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      Aileen Cannon, Judge in Trump Case Has Scant Criminal Trial Experience

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      Judge Aileen M. Cannon, under scrutiny for past rulings favoring the former president, has presided over only a few criminal cases that went to trial.Aileen M. Cannon, the Federal District Court judge assigned to preside over former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, has scant experience running criminal trials, calling into question her readiness to handle what is likely to be an extraordinarily complex and high-profile courtroom clash.Judge Cannon, 42, has been on the bench since November 2020, when Mr. Trump gave her a lifetime appointment shortly after he lost re-election. She had not previously served as any kind of judge, and because about 98 percent of federal criminal cases are resolved with plea deals, she has had only a limited opportunity to learn how to preside over a trial.A Bloomberg Law database lists 224 criminal cases that have been assigned to her, and a New York Times review of those cases identified four that went to trial. Each was a relatively routine matter, like a felon who was charged with illegally possessing a gun. In all, the four cases added up to 14 trial days.Judge Cannon’s suitability to handle such a high-stakes and high-profile case has already attracted scrutiny amid widespread perceptions that she demonstrated bias in the former president’s favor last year, when she oversaw a long-shot lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump challenging the F.B.I.’s court-approved search of his Florida home and club, Mar-a-Lago.In that case, she shocked legal experts across the ideological divide by disrupting the investigation — including suggesting that Mr. Trump gets special protections as a former president that any other target of a search warrant would not receive — before a conservative appeals court shut her down, ruling that she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene.“She’s both an inexperienced judge and a judge who has previously indicated that she thinks the former president is subject to special rules so who knows what she will do with those issues?” said Julie O’Sullivan, a Georgetown University criminal law professor and former federal prosecutor.In theory, Judge Cannon could step aside on her own for any reason, or the special counsel, Jack Smith, could ask her to do so under a federal law that says judges are supposed to recuse themselves if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” — and, if she declines, ask an appeals court to order her to recuse.There is no sign that either of them is considering taking that step, however — or what its legal basis would be.The appeals court last year found that she was wrong about jurisdiction law, not that she was biased. And judges have previously heard litigation involving presidents who appointed them — including the Trump search warrant lawsuit, in which, notably, two of the three appeals court judges who reversed her intervention were also Trump appointees.By bringing the charges in Florida, where most of the alleged crimes took place, instead of Washington, where the grand jury that primarily investigated the matter sat, the special counsel, Mr. Smith, avoided a potential fight over whether the case was in the right venue but ran the risk that Judge Cannon could be assigned the case.But the chances appeared low. Under the Southern District of Florida’s practices, a computer in the clerk’s office assigns new cases randomly among judges who sit in the division where the matter arose or a neighboring one — even if the matter relates to a previous case. Nevertheless, Judge Cannon got it.In a previous case, Judge Cannon suggested that Mr. Trump gets special protections as a former president that any other target of a search warrant would not receive.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe chief clerk of the court has said that five active judges were eligible to draw Mr. Trump’s case, and that Judge Cannon’s odds of receiving it were slightly higher than others because half of her cases come from the West Palm Beach division, where Mar-a-Lago is. The clerk has also said normal procedures were followed in making the assignment.Several lawyers who have appeared before Judge Cannon in run-of-the-mill criminal cases described her in interviews as generally competent and straightforward — and also, in notable contrast to her rulings hobbling the Justice Department after the search, someone who does not otherwise have a reputation of being unusually sympathetic to defendants.At the same time, they said, she is demonstrably inexperienced and can bristle when her actions are questioned or unexpected issues arise. The lawyers declined to speak publicly because they did not want to be identified criticizing a judge who has a lifetime appointment and before whom they will likely appear again.Judge Cannon’s four criminal trials identified in the review involved basic charges, including accusations of possession of a gun by a felon, assaulting a prosecutor, smuggling undocumented migrants from the Bahamas, and tax fraud. The four matters generated between two and five days of trial each.The Trump case is likely to raise myriad complexities that would be challenging for any judge — let alone one who will be essentially learning on the job.There are expected to be fights, for example, over how classified information can be used as evidence under the Classified Information Procedures Act, a national security law that Judge Cannon has apparently never dealt with before.Defense lawyers are also likely to ask her to suppress as evidence against Mr. Trump notes and testimony from one of his lawyers. While another federal judge already ruled that a grand jury could get otherwise confidential lawyer communications under the so-called crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege, Judge Cannon will not be bound by that decision in determining what can be used in trial.The judge will likely have to vet claims of prosecutorial misconduct put forward by Mr. Trump and his defense team.