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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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      Hillary Clinton’s Emails: A Nation Struggles to Unsubscribe

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      As Donald Trump made history by becoming the first former president to face federal charges, many Republicans tried to change the subject by renewing an eight-year-old controversy.It is the topic the nation just can’t delete from its political conversation: Hillary Clinton’s emails.In the days since Donald J. Trump became the first former U.S. president to face federal charges, Republicans across the ideological spectrum — including not only Mr. Trump and his allies, but also his critics and those who see prosecutors’ evidence as damaging — have insistently brought up the eight-year-old controversy.They have peppered speeches, social media posts and television appearances with fiery condemnations of the fact that Mrs. Clinton, a figure who continues to evoke visceral reactions among the Republican base, was never charged.The two episodes are vastly different legal matters, and Mrs. Clinton was never found to have systematically or deliberately mishandled classified information. Still, Republicans have returned to the well with striking speed, mindful that little more than the word “emails” can muddy the waters, broadcast their loyalties and rile up their base.“Lock her up,” chanted a woman at last weekend’s Georgia Republican Party state convention, where Mr. Trump sought to revive the issue of Mrs. Clinton’s email use. “Hillary wasn’t indicted,” he said in a speech at the event. “She should have been. But she wasn’t indicted.”Campaigning in North Carolina, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida bashed Mrs. Clinton’s email practices while being far more circumspect in alluding to Mr. Trump, his top rival for the Republican nomination.Even former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has made criticizing Mr. Trump a central theme of his presidential campaign, said on CNN recently that the Justice Department “is at fault for not charging Hillary Clinton,” while casting the facts laid out against Mr. Trump as “damning.”“The perception is that she was treated differently,” Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor, a 2024 presidential candidate and Trump critic, said in an interview on Monday. “Perception can become a reality very quickly.”Mr. Hutchinson, once a chief Clinton antagonist from former President Bill Clinton’s home state — he helped guide impeachment proceedings against Mr. Clinton — said he saw distinctions between Mrs. Clinton’s email episode and the charges Trump faced. But, he added, “If the voters say it’s relevant, it becomes relevant politically.”Taken together, the moment offers a vivid reminder of the ways the ghosts of the 2016 campaign continue to shape and scar American politics.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, campaigning in North Carolina, criticized Mrs. Clinton’s email practices.Kate Medley for The New York Times“There are few politicians on the Democratic side of the aisle that raise the ire of Republicans more than Hillary Clinton,” said Neil Newhouse, a veteran Republican pollster.Mrs. Clinton and her supporters, of course, have not forgotten the email saga. After Mr. Trump’s indictment, the episode to many of them serves as a symbol of a political system and a mainstream news media often focused on the superficial at the expense of the substantive.Clinton backers now make light of what they view as comparatively flimsy and unproven accusations she faced about her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. And some relish the fact that the man who crowed about “Crooked Hillary” finds himself facing a range of serious charges and the prospect of prison if he is convicted.Speaking on Monday with the hosts of the “Pod Save America” podcast at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Mrs. Clinton laughed when a host noted the tendency of some Republicans to make parallels to her emails.“When in doubt, right?” she said. “I do think it’s odd, let’s just say, to the point of being absurd, how that is their only response. You know, they refuse to read the indictment, they refuse to engage with the facts.”On Friday, Mrs. Clinton posted an edited photo of herself on Instagram wearing a black baseball hat that reads, in pink letters, “BUT HER EMAILS.” That three-word phrase has become something of a shorthand among Democrats for frustration at the grief she received for how she handled classified correspondence compared with the blowback Mr. Trump confronted for all the legal and ethical norms he busted while in office.She included a link to buy the hat for $32 on the website of her political group. (Asked about that decision, Nick Merrill, who served as a longtime spokesman for Mrs. Clinton and remains an adviser, replied, “We’re seven years past what was widely viewed as, at worst, a stupid mistake. And reminding people that a piece of merchandise exists in order to raise money to preserve our democracy is something I’m very comfortable with.”)Substantively, there are many clear differences between the episodes.A yearslong inquiry by the State Department into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server found that while it increased the risk of compromising classified information, “there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.”The indictment against Mr. Trump, by contrast, accuses him of not only mishandling sensitive national security documents found at his Mar-a-Lago club, but also willfully obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. He has been charged with 37 criminal counts related to issues including withholding national defense information and concealing possession of classified documents.Robert K. Kelner, a Republican lawyer and Trump critic who is a partner in the white-collar defense and investigations practice group at Covington & Burling, said Mr. Trump most likely would not have been indicted had he cooperated with the government’s requests to return classified documents he took from the White House.“There were lots of things to criticize about the way the Hillary Clinton investigation was handled — none of which, however, in any way to my mind, suggests that the case against Donald Trump is unfounded,” Mr. Kelner said.Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted Mr. Trump, seemed to anticipate efforts to bring up Mrs. Clinton’s emails. The indictment cited five statements Mr. Trump made during his 2016 campaign about the importance of protecting classified information.“Hillary wasn’t indicted,” Donald J. Trump said in a speech in Georgia. “She should have been. But she wasn’t indicted.”Jon Cherry for The New York TimesFor veterans of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, the Republican attempt to resurface their old boss’s email server to defend Mr. Trump’s storage of boxes of classified documents in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom and other places would be comical had their 2016 defeat not been so painful.