that, according to the polity index score, which places countries on a scale from fully autocratic (-10) to fully democratic (+10), the United States is now a +5, which makes us an “anocracy,” a country that is moving from a democracy to an authoritarian regime.In just five years, we went from +10 to +5! “A partial democracy,” writes Ms. Walter, “is three times as likely to experience civil war as a full democracy.”Now is the time to strengthen our democracy to avert another civil war.Allen J. DavisDublin, N.H.Listen to Asian American Voters  Doris LiouTo the Editor:Re “Will Asian Americans Desert Democrats?,” by Thomas B. Edsall (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, March 6):Mr. Edsall’s essay ponders whether Asian Americans are bolting from the Democratic Party, using isolated examples of Chinese American voters swaying recent races in two major cities, New York and San Francisco. However, his claim that this is evidence of Asian Americans moving to the right is a flawed analysis.First, these were complicated elections that cannot be boiled down to one or two issues. Second, how Chinese Americans voted in two cities cannot represent the political preferences of Asian Americans everywhere — just as the fact that Asian Americans helped flip historically Republican-held Senate seats in Georgia and Arizona does not necessarily mean Asian Americans are moving left nationwide.Although not often reported in media analyses, our Asian American Voter Survey polling data includes Asian American suburban moms, college- and non-college-educated, rich and poor, and a wide range of ethnic identities across all 50 states. One would not say the trends of white voters in Little Rock tell the story of white voters everywhere. This should not be done with Asian American voters either.To understand the future of our communities’ votes, one must look at who is listening, engaging and working on our behalf. Parties and political candidates who can do this the most effectively are more likely to win our vote; it’s as simple as that.Christine ChenWashingtonThe writer is executive director of Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote.A Double Standard for Supreme Court Nominees  Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Another Working Mother for the Supreme Court” (Opinion guest essay, March 8):Melissa Murray opines that, at her confirmation hearings, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s status as a “working mother” might be for her a selling point among conservative senators, just as it had factored into their support of Justice Amy Coney Barrett at her hearings.Funny, I don’t recall any prospective male justices ever being asked about whether their status as “working fathers” might affect their abilities and opinions. Republicans clearly did not deem it relevant to find out if a nominee was a superdad — whether he could do laundry, help kids with homework and work outside the home, all at the same time!Lori Pearson WiseWinter Park, Fla.Helping Students Fight Disinformation  Alberto MirandaTo the Editor:Re “Combating Disinformation Can Feel Like a Lost Cause. It Isn’t,” by Jay Caspian Kang (Opinion, March 9):It is no revelation to me, a retired middle- and upper-school librarian, that students in lower-income environments and underfunded public schools do not register well on media literacy tests.The hiring of professional, credentialed librarians in these schools is often postponed and neglected in order to hire more subject-matter teachers to decrease class sizes, leaving no one with the training and skill sets to introduce these important literacy tools.It is a disservice to these vulnerable students not to provide a curriculum that addresses this gaping hole in their education.Sandra MooreTownship of Washington, N.J.Covid’s Origins, and the Animal-Human Link  Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Pair of Studies Say Covid Originated in Wuhan Market” (news article, Feb. 28):As we enter the third year of the pandemic, it is becoming increasingly clear that we may never know the full and exact details of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in humans.Even as experts continue to uncover connections to the market in Wuhan, China, the spillover story may only remain a partial narrative, veiled by insufficient data. This is an uncertainty, like so many other unknowns on a shifting planet undergoing climate change, to which we must adapt.The one certainty we can rely on, however, is the inextricable link between humans and animals. From hunter-gathering to the industrial livestock production model, our relationships with animals cannot be unbound. What’s more, we’ve progressively dominated species and their habitats with dire consequences. This certainty is highlighted by the pandemic through which we are all living today.So, it’s time to start talking about our health differently. Public health does not exist in isolation from other beings. It’s time to become comfortable talking about public health as planetary health.Perhaps normalizing this discourse might have us, as a global community, face the destruction of natural habitats as the destruction of global human health. Perhaps it might have us cultivate a different type of care, a reciprocal care that might stand to benefit us all.Christine YanagawaVancouver, British ColumbiaMr. Biden, Reach the Heartland Ryan Peltier To the Editor:Re “What the Democrats Need to Do,” by Michael Kazin (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, Feb. 27):Mr. Kazin is right that President Biden could be more forceful in pushing for the stalled Build Back Better bill and the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.But the president needs to go beyond that and directly address the rural populace. He needs to tour the outposts of the heartland, the Rust Belt, the rural West and the South, bringing a message that Democrats have compassion for all Americans and that Democratic policies will make their lives better.We need to see more of the ol’ Empathetic Joe. The difference between a mountebank like Donald Trump and Joe Biden is that Mr. Biden can actually stand behind his promises to make America better — for all of us.Luc NadeauLongmont, Colo. More