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      Where Presidential Hopes Go to Die

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      Gail Collins: Bret, before we get to Donald Trump’s big mess — how many times have I said that? Well, before we get to you-know-who, one minute on the smoke that filled the city last week. Were you in town?Bret Stephens: I was. For a few hours there, the Manhattan sky looked like something out of “Apocalypse Now” or “Blade Runner.”Gail: When I was outdoors, with a mask on, I was tempted to stop some of the young people walking past and apologize for having screwed up their future with global warming. Joe Biden’s trying hard to deal with this, but his plans aren’t nearly enough given the scope of the problem.We need, among many, many things, to end tax breaks for fossil fuel production. Is it fair to complain that Republican resistance to the very idea of climate change is a huge culprit here?Bret: You’re asking whether it’s fair to complain that Republicans are causing forest fires in Canada, a country that’s been governed by Justin Trudeau and his left-of-center coalition for the past eight years?Gail: We can certainly bemoan Canada’s ineptitude in timber management, but this is hardly the only place where we’ve seen a mess of forest fires in the last few years.Admit it. Climate change is a stupendous global crisis and everybody has to join together to fight it.Bret: I was being just a tad flip, Gail: You know I had a Damascene — or Greenlandic — conversion last year.That said, we can’t wait for China and India to wean themselves off coal to find an effective solution to the remediable problem of forest fires. The answer is good forest management, particularly by doing more to remove dead trees and use controlled burns — something, as The Times reported last week, Canada doesn’t do nearly enough of. This is why Western states run by Democrats are now looking at states like Florida, Georgia and other areas in the Southeast for tips on how to avoid giant fires.But speaking of forest fires, shall we get to that latest Trump indictment?Gail: We’re obviously in history-making territory — first former president indicted in a criminal case brought by the federal government. And this one, which involves trying to stash away official papers he’d been told were government property, is certainly a classic Trump combination of shocking and stupid.Bret: Or sinister and self-serving. I’m still not sure.Gail: Wow, the pictures of those boxes of classified documents piled up around the toilet …Bret: Really puts a new spin on the term “anal retentive.”Gail: I did sorta hope we’d start the cosmic Trump prosecutions with one of the other big charges — trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election by pressing the Georgia secretary of state to “find” more votes and encouraging the Jan. 6 insurrection do seem more … important.You?Bret: Three thoughts, Gail. The first is that Jack Smith, the special counsel, has produced irrefutable proof that Trump knew that he possessed, as the former president himself put it, “secret information” that he could have declassified when he was in office but didn’t. That may be about as close to a slam dunk, legally speaking, as we’re ever going to get in a case like this.Gail: True, but I want shockingly terrible besides terribly illegal. Go on.Bret: The second thought is that a special counsel appointed by President Biden’s attorney general is bringing a criminal case against the president’s presumptive opponent in next year’s election. To many Republicans, this will smack of a bald attempt to politicize justice and criminalize politics — the very thing Trump was accused of doing in his first impeachment. Trump will surely use this to his political advantage and, as the writer Damon Linker noted in a perceptive guest essay last week, will probably see his primary poll numbers jump yet again.Gail: Yeah, at least temporarily.Bret: The third thought comes from a tweet by the conservative writer Erick Erickson: “Take the crime out of it — do you really want to put a man back in the White House who shows off highly classified military documents to randos?”Gail: Reasonable conclusion. Yet most of Trump’s would-be Republican opponents are dodging this whole, deeply startling, issue. Or pretending it’s a Democratic plot.Bret: Pathetic. As usual.Gail: Your fave Nikki Haley attacked the Justice Department for “prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics.” And no candidate apart from Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, was willing to really say gee, this is the kind of thing we want to avoid in our nominee.Explain, please …Bret: You get the sense that most of these Republican Lilliputians are running to be Trump’s veep pick or his pet rock. Or they’re trying to ingratiate themselves with Trump’s base and to present themselves as a slightly more responsible version of the 45th president, which is like trying to sell a fentanyl addict on the merits of pot gummies.The only Republicans in the race who seem to have gotten it right are Christie and Hutchinson. They understand that the way to beat Trump is to go after him hammer-and-tongs.Gail: Where does that leave you? Holding out hope for Chris Christie? I must confess it’s hard to imagine Hutchinson as any kind of contender.Bret: I respect his willingness to stand up clearly and strongly against Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election.Gail: Sounds good — and the last time I looked, Hutchinson was doing at least as well as, um, Ted Cruz.Does the need for big money worry you? It’s impressive to be a super-successful business person, but I’m not sure it’s as important as, say, running a state the way so many of the Republican candidates have.Bret: I was extremely enthusiastic about the prospect of a Mike Bloomberg presidency. Generally speaking, I prefer politicians who make their money before going into politics, the way Bloomberg did, as opposed to politicians who trade on their celebrity to make money after being in politics, the way the Clintons did.But back to Christie: Don’t be surprised if his campaign catches fire. People will be more than willing to forgive Bridgegate or his lackluster second term as governor if he can make things interesting in the G.O.P. contest. Which, merely by opening his mouth, he definitely can.Gail: Bret, I have to admit I will be surprised. But I would love, love to see Christie qualify for the Republican debate in August. Think there’s a chance?Bret: All Christie needs is 1 percent support in three polls, 40,000 campaign contributors and a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee, along with some other stipulations. I think he’ll manage that. The bigger question is whether Trump will agree to the final requirement — something he refused to do in 2016.Gail: You know, I was wondering that about Christie too, since he’s said he wouldn’t support Trump as the nominee. My cynical view is that anybody will get into the debate who wants to, which means that Christie — if he can meet the other requirements — will be there even if he has to fudge a bit. And that Trump will dodge the whole event no matter what the rules are.Bret: To do another town hall on the Collapsing News Network?Gail: Which would leave me with the hope of spending the dog days of summer watching Christie take on Ron DeSantis ….Bret: Something tells me he’ll be more circumspect about going hard against the Florida governor, just in case DeSantis becomes president and he wants the job of attorney general.Gail: Eww.Bret: Can we get back to CNN for a moment? Big news last week with the departure of its ill-starred president, Chris Licht. Any advice for whoever succeeds him?Gail: Well, there’s the rule that you shouldn’t go into a big interview with the assumption that you’re so charming that any writer who’s hanging out with you will just want to be pals.Bret: Much less give that reporter a sense of your workout routine. Gives a whole new meaning to the truism, “Never let them see you sweat.”Gail: But on a more cosmic level, Bret, I worry and wonder all the time about the future of the media in a wireless world. Very hard to make money doing critical chores like covering state and local government. Or even just pursuing hard news.Crossing fingers that the next CNN head will find a way to attract a big audience in search of serious reporting.You?Bret: I’m rooting for the network to return to its hard-news roots. Licht had the right idea, he just went about it badly. Instead of losing a lot of weight and getting rid of people, he should have taken another piece of timeless advice: “Leave the gun, take the cannolis” — as in, eat more, fire less.Gail: Wow, think that’ll work for the presidential candidates wandering around Iowa summer fairs?Bret: Everyone in Iowa ought to know “The Godfather” by heart. It’s the state where most presidential hopes go to die.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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      G.O.P. Faces Trump Indictment: Loyalty or Law and Order

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      The candidates challenging Donald Trump have to decide how to run against the indicted former president. And it could determine where the party goes from here.The federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump has left the Republican Party — and his rivals for the party’s nomination — with a stark choice between deferring to a system of law and order that has been central to the party’s identity for half a century or a more radical path of resistance, to the Democratic Party in power and to the nation’s highest institutions that Mr. Trump now derides.How the men and women who seek to lead the party into the 2024 election respond to the indictments of the former president in the coming months will have enormous implications for the future of the G.O.P.So far, the declared candidates for the presidency who are not Mr. Trump have divided into three camps regarding his federal indictment last Thursday: those who have strongly backed him and his insistence that the indictment is a politically driven means to deny him a second White House term, such as Vivek Ramaswamy; those who have urged Americans to take the charges seriously, such as Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson; and those who have straddled both camps, condemning the indictment but nudging voters to move past Mr. Trump’s leadership, such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.The trick, for all of Mr. Trump’s competitors, will be finding the balance between harnessing the anger of the party’s core voters who remain devoted to him while winning their support as an alternative nominee.Mr. Trump is due to appear in court on Tuesday in Florida. The danger for Republicans, after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, is that encouraging too much anger could lead to chaos — and to what pollsters call the “ghettoization” of their party: confined to minority status by voters unwilling to let go of the fervent beliefs that have been rejected by the majority.That point was laid bare Sunday by a new CBS News/YouGov poll that found 80 percent of Americans outside the core Republican voter base saw a national security risk in Mr. Trump’s handling of classified nuclear and military documents, while only 38 percent of likely Republican primary voters discerned such a risk.In the same poll, only 7 percent of Republicans said the indictment had changed their view of the former president for the worse; 14 percent said their views had changed for the better; and the majority, 61 percent, said their views would not change. More than three-quarters of Republican primary voters said the indictments were politically motivated.A separate ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that 61 percent of Americans viewed the charges as serious, up from 52 percent in April when pollsters asked about the mishandling of classified documents. Among Republicans, 38 percent said the charges were serious, also up, from 21 percent in this spring. But only about half of Americans said Mr. Trump should be charged, unchanged from April.“Base voters see the double standard in politics. I continue to hear, ‘When are they going to indict the Bidens?’” said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman and senior adviser to Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor and Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. But, he added, “65 percent of our primary voters are just tired of all the drama and I think are looking for a new generation of Republicans to take us out of the wilderness.”Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, campaigning in Iowa early this year. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMs. Haley has embodied that balancing act, saying in one statement, “This is not how justice should be pursued in our country,” and also, “It’s time to move beyond the endless drama.”Mr. Trump’s closest rival for the 2024 nomination, Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, captured the same spirit when he mused on Friday that he “would have been court-martialed in a New York minute” if he had taken classified documents during his service in the Navy. He was referring to Hillary Clinton — who has returned as a Republican boogeyman this week — and her misuse of classified material as secretary of state, but the double meaning was clear, just as it was when he said, “There needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let’s enforce it on everybody.”Those urging voters to read the charges facing Mr. Trump — the mishandling of highly classified documents on some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and his subsequent steps to obstruct law enforcement — are a lonelier group in the broader Republican Party. Just two former governors running for president — both former prosecutors — Mr. Christie of New Jersey and Mr. Hutchinson of Arkansas, are aligned with a scattering of other leaders like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who was the only Republican senator to vote to remove Mr. Trump from office twice.But their voices are likely to be amplified in the coming days by a media eager to give them a microphone. Mr. Christie will hold a town-hall meeting on CNN on Monday night, while Mr. Hutchinson, the longest of long shots for the nomination, has given a flurry of interviews.