“The best evidence that Trump’s actions are completely indefensible is the Republican Party’s non-attempt to defend it and instead rehash seven-year-old debunked attacks on somebody who is no longer even in politics,” said Josh Schwerin, a former Clinton campaign spokesman who for years after the 2016 election had a recording of Mr. Trump saying his name as his voice mail greeting.Mr. Merrill said that if there was a single word for “particularly acute hypocrisy,” it would apply to Republicans now.For Republicans, “whether you believe she was cavalier, or you believe that she should be tried for treason for the risky position she put Americans in by sending correspondence about yoga or whatever,” he said, “Donald Trump has done the most severe possible thing. It’s not a close call with him.”Trump acolytes are now delighting at the prospect of reviving one of their favorite boogeywomen.“Republicans believe there’s been an unequal application of justice,” said former Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who as chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigated myriad Clinton episodes leading up to the 2016 election. He added, “What is it that Donald Trump did that was worse than Hillary Clinton? Nothing, nothing, nothing.”Timothy Parlatore, a criminal defense lawyer who quit the Trump legal team last month, said he did not believe that Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump or President Biden — who has cooperated with a special counsel’s investigation into his own handling of classified documents after his tenure as vice president — should have been charged for their handling of classified information.Mr. Trump’s Justice Department had four years to prosecute Mrs. Clinton and did not. Mr. Parlatore said that Mr. Trump no longer saw her as a threat — and instead called for an investigation into Mr. Biden and his son.“Here is a big difference,” Mr. Parlatore said. “The Trump administration wasn’t looking at Hillary as being a presidential candidate. The Biden administration is looking at Trump in a different way.”In Boston, Rebecca Kaiser, a political consultant, has worn her “BUT HER EMAILS” hat regularly since she received it as a gift.Sophie Park for The New York TimesFor now, the most devoted Clinton supporters are following her lead and wearing “BUT HER EMAILS” hats as a badge of honor. They appeared in recent days at dog parks, soccer tournaments and Pride events as a sort of celebration of Mr. Trump’s comeuppance.In Boston, Rebecca Kaiser, a political consultant, has worn her “BUT HER EMAILS” hat regularly since she received it as a gift the day before Mr. Trump was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in Manhattan in April.Since then, at Little League and soccer games, the supermarket, the beach and during dates with her wife, Ms. Kaiser has sported the black hat with pink letters, which she said served as a conversation starter about an election that many other Democrats would rather forget.“There are definitely people who notice the hat and very quickly avert their eyes,” Ms. Kaiser said. “There are other people who look at the hat and just roll their eyes. And honestly, I think there are a good amount of people who have no idea what it’s referencing.”Anjali Huynh 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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      Indictment Brings Trump Story Full Circle

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      The former president assailed Hillary Clinton for her handling of sensitive information. Now, the same issue threatens his chances of reclaiming the presidency.There was a time, not that long ago really, when Donald J. Trump said he cared about the sanctity of classified information. That, of course, was when his opponent was accused of jeopardizing it and it was a useful political weapon for Mr. Trump.Throughout 2016, he castigated Hillary Clinton for using a private email server instead of a secure government one. “I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,” he declared. “No one will be above the law.” Mrs. Clinton’s cavalier handling of the sensitive information, he said, “disqualifies her from the presidency.”Seven years later, Mr. Trump faces criminal charges for endangering national security by taking classified documents when he left the White House and refusing to return all of them even after being subpoenaed. Even in the what-goes-around-comes-around department of American politics, it is rather remarkable that the issue that helped propel Mr. Trump to the White House in the first place now threatens to ruin his chances of getting back there.The indictment handed up by a federal grand jury at the request of the special counsel Jack Smith effectively brings the Trump story full circle. “Lock her up,” the crowds at his campaign rallies chanted with his encouragement. Now he may be the one locked up if convicted on any of the seven reported counts that include conspiracy to obstruct justice and willful retention of documents.The indictment is the second brought against the former president in recent months, but in many ways it eclipses the first in terms of both legal gravity and political peril. The first indictment, announced in March by the Manhattan district attorney, charged Mr. Trump with falsifying business records to cover up hush money to an adult film actress who alleged that they had a sexual tryst. The second is brought by a federal prosecutor representing the nation as a whole, the first in American history against a former president, and concerns the nation’s secrets.While Mr. Trump’s defenders have tried to brush off the first as the work of a local elected Democrat concerning issues that, however unseemly, seem relatively petty and happened before he took office, the latest charges stem directly from his responsibility as the nation’s commander in chief to safeguard data that could be useful to America’s enemies.Republican voters may not care if their leader slips money to a porn star to keep quiet, but will they be indifferent about impeding authorities seeking to recover clandestine material?Perhaps. Mr. Trump certainly hopes so. The Manhattan indictment only seemed to boost his poll ratings rather than hurt him. And so he immediately cast the latest indictment as part of the most extravagant conspiracy in American history, one that in his telling seems to involve a wide range of local and federal prosecutors, grand jurors, judges, plaintiffs, regulators and witnesses who have all lied for years to set him up while he is the one truth teller, no matter what the charges.