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      Texas Voting Bill Nears Passage as Republicans Advance It

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      The bill, which includes some of the strictest voting measures in the country, would head to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott if it passes. He is expected to sign it into law.The Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives is poised to take up a bill on Sunday that would impose a raft of new voting restrictions in the state, moving a step closer to the expected full passage of what would be among the most far-reaching laws in Republicans’ nationwide drive to overhaul elections systems and limit voting.The bill, which passed the State Senate early Sunday, would tighten what are already some of the country’s strictest voting laws, and it would specifically target balloting methods that were employed for the first time last year by Harris County, home to Houston. In addition to banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, which were used by nearly 140,000 voters in Harris County during the 2020 election, the bill would prohibit election officials from sending absentee ballots to all voters, regardless of whether they had requested them; ban using tents, garages, mobile units or any temporary structure as a polling location; further limit who could vote absentee; and add new identification requirements for voting by mail. Partisan poll watchers would also have more access and autonomy under the bill’s provisions, and election officials could be more harshly punished if they make mistakes or otherwise run afoul of election codes and laws. The bill, which was hashed out in a closed-door panel of lawmakers over the past week as the spring legislative session neared its conclusion on Monday, was rushed to the State Senate floor late Saturday in a legislative power play orchestrated by Republican lawmakers and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Suspending rules that require a bill to be public for 24 hours before a final vote, they set off hours of debate before the Senate passed the bill just after 6 a.m. on Sunday by an 18-to-13 vote. Democrats denounced the dark-of-night legislative maneuver on a measure that Senator Borris L. Miles, a Democrat from Houston, said people in his largely Black and Latino district called “Jim Crow 2.0.”“They do ask me, every time I’m in the neighborhood, is this 2021 or is this 1961?” Mr. Miles said on the Senate floor. “And why are we allowing people to roll back the hands of time?”The House, which did not move to suspend the 24-hour rule, is set to convene at 1 p.m. local time, and will debate the bill before voting on it. No further changes to the legislation can be made. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is widely expected to sign the bill. Texas is one of several Republican-led states — including Iowa, Georgia and Florida — that have moved since the 2020 presidential contest to pass new laws governing elections and restricting voting. The impetus is both Republicans’ desire to appease their base, much of which continues to believe former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election, and the party’s worries about a changing electorate that could threaten the G.O.P.’s longtime grip on power in places like Texas, the second-biggest state in the country.In a statement on Saturday, President Biden called the proposed law, along with similar measures in Georgia and Florida, “an assault on democracy” that disproportionately targeted “Black and Brown Americans.” He called on lawmakers to address the issue by passing Democratic voting bills that are pending in Congress. “It’s wrong and un-American,” Mr. Biden said. “In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote.”Republican state lawmakers have often cited voters’ worries about election fraud — fears stoked by Mr. Trump, other Republicans and the conservative media — to justify new voting restrictions, despite the fact that there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in recent American elections.And in their election push, Republicans have powered past the objections of Democrats, voting rights groups and major corporations. Companies like American Airlines, Dell Technologies and Microsoft spoke out against the Texas legislation soon after the bill was introduced, but the pressure has been largely ineffective so far.The final 67-page bill, known as S.B. 7, proved to be an amalgamation of two omnibus voting bills that had worked their way through the state’s Legislature. It included many of the provisions originally introduced by Republicans, but lawmakers dropped some of the most stringent ones, like a regulation on the allocation of voting machines that would have led to the closure of polling places in communities of color and a measure that would have permitted partisan poll watchers to record the voting process on video. Still, the bill includes a provision that could make overturning an election easier. Texas election law had stated that reversing the results of an election because of fraud accusations required proving that illicit votes had actually resulted in a wrongful victory. If the bill passes, the number of fraudulent votes required to do so would simply need to be equal to the winning vote differential; it would not matter for whom the fraudulent votes had been cast. Democrats and voting rights groups were quick to condemn the bill.“S.B. 7 is a ruthless piece of legislation,” said Sarah Labowitz, the policy and advocacy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “It targets voters of color and voters with disabilities, in a state that’s already the most difficult place to vote in the country.”But Republicans celebrated the proposed law and bristled at the criticism from Mr. Biden and others. “As the White House and national Democrats work together to minimize election integrity, the Texas Legislature continues to fight for accessible and secure elections,” State Senator Bryan Hughes, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement. “In Texas, we do not bend to headlines, corporate virtue signaling, or suppression of election integrity, even if it comes from the president of the United States.”The bill took its final form after a contentious, monthslong debate; back-room negotiations; procedural errors by legislators; and extended, passionate debate by Democrats, who have tried to stall the bill’s passage through political and legislative maneuvers.Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who has said that an election overhaul is a priority, is widely expected to sign the bill.Eric Gay/Associated PressVoting rights groups have long pointed to Texas as one of the hardest states in the country for voters to cast ballots. One recent study by Northern Illinois University ranked Texas last in an index measuring the difficulty of voting. The report cited a host of factors, including Texas’ in-person voter registration deadline 30 days before Election Day, a drastic reduction of polling stations in some parts of the state, strict voter identification laws, a limited and onerous absentee voting process, and a lack of early voting options.In the preamble to the new bill, the authors appear to pre-emptively defend the legislation from criticism, stating that “reforms to the election laws of this state made by this Act are not intended to impair the right of free suffrage guaranteed to the people of Texas by the United States and Texas Constitutions, but are enacted solely to prevent fraud in the electoral process and ensure that all legally cast ballots are counted.”In March, Keith Ingram, the director of elections in the Texas secretary of state’s office, testified that last year’s election in the state had been “smooth and secure.” He added, “Texans can be justifiably proud of the hard work and creativity shown by local county elections officials.”A day before the Texas bill emerged, a new report pointed to the vast sweep of Republicans’ nationwide effort to restrict voting.As of May 14, lawmakers had passed 22 new laws in 14 states to make the process of voting more difficult, according to the report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a research institute..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new 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(min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In last year’s election, while Republicans won Texas easily — Mr. Trump carried the state by more than 630,000 votes and the party maintained control of both chambers of the Legislature — turnout soared in cities and densely populated suburbs, which are growing increasingly Democratic. In Harris County, one of the biggest counties in the country, turnout jumped by nearly 10 percent.Republicans’ initial version of the bill put those densely populated counties squarely in the cross hairs, seeking to ban measures put in place during the 2020 election that helped turnout hit record numbers. The initial bill banned drive-through voting, a new method used by 127,000 voters in Harris County, as well as 24-hour voting, which was held for a single day in the county and was used by roughly 10,000 voters.While those provisions were left out of an earlier version of the bill as it made its way through the Legislature, they were reinstated in the final version of the bill, though the bill does allow for early voting to begin as early as 6 a.m. and continue until as late as 9 p.m. on weekdays. It also maintains at least two weekend days of early voting. More than any other state, Texas has also gone to great lengths to grant more autonomy and authority to partisan poll watchers. The observers have been a cornerstone of American voting for years, viewed as a watchdog for election officials, but their role has grown increasingly contentious, especially in Texas. Republican poll watchers have been egged on in particular by Mr. Trump, who implored them to go to major cities across the country and hunt for nonexistent voter fraud.Across Texas during the 2020 election, there was an increase in anecdotal complaints of aggressive poll watchers, often on the Republican side, harassing both voters of color and election officials.The new bill would make it a crime to refuse to admit the observers to voting sites or to block their ability to fully watch the process. It says poll watchers must be able to “sit or stand [conveniently] near enough to see and hear the election officers.”It would also make it easier for partisan poll watchers to successfully pursue legal action if they argue that they were wrongfully refused or obstructed.In addition, the bill would limit who can vote absentee by mail in Texas, which does not have universal, no-excuse absentee voting. The bill states that those with a disability may vote absentee, but a voter with “an illness, injury or disability that does not prevent the voter from appearing at the polling place on election day” may not do so.Amid the new restrictions are multiple provisions that provide greater transparency into election administration. Counties must now provide video surveillance of ballot-counting facilities, and they must eventually make those videos available to the public. Discussions with voting equipment vendors must also be available to the public.During the debate before Sunday’s vote in the State Senate, Senator Royce West, a Democrat from Dallas, raised concerns that a provision barring voting before 1 p.m. on Sundays would limit “souls to the polls” organizing efforts that are popular with Black churches. Mr. Hughes said that clause was intended to allow poll workers to go to church.Mr. West noted that a separate bill passed by the Legislature will allow the sale of beer and wine starting at 10 a.m., two hours earlier than current law permits.“We’re going to be able to buy beer at 10 o’clock in the morning, but we can’t vote until one o’clock,” Mr. West said.Austin Ramzy and Anna Schaverien contributed reporting. More

