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      Where 6 Investigations Into Donald Trump Stand

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      The former president finds himself without the power of the presidency, staring at a host of prosecutors and lawyers who have him and his associates in their sights.WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump has set up his office on the second floor of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida as part replica of the Oval Office and part homage to his time in the real White House.On the wall during a visit last year were six favorite photographs, including ones with Queen Elizabeth II and Kim Jong-un. On display were challenge coins, a plaque commemorating his border wall and a portrait of the former president fashioned out of bullet casings, a present from Jair Bolsonaro, the so-called Trump of Brazil.This has become Mr. Trump’s fortress in exile and his war room, the headquarters for the wide-ranging and rapidly escalating conflict with investigators that has come to consume his post-presidency. It is a multifront war, with battlefields in New York, Georgia and the nation’s capital, featuring a shifting roster of lawyers and a blizzard of allegations of wrongdoing that are hard to keep straight.Never before has a former president faced an array of federal, state and congressional investigations as extensive as Mr. Trump has, the cumulative consequences of a career in business and eventually politics lived on the edge, or perhaps over the edge. Whether it be his misleading business practices or his efforts to overturn a democratic election or his refusal to hand over sensitive government documents that did not belong to him, Mr. Trump’s disparate legal troubles stem from the same sense that rules constraining others did not apply to him.The story of how he got to this point is both historically unique and eminently predictable. Mr. Trump has been fending off investigators and legal troubles for a half century, since the Justice Department sued his family business for racial discrimination and through the myriad inquiries that would follow over the years. He has a remarkable track record of sidestepping the worst outcomes, but even he may now find so many inquiries pointing in his direction that escape is uncertain.His view of the legal system has always been transactional; it is a weapon to be used, either by him or against him, and he has rarely been intimidated by the kinds of subpoenas and affidavits that would chill a less litigious character. On the civil side, he has been involved in thousands of lawsuits with business partners, vendors and others, many of them suing him because he refused to pay his bills.While president, he once explained his view of the legal system to some aides, saying that he would go to court to intimidate adversaries because just threatening to sue was not enough.“When you threaten to sue, they don’t do anything,” Mr. Trump told aides. “They say, ‘Psshh!’” — he waved his hand in the air — “and keep doing what they want. But when you sue them, they go, ‘Oooh!’” — here he made a cringing face — “and they settle. It’s as easy as that.”When he began losing legal battles as president with regularity, he lashed out. At one point when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a traditionally liberal bench based in California, ruled against one of his policies, he demanded that aides get rid of the court altogether. “Let’s just cancel it,” he said, as if it were a campaign event, not a court system established under law. If it required legislation, then draft a bill to “get rid” of the judges, he said, using an expletive.But his aides ignored him and now he finds himself without the power of the presidency, staring at a host of prosecutors and lawyers who have him and his associates in their sights. Some of the issues at hand go back years, but many of the seeds for his current legal jeopardy were planted in those frenetic final days in office when he sought to overturn the will of the voters and hold onto power through a series of lies about election fraud that did not exist.What to Know About the Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      Trump’s Lawyers Could Face Legal Troubles of Their Own

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      Several of the former president’s lawyers are under scrutiny by federal investigators amid squabbling over competence.To understand the pressures, feuds and questions about competence within former President Donald J. Trump’s legal team as he faces potential prosecution on multiple fronts, consider the experience of Eric Herschmann, a former Trump White House lawyer who has been summoned to testify to a federal grand jury.For weeks this summer, Mr. Herschmann tried to get specific guidance from Mr. Trump’s current lawyers on how to handle questions from prosecutors that raise issues of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.After ignoring Mr. Herschmann or giving him what he seemed to consider perplexing answers to the requests for weeks, two of the former president’s lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and John Rowley, offered him only broad instructions in late August. Assert sweeping claims of executive privilege, they advised him, after Mr. Corcoran had suggested that an unspecified “chief judge” would ultimately validate their belief that a president’s powers extend far beyond their time in office.Mr. Herschmann, who served on Mr. Trump’s first impeachment defense team but later opposed efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, was hardly reassured and sounded confused by the reference to a chief judge.“I will not rely on your say-so that privileges apply here and be put in the middle of a privilege fight between D.O.J. and President Trump,” Mr. Herschmann, a former prosecutor, responded in an email, referring to the Justice Department. The exchange was part of a string of correspondence in which, after having his questions ignored or having the lawyers try to speak directly with him on the phone instead, Mr. Herschmann questioned the competence of the lawyers involved.The emails were obtained by The New York Times from a person who was not on the thread of correspondence. Mr. Herschmann declined to comment.Mr. Herschmann’s opinion was hardly the only expression of skepticism from current and former allies of Mr. Trump who are now worried about a turnstile roster of lawyers representing a client who often defies advice and inserts political rants into legal filings.Mr. Trump’s legal team just won one round in its battle with the Justice Department over the seizure of documents from his residence and