“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election,” he wrote on his social media site, making multiple misleading assertions in a single sentence. “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”So far, his core supporters have stuck with him and even some of those running against him for the Republican nomination next year have criticized the investigations against him. But he recently was found liable for sexual abuse in a civil trial, his company has been found guilty of 17 counts of tax fraud and other crimes and he still faces two other possible indictments stemming from his effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, leading to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The question, politically at least, is whether the accumulation of all those allegations will someday weigh him down among Republican voters who otherwise like him, especially if there is a third and maybe a fourth indictment. At least some of his rivals for the party nomination are counting on the fatigue factor eventually draining his support.As for Mrs. Clinton, whether she was feeling a little schadenfreude on Thursday night, the defeated candidate herself was not saying. But she and her allies have long believed that the reopening of the email investigation by James B. Comey, then the F.B.I. director, just days before the 2016 election cost her the victory that so many polls had forecast.Mr. Trump will try to turn this around on his pursuers, arguing that the fact that he has been indicted where Mrs. Clinton was not is proof that he is being unfairly persecuted.Never mind that the facts of the cases are different, that he seemed to go out of his way to intentionally thwart authorities trying to recover the secret documents for months while investigators concluded that Mrs. Clinton was not willfully trying to violate the law. But it will be a useful political argument for Mr. Trump to insist that he is a victim of double standards.Why, given the 2016 campaign, he did not recognize the potential danger of mishandling classified information and take more care about it is another matter. But he spent much of his presidency disregarding concerns about the security of information and the rules about preserving government documents.He disclosed highly classified information to Russian officials visiting him in the Oval Office. He posted sensitive satellite imagery of Iran online. He kept using an unsecured mobile phone even after being told it was monitored by Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies. He tore up official documents and threw them to the floor once he was done with them despite laws requiring that they be saved and cataloged, leaving aides to collect the ripped-up pieces and tape them back together.Even when confronted with the consequences of his actions, Mr. Trump never expressed concern. He was the president, after all, and he could do what he pleased. Even during the investigation into the classified documents that he took to Mar-a-Lago, he has defended himself by asserting that he had the power to declassify anything he chose just by thinking about it.But he is no longer president. Now he will face not just primary voters who will decide whether he has been disqualified from the presidency, but a prosecutor who says he will enforce laws concerning the protection of classified information.Mr. Trump will be booked as an accused criminal and, absent an unforeseen development, ultimately will be judged by a jury of his peers.What a difference seven years makes. More

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      A Tough Question for Chris Christie: Would Hillary Clinton Have Been Better Than Trump?

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      The former governor of New Jersey — who ran against Donald Trump in 2016 and is exploring a presidential campaign in 2024 — tried to thread the needle with his answer at a New Hampshire town hall.At a town hall in New Hampshire on Thursday, Chris Christie cited a long list of promises that former President Donald J. Trump failed to deliver on while in office. Above all else, however, he expressed disgust at the idea that Republicans would consider renominating Mr. Trump after he “undermined our democracy” by lying about the 2020 election and inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The event took place on the campus of New England College. After several gray-haired attendees asked Mr. Christie about Medicare, prescription drug prices and the like, a 15-year-old audience member named Quinn Mitchell — who had also heard Mr. Christie strike similar themes a month earlier in New Hampshire — spoke up.A Question for Chris Christie“I heard you say that one of the reasons you endorsed Trump is that you really did not want Clinton to be president in 2016. And now, based on recent knowledge that Trump was arrested — Trump was prosecuted on criminal charges — do you think that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton would have been the better bet for democracy in 2016?”The SubtextMr. Christie, who is exploring a 2024 Republican presidential bid, has positioned himself as the one G.O.P. hopeful willing to attack Mr. Trump. But a well-crafted question from Mr. Mitchell got to the heart of a contradiction in Mr. Christie’s posture, forcing him to own his support for the man he had just forcefully denounced.Chris Christie’s Answer“Hillary Clinton, in many, many ways, was a huge detriment to our democracy too. The American people had in 2016 the biggest hold-your-nose-and-vote choice they ever had. And so, look, philosophically, some of the stuff that Trump did accomplish is more in line with what I believe than what Hillary would have tried to accomplish. So I still would’ve picked Trump.”The SubtextMr. Christie’s answer was revealing. As much of a threat to democracy as he had just declared Mr. Trump to be, Mr. Christie, the former New Jersey governor, could not bring himself to say that Hillary Clinton would have been the better choice to preserve democracy.Mr. Christie’s unwillingness to declare that he would have voted for a Democrat if he had known what was coming gets to the heart of the dilemma for anti-Trump candidates. It’s why true Never Trumpers don’t trust candidates like Mr. Christie, who endorsed Mr. Trump in 2016 and in 2020 and served as an outside adviser while Mr. Trump was president. At the same time, Mr. Christie is making the straightforward political calculation that a would-be 2024 Republican who acknowledged that Mrs. Clinton would have been the better president would be dead in any G.O.P. primary.The moment also highlighted the challenge that almost every current or potential Republican primary candidate faces against Mr. Trump: Almost all of them, some of whom served in his administration, have a history of praising or supporting Mr. Trump during his presidency — words that can be expected to come back to haunt them.Alyce McFadden contributed research. More

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      Trump Will Be Indicted Today. Clinton Will Be Honored.