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      Prosecutors Investigating Whether Ukrainians Meddled in 2020 Election

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      The Brooklyn federal inquiry has examined whether former and current Ukrainian officials tried to interfere in the election, including funneling misleading information through Rudolph W. Giuliani.Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether several Ukrainian officials helped orchestrate a wide-ranging plan to meddle in the 2020 presidential campaign, including using Rudolph W. Giuliani to spread their misleading claims about President Biden and tilt the election in Donald J. Trump’s favor, according to people with knowledge of the matter. More

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      Justice Dept. Fights to Keep Secret a Memo on Clearing Trump in Russia Inquiry

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      The move put the Biden administration in the position of defending the secrecy of a memo related to the disputed decision to clear President Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has decided to fight a legal battle to keep secret most of a Trump-era Justice Department memo related to Attorney General William P. Barr’s much-disputed declaration in 2019 that cleared President Donald J. Trump of illegally obstructing justice in the Russia investigation.In a late-night filing on Monday, the Justice Department appealed part of a scathing district court ruling that ordered it to make public the entire memo. Two senior department officials wrote the document at the same time that they were helping Mr. Barr draft a letter to Congress claiming that the evidence in the report, which was still secret at the time, was insufficient to charge Mr. Trump with a crime.The still-redacted portion of the document examines nearly a dozen episodes presented as raising obstruction of justice concerns that were detailed in the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and has at least two sections, according to two people briefed on it.One laid out potential legal theories under which Mr. Trump could have been prosecuted, the people said. The other examined whether the evidence for any of the episodes constituted proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The memo is said to conclude that no charge was viable.The decision to keep hiding that analysis from public scrutiny puts the Biden administration in the politically awkward position of trying to cover up a record that would shed new light on an act by Mr. Barr that Democrats consider notorious. But it also enables the department to defend two institutional interests: its ability to keep internal legal analysis secret and the actions of career officials whom a judge accused of misleading the court.The Justice Department did release the first page and a half of the nine-page memo. While Mr. Mueller had declined to render a judgment about whether to prosecute Mr. Trump because the department’s policy was not to charge a sitting president, the memo said that Mr. Barr should offer his opinion of the evidence to shape public understanding of the report.“Although the special counsel recognized the unfairness of levying an accusation against the president without bringing criminal charges, the report’s failure to take a position on the matters described therein might be read to imply such an accusation if the confidential report were released to the public,” wrote Steven A. Engel and Edward C. O’Callaghan, two senior Justice Department officials during the Trump administration.The department also consented to releasing additional portions of the ruling this month by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, in which she had labeled its previous filings to her about the memo as “disingenuous.” Portions of her ruling that discussed the first part of the memo had been redacted.The court on Tuesday unsealed a more fulsome version of the ruling. It revealed that Judge Jackson had also accused the department of having “deliberately obscured” material in the memo that contradicted the notion that Mr. Barr needed to offer a public opinion about the prosecutorial merit of the evidence amassed by Mr. Mueller. The exercise, she said, was instead “purely hypothetical” and fundamentally about “getting a jump on public relations.”Noting that she had discovered the existence of this first part of the memo only after she insisted on reading it for herself rather than relying on the department’s representations about it, Judge Jackson also wrote: “D.O.J. made a strategic decision to pretend as if the first portion of the memorandum was not there and to avoid acknowledging that what the writers were actually discussing was how to neutralize the impact of the report in the court of public opinion.”The new Justice Department filing apologized for — but also defended — its Barr-era assertions to the court about the memo. It said that department officials could have been clearer, but that they were nevertheless accurate on the central legal question: whether the nature of the memo was pre-decisional and deliberative and thus exempt from disclosure. Any missteps, it argued, did not warrant releasing the entire document.Mr. Barr’s claim that the evidence did not show that Mr. Trump had committed any chargeable crime of obstruction has been widely criticized as deeply misleading. Among other fallout, a government watchdog group, CREW, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the United