private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, and it is not clear whether he will face prosecution from the multiple federal and state investigations swirling around him even as he weighs another run for the presidency.Mr. Trump has also just brought on a well-regarded lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, the former solicitor general of Florida, to help lead his legal team, after being rejected by a handful of others he had sought out, including former U.S. attorneys with experience in the jurisdictions where the investigations are unfolding.Mr. Kise agreed to work for the former president for a $3 million fee, an unusually high retainer for Mr. Trump to agree to, according to two people familiar with the figure. Mr. Kise did not respond to an email seeking comment.But Mr. Trump’s legal team has been distinguished in recent months mostly by infighting and the legal problems that some of its members appear to have gotten themselves into in the course of defending him.In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, Taylor Budowich, said that “the unprecedented and unnecessary weaponization of law enforcement against the Democrats’ most powerful political opponent is a truth that cannot be overshadowed and will continue to be underscored by the vital work being done right now by President Trump and his legal team.”Two members of the Trump legal team working on the documents case, Mr. Corcoran and Christina Bobb, have subjected themselves to scrutiny by federal law enforcement officials over assurances they provided to prosecutors and federal agents in June that the former president had returned all sensitive government documents kept in his residence and subpoenaed by a grand jury, according to people familiar with the situation.That assertion was proved to be untrue after the search of Mar-a-Lago in August turned up more than 100 additional documents with classification markings..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Investigators are seeking information from Ms. Bobb about why she signed a statement attesting to full compliance with the subpoena, and they have signaled they have not ruled out pursuing a criminal inquiry into the actions of either Ms. Bobb or Mr. Corcoran, according to two people briefed on the matter.The attestation was drafted by Mr. Corcoran, but Ms. Bobb added language to it to make it less ironclad a declaration before signing it, according to the people. She has retained the longtime criminal defense lawyer John Lauro, who declined to comment on the investigation.It is unclear whether the authorities have questioned Ms. Bobb yet or whether she has had discussions with Mr. Trump’s other lawyers about the degree to which she would remain bound by attorney-client privilege.Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Rowley did not respond to emails seeking comment.Mr. Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor and insurance lawyer, represented the former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon in his recent trial for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. In that case, Mr. Bannon claimed he believed he had immunity from testimony because of executive privilege; Mr. Trump later said he would not seek to invoke executive privilege for Mr. Bannon.Mr. Corcoran, the son of a former Republican congressman from Illinois, has told associates that he is the former president’s “main” lawyer and has insisted to colleagues that he does not need to retain his own counsel, as Ms. Bobb has.But several Trump associates have said privately that they believe Mr. Corcoran cannot continue in his role on the documents investigation. That view is shared by some of Mr. Trump’s advisers, who have suggested Mr. Corcoran needs to step away, in part because of his own potential legal exposure and in part because he has had little experience with criminal defense work beyond his stint as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. attorney in Washington more than two decades ago.Mr. Trump has at least 10 lawyers working on the main investigations he faces. Mr. Corcoran, Ms. Bobb and Mr. Kise are focused on the documents case, along with James M. Trusty, a former senior Justice Department official. Three lawyers on the team — Mr. Corcoran, Mr. Rowley and Timothy Parlatore — represent other clients who are witnesses in cases related to Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power.To the extent anyone is regarded as a quarterback of the documents and Jan. 6-related legal teams, it is Boris Epshteyn, a former campaign adviser and a graduate of the Georgetown University law school. Some aides tried to block his calls to Mr. Trump in 2020, according to former White House officials, but Mr. Epshteyn now works as an in-house counsel to Mr. Trump and speaks with him several times a day.Mr. Epshteyn played a key role coordinating efforts by a group of lawyers for and political allies of Mr. Trump immediately after the 2020 election to prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr. from becoming president. Because of that role, he has been asked to testify in the state investigation in Georgia into the efforts to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory there.Mr. Epshteyn’s phone was seized by the F.B.I. last week as part of the broad federal criminal inquiry into the attempts to overturn the election results and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. That prompted alarm among some of Mr. Trump’s allies and advisers about him remaining in a position of authority on the legal team.It is not clear how much strategic direction and leadership Mr. Kise may provide. But he is joining a team defined by warring camps and disputes over legal issues.In his emails to Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Rowley, Mr. Herschmann — a prominent witness for the House select committee on Jan. 6 and what led to it — invoked Mr. Corcoran’s defense of Mr. Bannon and argued pointedly that case law about executive privilege did not reflect what Mr. Corcoran believed it did.Mr. Herschmann made clear in the emails that absent a court order precluding a witness from answering questions on the basis of executive privilege, which he had repeatedly implored them to seek, he would be forced to testify.