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      Hours after Donald Trump appears in court, his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, will be the honoree at a dinner 10 blocks from Trump Tower.Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll look at one of those coincidences in scheduling that can only happen in New York. We’ll also look at whether a court ruling might prompt prosecutors to abandon difficult cases.Mark Kauzlarich/The New York TimesToday New York will be focused on the arraignment of a former president, the first proceeding of its kind in American history.But other things are on the day’s agenda besides Donald Trump’s scheduled appearance for booking, fingerprinting and entering a plea in court. This evening a private club on East 66th Street will continue a tradition dating to the 1870s with a black-tie dinner.The honoree will be Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidency to Trump in 2016.The timing is a coincidence, said John Sussek III, the president of the Lotos Club. The date was chosen around the beginning of the year, long before the grand jury hearing the case against Trump voted on the indictment that brought Trump to Manhattan from Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Florida.“We have had princes and princesses, senators and congressmen,” Sussek said, noting that one recent honoree was Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leader in the federal response to the pandemic. Another past honoree was Robert Morgenthau, a predecessor of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, whose office brought the case against Trump.The criteria, Sussek said, “are essentially an individual who has made great contributions in whatever field or fields they’re in. It’s recognition of their accomplishments in society.”The club, which took its name from the lotos-leaf-eaters in a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, has held state dinners since the 1870s. Its early members included Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, who took a nap during the 12-course meal lauding him. Also on the club’s membership roll in its early years was John Hay, who held a job that Clinton later took; he was secretary of state under President William McKinley and President Theodore Roosevelt.Democrats and Republicans have been cheered at state dinners, as the club calls gatherings like the one tonight. Former President Harry Truman, a Democrat, and former President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, were each hailed at state dinners after leaving the White House. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court was celebrated at one in 1996, a couple of years after President Bill Clinton nominated her to the court.Over the years, the club has invited people with no political connections, including the Yankees star Joe DiMaggio, the astronaut John Glenn and at least two musical theater teams: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (of “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific,” among others) and John Kander and Fred Ebb (of “Cabaret” and “Chicago”).Lotos gives state dinner honorees lifetime memberships ($4,800 a year for regular resident members). Clinton will also be presented with a small bust of Ginsburg by the sculptor Zenos Frudakis, a Lotos member who did the larger busts of Twain and Ulysses S. Grant at the club.“You may recall what Donald Trump said in 2016, that if we voted for Hillary Clinton we’d have a criminal president under constant investigation and who would soon be indicted,” Sussek said in the speech he planned to deliver tonight. “And you know what? Trump was right. I voted for Hillary Clinton and ended up with a criminal president under constant investigation and has now just been indicted.”WeatherIt’s a partly sunny day near the high 60s. Expect a chance of showers at night, with temps around the low 50s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Thursday (Passover).The latest New York newsJustin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockTrump indictmentTrump in New York: Donald Trump arrived in New York on Monday, kicking off a 24-hour visit that will culminate with a polarizing arraignment in the city where he grew up and rose to the fame that catapulted him to the presidency.Jan. 6: Trump’s arraignment differs from the Capitol riot, but law enforcement’s response is informed by lessons learned on Jan. 6, as well as the nationwide protests against police violence.CrimeA cold-case detective’s quest: Jasmine Porter’s 4-year-old son watched as a man killed her in their Bronx apartment in 1996. In 2020, a police investigator began trying to crack the case.Arrests made for murders and robberies: Three men were arrested and charged in connection with a series of killings and robberies at Manhattan gay bars.More local newsConstruction workers dead: Two workers were killed at Kennedy International Airport when they were buried under construction rubble inside a trench, officials said.Yeshiva University scrutiny on funding: A lawmaker asked a state inspector to look at millions given to Yeshiva University, which has argued it is a religious institution, not an educational one, to justify its ban on an L.G.B.T.Q. club.The suburbs and the housing debate: Gov. Kathy Hochul is promoting a housing plan that she says could create 800,000 new homes across the state over the next decade. Officials from Westchester County and Long Island are resisting the effort.Could a recent ruling give prosecutors a reason to abandon difficult cases?Christopher Lee for The New York TimesA recent decision by New York State’s highest court invalidated a rape conviction. Advocates for sexual assault survivors worry that the ruling could give prosecutors a reason not to bring sexual assault charges when the victim and the defendant know each other and there are no other witnesses.My colleague Maria Cramer writes that the 4-to-2 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals could also give defendants a reason to do everything they can to resist investigations and run out the clock.That is because the court threw out the first-degree rape conviction of Andrew Regan, noting that it took 31 months to obtain a warrant for a DNA sample. Judge Rowan Wilson wrote in the majority opinion that prosecutors had violated Regan’s rights to speedy prosecution, as guaranteed by a state law intended to prevent prosecutors from slow-walking cases without good reason.The court acknowledged that vacating his conviction could create “a genuine risk that a guilty person will not be punished, or, as in this case, not finish out his full sentence.” Regan was in the ninth year of a 12-year sentence when the ruling was handed down last month.The case began in 2009, when two couples went drinking after attending a wedding. At the end of the night, one of the four, a 22-year-old woman, invited her boyfriend and the other couple to stay at her home in upstate Norwood, N.Y.The woman went to sleep alone but woke during the night to find the other man, Regan, crushing her beneath him, according to court documents. She woke her boyfriend and told him she had been sexually assaulted, and they called the police. Regan was interviewed and released. At a hospital, a nurse collected evidence with a rape kit.The investigation dragged on for four years, in part because prosecutors in St. Lawrence County said they did not know how to obtain a warrant to get a DNA sample from Regan, something he repeatedly refused to provide. The police had taken a DNA sample from the woman’s boyfriend after she reported the assault and found that it did not match the semen on her underwear. Regan told the police he had not had sex with her.The prosecutors struggled for at least a year over how to obtain his DNA, a straightforward procedure that involves submitting an affidavit to a judge. The woman said that in the years that followed the incident, she had called the district attorney’s office in St. Lawrence County or the police at least once a month to find out what was happening with the case. She said that new investigators were assigned to the case at least three times, but no one provided a clear explanation for the delays.Gary Pasqua, who became the St. Lawrence County district attorney in 2018, said he did not believe that the ruling would set a precedent — even though Judge Madeline Singas wrote in a dissenting opinion that the decision would “be weaponized against victims.”She said the court “fails to appreciate the practice implications of the precedent they are creating: If law enforcement negligently delays rape investigations, women’s voices will continue to be stifled, rapists held unaccountable and jury verdicts discarded.”METROPOLITAN diaryDirtDear Diary:At Prince StreetI suck a smalltart found in apocket nest oftobacco and lintfrom last winter.The train pulls in.A woman isfolding a mapmouthing the routeto herself,girls in dark lipsticksget on, talkingloudly of rats,drowning the chime.The doors shudderthen close, openand shut once more.I’m nodding offby 34thand top out atTimes Square, each spotlighted a show:saxophone playerin shorts blows outworkable riffscasting for earswith a brass pole.A conductresstelling stories.An old sailorconsiders fakeson black velvet.Further up agospel singerin beads and gown,a man rentinga telescope aimedat the moon.— William ClarkIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      ‘Nikki Haley Will Not Be the Next President’: Our Columnists Weigh In

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      With candidates entering the 2024 presidential race, Times columnists and Opinion writers are starting a scorecard assessing their strengths and weaknesses. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any actual caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of accepting the party’s nomination next summer. We begin with Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration, who announced her bid for the Republican nomination on Tuesday.How seriously should we take Nikki Haley’s candidacy?David Brooks In a normal party, she would have to be taken seriously. She’s politically skilled, has never lost an election, has domestic and foreign policy experience, has been a popular governor, is about as conservative as the median G.O.P. voter and is running on an implicit platform: Let’s end the chaos and be populist but sensible. The question is, is the G.O.P. becoming once again a normal party?Jane Coaston To borrow a phrase, we should take it extremely literally but not seriously. She is indeed running for president. But Nikki Haley will not be the next president of the United States of America.Ross Douthat Much less seriously than the likely front-running candidacies of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, and somewhat less seriously than the likely also-ran candidacy of Mike Pence. Which means that barring a scenario where at least two of those three men don’t catch fire, not particularly seriously at all.David French The Republican race is best summed up as two individuals (Trump and DeSantis) and a field. Maybe a third candidate can emerge from the field, and maybe that person can be Haley — a decent reason to take her seriously — but we need to see evidence of independent traction.Michelle Goldberg Not very. I can’t imagine who she thinks her constituency is. A video teasing her candidacy starts with a spiel by the neocon Reagan official Jeane Kirkpatrick. Talk about nailing the zeitgeist!Rosie Gray Haley handled the Trump years more deftly than most. She never allowed herself to be dragged into anything too embarrassing or scandalous and didn’t fall victim to vicious Trump world back-stabbing. But she probably isn’t the kind of candidate who can get through a Republican presidential primary. Shrewd as she has been, she can’t plausibly reinvent herself as a 2023 outrage merchant.Liz Mair She could be the next vice president. That’s the reason to take her seriously.Mike Madrid I don’t see Haley