“That has already been signaled in a lot of the media statements made by Trump and his lawyers,” Samuel Buell, a Duke University law professor and former federal prosecutor, said of the misconduct claims. “This is very typical, but she is a very inexperienced judge, so even if she weren’t favorable to Trump, she might hear a lot of stuff and think she is hearing stuff that is unusual even though it’s made all the time.”And the judge will decide on challenges to potential jurors when either side claims someone might be biased for or against one of the most famous and polarizing people in the world.Fritz Scheller, a longtime defense lawyer in Florida who has had cases in Judge Cannon’s district but not appeared before her, said in complex and high-profile cases, even the most experienced judges are forced to think on their feet to make swift decisions.In this case, he said, the issue of how to protect the jury from being influenced by the vast media coverage alone “will be a herculean task” for any judge.Alina Habba, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters in Miami on Tuesday. The case has already received vast media coverage that could influence a jury.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn the aftermath of the F.B.I.’s Mar-a-Lago search, Judge Cannon repeatedly sided with the man who had appointed her. She blocked investigators from having access to the classified government documents seized from him and entertained an unprecedented legal theory put forward by his lawyers that White House records could be kept from the Justice Department in a criminal investigation on the basis of executive privilege.Eventually, a conservative appeals court panel — including two other Trump appointees — reversed her, writing in a pair of scathing opinions that she had misread the law and had no jurisdiction to interfere in the investigation. The Supreme Court let those rebukes stand without comment, and she acquiesced, dismissing the lawsuit.It remains to be seen what she will take from the reputational damage she brought upon herself at the start of what is likely to be many decades on the bench. She could continue her pattern from last year, or she could use her second turn in the spotlight to adjudicate the documents case more evenhandedly.While Mr. Trump and his White House lawyers put forward many young conservatives to fill judicial vacancies when he was president, Judge Cannon was unusually young and inexperienced. She was 38 years old and working on appellate matters as an assistant United States attorney in Florida when Mr. Trump nominated her for a lifetime appointment, and little about her legal résumé up to that point was remarkable.Still, the Senate majority leader at the time, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, pushed through her confirmation vote in the lame-duck session after the election. Her nomination received little attention and did not draw particular fire from Democrats; she was confirmed 56 to 21, with 12 Democrats joining 44 Republicans to vote in favor.The daughter of a Cuban exile, she grew up in Miami and graduated from Duke University and the University of Michigan Law School. She was identifiable as ideologically conservative, having joined the Federalist Society in law school and clerked for a conservative appeals court judge.She had been approached by the office of Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and asked to apply to a panel he uses to vet potential judicial candidates, she wrote on her Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire. She also interviewed with a lawyer for Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, before talking to the White House, she wrote.(The Senate’s “blue slip” practice empowers senators to block confirmation proceedings for nominees from their states, so senators wield significant power over who the White House nominates. There are currently three vacant seats on the Federal District Court in South Florida for which President Biden has made no nomination, suggesting that Mr. Rubio and Mr. Scott have not agreed to let him fill those seats with anyone acceptable to a Democratic White House.)Judge Cannon had been approached by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and asked to apply to a panel that vets potential judicial candidates.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesJudge Cannon had graduated from law school in 2008, and her 12 years as a lawyer were the minimum the American Bar Association considers necessary for a judicial nominee. A substantial majority of the bar association’s vetting panel deemed her to be merely “qualified,” though a minority deemed her “highly qualified.”Her criminal trial experience before becoming a judge was limited.In 2004, when she was working as a paralegal at the Justice Department’s civil rights division before going to law school, she had “assisted federal prosecutors in two federal criminal jury trials,” she wrote on the questionnaire.From 2009 to 2012, she was an associate at the law firm Gibson Dunn, where she worked on regulatory proceedings, not criminal matters. (She wrote that she participated in two administrative trials before agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission.)From 2013 to 2020, she was an assistant United States attorney in Florida. While most of that time was spent on appellate work, until 2015 she had worked in the major crimes division on ​“a wide range of federal firearms, narcotics, fraud and immigration offenses” that resulted in the conviction of 41 defendants, she wrote. Most of those cases, however, ended in plea deals: She tried just four of them to a jury verdict, she wrote.She was the lead counsel for two of those cases — both involving a felon charged with possessing a firearm, she wrote, and served as assistant to the main prosecutor in the other two cases, one of which she said involved possession of images of child sexual exploitation.Other parts of Judge Cannon’s questionnaire answers put forward few experiences or accomplishments that clearly distinguished her as seasoned and demonstrably ready for the powers and responsibilities of a lifetime appointment to be a federal judge.It asked, for example, for every published writing she had produced. She listed 20 items. Of those, 17 were pieces she had written in the summer of 2002 as a college intern at The Miami Herald’s Spanish-language sister publication, El Nuevo Herald, with headlines like “Winners in the Library Quest Competition.” The other three were articles published on Gibson Dunn’s website describing cases the firm had handled, each of which had three other co-authors.The questionnaire also asked her to provide all reports, memorandums and policy statements she had written for any organization, all testimony or official statements on public or legal policy she had ever delivered to any public body, and all her speeches, talks, panel discussions, lectures or question-and-answer sessions.“None,” she wrote.Kitty Bennett More