“I certainly am not relying on any legal analysis from either of you or Boris who — to be clear — I think is an idiot,” Mr. Herschmann wrote in a different email. “When I questioned Boris’s legal experience to work on challenging a presidential election since he appeared to have none — challenges that resulted in multiple court failures — he boasted that he was ‘just having fun,’ while also taking selfies and posting pictures online of his escapades.”Mr. Corcoran at one point sought to get on the phone with Mr. Herschmann to discuss his testimony, instead of simply sending the written directions, which alarmed Mr. Herschmann, given that Mr. Herschmann was a witness, the emails show.In language that mirrored the federal statute against witness tampering, Mr. Herschmann told Mr. Corcoran that Mr. Epshteyn, himself under subpoena in Georgia, “should not in any way be involved in trying to influence, delay or prevent my testimony.”“He is not in a position or qualified to opine on any of these issues,” Mr. Herschmann said.Mr. Epshteyn declined to respond to a request for comment.Nearly four weeks after Mr. Herschmann first asked for an instruction letter and for Mr. Trump’s lawyers to seek a court order invoking a privilege claim, the emails show that he received notification from the lawyers — in the early morning hours of the day he was scheduled to testify — that they had finally done as he asked.His testimony was postponed.Michael S. Schmidt More

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      Republicans Signal Worries About Trump and the Midterms

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      Few Republicans appeared on the major Sunday talk shows to defend the former president. Those who did indicated that they would rather be talking about almost anything else.WASHINGTON — Headed into 2022, Republicans were confident that a red wave would sweep them into control of Congress based on the conventional political wisdom that the midterm elections would produce a backlash against President Biden, who has struggled with low approval ratings.But now some are signaling concern that the referendum they anticipated on Mr. Biden — and the high inflation and gas prices that have bedeviled his administration — is being complicated by all-encompassing attention on the legal exposure of a different president: his predecessor, Donald J. Trump.Those worries were on display on Sunday morning as few Republicans appeared on the major Washington-focused news shows to defend Mr. Trump two days after a redacted version of the affidavit used to justify the F.B.I. search of his Mar-a-Lago estate revealed that he had retained highly classified material related to the use of “clandestine human sources” in intelligence gathering. And those who did appear indicated that they would rather be talking about almost anything else.Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, acknowledged that Mr. Trump “should have turned the documents over” but quickly pivoted to the timing of the search.“What I wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and, less than 100 days before the election, suddenly we’re talking about this rather than the economy or inflation or even the student loan program,” Mr. Blunt lamented on ABC’s “This Week.”Gov. Chris Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, also pointed to a fear that Mr. Trump’s legal troubles could hurt his party’s midterm chances.“Former President Trump has been out of office for going on two years now,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “You think this is a coincidence just happening a few months before the midterm elections?”The Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, which followed repeated requests over more than a year and a half for Mr. Trump to turn over sensitive documents he took when he left office, initially prompted most Republicans to rally around the former president, strengthening his grip on the party. Some reacted with fury, attacking the nation’s top law enforcement agencies as they called to “defund” or “destroy” the F.B.I. Others invoked the Nazi secret police, using words like “Gestapo” and “tyrants.”Polls showed an increase in Republican support for Mr. Trump, and strategists quickly began incorporating the search into the party’s larger anti-big-government messaging. They combined denunciation of the F.B.I.’s actions with criticism of Democrats’ plans to increase the number of I.R.S. agents in hopes of rallying small-government conservatives to the polls.But as more revelations emerge about Mr. Trump’s handling of some of the government’s most sensitive documents, some of those voices have receded.Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago SearchCard 1 of 4Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago SearchThe release on Aug. 26 of a partly redacted affidavit used by the Justice Department to justify its search of former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence included information that provides greater insight into the ongoing investigation into how he handled documents he took with him from the White House. Here are the key takeaways:Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago SearchThe government tried to retrieve the documents for more than a year. More

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      Possibility of Obstruction Looms Over Trump, Affidavit Suggests

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      Unredacted portions of the affidavit point to a crime that has been overshadowed amid disputes over classified information.WASHINGTON — When the Justice Department proposed redactions to the affidavit underlying the warrant used to search former President Donald J. Trump’s residence, prosecutors made clear that they feared the former president and his allies might take any opportunity to intimidate witnesses or otherwise illegally obstruct their investigation.“The government has well-founded concerns that steps may be taken to frustrate or otherwise interfere with this investigation if facts in the affidavit were prematurely disclosed,” prosecutors said in the brief.The 38-page affidavit, released on Friday, asserted that there was “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at” Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound, indicating that prosecutors had evidence suggesting efforts to impede the recovery of government documents.Since the release of the search warrant, which listed three criminal laws as the foundation of the investigation, one — the Espionage Act — has received the most attention. Discussion has largely focused on the spectacle of the F.B.I. finding documents marked as highly classified and Mr. Trump’s questionable claims that he had declassified everything held at his residence.But by some measures, the crime of obstruction is a threat to Mr. Trump or his close associates that is as much or even more serious. The version investigators are using, known as Section 1519, was part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a broad set of reforms enacted in 2002 after financial scandals at