“The Republican Party should not dismiss this case out of hand,” Mr. Hutchinson said in an interview. “These are serious allegations that a grand jury has found probable cause on.”On Sunday morning, Mr. Trump’s former attorney general, William P. Barr, weighed in on Fox News Sunday, saying he was “shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were.” “If even half of it is true, he’s toast,” Mr. Barr said. “It is a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning. This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here — a victim of a witch hunt — is ridiculous.”The critics of Mr. Trump also have an appeal that goes to the center of the party’s identity: law and order. Republicans are still attacking Democrats on the rise of street crime after the pandemic even as they attack the F.B.I., the Justice Department, the special prosecutor and the federal grand jury system.“If Congress has the ability to have oversight over the Department of Justice, I encouraged them to do it vigorously and fairly and ask all the questions they need,” Mr. Christie said on CNN. “But what we should also be doing is holding to account people who are in positions of responsibility and saying, if you act badly, there has to be penalties for that. There has to be a cost to be paid.”But voters eager to believe the dark tales spun by Mr. Trump of a nefarious “deep state,” of “Communists” bent on the destruction of America, are receiving encouragement from candidates who are ostensibly Mr. Trump’s rivals. For them, the calculation appears to be capturing the former president’s voters if his legal troubles finally end his political career.“I am personally deeply skeptical of everything in that indictment,” Mr. Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur and author, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, adding, “I personally have no faith whatsoever in those vague allegations.”Other candidates were less blunt but equally willing to challenge the integrity of the justice system, a system, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said, “where the scales are weighted” against conservatives.The language of Trump supporters after his indictment last Thursday has alarmed some experts.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesIn truth, the conservative world is divided. Some figures have, predictably, rallied around Mr. Trump with irresponsible rhetoric that appeared to call for violence.“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and 75 million Americans just like me. And most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.,” said Kari Lake, the failed candidate for governor of Arizona.More surprisingly were the voices on the Trumpist right who have voiced their concerns — over the charges and over their impact on the Republican Party’s future. When Charlie Kirk of the pro-Trump Turning Point USA called for every other Republican candidate for the presidency to drop out of the race in solidarity with Mr. Trump, Ann Coulter, the right-wing bomb thrower, responded, “That’s nothing! I’m calling on EVERY REPUBLICAN TO COMMIT SUICIDE in solidarity with Trump!” — acknowledging that rallying around the former president could send the party to oblivion.Mike Cernovich, a lawyer and provocateur on the right, criticized the indictment as a “selective prosecution,” but also said, “Trump walked into this trap.”How the party, and its 2024 candidates, respond will matter, to the country and to the party’s political fortunes. The core Republican voter might stand with Mr. Trump, but most Americans most likely will not. It is a dilemma, acknowledged Clifford Young, president of U.S. public affairs at the polling and marketing firm Ipsos.“For the average American in the middle, they’re appalled,” he said, “but for the base, not only is support being solidified, they don’t believe what is happening.” “Heck,” he added, “they believe he won the election.” More

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      Trump Supporters’ Violent Rhetoric in His Defense Disturbs Experts

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      The former president’s allies have portrayed the indictment as an act of war and called for retribution, which political violence experts say increases the risk of action.The federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump has unleashed a wave of calls by his supporters for violence and an uprising to defend him, disturbing observers and raising concerns of a dangerous atmosphere ahead of his court appearance in Miami on Tuesday.In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Mr. Trump — including a member of Congress — have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons. The allies have painted Mr. Trump as a victim of a weaponized Justice Department controlled by President Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election.The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Mr. Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him.Experts on political violence warn that attacks against people or institutions become more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or calls for violence with impunity. The pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was drawn to Washington in part by a post on Twitter from Mr. Trump weeks earlier, promising that it would be “wild.”The former president alerted the public to the indictment on Thursday evening in posts on his social media platform, attacking the Justice Department and calling the case “THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.”“Eye for an eye,” wrote Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, in a post on Twitter on Friday. His warning came shortly before the special counsel in the case, Jack Smith, spoke to the public for the first time since he took over the investigation of Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents.On Instagram, Mr. Trump’s eldest son’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, posted a photo of the former president with the words, “Retribution Is Coming,” in all capital letters.In Georgia, at the Republican state convention, Kari Lake, who refused to concede the Arizona election for governor in 2022 and who is an ardent defender of Mr. Trump, emphasized that many of Mr. Trump’s supporters owned guns.“I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden — and the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one is for you,” Ms. Lake said. “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”The crowd cheered.Ms. Lake added: “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”Political violence experts say that even if aggressive language by high-profile individuals does not directly end in physical harm, it creates a dangerous atmosphere in which the idea of violence becomes more accepted, especially if such rhetoric is left unchecked.Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, wrote “Eye for an eye” on Twitter on Friday in response to news of the indictment, before its particulars were released.Al Drago for The New York Times“So far, the politicians who have used this rhetoric to inspire people to violence have not been held accountable,” said Mary McCord, a former senior Justice Department official who has studied the ties between extremist rhetoric and violence. “Until that happens, there’s little deterrent to using this type of language.”The language used by some right-wing media figures was more stark.On Pete Santilli’s talk show, the conservative provocateur declared that if he were the commandant of the Marine Corps, he would order “every single Marine” to grab President Biden, “throw him in freakin’ zip ties in the back of a freakin’ pickup truck,” and “get him out of the White House.”One of his guests, Lance Migliaccio, said that if it were legal and he had access, he would “probably walk in and shoot” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and someone Mr. Trump has identified as one of his enemies.So far, the reactions from Mr. Trump’s supporters have been more intense and explicit than those expressed after Mr. Trump was indicted in a separate case by the Manhattan district attorney Alvin L. Bragg in late March.Shortly before that indictment, Mr. Trump posted an article on Truth Social, his social media platform, that included a photo of himself holding a baseball bat on one side, and Mr. Bragg in an adjacent photo. Dueling crowds of pro-Trump and anti-Trump protesters appeared in Lower Manhattan when Mr. Trump was arraigned there in April.On Saturday, in his first public remarks since the latest indictment on seven charges related to the retention of classified documents and efforts to obstruct justice, Mr. Trump attacked those investigating him as engaged in “demented persecution.”The F.B.I. has been the target of much criticism from far-right Republican lawmakers and the former president’s supporters. In the wake of the heated partisanship, F.B.I. field offices are reporting all threats related to their personnel or facilities to the Washington headquarters, in an unusual step. A law enforcement familiar with the move said the F.B.I. was trying to get a handle on the number of threats around the country directed at the agency.Despite whatever security precautions are taken for Mr. Trump’s appearance on Tuesday, security experts said that the rhetoric and the threats from it were unlikely to subside and would likely become more pronounced as the case moves forward and the 2024 election nears.“Rhetoric like this has consequences,” said Timothy J. Heaphy, the lead investigator for the select House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in the White House after his presidency. “People who we interviewed for the Jan. 6 investigation said they came to the Capitol because politicians and the president told them to be there. Politicians think that when they say things it’s just rhetoric, but people listen to it and take it seriously. In this climate politicians need to realize this and be more responsible.”On Instagram on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump posted a mash-up video of himself swinging a golf club on the course and an animation of a golf ball hitting President Biden in the head, superimposed with footage of Mr. Biden falling at a public event in recent days after he tripped over something onstage.It was hardly the first time that figures on the right have issued calls for war or violence to support the former president, or the first time that Mr. Trump has appeared to summon his supporters to amass on his behalf.In the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol, the notion that a civil war was drawing near was prevalent in right-wing circles. Extremist leaders like Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia, and Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, often rallied their groups with incendiary references to the cleansing violence of the American Revolution. Both men have been convicted of sedition in connection with the Capitol attack.More broadly, on far-right websites, people shared tactics and techniques for attacking the building and discussed building gallows and trapping lawmakers in tunnels there.The federal courthouse in Miami where Mr. Trump is expected to appear Tuesday afternoon for his arraignment. Gerald Herbert/Associated PressThe recent bout of warlike language coming in response to Mr. Trump’s indictment echoed what took place among Republican officials and media figures last summer after the F.B.I. searched Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, as part of the documents investigation and hauled away about 100 classified records.“This. Means. War,” The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump outlet wrote at the time, setting the tone for others. Hours later, Joe Kent, a Trump-endorsed House candidate in Washington State, went on a podcast run by Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime political adviser, and declared, “This just shows everyone what many of us have been saying for a very long time. We’re at war.”Indeed, within days of the heated language that followed the search of Mar-a-Lago, an Ohio man armed with a semiautomatic rifle tried to breach the F.B.I. field office near Cincinnati and wound up killed in a shootout with the local police.Jonathan Swan More

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      The Trump Documents Case Puts the Justice System on Trial

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      The former president’s efforts to defend against multiple felony counts by discrediting law enforcement pose a grave challenge to democracy.Former President Donald J. Trump has a lot at stake in the federal criminal case lodged against him. He could, in theory, go to prison for years. But if he winds up in the dock in front of a jury, it is no exaggeration to suggest that American justice will be on trial as well.History’s first federal indictment against a former president poses one of the gravest challenges to democracy the country has ever faced. It represents either a validation of the rule-of-law principle that even the most powerful face accountability for their actions or the moment when a vast swath of the public becomes convinced that the system has been irredeemably corrupted by partisanship.Mr. Trump, his allies and even some of his Republican rivals have embarked on a strategy to encourage the latter view, arguing that law enforcement has been hijacked by President Biden and the Democrats to take out his strongest opponent for re-election next year. Few if any of them bothered to wait to read the indictment before backing Mr. Trump’s all-caps assertion that it was merely part of the “GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.” It is now an article of faith, a default tactic or both.Jack Smith, the special counsel, and his prosecutors knew that defense was coming and have labored to avoid any hint of political motivation with a by-the-book approach, securing the assent of judges and grand jurors along the way. Moreover, their indictment laid out a damning series of facts based on security camera video, text messages and testimony from within Mr. Trump’s own team; even some who have defended him in the past say it will be harder to brush aside the evidence in a courtroom than in the court of public opinion.In the public arena, though, it may be a one-sided fight. Mr. Trump and his allies can scream as loudly as they can that the system is unfair, but prosecutors are bound by rules limiting how much they can say in response. To the extent that Democrats defend prosecutors, it may only buttress the point Mr. Trump is trying to make to the audience he is trying to reach.