as a serious candidate for the presidency or the vice presidency. She brings nothing demographically or ideologically to the G.O.P. that it doesn’t already have. But it is a serious attempt to maintain her relevance in the Republican hierarchy as a nonwhite woman willing to take a cabinet position or appointment to reassure primary voters that they aren’t actually a bunch of monolithic white people.Daniel McCarthy The interventionist foreign policy that Ambassador Haley has made her signature theme in recent years is unlikely to resonate in an America First party.Bret Stephens Seriously. Last month, Haley gave a speech to an association of auto dealers — the kind of audience any G.O.P. candidate needs to win over. Someone who was in attendance told me she got three thunderous standing ovations. It’s said of Ron DeSantis that the closer you get to him, the less you like him. Haley is the opposite. She still has work to do to win over other core Republican constituencies (above all, evangelicals and Trump sympathizers), but nobody should underestimate her appeal. She looks like a winner to a party that’s desperate to win.What matters most about her as a presidential candidate?Brooks If Trump and DeSantis compete in the Trumpy lane, there will be room for a normie candidate to oppose them. She’s more charismatic than Pence or Mike Pompeo, more conservative than Larry Hogan or Chris Sununu. Her problem is South Carolina. She’ll get no credit for winning that early primary, and it will be devastating to her campaign if she loses.Coaston Haley ought to be an interesting candidate — daughter of immigrants, former governor of a state experiencing big population shifts, a U.N. ambassador — but she seems to have no real basis to run for office. She’s not a populist, and she’s not a culture warrior.Douthat Her possible ability to split off a (small) piece of the non-Trump vote in early primaries, helping him to the nomination if those primaries are extremely close.French She’s a conventional Republican. If no one like her can gain traction, it will be a decisive signal that the Republican base has fundamentally transformed and traditional ideological conservatives are at best an imperfect fit for the G.O.P.Goldberg It will be interesting to see if Trump tries to destroy her right away as a warning to others, or holds off since he’s likely to fare best in a fractured field, with Haley pulling enough votes away from DeSantis to give the nomination to Trump. The more candidates there are, the more likely Trump is to win with a plurality.Gray Not so long ago, the Republican National Committee was predicting continued electoral doom unless the party expanded beyond its mostly white base. So Marco Rubio threw himself into the failed Gang of Eight immigration bill; Paul Ryan went on a listening tour of poor urban communities; and Haley had the Confederate flag removed from the State Capitol grounds. For a time, Trump seemed to upend any hope that these savvy rising stars had of one day reaching the White House. Haley’s candidacy will test that assumption, and that’s why she matters. Did Trump stamp out the ambitions of her generation for good, putting an end to the dream of a friendlier, more moderate Republican Party? Or did he merely put those ambitions on hold?Madrid Over 70 percent of Republican primary voters are white, so her candidacy will test the viability of a nonwhite candidate.Mair She has foreign policy and national security experience, which DeSantis does not. Trump can claim to have that kind of experience, but for many people, all it amounts to is keeping classified documents he shouldn’t have had, coddling up to dictators and autocrats, being softer on China than a lot of Republicans would like and other national security failures. Less substantively, she’s a woman of color, and Republican primary voters would love a chance to show that there are indeed nonwhite people and women who think just like they do (this is something a lot of primary voters are a bit neurotic about, and Haley knows it).McCarthy She’s the running mate they wish John McCain had in 2008, the kind of Republican the party thought it needed to appeal to a less white, more educated and firmly feminist America. But Trump changed the dream of the G.O.P.’s destiny: appealing to the working class, rather than to a wider ethnic profile within the class of educated professionals, is what Republicans voters now expect. Haley is too representative of the party elite’s desires to be seen as a plausible tribune of the working class.Stephens If the subtext of a DeSantis candidacy is that he is Trump shorn of the former president’s personal flaws, the subtext of Haley’s is that she is the Republican Party shorn of the former president. A woman, a minority, an immigrant background, a self-made person: Without having to say a word, she embodies everything Trump’s vision of America isn’t. She also would be less vulnerable to Democratic attack lines about Republican bigotry.What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about her vision for America?Brooks Her immigrant story is a good one, her decision to get rid of the Confederate flag showed common decency. On the other hand, there was an awful lot of complicity and silence when she served under Trump.Coaston I would ask … what vision for America? What exactly is Haley offering that is distinctly different from the Generic Republican that Donald Trump (whom she reportedly asked first before deciding to announce her candidacy) became? She is selling the idea that she is somehow both distinct enough to separate herself from the former president she continues to support and similar enough to win the nomination with this Republican Party. I don’t buy it.Douthat She has generally offered herself as the candidate of Reaganite bromides and as a potential vehicle for members of the Republican gentry who wish the Trump era had never happened but don’t particularly want to have any unpleasant fights about it. That’s a vision that’s neither inspiring nor