companies like Enron, Arthur Andersen and WorldCom.The heavily redacted affidavit provides new details of the government’s efforts to retrieve and secure the material in Mr. Trump’s possession, highlighting how prosecutors may be pursuing a theory that the former president, his aides or both might have illegally obstructed an effort of well over a year to recover sensitive documents that do not belong to him.To convict someone of obstruction, prosecutors need to prove two things: that a defendant knowingly concealed or destroyed documents, and that he did so to impede the official work of any federal agency or department. Section 1519’s maximum penalty is 20 years in prison, which is twice as long as the penalty under the Espionage Act.Julie O’Sullivan, a Georgetown University law professor who specializes in white-collar crime, said the emerging timeline of the government’s repeatedly stymied attempts to retrieve all the documents, coupled with claims by Mr. Trump that he did nothing wrong because he had declassified all the documents in his possession, raised significant legal peril for him.“He is making a mistake in believing that it matters whether it’s top secret or not,” she said. “He is essentially conceding that he knew he had them.” If so, she added, then not giving them back was “obstructing the return of these documents.”The cloud of potential obstruction carries echoes of the Russia investigation led by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. That inquiry ended up being as much about how Mr. Trump had sought to impede his work, as it was about scrutinizing Russia’s efforts to manipulate the 2016 election and the nature of myriad Russian links to people associated with Mr. Trump’s campaign.Explore Our Coverage of the Trump InvestigationsWhite House Documents: Mr. Trump kept more than 700 pages of classified documents, according to a letter from the National Archives. The Justice Department is said to have retrieved more than 300 classified documents from Mr. Trump since he left office.A Showdown in Georgia: Senator Lindsey Graham is fighting efforts to force him to testify before an Atlanta special grand jury investigating election interference by Mr. Trump and his allies in the state.Invoking the Fifth Amendment: Sitting for a deposition in the New York attorney general’s civil inquiry into his business practices, Mr. Trump repeatedly invoked his constitutional right against self incrimination.In a coincidence, the Justice Department on Thursday revealed an internal document commissioned by then-Attorney General William P. Barr that laid out purported justifications for his pronouncement in 2019 that Mr. Trump was cleared of obstruction suspicions, despite every episode recounted in the Mueller report. This time, however, the Justice Department is not overseen by a Trump loyalist.Because of the heavy redactions in the newly released affidavit, it remains unclear whether there is any other investigation or official agency effort that law enforcement officials think Mr. Trump or people in his circle might have obstructed in refusing to turn over the government documents. But at a minimum, it is clear that the government’s efforts to retrieve the records have repeatedly been impeded.The timeline laid out in the redacted affidavit, which fills in several gaps in the public understanding, traces back to May 6, 2021. On that day, as The New York Times reported this week, the general counsel for the National Archives first reached out to Mr. Trump’s designated representatives to the agency and asked for the return of about two dozen boxes of missing documents. More

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      There Is No Happy Ending to America’s Trump Problem

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      Debate about the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence has settled into well-worn grooves. Mr. Trump and many Republicans have denounced the act as illegitimate. Attorney General Merrick Garland is staying mostly mum. And Democrats are struggling to contain their enthusiasm.Liberal excitement is understandable. Mr. Trump faces potential legal jeopardy from the Jan. 6 investigation in Congress and the Mar-a-Lago search. They anticipate fulfilling a dream going back to the earliest days of the Trump administration: to see him frog-marched to jail before the country and the world.But this is a fantasy. There is no scenario following from the present that culminates in a happy ending for anyone, even for Democrats.Down one path is the prosecution of the former president. This would be a Democratic administration putting the previous occupant of the White House, the ostensible head of the Republican Party and the current favorite to be the G.O.P. presidential nominee in 2024, on trial. That would set an incredibly dangerous precedent. Imagine, each time the presidency is handed from one party to the other, an investigation by the new administration’s Justice Department leads toward the investigation and possible indictment of its predecessor.Some will say that Mr. Trump nonetheless deserves it — and he does. If Mr. Garland does not press charges against him for Jan. 6 or the potential mishandling of classified government documents, Mr. Trump will have learned that becoming president has effectively immunized him from prosecution. That means the country would be facing a potential second term for Mr. Trump in which he is convinced that he can do whatever he wants with complete impunity.That seems to point to the need to push forward with a case, despite the risk of turning it into a regular occurrence. As many of Mr. Trump’s detractors argue, the rule of law demands it — and failing to fulfill that demand could end up being extremely dangerous.But we’ve been through a version of the turbulent Trump experience before. During the Trump years, the system passed its stress test. We have reason to think it would do so again, especially with reforms to the Electoral Count Act likely to pass during the lame duck session following the upcoming midterm elections, if not before. Having to combat an emboldened Mr. Trump or another bad actor would certainly be unnerving and risky. But the alternatives would be too.We caught a glimpse of those alternative risks as soon as the Mar-a-Lago raid was announced. Within hours, leading Republicans had issued inflammatory statements, and these statements would likely grow louder and more incendiary through any trial, both from Mr. Trump himself and from members of his party and its media rabble-rousers. (Though at a federal judge’s order a redacted version of the warrant affidavit may soon be released, so Mr. Trump and the rest of his party would have to