“I think the verdict on democracy ultimately comes down to Republican leaders and Republican voters,” said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida who left the party during the Trump presidency. “Their current weaponization narrative is dangerous and destabilizing, but seems to reflect the party’s early consensus. If they don’t pivot soon to due process and faith in the system, I think we could have very dark days ahead. I do worry.”Mr. Trump has attacked the Justice Department and Jack Smith, the special counsel in the case, calling him a lunatic.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesPolls suggest that Mr. Trump has made headway in persuading at least his own supporters that any and all allegations against him are just political. After the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, brought state charges against him related to hush money paid to an adult film actress, the former president’s support among Republicans rose, rather than fell.While 60 percent of all adults surveyed by CNN afterward approved of the charges, 76 percent agreed that politics played a role in the prosecution. As for the effect on America’s system, 31 percent said the indictment strengthened democracy, while 31 percent said it weakened it.All of which indicates that the system’s credibility is on the line in a way it has not been before. Many have criticized American justice over the years for systemic racism, excessive punishment, mistreatment of women subjected to assault or other issues, but they did not command the bullhorn of the presidency. When past presidents like Richard M. Nixon or Bill Clinton got in trouble, they defended themselves aggressively, but did not call the whole system into question.“In 1972 to 1974, the Republicans participated as good-faith members of the process,” said Garrett Graff, the author of “Watergate: A New History,” published last year. “They saw their roles as legislators first and Republicans second. They definitely were skeptical” initially of the allegations against Nixon, “but they followed the facts where they led.”Even Nixon’s sharp-tongued vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, was careful about disparaging the justice system broadly. “Agnew, of course, was Nixon’s attack dog, but mainly against the press, not the F.B.I. or the special prosecutor,” Mr. Graff said.Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is holding nothing back as he assails “the ‘Thugs’ from the Department of Injustice” and calls Mr. Smith a “deranged lunatic.” Republicans like Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona have called for dismantling the F.B.I. “We have now reached a war phase,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday. “Eye for an eye.” Elon Musk said the authorities were showing “far higher interest in pursuing Trump compared to other people in politics.”Several of Mr. Trump’s competitors for the Republican presidential nomination joined in. Former Vice President Mike Pence compared the indictment to leaders of “third-world nations” who “use a criminal justice system in their country against their predecessors.” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said “the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society.”The former president’s defenders generally do not address the substance of the 37 counts against him, but instead make a case of selective prosecution that resonates powerfully among many Republicans: What about Mr. Biden? What about Hunter Biden? What about Hillary Clinton?They point to the origin of the Russia investigation against Mr. Trump, citing the recent report by the special counsel John H. Durham that harshly criticized the F.B.I. for its handling of the case even though it did not come up with any new blockbuster revelations of politically motivated misconduct nor result in the conviction of any major figure.They point to Republican congressional inquiries that they say hint at wrongdoing by the Bidens even without confirmation. They point to the continuing federal criminal investigation of the president’s son Hunter, suggesting it has been impeded. And they point to the fact that the president himself is also under investigation over retaining classified documents yet not charged.The differences between the cases, however, are stark, making apples-to-apples comparisons complicated. In the documents investigation, for instance, Mr. Biden’s advisers by all accounts so far returned the papers to the authorities promptly after discovering them. Mr. Pence did the same after a voluntary search found that the former vice president had kept classified documents, and he was recently cleared by the Justice Department because there was no evidence of willful violations of the law.Mr. Trump, by contrast, refused to hand over all the documents he had taken from the White House — even after being subpoenaed for them. According to the indictment, he orchestrated an expansive scheme to hide papers and feed lies to authorities seeking them. On two occasions, the indictment charged, Mr. Trump showed secret documents to people without security clearance and indicated that he knew he was not supposed to.As for seeking to weaponize the Justice Department, there was ample evidence that Mr. Trump sought to do just that while in office. He openly and aggressively pushed his attorneys general to prosecute his perceived enemies and drop cases against his friends and allies, making no pretense that he was seeking equal and independent justice. His friends-and-family approach to his pardon power extended clemency to associates and those who had access to him through them.He chipped away at so many norms during his four years in office that it is no wonder that institutions have faced credibility problems. Indeed, he has made clear that he does not respect the boundaries that constrained other presidents. Since leaving office, he has called for “termination” of the Constitution so that he could be returned to power without waiting for another election and vowed that he would devote a second term to “retribution” against his foes while pardoning supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the transfer of power.There is no known evidence, on the other hand, that Mr. Biden has played any role in the investigations against Mr. Trump. Unlike the voluble Mr. Trump, he has made a point of not even publicly commenting on individual prosecutions, saying he respects the autonomy of the Justice Department.