unsettling; it’s just dull and useless and unlikely to take her anywhere.French Haley is right about the most important issues facing the free world. The United States should aggressively support Ukraine, and it should aggressively compete with China and deter Chinese aggression. What’s unsettling about her is that, like many Republicans, she never seemed to figure out quite how to handle Trump and constantly flipped and flopped between confrontation and accommodation. Yet her vacillation may be the key to her potential viability. Her back-and-forth on Trump mirrors the back-and-forth of many rank-and-file Republicans. They could perhaps see themselves in her.Goldberg She’s such a hollow figure that it’s impossible to say what her vision is. “What I’ve heard again and again is that Haley’s raw skills obscure an absence of core beliefs and a lack of tactical thinking,” Tim Alberta wrote in a great profile of her in 2021. She’d most likely pursue a hawkish foreign policy, though, so she could be the candidate of those nostalgic for the George W. Bush administration.Gray Haley might be the last person in American politics still quoting Sheryl Sandberg. “We are leaning in,” Haley told Sean Hannity last month. “It is time for a new generation. It is time for more leadership.” But at 51, she’s part of a political generation that can hardly be considered “new.” Her candidacy feels trapped in the post-Tea Party, mid-Obama administration era when she rose to prominence.Madrid Haley will be the first of many candidates trying to connect with Trump’s populist base while also resurrecting the establishment infrastructure that capitulated to him. If she can explain that she was against him before she was for him and now is against him again in a way that wins over voters and reassures party leaders, it may be inspiring for the sliver of Republicans who still maintain the party can return to the Reagan-Bush days, and unsettling for everyone else.Mair It’s not clear to me what her vision is for America. She has alternated between praising and defending Trump and Trumpism and critiquing him and it.McCarthy What’s unsettling is that her vision is a prepackaged failure. She was a moderately conservative governor and something of a soft libertarian at a time when an aggressive neoconservatism was dominant in the G.O.P. But when she took to the national stage she proved unable to distinguish between the tough realism of Jeane Kirkpatrick and the tough-sounding but inept idealism of the George W. Bush administration. She imbibed Robert Kagan when she should have studied George Kennan.Stephens There are two dueling G.O.P. visions for America: the “Fortress America” vision, of a nation besieged by undesirable immigrants and undermined by undesirable globalists, and a “City on a Hill” vision, of a nation whose powers of attraction are its greatest strength. Haley strikes me as leaning much closer to the second vision, at least within the broader parameters of conservative thinking.Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Haley candidacy?Brooks Every wing of the party would accept her, at least as its second choice, if the top choice falters. It’s not an inspiring strategy, but it has worked for others — not the least of which a certain A. Lincoln.Coaston Remember when Republicans seemed hinged? Nikki Haley remembers.Douthat A charismatic female candidate with a vague platform and banal record is all we need to take a time machine back to the politics of 1988.Goldberg She’s canny, poised and doesn’t come off as crazy, so could be formidable in the general election.French She can beat Joe Biden!Gray Haley has already been out there making her own elevator pitch for her candidacy: “We have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president,” she told Sean Hannity last month. “It is time that we get a Republican in there that can lead and that can win a general election.”Madrid Nikki Haley has the establishment experience to beat the establishment.Mair No one should underestimate the appeal of a nonwhite, female conservative candidate to old, conservative, white, die-hard G.O.P. primary voters, and she’s not another white conservative dude.McCarthy Did you ever wish Hillary Clinton was a Republican? Now she is!Stephens If she can win the nomination, she will win the general election.On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank Nikki Haley’s potential as a presidential candidate? Share your ranking — and your reasoning for it — in the comments. (1 means she will drop out early; 10 means she has a strong chance of accepting the nomination.)David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Bret Stephens are Times columnists.Jane Coaston is a Times Opinion writer.Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) has covered the conservative movement for more than a decade as a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and The Atlantic.Mike Madrid is a Republican political consultant and a co-founder of the Lincoln Project.Liz Mair (@LizMair) has served as a campaign strategist for Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry. She is the founder and president of Mair Strategies.Daniel McCarthy is the editor of “Modern Age: A Conservative Review.”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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      Barr and Durham Made a Mockery of the Rules I Wrote