contend with the government’s actual justification of the raid itself.)If the matter culminates in an indictment and trial of Mr. Trump, the Republican argument would be more of what we heard day in and day out through his administration. His defenders would claim that every person ostensibly committed to the dispassionate upholding of the rule of law is in fact motivated by rank partisanship and a drive to self-aggrandizement. This would be directed at the attorney general, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and other branches of the so-called deep state. The spectacle would be corrosive, in effect convincing most Republican voters that appeals to the rule of law are invariably a sham.But the nightmare wouldn’t stop there. What if Mr. Trump declares another run for the presidency just as he’s indicted and treats the trial as a circus illustrating the power of the Washington swamp and the need to put Republicans back in charge to drain it? It would be a risible claim, but potentially a politically effective one. And he might well continue this campaign even if convicted, possibly running for president from a jail cell. It would be Mr. Trump versus the System. He would be reviving an old American archetype: the folk-hero outlaw who takes on and seeks to take down the powerful in the name of the people.We wouldn’t even avoid potentially calamitous consequences if Mr. Trump somehow ended up barred from running or his party opted for another candidate to be its nominee in 2024 — say, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. How long do you think it would take for a freshly inaugurated President DeSantis to pardon a convicted and jailed Donald Trump? Hours? Minutes? And that move would probably be combined with a promise to investigate and indict Joe Biden for the various “crimes” he allegedly committed in office.The instinct of Democrats is to angrily dismiss such concerns. But that doesn’t mean these consequences wouldn’t happen. Even if Mr. Garland’s motives and methods are models of judiciousness and restraint, the act of an attorney general of one party seeking to indict and convict a former and possibly future president of the other party is the ringing of a bell that cannot be unrung. It is guaranteed to be undertaken again, regardless of whether present and future accusations are justified.As we’ve seen over and over again since Mr. Trump won the presidency, our system of governance presumes a certain base level of public spiritedness — at the level of the presidency, in Congress and in the electorate at large. When that is lacking — when an aspersive figure is elected, when he maintains strong popular support within his party and when that party remains electorally viable — high-minded efforts to act as antibodies defending the body politic from the spread of infection can end up doing enduring harm to the patient. Think of all those times during the Trump presidency when well-meaning sources inside and outside the administration ended up undermining their own credibility by hyping threats and overpromising evidence of wrongdoing and criminality.That’s why it’s imperative we set aside the Plan A of prosecuting Mr. Trump. In its place, we should embrace a Plan B that defers the dream of a post-presidential perp walk in favor of allowing the political process to run its course. If Mr. Trump is the G.O.P. nominee again in 2024, Democrats will have no choice but to defeat him yet again, hopefully by an even larger margin than they did last time.Mr. Trump himself and his most devoted supporters will be no more likely to accept that outcome than they were after the 2020 election. The bigger the margin of his loss, the harder it will be for Mr. Trump to avoid looking like a loser, which is the outcome he dreads more than anything — and one that would be most likely to loosen his grip on his party.There is an obvious risk: If Mr. Trump runs again, he might win. But that’s a risk we can’t avoid — which is why we may well have found ourselves in a situation with no unambivalently good options.Damon Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter “Eyes on the Right” and is a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.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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      With Trump, Merrick Garland Can’t Afford to Miss

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      The two weeks since the F.B.I. descended on Mar-a-Lago have felt remarkably familiar. It’s not just that Donald Trump is dominating headlines once again; it’s that all the hits of 2017 and 2018 are being played again: legal experts cobbling together complex theories out of fragmentary information, exciting Twitter speculation about espionage and treason, a “this time we’ve got him” spirit unseen since the days of Bob Mueller devotional candles.The familiarity is useful; it means that we can look back and consider why they didn’t “get him” then, why Russiagate ended in a relative fizzle and sealed Republicans into a permanent suspicion of any investigation into Trumpian malfeasance.The Russia investigation was predicated — in the public eye and, at least in part, in its legal origins — on dire and dramatic scenarios: that Donald Trump had been cultivated as an agent of influence by Moscow, that there was a secret alliance between Trump’s inner circle and Russian intelligence, that the Trump campaign and the Russians had effectively collaborated in the hacking and dissemination of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. (And lordy, that maybe there was a pee tape.)None of these scenarios were proved by the investigation. As many Trump critics hastened to argue, the Mueller report did not exonerate the president or his campaign from wrongdoing. But the guilt established or suggested involved many things done in the clear light of day in an election that Trump won (encouraging Russian hackers and touting the information released), things attempted but never brought to fruition (some hapless, “Burn After Reading”-level attempts to connect with Russian dirt peddlers) and possible obstructions of justice in the course of the Mueller inquiry.Meanwhile, it also became clear that the investigation itself was guilty of process abuses, particularly in the way that the F.B.I. went about obtaining FISA warrants. And there was an obvious feedback loop between this investigative overreach and the overheated media coverage — the fact that law enforcement was unwisely using the infamous Steele dossier as a predicate encouraged journalists to amplify the dossier’s extreme scenarios, because after all, if the F.B.I. took them seriously, they must be very serious indeed.The