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has been sensitive to the matter of perception and sought to insulate the inquiries by appointing Mr. Smith, a career prosecutor who is not registered with either political party, as a special counsel with a guarantee of independence absent manifest wrongdoing on his part.But that was never going to convince Mr. Trump or his most fervent supporters of the fairness of the process. At bottom, the former president and front-runner for his party’s nomination to be the next president is being charged by a prosecutor appointed by an appointee of the man he hopes to beat. It is a recipe for distrust, especially when stoked by a defendant who has mastered the politics of grievance and victimhood.Will that result in lasting damage to democracy? Even some who support charging Mr. Trump fear that it may. Still, some who have studied politically fraught investigations counseled patience. There will be fireworks. Many will doubt the credibility of the system. But in the end, they said, the system will survive just as it has for more than two centuries.“It’s messy and uncomfortable for the generation living through it, but the system is durable enough to win out,” said Ken Gormley, the president of Duquesne University and the author of books on Watergate and the Clinton investigations. “As painful as the next year is likely to be as the criminal justice system grinds forward toward a fair verdict in the Mar-a-Lago documents case — whatever that outcome may be — we are fortunate that our predecessors have spent 234 years shoring up the bulwark.” More

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      Qué significa la acusación contra Donald Trump por los documentos

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      En su momento, el expresidente criticó a Hillary Clinton por su manejo de información sensible. Ahora, el mismo problema amenaza sus posibilidades de retomar la presidencia.Hubo un tiempo, no hace mucho en realidad, en el que Donald Trump afirmó que se preocupaba por la inviolabilidad de la información clasificada. Eso, por supuesto, sucedió cuando su adversaria fue acusada de ponerla en peligro y eso representó un arma política útil para Trump.A lo largo de 2016, fustigó a Hillary Clinton por utilizar un servidor de correo electrónico privado en vez de uno gubernamental seguro. “Voy a hacer cumplir todas las leyes relativas a la protección de información clasificada”, declaró. “Nadie estará por encima de la ley”. El manejo negligente que Clinton hizo de la información sensible, sentenció, “la descalifica para la presidencia”.Siete años después, Trump se enfrenta a cargos penales por poner en peligro la seguridad nacional por haberse llevado documentos clasificados cuando dejó la Casa Blanca y negarse a devolverlos todos, incluso después de que se le exigió hacerlo. A pesar del adagio de “recoge lo que siembras” de la política estadounidense, es bastante sorprendente que el asunto que ayudó a impulsar a Trump a la Casa Blanca sea lo que amenace con arruinar sus posibilidades de regresar a ella.La acusación presentada por un gran jurado federal a petición del fiscal especial Jack Smith cierra el círculo de la historia de Trump. “Enciérrenla”, coreaban las multitudes en los mítines de campaña de Trump, quien alentaba a sus seguidores para que gritaran eso. Ahora, él podría ser el encerrado de ser sentenciado por alguno de los siete cargos, entre ellos conspiración para la obstrucción de justicia y retención intencional de documentos.Esta acusación es la segunda presentada contra el expresidente en los últimos meses, pero en muchos aspectos eclipsa a la primera tanto en gravedad jurídica como en peligro político. La primera acusación, anunciada en marzo por el fiscal del distrito de Manhattan, acusó a Trump de falsificar registros empresariales para encubrir el pago de dinero a una actriz de cine para adultos —la cual había alegado que habían mantenido una relación sexual— a cambio de su silencio. La segunda la presentó un fiscal federal en representación de toda la nación, la primera en la historia de Estados Unidos contra un expresidente, y se refiere a los secretos de la nación.Mientras que los partidarios de Trump han tratado de desestimar la primera como el trabajo de un demócrata electo local sobre cuestiones que, aunque indecorosas, en última instancia parecen relativamente mezquinas y ocurrieron antes de que asumiera la presidencia, las más recientes acusaciones se derivan directamente de su responsabilidad como comandante en jefe de la nación para salvaguardar los datos que podrían ser útiles a los enemigos de Estados Unidos.Es posible que a los votantes republicanos no les importe que su líder le dé dinero a una estrella porno para que guarde silencio, pero ¿también serán indiferentes ante el delito de impedir que las autoridades intenten recuperar material clasificado?Tal vez. Sin duda, Trump así lo espera. La acusación de Manhattan solo pareció aumentar sus índices de popularidad más que perjudicarlo. Es por eso que, de inmediato, afirmó que la acusación más reciente forma parte de la conspiración más extravagante de la historia de Estados Unidos. Pareciera que, según él, la componenda implica a una amplia gama de fiscales locales y federales, grandes jurados, jueces, demandantes, reguladores y testigos que han mentido durante años para tenderle una trampa, mientras que él es el único que dice la verdad, sin importar cuáles sean los cargos.“Nunca creí posible que algo así pudiera ocurrirle a un expresidente de Estados Unidos, que recibió muchos más votos que cualquier presidente en funciones en la historia de nuestro país y que actualmente lidera, por mucho, a todos los candidatos, tanto demócratas como republicanos, en las encuestas de las elecciones presidenciales de 2024”, escribió en sus redes sociales, haciendo múltiples afirmaciones engañosas en una sola frase. “¡SOY UN HOMBRE INOCENTE!”