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      GOP Rivals See Trump Indictment Stealing Spotlight

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      An all-indictment, all-the-time news diet could swallow the summer, denying attention to other Republican candidates who need it like oxygen.Former President Donald J. Trump faces 37 federal charges that could send him to prison for the remainder of his life, but it’s the rest of the Republican field that’s in the most immediate political trouble.Advisers working for Mr. Trump’s opponents are facing what some consider an infuriating task: trying to persuade Republican primary voters, who are inured to Mr. Trump’s years of controversies and deeply distrustful of the government, that being criminally charged for holding onto classified documents is a bad thing.In previous eras, the indictment of a presidential candidate would have been, at a minimum, a political gift for the other candidates, if not an event that spelled the end of the indicted rival’s run. Competitors would have thrilled at the prospect of the front-runner’s spending months tied up in court, with damaging new details steadily dripping out. And they still could be Mr. Trump’s undoing: If he does not end up convicted before November 2024, his latest arrest is not likely win him converts in the general election.But Mr. Trump’s competitors — counterintuitively, according to the old conventional political wisdom — are actually dreading what threatens to be an endless indictment news cycle that could swallow up the summer. His rivals are desperate to get media coverage for their campaigns, but since the indictment became public last Thursday, as several advisers grumbled, the only way they can get their candidates booked on television is for them to answer questions about Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump is making full use of the trappings of his former office: the big, black sport utility vehicles; the Secret Service agents in dark glasses; the stops at grocery stores and restaurants with entourages, bodyguards and reporters in tow, said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman who works on Nikki Haley’s campaign.“That is powerful stuff when you’re campaigning against it,” Mr. Dawson said.And there’s no end in sight for indictment season. This was the second time Mr. Trump has been indicted in two months, and he may be indicted at least once more this summer, in Georgia, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Georgia prosecutor leading that investigation signaled the timing when she announced last month that most of her staff would work remotely during the first three weeks of August — right when Republican presidential candidates will be preparing for the first debate of the primary season, on Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.Mr. Trump arrived at Wilkie Ferguson Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, making full use of the trappings of his former office.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesIn Mr. Trump’s federal case, in South Florida, it is possible that the former president could face trial in the middle of the primary campaign season.One Republican candidate who has gotten some airtime, Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur and author, did so by flying to Miami from Ohio and addressing journalists gathered outside the courthouse to record Mr. Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday. He promised to pardon Mr. Trump if he gets elected president. He railed against a “donor class” that he asserted was urging him to spurn Mr. Trump, knocked the news media and demanded that every other G.O.P. candidate sign a pledge to pardon Mr. Trump if elected.“Half the battle is showing up,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in an interview Tuesday night on his way to Iowa. “I am getting my message out, at least the part of it that relates to the events of the day.”Most of Mr. Trump’s other rivals have tied themselves in knots trying to fashion responses to the indictments that would grab media attention without alienating Republican voters who remain supportive of Mr. Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida came down on Mr. Trump’s side but with little enthusiasm. He subtly rebuked Mr. Trump’s conduct, raising Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents as a stand-in for Mr. Trump’s when he said he would have been “court-martialed in a New York minute” had he taken classified documents during his service in the Navy.But Mr. DeSantis has also used the opportunity to give Republican voters what they mostly want: He has defended Mr. Trump and attacked President Biden and his Justice Department, saying they unfairly target Republicans. On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis began to roll out his plan to overhaul the “weaponized” F.B.I. and Justice Department. And the main pro-DeSantis super PAC released a video attacking the “Biden D.O.J.” for “indicting the former president.”Before the indictment was released, former Vice President Mike Pence said on CNN that he hoped Mr. Trump would not be charged because it would “be terribly divisive to the country.”Then Mr. Pence read the indictment. On Tuesday, he told The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, “These are very serious allegations. And I can’t defend what is alleged. But the president is entitled to his day in court, he’s entitled to bring a defense, and I want to reserve judgment until he has the opportunity to respond.”Mr. Pence went on to denounce the Biden administration’s Justice Department as politicized — in large part because of its treatment of Mr. Trump — and promised that as president he would clean it up.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, both initially greeted the indictment with condemnation of what they called unequal justice — harsh for Republicans, lenient for Democrats — before tacking on their assessment that the accusations against Mr. Trump were grave and should be taken seriously.Then, on Tuesday, Ms. Haley volunteered that if elected she, too, would consider pardoning Mr. Trump.All of those contortions offer an opening to candidates with simpler messages, either for or against Mr. Trump’s prosecution.“I don’t think they know what they think yet,” said Mr. Ramaswamy of the candidates he called the “finger-in-the-wind class.” Some candidates “tend to serve as mouthpieces for the donors who fund them and the consultants who advise them, and the donors and consultants haven’t figured out their advice yet.”All of this presumably is music to Mr. Trump’s ears: So long as the news media and his rivals are fighting each other and obsessing about him, he must be winning.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is so far the only Republican rival of Mr. Trump’s to make full-throated statements condemning the former president for the actions detailed in the indictment.John Tully for The New York TimesThe only Republican presidential candidate so far to speak clearly and forcefully against Mr. Trump over the actions documented in the indictment was former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. He condemned Mr. Trump and showed contempt for Republicans who were directing blame elsewhere.“We’re in a situation where there are people in my own party who are blaming D.O.J.,” Mr. Christie said on Monday night in a CNN town hall meeting. “How about blame him? He did it.”He also implored his fellow competitors to focus on the front-runner, not each other, saying 2024 is playing out as a rerun of 2016 when a large field, which included Mr. Christie, sniped at each other and let Mr. Trump gallop away with the nomination.Tucker Carlson, who was taken off air by Fox News but remains influential with the Republican base, put out a video on Twitter on Tuesday night that captures what Mr. Trump’s rivals are up against. Mr. Carlson sought to portray the federal indictment as proof that Mr. Trump was “the one guy with an actual shot of becoming president” who was feared by the Washington establishment. The clip is an implied rebuke of Mr. DeSantis and comes close to an endorsement of Mr. Trump.It is too soon after the indictment to draw solid conclusions about how Republican voters are processing the news. But the early data bodes well for Mr. Trump and ominously for his opponents. In a CBS News poll released on Sunday, only 7 percent of likely Republican primary voters said the indictment would lower their opinion of Mr. Trump. Twice as many said the indictment would change their view of him “for the better.”An adviser to one of Mr. Trump’s rivals, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid, admitted he was depressed at how Republican voters were receiving the news of what he considered to be devastating facts unearthed by the special counsel, Jack Smith.“I think the reality is there’s such enormous distrust of the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. after the Hillary years and the Russiagate investigation that it appears that no other fact set will persuade Republican voters otherwise right now,” the adviser said.Mr. Dawson, who is backing Ms. Haley, said Mr. Trump’s poll numbers were likely to rise in the coming weeks, along with the sentiment that the government cannot be trusted.The other candidates are gambling that they have the luxury of time.Mr. Christie has stepped up to bloody the former president with his attacks, which are unlikely to help Mr. Christie’s standing but may help other Republicans in the race: those who are refraining but “drafting” behind Mr. Christie, as one adviser put it, perhaps wishfully, using a horse-racing term.As more information spills out ahead of the former president’s trial, especially about the specifics of what was contained in the classified documents that Mr. Trump held onto — details of battle plans and nuclear programs — the severity of what crimes the former president is charged with may slowly seep in.That’s the hope, at least, for Mr. Trump’s rivals who languish far behind him in polls.“Let that little pop blow up, then get out of here, let the voters read the term paper, and let it sink in,” Mr. Dawson said. He added, of Mr. Trump: “People are going to start questioning his sanity.” More