endpoint of the investigation, then, reminded everyone that Trump is a self-interested intriguer surrounded by low-minded hacks. But it also made both the feds and the press look as if they had overreached in search of a Watergate ending. And for the partisan mind, the second part loomed inevitably larger, confirming Trump’s supporters in their belief that whatever sins their man might commit, the deep state was always out to get him.Now here we are again, and like the decisions of Mueller and James Comey before him, Merrick Garland’s choices turn on facts that the public can see only through a glass darkly. But I sincerely hope that the attorney general had the Russiagate experience in mind when he signed off on the search of Mar-a-Lago and that he considers how Mueller’s investigation finished as he considers his next move.The lesson to be drawn is emphatically not that Trump needs to be given permanent immunity because of a “don’t arrest ex-presidents” rule or out of fears that his supporters will take to the streets or launch lone-wolf attacks on the F.B.I.The lesson, rather, is that if the agents of the state come after Trump, and especially now when they come as representatives of an administration that might face him in the next election, they can’t afford to miss.Not only in the jury box but also in the court of public opinion, it needs to be clear, crystal clear, what separates any crimes he might be charged with from — for example — the perjury and obstruction of justice that didn’t send Bill Clinton to prison or the breach of intelligence protocols that Hillary Clinton wasn’t charged with. You don’t just need a plausible legal case that tests interesting questions about presidential declassification powers; you need an easy-to-explain slam-dunk.So if you have Trump taking design documents for nuclear weapons and shopping them to his pals in Saudi Arabia, congratulations — you got him; lock him up. If you have him taking boxes of notes from foreign leaders because he’s a childish egomaniac who thinks that he’s earned his White House souvenirs, well, then take the documents back, declare victory for the public interest and stop there. And if he took documents about the Russia investigation itself, of the sort that he wanted declassified during his presidency, well, tread carefully, lest you trap us all in an awful time loop where it’s forever 2017.It seems like a reasonable presumption that the documents in question are more serious than just some notes to Kim Jong-un but that the potential incrimination falls short of Trump literally selling secrets. But that’s a presumption, not a prediction. I’ve learned to be unsurprised by Trump’s folly and venality but also by his capacity to induce self-defeating blunders among people and institutions I would have considered relatively sensible before his ascent.So no predictions, just the warning: Don’t miss.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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      The Absurd Argument Against Making Trump Obey the Law

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      This article has been updated to include new information about a man who attempted to breach an F.B.I. field office.It took many accidents, catastrophes, misjudgments and mistakes for Donald Trump to win the presidency in 2016. Two particularly important errors came from James Comey, then the head of the F.B.I., who was excessively worried about what Trump’s supporters would think of the resolution of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.First, in July 2016, Comey broke protocol to give a news conference in which he criticized Clinton even while announcing that she’d committed no crime. He reportedly did this because he wanted to protect the reputation of the F.B.I. from inevitable right-wing claims that the investigation had been shut down for political reasons.Then, on Oct. 28, just days before the election, Comey broke protocol again, telling Congress that the Clinton investigation had been reopened because of emails found on the laptop of the former congressman Anthony Weiner. The Justice Department generally discourages filing charges or taking “overt investigative steps” close to an election if they might influence the result. Comey disregarded this because, once again, he dreaded a right-wing freakout once news of the reopened investigation emerged.“The prospect of oversight hearings, led by restive Republicans investigating an F.B.I. ‘cover-up,’ made everyone uneasy,” The New Yorker reported. In Comey’s memoir, he admitted fearing that concealing the new stage of the investigation — which ended up yielding nothing — would make Clinton, who he assumed would win, seem “illegitimate.” (He didn’t, of course, feel similarly compelled to make public the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.)Comey’s attempts to pre-empt a conservative firestorm blew up in his face. He helped put Trump in the White House, where Trump did generational damage to the rule of law and led us to a place where prominent Republicans are calling for abolishing the F.B.I.This should be a lesson about the futility of shaping law enforcement decisions around the sensitivities of Trump’s base. Yet after the F.B.I. executed a search warrant at Trump’s beachfront estate this week, some intelligent people have questioned the wisdom of subjecting the former president to the normal operation of the law because of the effect it will have on his most febrile admirers.Andrew Yang, one of the founders of a new centrist third party, tweeted about the “millions of Americans who will see this as unjust persecution.” Damon Linker, usually one of the more sensible centrist thinkers, wrote, “Rather than healing the country’s civic wounds, the effort to punish Trump will only deepen them.”The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta described feeling “nauseous” watching coverage of the raid. “What we must acknowledge — even those of us who believe Trump has committed crimes, in some cases brazenly so, and deserves full prosecution under the law — is that bringing him to justice could have some awful consequences,” he wrote.In some sense, Alberta’s words are obviously true; Trumpists are already issuing death threats against the judge who signed off on the warrant, and a Shabbat service at his synagogue was reportedly canceled because of the security risk. On Thursday, an armed man tried to breach an F.B.I. field office in Ohio, and The New York Times reported that he appears to have attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington the night before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The former president relishes his ability to stir up a