States District Court in Washington seeking disclosure materials about the matter, leading to the fight over the memo.The Mueller report itself — which Mr. Barr permitted to become public weeks after his letter to Congress created an impression that the fruits of the inquiry had cleared Mr. Trump of obstruction — detailed several actions by Mr. Trump that many legal specialists say were sufficient to ask a grand jury to indict him on charges of obstruction of justice.Those actions included Mr. Trump’s attempt to bully his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, into putting out a statement or writing a memo that would falsely deny that the president had directed him to fire Mr. Mueller — effectively falsifying evidence that would have contradicted Mr. McGahn’s witness testimony about that event.Mr. McGahn, who refused to relay directions to remove Mr. Mueller and to later falsely deny that episode, according to the Mueller report, will privately testify next week before the House Judiciary Committee about such matters.Mr. Trump’s actions also included dangling a potential pardon to his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to encourage him not to cooperate with investigators.Mr. Trump later pardoned Mr. Manafort, who had refused to cooperate with Mr. Mueller about certain key matters.Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2019, Mr. Barr offered some explanations for why he did not think charges were merited for a few of the 10 episodes that the Mueller report had recounted as raising obstruction concerns. One of the people said that testimony drew upon and dovetailed with the still-hidden portions of the memo.“We took each of the 10 episodes, and we assessed them against the analytical framework that had been set forth by the special counsel,” Mr. Barr said at the time. “And we concluded that the evidence developed during the special counsel’s investigation was not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense.”For example, several episodes centered on Mr. Trump’s use, or attempted use, of his power to remove subordinate officials in the executive branch. They included his firing in 2017 of the F.BI. director James B. Comey Jr. — the act that led to Mr. Mueller’s appointment — and his unsuccessful efforts to persuade subordinates to have Mr. Mueller fired.Mr. Barr testified that “as a matter of law,” the obstruction statutes enacted by Congress did not limit the president’s power to remove a special counsel.That view, which is contested, comports with his own sweeping theory of presidential power. Still, in the deliberations, department officials also focused on the lack of historical precedent for prosecuting a current or former president for firing a subordinate, the two people said.In his testimony, Mr. Barr also maintained that the evidence was insufficient to prove that Mr. Trump had deliberately sought to criminally obstruct the investigation, apart from legal theories.For example, Mr. Barr said, a major reason that Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey was his “refusal to tell the public what he was privately telling the president, which was that the president was not under investigation.” Mr. Trump’s rationale for trying to fire Mr. Mueller was a purported conflict of interest, and had Mr. Trump succeeded, Mr. Barr said, a replacement would “presumably” have been appointed.But the Trump Justice Department never made public its comprehensive analysis of all the episodes the Mueller report laid out. That is the analysis the Biden administration is seeking to keep secret.Judge Jackson had given the department until Monday night to respond to her order to disclose the memo — and, by extension, her finding that officials had been “disingenuous to this court” about its nature in court filings by arguing that it could be lawfully kept secret.In addition to officials omitting the existence of the first part of the memo in descriptions of it that were submitted to her, Judge Jackson also blasted the characterization of the document as pre-decisional. Mr. Barr, she wrote, had already decided not to initiate any prosecution of Mr. Trump when the memo was written, and it was instead about strategy and arguments that could be mustered to support that decision.In its filing, the Biden Justice Department said that the previous filings “could have been clearer, and it deeply regrets the confusion that caused.” But it also insisted that the department’s “declarations and briefs were accurate and submitted in good faith.”The department also put forward a narrow view of the problems with its previous statements about the memo, focusing on imprecision about whether Mr. Barr had been considering whether to commence a prosecution of Mr. Trump at that moment — as it had suggested in some places — or whether he was opining on whether Mr. Trump could be charged after he left office.Although Mr. Engel and Mr. O’Callaghan completed the memo after Mr. Barr had decided to say the evidence would not support obstruction charges, the department argued that the legal analysis portion of the memo memorialized advice they had provided before Mr. Barr made that decision.“The government acknowledges that its briefs could have been clearer, and it deeply regrets the confusion that caused,” the Biden Justice Department’s filing said. “But the government’s counsel and declarants did not intend to mislead the court, and the government respectfully submits” that any missteps still did not warrant releasing the entire memo.Katie Benner More