.Hasta ahora, sus seguidores de base han seguido apoyándolo e incluso algunos de los que se postulan en su contra para obtener la candidatura republicana del próximo año han criticado las investigaciones en su contra. Pero recientemente fue declarado responsable de abuso sexual en un juicio civil, su empresa ha sido declarada culpable de 17 cargos de fraude fiscal y otros delitos y todavía enfrenta otras dos posibles acusaciones formales derivadas de su esfuerzo por revertir su derrota electoral de 2020, lo que desencadenó el ataque al Capitolio el 6 de enero de 2021.La pregunta, al menos políticamente, es si la acumulación de todas esas acusaciones terminará influyendo algún día en los votantes republicanos que lo respaldan, en especial si se concreta una tercera y tal vez cuarta acusación formal. Al menos algunos de sus rivales por la candidatura del partido esperan que el factor fatiga termine mermando su apoyo.En cuanto a Clinton, si sintió cierta alegría por la desgracia ajena la noche del jueves no lo expresó. Sin embargo, tanto ella como sus aliados siempre han creído que el hecho de que James Comey, el entonces director del FBI, reabriera la investigación de su correo electrónico unos días antes de la elección de 2016 le costó la victoria que tantas encuestas habían pronosticado.Trump intentará poner esto en contra de sus perseguidores, con el argumento de que el hecho de que haya sido acusado mientras que Clinton no lo fue, es prueba de que está siendo perseguido injustamente.No importa que los hechos de los casos sean distintos, que Trump pareciera haber hecho todo lo posible para frustrar intencionadamente a las autoridades que trataban de recuperar los documentos secretos durante meses mientras que los investigadores concluyeron que Clinton no tuvo intención de violar la ley. Será un argumento político útil para Trump insistir en que es víctima de una doble moral.Por qué, tras lo sucedido en la campaña de 2016, no reconoció el potencial peligro político de manejar mal información clasificada y tuvo más cuidado al respecto es otra cuestión. Pero pasó gran parte de su presidencia haciendo caso omiso de las preocupaciones sobre la seguridad de la información y las normas sobre la conservación de documentos gubernamentales.Divulgó información ultraconfidencial a funcionarios rusos que lo visitaron en el Despacho Oval. Publicó en internet imágenes sensibles de Irán obtenidas por satélite. Siguió utilizando un teléfono móvil inseguro incluso después de que le dijeron que el dispositivo era monitoreado por agencias de inteligencia rusas y chinas. Rompió documentos oficiales y los tiró al suelo una vez que terminó con ellos, a pesar de que las leyes exigen que se guarden y cataloguen, mientras sus ayudantes iban tras él, recogiendo los fragmentos y pegándolos de nuevo con cinta adhesiva.Incluso cuando se enfrentó a las consecuencias de sus actos, nunca se mostró preocupado. Al fin y al cabo, era el presidente y podía hacer lo que quisiera. Incluso durante la investigación sobre los documentos clasificados que se llevó a Mar-a-Lago, se ha defendido afirmando que tenía el poder de desclasificar cualquier cosa que quisiera con solo pensarlo.Pero ya no es presidente. Ahora no solo se enfrentará a los votantes de las elecciones primarias que decidirán si ha sido inhabilitado para la presidencia, sino a un fiscal que asegura que hará cumplir las leyes relativas a la protección de información clasificada.Será fichado como un criminal acusado y, a menos que ocurra algo imprevisto, en última instancia será juzgado por un jurado de sus iguales.Qué diferencia con su situación de hace siete años.Peter Baker es el corresponsal principal de la Casa Blanca y ha cubierto las gestiones de los últimos cinco presidentes para el Times y The Washington Post. También es autor de siete libros, el más reciente de ellos se titula The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, el cual escribió junto a Susan Glasser. More

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      Chris Christie Says He Found Trump Indictment ‘Devastating’

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      Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who is now running for president, called the facts in the indictment against his former ally Donald J. Trump “devastating,” and said that the small group of Republicans now critical of the former president’s conduct would grow.Mr. Christie, appearing on CNN Friday evening, refuted point-by-point the claim by Mr. Trump and many of his fellow Republicans that the indictment represented selective, partisan prosecution that would unnecessarily divide the country.The indictment would divide the nation, he said, but Mr. Trump had brought that on himself with poor conduct that “was completely self-inflicted.”Mr. Christie said he still believes Hillary Clinton should have faced charges in response to her mishandling of classified documents on a private email server, and still does not believe the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election.But, he added, “Each case needs to be assessed on its own merits, and the facts that are laid out here are damning.”The prosecution of Mr. Trump is about “holding to account people who are in positions of responsibility,” he said.Mr. Christie, who opened the broadcast by noting his own record as a federal prosecutor, has made his willingness to draw critical attention to Mr. Trump central to his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. But only he and one other candidate, Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, spoke favorably on Friday of the government’s case against the former president.The other candidates, balancing their need to curry favor with Mr. Trump’s supporters against the imperative to dislodge him as the front-runner, have largely taken the side of the Republican base, which sides with the former president.Rather than saying the Justice Department is holding Mr. Trump to an unfair standard, Mr. Christie said a man of Mr. Trump’s stature and ambitions should be held to a higher standard.“The conduct is bad,” he said of actions described in the indictment. “And it is bad for anybody in this country to do it, but it’s particularly awful for someone who has been president and who aspires to be president again.” More

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      DeSantis Backhandedly Defends Trump After Indictment

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      Visitors from a foreign planet might think Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida had been delivered a tremendous gift this week when his main presidential rival was charged with mishandling the country’s national security secrets.But as Mr. DeSantis’s latest speech showed, this is a turn of events he will need to beware.In an address to Republicans in North Carolina on Friday night, his first public remarks since the unsealing of federal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. DeSantis trod carefully and danced quickly past the subject.Previewing how he might criticize the Justice Department’s case without letting Mr. Trump entirely off the hook, he offered a somewhat backhanded defense of the now twice-indicted former president — whose loyal followers Mr. DeSantis is seeking to avoid angering — by drawing on his own experiences as a Navy lawyer.Seeming to muse aloud, Mr. DeSantis asked what the Navy would have done to him had he taken classified documents while in military service. “I would have been court-martialed in a New York minute,” he said, in a riff on Mr. Trump’s hometown.While Mr. DeSantis made his remark in reference to the fact that Hillary Clinton did not face charges over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, his comments could just as easily have applied to Mr. Trump. And they suggested that he believed both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton should have faced charges — or neither.