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      When Should a Former President Be Charged

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      What if Donald Trump were someone else? Two weeks ago, a federal judge sentenced Robert Birchum, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, to three years in jail for removing hundreds of secret documents from their authorized locations and storing them in his home and officer’s quarters.In April, a judge sentenced Jeremy Brown, a former member of U.S. Special Forces, to more than seven years in prison partly for taking a classified report home with him after he retired. The report contained sensitive intelligence, including about an informant in another country.In 2018, Nghia Hoang Pho received a five-and-a-half-year sentence for storing National Security Agency documents at his home. Prosecutors emphasized that Pho was aware he was not supposed to have taken the documents.These three recent cases are among dozens in which the Justice Department has charged people with removing classified information from its proper place and trying to conceal their actions. That list includes several former high-ranking officials, like David Petraeus and John Deutch, who each ran the C.I.A.Now, of course, the list also includes Donald Trump, who was arraigned in a Miami federal courthouse yesterday and pleaded not guilty to 37 charges.Above the law?Are federal prosecutors singling out Trump because of his signature role in American politics? Or are they basing their decision to indict him solely on the facts of the case?Sean Trende, a political analyst with RealClearPolitics, has offered a helpful way to understand these questions — and specifically when a former president should, and should not, be charged with a crime.Start by thinking about all the other people who had engaged in behavior similar to that for which the ex-president was charged with a crime. If just some of those other people were charged, the ex-president should not be, Trende wrote. Prosecutors have a large amount of discretion about which cases to bring, and they should err on the side of not indicting a former president because of the political turmoil it is likely to cause, he argued.But if the ex-president did something that would have caused anybody else to be charged with a crime, he should be, too. “The president shouldn’t be above the law,” Trende explained.There is ample reason to believe that the document case against Trump falls into the second category: Had any other American done what he is accused of doing, that person would almost certainly be prosecuted. “The real injustice,” the editors of The Economist magazine wrote yesterday, “would have been not to indict him.”Consider: Prosecutors have accused Trump of removing classified documents from government property and bringing them home with him. Those documents contained sensitive information, such as military plans and intelligence about foreign militaries. Trump made clear to others that he knew he should not have the documents and took steps to mislead investigators about them, prosecutors claim.It’s true — as Trump’s defenders repeatedly point out — that other government officials, including President Biden, Mike Pence and Hillary Clinton, have also mishandled classified information without having been charged with crimes. But those cases were very different from Trump’s. The transgressions seemed to be accidental. The officials returned the documents when asked. They did not try to mislead federal investigators.Trump’s alleged actions instead resemble those of the obscure officials I mentioned at the top of today’s newsletter. His behavior also seems to have been much more brazen than that of Deutch and Petraeus.This pattern helps explain why legal experts have been much more supportive of the Justice Department’s indictment of Trump than of the case in New York charging Trump with violating campaign-finance law. The New York case has made some experts uncomfortable because it lacked a clear precedent. It does not seem to pass Trende’s standard for when a former president should be charged with a crime. There are no good analogies.The New York case relies on a novel combination of statutes to charge Trump with a felony for hiding payments he made to conceal a sexual encounter. Perhaps the most similar case — the trial of John Edwards, a former Democratic presidential candidate, also on charges of concealing payments connected to an affair — ended with an acquittal on one charge and a hung jury on five others.By contrast, the list of analogies to the document charges against Trump just keeps growing. Next week, Kendra Kingsbury, a former F.B.I. analyst, is scheduled to be sentenced to federal prison. She has pleaded guilty to having brought hundreds of classified documents to her home in Dodge City, Kan.The day’s news“We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” Todd Blanche, Trump’s lawyer, told the judge during the 50-minute courtroom appearance. Trump did not speak.Trump was fingerprinted at the courthouse, but did not get a mug shot taken. Officials considered it unnecessary because of his fame.The judge said Trump was not allowed to discuss the case with Walt Nauta, his personal aide, who is also charged. Nauta accompanied Trump to court, but his own arraignment was postponed because he does not yet have a Florida-based lawyer.Trump has a new nemesis: Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged him. Their paths finally crossed yesterday.What’s next? “The government will begin to reveal its evidence through the discovery process,” The Times’s Alan Feuer said. “Pretrial motions will be filed and argued. All that will likely take months.” Our colleague Maggie Haberman explained: “Trump is determined to fight this battle in the court of public opinion for as long as possible.”“Trump may well be waiting for a trial when voters cast their presidential ballots next fall,” Russell Berman writes in The Atlantic.President Biden spent his day meeting with the NATO secretary general and taking in a Juneteenth concert. “Anything but pay attention to Donald Trump,” The Times’s Michael Shear wrote.After leaving court, Trump visited Versailles Restaurant in Miami, where patrons sang “Happy Birthday” (he turns 77 today). He then traveled back to his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and told supporters, “I did everything right, and they indicted me.” He displayed less energy than usual during the speech.Here’s a fact-check of Trump’s speech.THE LATEST NEWSInternationalFour Colombian children who survived 40 days in the jungle after a plane crash had been fleeing for their lives.A woman in Britain was sentenced to prison for using abortion pills to end her late-stage pregnancy.A boat capsized on the Niger River, killing at least 103 people. Many of the passengers were returning home from a wedding.Other Big Stories More