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      Long After Trump’s Loss, a Push to Inspect Ballots Persists

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      Efforts to review 2020 ballots in Georgia and Arizona reflect the staying power of Donald Trump’s falsehoods, and Democrats fear that the findings could be twisted by Republicans.Georgia has already counted its 2020 presidential vote three times, with the same result: President Biden defeated Donald J. Trump narrowly yet decisively. But now portions of the vote will be inspected for a fourth time, after a judge ruled late last week that a group of voters must be allowed to view copies of all 147,000 absentee ballots cast in the state’s largest county.The move carries limited weight. The plaintiffs, led by a known conspiracy theorist, will have no access to the actual ballots, Georgia’s election results have already been certified after recounts and audits showed Mr. Biden as the winner with no evidence of fraud, and the review will have no bearing on the outcome.But the order from Judge Brian Amero of Henry County Superior Court was a victory for a watchdog group of plaintiffs that has said it is in search of instances of ballot fraud, parroting Mr. Trump’s election lies. Election officials in Fulton County, which contains most of Atlanta, worry that if such a review does occur there, it could cast further doubt on the state’s results and give Republican lawmakers ammunition to seek greater power over the administration of elections.“Where does it end? It’s like a never-ending circus, this big lie,” Robb Pitts, the Democratic chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, said in an interview on Monday. “When they were accusing Fulton County and me in particular, I listened and I said — I said to the president, his representatives and I said to the secretary of state: ‘If you have evidence of any wrongdoing, bring it to me. If you do not, put up or shut up.’ And I repeat that again today.”The ruling in Georgia, a state that for months has weathered attacks from Mr. Trump and his allies as they falsely claimed the election had been stolen, coincided with a widely criticized Republican-led recount of over two million ballots cast in Maricopa County, Ariz., the largest county in another state that stunned Republicans by tipping to Mr. Biden last year after decades of G.O.P. dominance in presidential elections.That recount, which was approved by the Arizona state government and funded privately, resumed on Monday despite wide and bipartisan denunciations of the effort as a political sham and growing evidence that it is powered by “Stop the Steal” allies of Mr. Trump’s.The Arizona Republic reported on Saturday that volunteers being recruited to help recount the Maricopa ballots were being vetted by an organization set up by Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive of the online retailer Overstock.com and a prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump.On Monday, an independent nonprofit news outlet, azmirror.com, reported that the organization conducting the hand recount, Wake Technology Services, had been hired in December for an election audit in Pennsylvania by a nonprofit group run by Sidney Powell, a onetime member of Mr. Trump’s legal team and prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories about the election.Late Monday, Mr. Trump continued to rail against the election results, citing the Arizona recount and the Georgia court ruling. “More to follow,” he said in a statement issued by his office. The efforts to continue questioning the legitimacy of the election in two critical battleground states, nearly seven months after voting concluded, illustrate Mr. Trump’s hold over the Republican Party and the staying power of his false election claims. Even though Mr. Trump is not directly involved in the continued examinations of votes in Arizona and Georgia, his supporters’ widespread refusal to accept the reality of Mr. Biden’s victory has led fellow Republicans to find new and inventive ways to question and delegitimize the 2020 results.A recount of over two million ballots cast in Maricopa County, Ariz., the state’s largest, was paused this month and resumed on Monday.Courtney Pedroza for The New York TimesLeading the Georgia ballot review effort is Garland Favorito, a political gadfly in Georgia who has lingered on the conspiracy fringe of American politics for decades. In 2002, he published a book questioning the origin of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He has also trafficked in unproven theories about the Kennedy assassination and, in 2014, he appeared in a video promoting the idea that the 14th Amendment was itself unconstitutional and argued that the federal government was therefore illegitimate and should be overthrown.In an interview, Mr. Favorito cited his “15 years” of experience as a self-styled elections investigator, saying he had been first motivated by Georgia’s purchase of new election machines that did not maintain paper-ballot records. He said that his concerns about the 2020 election stemmed in large part from affidavits filed by former election officials who claimed that they had handled ballots that appeared to be counterfeit because they were either not folded, appeared to be marked by a machine, or were printed on different stock. (There is no evidence of widespread use of counterfeit ballots.)Though Mr. Favorito refused to accept the findings of the recounts and audits already done in Georgia, he said he would be satisfied if, after inspecting the ballot copies, he and his team found no problems.“Once we find out the truth, if the results were correct, we can all go home and sleep at night knowing that it was right all along,” Mr. Favorito said.But he does not view leading Republicans in Georgia — some of whom, like former Senator Kelly Loeffler, have been vocally supportive of his efforts — as allies.“The Republican establishment hasn’t reached out, whatsoever,” he said, adding that he had not voted for Mr. Trump but for a third-party candidate. And the funding for the inspection, he said, would come from “patriots” making small-dollar donations. “We don’t have any big money.”The spread and repetition of false claims about the election follows familiar patterns for disinformation, which often occupies segmented corners of the internet and social media. Forces both algorithmic and organic will surface content — such as theories of election fraud based on grainy social media videos or anonymous allegations — for people who are inclined to agree with it.But what have further fueled Mr. Trump’s election claims, aside from his continued public pronouncements, are the many lawsuits filed by the former president and his allies after the 2020 election.“Even though all of the lawsuits got thrown out, the Trump campaign did file a whole bunch of baseless lawsuits, which adds a layer of legitimacy when you’re reading about a lawsuit that’s been filed versus some rumor, allegation or piece of content online,” said Lisa Kaplan, the founder of Alethea Group, a company that helps fight misinformation. “It ratchets it up a notch.”The Georgia effort could also yet extend beyond the Republican echo chamber in which the 2020 election is still being litigated. The state’s new election law ensures that the General Assembly, which is currently controlled by Republicans, has broad authority over counties through a restructured state election board. The board can, among other things, suspend county election officials.As Mr. Favorito did a victory lap on pro-Trump news outlets, he won praise from top Georgia Republicans. David J. Shafer, the pro-Trump chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, emailed fellow Republicans on Friday calling Judge Amero’s ruling “a very significant and encouraging development.”Ms. Loeffler also praised Mr. Favorito’s effort.“While there is a dire need to investigate a number of other well-documented issues, we must also inspect Fulton County’s absentee ballots to reassure Georgians that their voices are heard and their votes are counted,” she said.Even Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, signaled support for the inspection led by Mr. Favorito’s group.“Allowing this audit provides another layer of transparency and citizen engagement,” Mr. Raffensperger said in a statement on Friday.The support from Mr. Raffensperger, who is now running for re-election, surprised some political observers in Georgia. It was the secretary of state who stood up to the false claims of election fraud in Georgia espoused by Mr. Trump and who has highlighted the audits conducted by state government officials last year as definitive reaffirmations of the election results. His office also filed an amicus brief in the lawsuit, arguing that Mr. Favorito’s group should not be given physical ballots for security reasons, though Mr. Raffensperger took no stance on the case in his brief.“From day one, I have encouraged Georgians with concerns about the election in their counties to pursue those claims through legal avenues,” Mr. Raffensperger said in his statement.Michael Wines More