“Is there a different standard for a Democrat secretary of state versus a former Republican president?” he asked. “I think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let’s enforce it on everybody and make sure we all know the rules.”(A yearslong inquiry by the State Department found that Mrs. Clinton had not deliberately or systemically mishandled classified information.)The nature of Mr. Trump’s federal indictment, which emerged in full view on Friday, left Mr. DeSantis and several other Republican presidential contenders ever more wobbly on the tightrope they are walking, trying to defend a rival accused of cavalierly and illegally keeping sensitive documents about U.S. nuclear programs and the country’s vulnerabilities to military attack.Many of these candidates now find themselves in the difficult position of rallying around Mr. Trump even as they seek to differentiate themselves from his legacy while he continues to dominate them in the polls.“This is not how justice should be pursued in our country,” Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador, said on Twitter. “The American people are exhausted by the prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics.”Such caution struck a sharp contrast with the two Republican candidates most willing to criticize Mr. Trump.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey called the indictment “devastating,” telling CNN that “the facts that are laid out here are damning.” And in an interview with The New York Times, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas pushed back against claims that Mr. Trump was being treated unfairly and reiterated his belief that he should drop out of the race.“To pejoratively say this is the result of a political prosecution is not in service to our justice system,” Mr. Hutchinson said, adding, “It would be doing a disservice to the country if we did not treat this case seriously.”Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the investigation, urged the public on Friday to understand the “scope and gravity” of the charges.Mr. Trump is expected to appear in Federal District Court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon to face charges including willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice. On his Truth Social website, the former president called Mr. Smith “deranged.”Some voters who attended Mr. DeSantis’s speech in Greensboro, N.C., suggested they were growing weary of the controversy surrounding Mr. Trump, even as they expressed a belief that the charges were politically motivated. (Mr. Trump also faces charges in state court in New York for his alleged role in paying hush money to a porn star.)“Even if he gets elected again, they’re never going to leave him alone. So what’s the point?” said Mary Noble, 70, who voted twice for Mr. Trump but has not made up her mind in the 2024 primary. “He’ll never be effective. That’s my fear.”Tom Wassel, who sells air pollution control equipment and also supported Mr. Trump in both previous elections, did not mind that Mr. DeSantis had touched on the indictment only briefly, and not very forcefully.“I want him to talk about what he’s going to run on,” Mr. Wassel, 70, said.Beyond Mr. Christie and Mr. Hutchinson, Republicans running for president were largely supportive of Mr. Trump, with some arguing that the prosecution amounted to an extraordinary and unfair political vendetta and one going so far as to bluntly promise to pardon him.Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who has positioned himself to secure the backing of Mr. Trump’s supporters if the former president’s legal problems derail his political comeback, said, “I commit to pardon Trump promptly on Jan. 20, 2025.”In a radio interview on Friday before the indictment was unsealed, former Vice President Mike Pence seemed to contrast Mr. Trump’s conduct with his own diligent return of classified documents to the National Archives. But he added that he was “deeply troubled to see this indictment move forward” and took a swipe at what he called “years of politicization” of the Justice Department.Meanwhile, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the Republican nominee for president in 2012 and a leading critic of Mr. Trump, was one of the few G.O.P. officeholders to condemn him, saying the former president had “brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents, but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so.”Jonathan Weisman More

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      Will Trump’s Indictment Bar Him From Running for President in 2024?

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      The second indictment of former President Donald J. Trump — this time over his hoarding of sensitive government documents — adds to the unusual questions raised by the spectacle of someone running for president while facing charges.The indictment — and any conviction — would not bar Mr. Trump from running.Nevertheless, it would be extraordinary for a person who is under indictment, let alone convicted of a felony, to be a major party nominee.There are only a few historical examples of somewhat serious candidates who even come close. They include the unsuccessful run in the 2016 Republican primary by Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, after he was indicted on charges of abuse of power (the charges were dismissed months after he dropped out of the race), and the 1920 run by Eugene V. Debs as the Socialist Party nominee while he sat in prison for an Espionage Act conviction.If Mr. Trump were to be elected president while a felony case against him was pending or after any conviction, many complications would ensue.The Justice Department has in the past taken the position that even indicting a president while in office would be unconstitutional because it would interfere with the president’s ability to perform duties as head of the executive branch. Mr. Trump would surely try to get the case dismissed on that basis. There is no definitive Supreme Court ruling because the issue has never arisen before.Notably, in 1997, the Supreme Court allowed a federal lawsuit against President Bill Clinton to proceed while he was in office. That was a civil case, however — not a criminal one. Mr. Trump also faces a state case, an indictment in Manhattan in April, where he is accused of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment.Even more extraordinary complications would arise were Mr. Trump to be convicted and incarcerated and yet elected anyway. One possibility is that he could win a federal court order requiring his release from prison as a result of a constitutional challenge. Another is that upon the commencement of his second term, he could be immediately removed from office under the 25th Amendment as “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” More