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      Arraigned, Again: Trump’s Federal Court Hearing in Miami

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      Michael Simon Johnson, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Diana Nguyen, Mary Wilson and Rachel Quester and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicDonald Trump was arraigned in Miami yesterday on 37 criminal counts covering seven different violations of federal law, including the handling of classified documents.Three New York Times journalists covered the proceedings: Glenn Thrush was inside the courtroom, Luke Broadwater reported from outside the courthouse, and Maggie Haberman was at Mr. Trump’s home in Bedminster, N.J.On today’s episodeLuke Broadwater, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.Glenn Thrush, who covers the Department of Justice for The New York Times.Maggie Haberman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.Donald Trump boarding a plane in Miami after making his court appearance. “I did everything right and they indicted me,” he said in a speech after his arraignment.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBackground readingMr. Trump, now twice indicted since leaving the White House, surrendered to federal authorities in Miami and pleaded not guilty, striking a defiant tone afterward.On the calendar for Mr. Trump, the Republicans’ 2024 front-runner: rallies and primaries mixed with court dates.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Luke Broadwater More

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      After Trump’s 2nd Indictment, His 2024 Presidential Campaign Trudges On

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      On the calendar for the Republicans’ 2024 front-runner: rallies and primaries mixed with court dates.Donald J. Trump went to bed Tuesday night, on the eve of his 77th birthday, as a now twice-indicted former president and current front-runner for the Republican nomination for the White House in 2024.“Some birthday,” Mr. Trump grumbled on Tuesday as he visited Versailles, a popular Cuban coffee shop in Miami. “Some birthday.”He had just been arraigned on federal charges. His co-defendant was working as his valet. And he didn’t eat Cuban — he had McDonald’s. On his plane headed back to New Jersey from Miami, Mr. Trump ate the fast food while holding court with advisers and finishing edits on the speech he would soon deliver and mostly adhere to.The surreal scene that awaited him at his private club in Bedminster, N.J., was a blend somewhere between a summer garden wedding and a political victory party. There was an air of an almost post-arraignment celebration as women arrived in their finery: fuchsia and canary yellow dresses, embroidered Trump wares and heels. Men sported suits and red MAGA hats.Then Mr. Trump arrived. Visibly deflated after pleading not guilty for the second time in three months, his dry and low-energy resuscitation of his legal defense — even inflected with the usual references to Marxists, Communists and fascists — pleased his advisers but drew a relatively muted response from a crowd that had minutes earlier craned their phones for a shot of his motorcade.He had entered to the same track — “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood — that he has used as an entrance theme so many times before. On Tuesday, the chorus landed differently.Proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.“I did everything right,” Mr. Trump declared in his 30-minute speech, “and they indicted me.”When he finished, he barely lingered to take in the applause. He gave an obligatory fist pump and mouthed thanks to the crowd. Then he turned and went inside.All told, the day encapsulated the remarkable numbness to the extraordinary that has defined the Trump era. The former president entered federal court as a criminal defendant, and now faces hundreds of years in prison. The Republican front-runner’s early 2024 calendar now includes not only key caucuses and primaries but court dates. His rivals are at times contorting themselves while discussing his alleged crimes; one circulated a petition on Tuesday demanding they all promise to pardon him.During his speech, Mr. Trump pledged to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after President Biden and his family.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Trump’s appearance in a Miami courtroom was a humiliating moment for a New York businessman with a 40-year history of engaging in gamesmanship with prosecutors and regulators, viewing most every interaction as a transaction or something he could bluster his way through. By 2017, he had the armor of the presidency protecting him when the first special counsel investigating him, Robert S. Mueller III, began his work. And by 2021, as investigations began into his efforts to thwart the transfer of power, he had come to see another campaign as a shield against prosecutions.But that grandeur — and legal insulation — had vanished on Tuesday. Instead, Mr. Trump’s team tried to create the sense of a man still in power. In Bedminster, he spoke with the white columns of the main house of his New Jersey golf club behind him. The indictment became another backdrop for the ongoing Trump Show.He was comforted by a motley assortment of his most fervent supporters. They included former President Richard Nixon’s son-in-law; a former New York Police Department commissioner whom Mr. Trump pardoned in the final year of his presidency; and a former administration official whom Mr. Trump named as a representative to the National Archives.It was the National Archives that began the winding road that ended with Mr. Trump facing charges alleging that he had defied a subpoena and kept highly classified documents. The agency, which is in charge of preserving presidential records, spent most of 2021 trying to compel Mr. Trump to return boxes of materials that he had taken with him when he left the White House. So did some of his lawyers and advisers. When he finally returned 15 boxes in January 2022, archives officials discovered nearly 200 individual classified documents, and alerted the Justice Department.On Tuesday night in Bedminster, what amounted to a red-carpet MAGA crowd mingled to a carefree playlist of Trump-favored throwbacks: “Macho Man” by the Village People, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli, “We Will Rock You” by Queen, “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. Dozens of women wore matching red-white-and-blue outfits and chanted “We love Trump!” in unison as Mr. Trump was airborne.The arraignment date happened to coincide with Mr. Trump’s first major fund-raiser, with those who had raised at least $100,000 invited to a “candlelight dinner” after his speech. The Trump campaign will be paying Mr. Trump’s private business in donor dollars for both events, a practice he has done for years.The crowd at the Bedminster event on Tuesday evening, which blended a summer garden wedding with a political victory party.Doug Mills/The New York TimesRobert Jeffress, an evangelical pastor in Dallas and an early supporter who said he would not “abandon” Mr. Trump, got a call from a staffer for the former president on Monday, asking him to attend. He said Mr. Trump’s supporters saw the charges as “political.”“I think they see this as Biden’s way of getting rid of his No. 1” opponent, he said, as music blared behind him.Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, missed votes in Washington to be there to cheer for Mr. Trump.The gathering in Bedminster and Mr. Trump’s not-quite impromptu cafe stop in Miami were reminiscent of how he handled the gravest political threat he faced in his first 2016 campaign: the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape. Back then, he immersed himself in a crowd of his supporters outside Trump Tower. Now, he did so both at his own property and in a friendly corner of a city where he will soon face trial.“You see where the people are,” Mr. Trump said after he was serenaded with a brief rendition of “Happy Birthday” at the Cuban cafe, called Versailles, where he also stopped to pose for a picture with a mixed martial arts fighter.He seemed determined to project nonchalance as much as defiance. His co-defendant and valet, Walt Nauta, continued to assist him throughout the day, even as the judge cautioned against the two men discussing the case, after traveling to court as part of Mr. Trump’s motorcade staff. Ever image-conscious, Mr. Trump had entered the courthouse in Miami out of the sightlines of cameras, and he avoided a mug shot and handcuffs for the second time.The act of indicting him, Mr. Trump said, “will go down in infamy.” And he pledged to appoint a “real special prosecutor” once he’s president again to go after President Biden and his family.“The seal is broken by what they’ve done,” he added. More

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      Trump Visits Versailles in Miami After Arraignment to Greet Supporters