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      Giuliani Seeks to Block Review of Evidence From His Phones

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      Prosecutors investigating Rudolph W. Giuliani’s work in Ukraine have seized his electronic devices, a move his lawyers are now questioning.Rudolph W. Giuliani on Monday opened a broad attack on the searches that federal investigators conducted of his home, his office and his iCloud account, asking a judge to block any review of the seized records while his lawyers determine whether there was a legitimate basis for the warrants, according a court filing made public on Monday.Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers are seeking copies of the confidential government documents that detail the basis for the search warrants, a legal long shot that they hope could open the door for them to argue for the evidence to be suppressed. Typically, prosecutors only disclose such records after someone is indicted and before a trial, but Mr. Giuliani, who is under investigation for potential lobbying violations, has not been accused of wrongdoing.A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on Monday.In a 17-page letter to the judge who authorized the searches, Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers argued that it would have been more appropriate — and less invasive — for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan to seek information through a subpoena, which, unlike a warrant, would have given him an opportunity to review the documents and respond.Justice Department policy recommends that prosecutors use subpoenas when seeking information from lawyers, unless there is a concern about destruction of evidence.The defense lawyers wrote that prosecutors “simply chose to treat a distinguished lawyer as if he was the head of a drug cartel or a terrorist, in order to create maximum prejudicial coverage of both Giuliani and his most well-known client — the former president of the United States.”The lawyers also disclosed that the government had claimed in a November 2019 search warrant for Mr. Giuliani’s iCloud account that the search needed to be a secret because of concerns he might destroy records or intimidate witnesses.Though the government routinely cites concern about potential destruction of records when seeking search warrants, Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers attacked the idea that their client, himself a former federal prosecutor and onetime personal lawyer to President Donald J. Trump, would ever destroy evidence.“Such an allegation, on its face, strains credulity,” the lawyers, including Robert J. Costello and Arthur Aidala, wrote. “It is not only false, but extremely damaging to Giuliani’s reputation. It is not supported by any credible facts and is contradicted by Giuliani’s efforts to provide information to the government.”The judge who approved the warrants, J. Paul Oetken of Federal District Court, will ultimately decide whether Mr. Giuliani will have access to the confidential government materials underlying them.Mr. Giuliani’s court filing came in response to the government’s request that Judge Oetken appoint a so-called special master to review cellphones and computers seized in the search of Mr. Giuliani’s home and office in Manhattan on April 28.The special master — usually a retired judge or magistrate — would determine whether the materials contained in the devices are covered by attorney-client privilege and as a result cannot be used as evidence in the case. He or she would filter out privileged communications not only between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump, but also between Mr. Giuliani and his other clients.Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers called the appointment of a special master “premature,” because they are first seeking copies of the search warrant materials.The authorities want to examine the electronic devices for communications that might reveal whether Mr. Giuliani violated lobbying laws in his dealings in Ukraine, The New York Times has reported.While serving as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer before the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Giuliani sought to uncover damaging information on President Biden, then a leading Democratic contender.At issue is whether Mr. Giuliani was at the same time lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials who were assisting him in the search.It is a violation of federal law to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of foreign officials without registering with the Justice Department. Mr. Giuliani never registered as a lobbyist for the Ukrainians. He has maintained that he was working only for Mr. Trump.One day after the search, the U.S. attorney’s office told Judge Oetken in a letter that the F.B.I. had begun to extract materials from the seized devices but had not yet begun reviewing them.In the letter, the prosecutors said the appointment of a special master might be appropriate because of “the unusually sensitive privilege issues” raised by the searches, citing, for example, Mr. Giuliani’s representation of Mr. Trump.Communications between lawyers and their clients are generally shielded from investigators in the United States, and communications between presidents and their aides enjoy a similar protection, known as executive privilege.“Any search may implicate not only the attorney-client privilege but the executive privilege,” the office of Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, wrote.In seeking the appointment of a special master to review Mr. Giuliani’s materials, the prosecutors cited their office’s investigation of Michael D. Cohen, another of Mr. Trump’s former lawyers.In that case, federal agents seized documents and electronic devices in an April 2018 search of Mr. Cohen’s office, apartment and hotel room. A judge appointed Barbara S. Jones, a retired judge, to determine whether those materials were off-limits to investigators because of attorney-client privilege.Ms. Jones ultimately concluded that only a fraction of Mr. Cohen’s materials were privileged and that the rest could be provided to the government. That August, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other crimes. More