mob; it’s part of what makes him so dangerous.We already know, however, that the failure to bring Trump to justice — for his company’s alleged financial chicanery and his alleged sexual assault, for obstructing Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation and turning the presidency into a squalid influence-peddling operation, for trying to steal an election and encouraging an insurrection — has been disastrous.What has strengthened Trump has not been prosecution but impunity, an impunity that some of those who stormed the Capitol thought, erroneously, applied to them as well. Trump’s mystique is built on his defiance of rules that bind everyone else. He is reportedly motivated to run for president again in part because the office will protect him from prosecution. If we don’t want the presidency to license crime sprees, we should allow presidents to be indicted, not accept some dubious norm that ex-presidents shouldn’t be.We do not know the scope of the investigation that led a judge to authorize the search of Mar-a-Lago, though it reportedly involves classified documents that Trump failed to turn over to the government even after being subpoenaed. More could be revealed soon: Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that the Justice Department had filed a motion in court to unseal the search warrant.It should go without saying that Trump and his followers, who howled “Lock her up!” about Clinton, do not believe that it is wrong for the Justice Department to pursue a probe against a presidential contender over the improper handling of classified material. What they believe is that it is wrong to pursue a case against Trump, who bonds with his acolytes through a shared sense of aggrieved victimization.The question is how much deference the rest of us should give to this belief. No doubt, Trump’s most inflamed fans might act out in horrifying ways; many are heavily armed and speak lustily about civil war. To let this dictate the workings of justice is to accept an insurrectionists’ veto. The far right is constantly threatening violence if it doesn’t get its way. Does anyone truly believe that giving in to its blackmail will make it less aggressive?It was Trump himself who signed a law making the removal and retention of classified documents a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Those who think that it would be too socially disruptive to apply such a statute to him should specify which laws they believe the former president is and is not obliged to obey. And those in charge of enforcing our laws should remember that the caterwauling of the Trump camp is designed to intimidate them and such intimidation helped him become president in the first place.Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted because of politics, but he also shouldn’t be spared because of them. The only relevant question is whether he committed a crime, not what crimes his devotees might commit if he’s held to account.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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      Your Friday Briefing: U.S. to Unseal Trump Warrant

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      Plus Russia prepares for show trials and Taiwan does not rise to China’s provocations.Good morning. We’re covering moves by the U.S. to unseal the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, Russia’s preparation for possible show trials and Taiwan’s undeterred diplomacy.Attorney General Merrick Garland had come under pressure to provide more information about the search at former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesU.S. to unseal the Trump warrantMerrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general, moved to unseal the warrant authorizing the F.B.I. search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s residence in Florida. Garland said he personally approved the decision to seek the warrant.Garland’s statement followed revelations that Trump received a subpoena for documents this spring, months before the F.B.I. search on Monday. It also came a day after Trump asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when he was questioned by New York’s attorney general in a civil case about his business practices.The subpoena suggests the Justice Department tried methods short of a search warrant to account for the material before taking the politically explosive step of sending F.B.I. agents, unannounced, to the former president’s doorstep. Here are live updates.Details: Officials think the former president improperly took documents with him after leaving office. The Justice Department has provided no information about the precise nature of the material it has been seeking to recover, but it has signaled that the material involved classified information of a sensitive nature.Analysis: Garland’s decision to make a public appearance came at an extraordinary moment in the department’s 152-year history, as the sprawling investigation of a former president who remains a powerful political force gains momentum. After coming under pressure, Garland said he decided to go public to serve the “public interest.”The Mariupol Chamber Philharmonic will be used for upcoming show trials of Ukrainian soldiers. Associated PressRussia readies for likely show trialsRussia has installed cages in a large Mariupol theater, an apparent preparation for show trials of captured Ukrainian soldiers on newly occupied soil. The trials could begin on Aug. 24, Ukrainian Independence Day.Some fear that the Kremlin plans to use the trappings of legal proceedings to reinforce its narrative about fighters who defended the southern Ukrainian city and spent weeks underneath a steel plant. Ukrainian officials have called for international intervention.Moscow may also use the trials to deflect responsibility for atrocities Russia committed as its forces laid siege to Mariupol. The Kremlin has a long and brutal history of using such trials to give a veneer of credibility to efforts to silence critics. Here are live updates.Our Coverage of the Russia-Ukraine WarOn the Ground: A series of explosions that Ukraine took credit for rocked a key Russian air base in Kremlin-occupied Crimea. Russia played down the extent of the damage, but the evidence available told a different story.Drones: To counter Russia’s advantage in artillery and tanks, Ukraine has seized on drone warfare and produced an array of inexpensive, plastic aircraft rigged to drop grenades or other munitions.Nuclear Shelter: The Russian military is using а nuclear power station in southern Ukraine as a fortress, stymying Ukrainian forces and unnerving locals, faced with intensifying fighting and the threat of a radiation leak.Starting Over: Ukrainians forced from their hometowns by Russia’s invasion find some solace, and success setting up businesses in new cities.Context: Concerns for prisoners’ safety have only grown since last month, when the Ukrainian authorities accused Moscow of orchestrating an explosion at a Russian prison camp that killed at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war.Other updates:Satellite images show that Russia lost at least eight warplanes in a Tuesday explosion at a Crimean air base.New shelling at a Russian-occupied nuclear plant in southern Ukraine added to concerns of possible disaster.Turkey needs Russian cash and gas ahead of an election. Russia needs friends to evade sanctions. The country’s leaders have a wary, mutually beneficial rapport.Taiwanese soldiers conducted a live-fire drill earlier this week. Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesChina’s drills did not deter TaiwanChina’s continuing military drills have not deterred Taiwan, my colleagues write in an analysis.In fact, the drills have hardened the self-ruled island’s belief in the value of its diplomatic, economic and military maneuverings to stake out a middle ground in the big-power standoff between Beijing and Washington.Under Tsai Ing-wen, the current president, Taiwanese officials have quietly courted the U.S., making gains with weapon sales and vows of support. They have also turned China’s bluster into a growing international awareness about the island’s plight.But Taiwan has held back from flaunting that success in an effort to avoid outbursts from China. When Beijing recently sent dozens of fighters across the water that separates China and Taiwan, the Taiwanese military said it would not escalate and took relatively soft countermeasures. Officials offered sober statements and welcomed support from the Group of 7 nations.What’s next: American officials have considered stockpiling arms in Taiwan out of concern that it might be tough to supply the island in the event of a Chinese military blockade.THE LATEST NEWSAsiaAn undated North Korean state media photograph showed Kim Jong-un attending a meeting about Covid-19.Korean Central News Agency, via ReutersKim Jong-un declared “victory” over North Korea’s coronavirus outbreak, despite a lack of vaccines, state news reported.Hong Kong suffered a record 1.6 percent population decline over the past 12 months, the South China Morning Post reports.A new animal-derived virus, Langya henipavirus, has infected at least 35 people in China’s eastern Shandong and Henan provinces, the BBC reports.Seoul announced a ban on underground homes after people drowned during recent flooding, The Korea Herald reports.The PacificOlivia Newton-John will receive a state memorial service in Australia, CNN reports.New Zealand’s tourism minister dismissed budget travelers and said the country planned to focus on attracting “high quality,” “big spender” visitors, The Guardian reports.World NewsAfter peaking in June, the lower price of gas is a welcome change for drivers.Gabby Jones for The New York TimesU.S. gas prices fell below $4 a gallon yesterday, back to where they were in March.The Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, not the commonly reported two to three times, researchers said.The W.H.O. warned people to not blame monkeys for monkeypox after a report that animals were harmed in Brazil amid fear of transmission.Wildfires are again ripping through France, weeks after the last heat wave.A Morning ReadSo-called carbon farming has become a key element of New Zealand’s drive to be carbon neutral by 2050.Fiona Goodall/Getty ImagesNew Zealand put a growing price on greenhouse emissions. But the plan may be threatening its iconic farmland: Forestry investors are rushing to buy up pastures to plant carbon-sucking trees.ARTS AND IDEASSelling democracy to AfricaThe U.S. unveiled a new Africa policy this week that leaned on a familiar strategy, promoting democracy. The challenge will come in selling it to a changing continent.“Too often, African nations have been treated as instruments of other nations’ progress rather than the authors of their own,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as he presented the new U.S. approach during a tour that included South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.The U.S. “will not dictate Africa’s choices,” he added, in an apparent response to criticism that America’s stance toward Africa can be patronizing, if not insulting. “I think, given history, the approach has to be somewhat different, and I would recommend a greater attention to tools that Africans have developed,” said Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s foreign minister.Along with their own tools and institutions, like the African Union, more African states are wealthier than they were a generation ago, Bob Wekesa, the deputy director of the African Center for the Study of the United States in Johannesburg, said.“They can afford to say, ‘We can choose who to deal with on certain issues,’” Wekesa said. Those new partnerships include not only U.S. rivals Russia and China, but also emerging powers like Turkey and India. Traditional U.S. allies like Botswana and Zambia are likely to embrace the American strategy, but strongman leaders in Uganda and even Rwanda are likely to be more resistant, he added.In Kigali yesterday, Blinken said that he had urged the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to end their support for militias in eastern Congo. He also raised concerns about the detention of the U.S. resident who inspired the film “Hotel Rwanda,” Paul Rusesabagina.But just hours before his meeting with Blinken, President Paul Kagame poured cold water over suggestions that he would be swayed on the Rusesabagina case. “No worries … there are things that just don’t work like that here!!” he said on Twitter. — Lynsey Chutel, Briefings writer based in Johannesburg.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Testani for The New York TimesCaramelized brown sugar adds complexity to this berry upside-down cake.What to Watch“Inu-oh” is a visually sumptuous anime film about a 14th-century Japanese performer.TravelRetirees are taking on part-time work loading baggage at airports or passing out towels to make their way through Europe on the cheap.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: “Crucial” (three letters).Here are today’s Wordle and Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. The Times will bring back its Food Festival for the first time since 2019. Mark your calendars: Oct. 8, in New York City.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on abortion in the U.S.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More