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      Former President Donald J. Trump visited Little Havana in Miami on Tuesday immediately after his arraignment, his latest attempt to cast himself as a man persecuted by his political enemies.It was a not-subtle attempt to seek the sympathies of Latinos, in Florida and beyond.Mr. Trump’s visit to Versailles Restaurant, a landmark that is emblematic of the Cuban diaspora, came as Republicans have increasingly likened his indictment to corruption and political oppression in Latin American countries.Outside the federal courthouse where the arraignment took place in Miami, Alina Habba, a lawyer and spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, suggested that he was no different than political dissidents from Latin America.“The targeting, prosecution, of a leading political opponent is the type of thing you see in dictatorships like Cuba and Venezuela,” she said. “It is commonplace there for rival candidates to be prosecuted, persecuted and put into jail.”The day before his arraignment, Mr. Trump said he believed Hispanics in South Florida were sympathetic to him because they are familiar with governments targeting rivals.“They really see it better than other people do,” he said in an interview with Americano Media, a conservative Spanish-language outlet in South Florida.Mr. Trump has enjoyed relatively strong support in some Latino communities, particularly those in South Florida. Eduardo A. Gamarra, a professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University who is also part of its Cuban Research Institute, said the narrative woven by Mr. Trump and his surrogates, while false, was a shrewd one.“It’s reinforced by local media, by much of what of the Trump campaign and other Republicans are saying: that this administration, the Biden administration, is behaving like the banana republics behave, so that’s resonated very intensely here,” he said. “It’s great politics, but it’s not true.”Mr. Gamarra, who was born in Bolivia, noted that Mr. Trump had also tried to win support from Latino voters by railing against socialism and communism. He lamented the way that Mr. Trump and his allies had repeatedly mentioned Latin America.“It’s a very unfortunate narrative,” he said. “I think it just sort of propagates the stereotypes about Latin America. It’s much more complex than simply the banana republic image.”Mr. Trump’s cameo at the restaurant was the latest for him and a long line of politicians that includes former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In 2016, the restaurant hosted Mr. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani together after Mr. Trump’s first debate against Hillary Clinton.Paloma Marcos, a native of Nicaragua who has been a U.S. citizen for 15 years, rushed to Versailles with a Trump hat and a sign that said, “I stand with Trump.”She said many Nicaraguans like her had an affinity for the former president, because he is against communism. She added that people like her, as well as Cuban and Venezuelans, saw how that form of government destroyed their home countries.“He knows we support him. The Latino community has had an awakening,” Ms. Marcos said. “The curtain has been pulled back.”The Rev. Yoelis Sánchez, a pastor at a local church and a native of the Dominican Republic, said she did not hesitate when asked to go to Versailles Restaurant to pray with Mr. Trump. Several religious people, including evangelicals and Catholics, prayed with him while her daughter sang.“We prayed for God to give him strength and for the truth to come out,” she said. “We are really concerned for his welfare.”Ms. Sánchez, who lives in Doral, Fla., which is part of Miami-Dade County and is where Mr. Trump owns a golf resort, was not yet a citizen in 2020. She would not say whether she plans to vote for him in 2024.“I don’t think he came here just because of the Latino vote,” she said. “He came because he wanted to meet with people who have biblical thinking — he’s pro-life and pro-family and Latinos identify with that.”Mr. Trump is facing criminal charges related to mishandling classified documents and then obstructing the government’s attempts to retrieve them. The federal indictment of a former president is unprecedented in the United States, but many Latin American presidents have been prosecuted after leaving office.Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, served more than a year in prison after he left office the first time. Argentina’s former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was sentenced to six years for corruption last year. In Peru, Alejandro Toledo was recently extradited to face a bribery charge. Its former leader, Alberto Fujimori, is serving 25 years in prison.Arnoldo Alemán of Nicaragua is one of the few former presidents who was arrested in a corruption case despite his own party being in power.“This is something you see a lot in Latin America, especially in Peru and now in El Salvador,” said Mario García, a regular at Versailles who was tickled to see Mr. Trump visit the restaurant. “But in those countries, they do it for a good reason: because the presidents get caught robbing money.” Mr. García said he believed the government was targeting Mr. Trump “because they don’t have any other way to get him.”Mr. García said he didn’t think Mr. Trump came to Versailles to court the Latino vote. “The votes here at Versailles are ones he already has,” he said. “He needs support. It’s nice to surround yourself with love when everyone is attacking you.”Maggie Haberman More

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      Fact Check: Trump’s Misleading Defenses in Classified Documents Case