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      ‘We Can’t Indulge These Insane Lies’: Arizona G.O.P. Split on Vote Audit

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      Top local Republicans are hitting back at Donald J. Trump and fellow party members in the State Senate over a review of Arizona ballots.For weeks, election professionals and Democrats have consistently called the Republican-backed review of November voting results in Arizona a fatally flawed exercise, marred by its partisan cast of characters and sometimes bizarre methodology.Now, after a week in which leaders of the review suggested they had found evidence of illegal behavior, top Republicans in the state’s largest county have escalated their own attacks on the effort, with the county’s top election official calling former President Donald J. Trump “unhinged” for his online comments falsely accusing the county of deleting an elections database.“We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer,” the official, Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder and a Republican, wrote on Twitter. “As a party. As a state. As a country. This is as readily falsifiable as 2+2=5.”Three times, the county has investigated and upheld the integrity of the November vote, which was supervised by Mr. Richer’s predecessor, a Democrat.It is not the first time Republicans in county government have been at odds with the Republicans in the Legislature over the review of the vote. But Mr. Richer is among various Republicans in Maricopa County sounding like they have run out of patience.The five elected supervisors, all but one of whom are Republicans, plan to meet on Monday afternoon to issue a broadside against what Republican sponsors in the State Senate have billed as an election audit, which targets the 2.1 million votes cast in November in metropolitan Phoenix and outlying areas. The planned meeting follows a weekend barrage of posts on Twitter, with the hashtag #RealAuditorsDont, in which the supervisors assailed the integrity of the review.Those posts followed a letter from the leader of the audit, State Senator Karen Fann, implying that the county had removed “the main database for all election-related data” from election equipment that had been subpoenaed for review. Mr. Trump later published the letter on his website, calling it “devastating” evidence of irregularities.The supervisors’ Twitter rebuke was scathing. Real auditors don’t “release false ‘conclusions’ without understanding what they are looking at,” one post said, ridiculing the allegation of a deleted database. Nor do real auditors “hire known conspiracy theorists,” a reference to the firm hired to manage the review, whose chief executive has promoted theories that rigged voting machines caused Mr. Trump’s loss in Arizona.The Arizona Senate president, Karen Fann, has defended the ballot review. Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressJack Sellers, the Republican chairman of the board of supervisors, issued a statement calling the suggestion that files were deleted “outrageous, completely baseless and beneath the dignity of the Arizona Senate,” which ordered the audit. In an interview, he said the meeting on Monday would refute claims in the letter from Ms. Fann, the Senate president.“Basically, every one of our five supervisors said, ‘Enough is enough,’” Mr. Sellers said in an interview on Sunday. “What they’re suggesting is not just criticism. They’re saying we broke the law. And we certainly did not.”The real target of the accusations, he said in the interview, “are the professionals who run the elections, people who followed the rules and who did an incredible job in the middle of a pandemic.“A lot of the questions being asked right now have been answered,” he said of those challenging the November results. “But the people asking them don’t like the answers, so they keep on asking.”At issue is the Maricopa County vote. But Ms. Fann’s letter raises the prospect that an exercise dismissed by serious observers as transparently partisan and flawed could become a potent weapon in the continuing effort by Mr. Trump and his followers to undermine the legitimacy of the vote in Arizona, and perhaps elsewhere.The review has no formal electoral authority and will not change the results of the election in Arizona, no matter what it finds.One poll by High Ground, a Phoenix firm well known for its political surveys, concluded this spring that 78 percent of Arizona Republicans believe Mr. Trump’s false claims that President Biden did not win the November election. A recent Monmouth University poll found that almost two-thirds of Republicans nationally believe that Mr. Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election. More than six in 10 Americans overall believe that he did.Beyond the dispute over supposedly deleted files, Ms. Fann is also pressing the county and the manufacturer of its voting machines, Dominion Voting Systems, to release passwords for vote tabulating machines and county-operated internet routers.Dominion, which has been fighting a series of election-fraud conspiracy theories promoted by Trump supporters and pro-Trump news outlets, has said it will cooperate with federally certified election auditors. But it has spurned the firms hired to conduct the Arizona vote review, whose track record in election audits is scant at best.Maricopa County officials have refused to turn over router passwords, which the auditors say they need to determine whether voting machines were connected to the internet and subject to hacking. County officials say past audits have settled that question. The county sheriff, Paul Penzone, called the demand for passwords “mind-numbingly reckless,” saying it would compromise law enforcement operations unrelated to the election.The review has no formal electoral authority and will not change the results of the election in Arizona, no matter what it finds.Pool photo by Matt YorkThe election review was born in December as an effort by Republican senators to placate voters who had embraced Mr. Trump’s lie that Mr. Biden’s 10,457-vote victory in the state was a fraud. Maricopa County, where two-thirds of the state’s votes were cast, was chosen in part because Republicans refused to believe that Mr. Biden had scored a 45,000-vote victory in a county that once was solid G.O.P. territory.What once seemed an effort to mollify angry supporters of Mr. Trump, however, has become engulfed in acrimony as Ms. Fann and other senators have steered the review in a decidedly partisan direction, hiring as its manager a Florida company, Cyber Ninjas, whose chief executive had previously suggested that rigged voting machines caused Mr. Trump’s Arizona loss.An accounting of the review’s finances remains cloudy, but far-right supporters, including the ardently pro-Trump cable news outlet One America News, have raised funds on its behalf. Nonpartisan election experts and the Justice Department have cited troubling indicators that the review is open to manipulation and ignores the most basic security guidelines.Most Arizona Republican officials who have spoken publicly have doggedly supported the review. But State Senator Paul Boyer, a Republican from a suburban Phoenix district evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, made headlines last week after saying that the conduct of the review made him embarrassed to serve in the State Senate.Senator T.J. Shope, another Republican from a Phoenix swing district, has been more circumspect, saying he believed Mr. Biden’s election was legitimate but that he had been too busy to follow the controversy. But in a Twitter post on Saturday, he wrote that Mr. Trump was “peddling in fantasy” by suggesting that the county’s election records had been nefariously deleted.The Maricopa County vote review has been forced to suspend operations this week while the Phoenix work site, a suburban coliseum, is cleared out to host high school graduations. Mr. Sellers, the chairman of the board of supervisors, said he hoped the supervisors’ effort to refute the review’s claims on Monday would be the end of the affair.“It’s clearer by the day: The people hired by the Senate are in way over their heads,” his statement said. “This is not funny; it’s dangerous.” More

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      Beneath Joe Biden’s Folksy Demeanor, a Short Fuse and an Obsession With Details

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      As Mr. Biden settles into the office he has chased for more than three decades, aides say he demands hours of debate from scores of policy experts.WASHINGTON — The commander in chief was taking his time, as usual.It was late March, and President Biden was under increasing pressure to penalize President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for election interference and the biggest cyberattack ever on American government and industry. “I have to do it relatively soon,” he said to Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser. More

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      Biden Courts Democrats and Republican Leaders on Infrastructure

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      The meeting produced little progress, underscoring the political challenge for President Biden as he seeks to exploit the narrowest of majorities in Congress to revive the country’s economy.WASHINGTON — To hear the participants tell it, President Biden’s first-ever meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders from both houses of Congress was 90 minutes of productive conversation. It was cordial. There were no explosions of anger. More