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      The former president drew misleading comparisons to others, misconstrued the classification process and leveled inaccurate attacks at officials.Hours after pleading not guilty in a federal court in Miami to charges related to his handling of classified documents, former President Donald J. Trump defended his conduct on Tuesday with a string of familiar falsehoods.Appearing at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump drew misleading comparisons to other political figures, misconstrued the classification process and leveled inaccurate attacks at officials.Here’s a fact check of claims Mr. Trump made related to the inquiry.What Mr. Trump Said“Threatening me with 400 years in prison for possessing my own presidential papers, which just about every other president has done, is one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law.”False. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 governs the preservation and retention of official records of former presidents, and gives the National Archives and Records Administration complete ownership and control of presidential records. The law makes a distinction between official records and personal documents, and has applied to every president since Ronald Reagan.The agency has said that “it assumed physical and legal custody of the presidential records from the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, when those presidents left office.”Separately, after Mr. Trump repeatedly and misleadingly compared his handling of records to that of his immediate predecessor, the National Archives said in a statement that former President Barack Obama turned over his documents, classified and unclassified, as required by law. The agency has also said it is not aware of any missing boxes of presidential records from the Obama administration.What Mr. Trump Said“The decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president’s term and in the president’s sole discretion.”False. The Presidential Records Act defines what constitutes personal materials — such as diaries or political campaign documents — from official records. It does not give the president “sole discretion” in determining what is and is not a personal record. Under the law, a departing president is required to separate personal documents from official records before leaving office.F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August, more than a year after the general counsel of the National Archives requested the recovery of the materials and after months of repeated inquiries from officials at the agency and at the Justice Department.What Mr. Trump Said“I was supposed to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was raided by gun-toting F.B.I. agents.”False. The Presidential Records Act does not establish a process of negotiation between the president and the archives. The court-approved search of Mr. Trump’s Florida residence unfolded after he repeatedly resisted the government’s requests that he return the material, even after being subpoenaed.What Mr. Trump Said“Biden sent 1,850 boxes to the University of Delaware, making the search very, very difficult for anybody. And he refuses to give them up and he refuses to let people even look at them, and then they say how he’s behaving so nicely.”This is misleading. Joseph R. Biden Jr. donated 1,850 boxes of documents to the University of Delaware in 2012 from his tenure as a senator representing the state from 1973 to 2009. Unlike presidential documents, which must be released to the archives once a president leaves office, documents from members of Congress are not covered by the Presidential Records Act. It is not uncommon for senators and representatives to give such items to colleges, research institutions or historical facilities.The University of Delaware agreed not to give the public access to Mr. Biden’s documents from his time as senator until two years after he retired from public life. But the F.B.I. did search the collection in February as part of a separate special counsel investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of government documents and in cooperation with his legal team. The New York Times reported at the time that the material was still being analyzed but did not appear to contain any classified documents.What Mr. Trump Said“When caught, Hillary then deleted and acid-washed. Nobody does that because of the expense, but it’s pretty conclusive. Thirty-three thousand emails in defiance of a congressional subpoena already launched. The subpoena was there and she decided to delete, acid-wash and then smash and destroy her cellphones with a hammer. And then they say I participated in obstruction.”This is misleading. There are several key differences between Mr. Trump’s case and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state — which Mr. Trump also described inaccurately.Crucially, several official investigations have concluded that Mrs. Clinton did not systematically or deliberately mishandle classified material, and a 2018 inspector general report supported the F.B.I.’s decision not to charge Mrs. Clinton.In contrast, Mr. Trump is accused of mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to recover them and making false statements to officials. The indictment unsealed last week featured photographs of documents stored in sometimes haphazard ways, including boxes stacked in a shower and others piled on the stage of a ballroom that guests frequented.According to the F.B.I.’s inquiry into the matter, Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers provided about 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department in 2014 and instructed an employee to remove all personal emails older than 60 days. In 2015, after The Times reported Mrs. Clinton’s use of a personal email account, a Republican-led House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on American outposts in Benghazi, Libya, sent a subpoena requesting all emails she had in that account related to Libya.That same month, an employee working for the company that managed Mrs. Clinton’s server realized he did not actually delete the personal emails as instructed in 2014. He then used a free software program called BleachBit — not actual acid or chemical compounds — to delete about 30,000 personal emails.The F.B.I. found thousands of additional work-related emails that Mrs. Clinton did not turn over to the State Department, but the director of the bureau at the time, James B. Comey, said it found “no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.”Mrs. Clinton would almost certainly disagree with Mr. Trump’s assertion that the F.B.I. and the Justice Department “protected” her, and has said that Mr. Comey’s actions as well as Russian interference cost her the 2016 election.What Mr. Trump Said“He totally exonerated Mike Pence. I’m happy about that. Mike did nothing wrong, but he happened to have classified documents in his house. But they exonerated him. And Biden is a different story.”This is misleading. Classified documents were found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s home in Indiana in January and President Biden’s former office at a Washington think tank in November and his Delaware residence in January. The Justice Department declined to pursue charges against Mr. Pence, and the investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of materials is continuing.But those cases differ in several significant ways from Mr. Trump’s, particularly in the volume of documents found and in Mr. Pence’s and Mr. Biden’s response.About a dozen documents with classified markings were found at Mr. Pence’s home. The F.B.I. searched his home in February with his agreement and found one additional classified document. It is unclear how many classified documents were found in Mr. Biden’s possession, but his lawyers have said “a small number” were discovered at his former office and about a half-dozen at his Delaware home.In contrast, Mr. Trump stored “hundreds” of classified documents, according to the Justice Department’s indictment, which said some records included information about the country’s nuclear programs as well as “potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack.” In total, the government has retrieved more than 300 files with classified markings from his Florida home and private club.Representatives for Mr. Pence and Mr. Biden have said that they inadvertently kept those documents and quickly alerted the National Archives once they were discovered. Both men also cooperated with government officials in turning over the documents and appeared to have voluntarily complied with searches of their properties.In contrast, Mr. Trump repeatedly defied requests to return materials for months and, according to the indictment, played an active role in concealing classified documents from investigators. The archives alerted Mr. Trump in May 2021 that presidential documents were missing. Officials retrieved 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January 2022 but suspected that other records remained missing. Seven months later, F.B.I. agents searched the Florida property and recovered additional documents.What Mr. Trump Said“Unlike me, who had absolute declassification authority as president, Joe Biden as vice president had no authority to declassify and no right to possess the documents. He had no right.”This is misleading. Vice presidents do have the power to declassify certain material, though the scope of their declassification powers has not been explicitly tested in courts.Mr. Trump has previously insisted that he had the power to declassify material without needing to inform anyone. There are formal procedures for declassifying information, but whether presidents must abide by them is an unsettled legal issue, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service and the American Bar Association. A federal appeals court ruled in 2020 that “declassification, even by the president, must follow established procedures.” But the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on the matter.It is worth noting, though, that Mr. Trump followed these procedures for certain documents, like issuing a memorandum on the day before leaving office declassifying information related to the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia.Separately, legal experts have noted that the classification of information related to nuclear weapons or “restricted data” is governed by a separate legal framework entirely, the Atomic Energy Act. That law does not explicitly give the president the authority to declassify nuclear secrets unilaterally and establishes a strict process for declassification that involves several agencies. It is unclear whether documents stored at Mar-a-Lago included “restricted data.”Chris Cameron More

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      Just When You Thought There Was Nothing New to Learn About Donald Trump

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      Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat and The New York Times Audio app includes podcasts, narrated articles from the newsroom and other publishers, as well as exclusive new shows — including this one — which we’re making available to readers for a limited time. Download the audio app here.For the second time in recent months, Donald Trump has been indicted. This time, the charges were filed by the special counsel appointed to investigate accusations that the former president took classified documents from the White House and repeatedly resisted efforts to return them.On this episode of “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts discuss what the 49-page indictment reveals about Trump and his view of the law, and its impact on the Republican primary race.The New York TimesThoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com or leave us a voice mail message at (212) 556-7440. We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.Follow our hosts on Twitter: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) and Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT) and Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Stephanie Joyce. Mixing by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Isaac Jones, Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More