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      The recent revelations about Special Counsel John H. Durham’s investigation of the origins of Robert Mueller’s Russia inquiry paint a bleak picture — one that’s thoroughly at odds with governing law. Those rules, called the Special Counsel Regulations, contemplate someone independent of the attorney general who can reassure the public that justice is being done.I drafted those guidelines as a young Justice Department official, and there is zero chance that anyone involved in the process, as it was reported on by The New York Times, would think that former Attorney General William Barr or Mr. Durham acted appropriately.According to the report, Mr. Barr granted Mr. Durham special counsel status to dig into a theory that the Russia investigation likely emerged from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. That investigation took almost four years (longer than Mr. Mueller’s inquiry) and appears to be ending soon without any hint of a deep state plot against Mr. Trump.Furthermore, the reporting suggests that the Durham inquiry suffered from internal dissent and ethical disputes as it lurched from one unsuccessful path to another, even as Americans heard a misleading narrative of its progress.But now Merrick Garland, not Mr. Barr, is the attorney general, and the regulations give him the power to require Mr. Durham to explain himself — and to discipline and fire Mr. Durham if the explanation is not adequate. Right now, there are a plethora of investigations in Washington — in addition to Mr. Durham’s, two special counsels are looking into presidential handling of classified documents, the new Republican House of Representatives has created a “weaponization” of government committee and the new House Oversight Committee is ramping up as well.At this moment, it is critical for Mr. Garland to use the supervisory powers under the Special Counsel Regulations that govern Mr. Durham to remind Americans of what actual justice, and independent investigations and decision making, look like.The special counsel regulations say that a special counsel must have “a reputation for integrity and impartial decisionmaking” and that, once appointed, the counsel “shall not be subject to the day-to-day supervision” of the attorney general or any other Justice Department official.The point of the regulations was to create a strong degree of independence, especially in highly fraught political investigations where the attorney general’s status as a presidential appointee might cause the public to question the appearance of partiality. The appointment of Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, to examine President Biden’s handling of classified documents is a perfect illustration. The special counsel is supposed to be someone who cannot be reasonably accused of laundering an attorney general’s dirty work.In light of the new reporting, it is hard to view Mr. Durham as anything else. Indeed, no one involved in developing these regulations thought that a prosecutor who has regular scotch-sipping sessions with the attorney general would ever be remotely fit for the job. Yet that was the relationship reportedly developed by Mr. Durham and Mr. Barr, who jetted off to Italy as a team, where they learned of a lead about President Trump and potential criminal acts. Mr. Barr gave that investigation, too, to Mr. Durham, where it appears to have died.The regulations were set up to avoid a headless fourth branch of government, and so gave the attorney general the power to discipline or fire a special counsel. The Justice Department inspector general, too, should immediately begin an investigation, as members of Congress have recently requested.The regulations also require Mr. Durham to write a final report outlining his actions. Mr. Garland should call for that report immediately, and if Mr. Durham claims he has some ongoing work to do, he should be told to submit an interim report for Mr. Garland.That report should go into detail about the Italy-focused investigation of Mr. Trump and what the investigators found. And Mr. Garland should scrutinize that report closely, because it certainly appears that we can’t trust Mr. Durham’s prosecutorial judgment. Mr. Barr has said that the Italian tip “was not directly about Trump” and that it “turned out to be a complete nonissue,” but given his and Mr. Durham’s many failures and obfuscations, there is a need for more than Mr. Barr’s word.Remember, Mr. Durham tried to prosecute Michael Sussmann, a former lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but the jury acquitted him. He then tried to prosecute Igor Danchenko about the Steele Dossier, but that prosecution led to an acquittal, too.As many lawyers will tell you, a federal prosecutor almost has to go out of his way to be 0-2 in federal jury trials. Mr. Durham managed to do it. (His only measly conviction was a minor plea for a low-level F.B.I. lawyer.) Still, Mr. Durham’s failures in court do not show a violation of the special counsel regulations. They just show bad judgment.Attorney General William Barr with Donald Trump in front of the Capitol building in 2019.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Garland knows all this, so he should demand a report — though this would not be the sort of report that should be automatically made public. It may very well be that the investigation into Mr. Trump off the Italian lead fizzled because there was nothing to the allegations. If so, Mr. Garland can say that he is refusing to make the report public, but that he has looked into the matter and is satisfied by Mr. Durham’s resolution of it.That, too, is something the special counsel regulations contemplated — they were drafted after the Starr Report and its gratuitous tarnishing of individuals, and so they made clear the special counsel’s report need not be public. (More recently, James Comey tarnished Hillary Clinton in a similar way, underscoring the need for the Justice Department to speak through indictments, not public attacks.)Unfortunately, Mr. Durham and Mr. Barr allowed a misleading narrative to gain traction in public. When news organizations began to report in October 2019 that Mr. Durham’s investigation had morphed from an administrative inquiry into a criminal investigation, creating the misimpression that there might have been criminal wrongdoing by those involved in the Russia investigation, neither man corrected the narrative, even though the real investigation involved Mr. Trump.The Trump administration dealt an awful blow to the notion of a fair investigation. Mr. Trump’s playbook was to relentlessly attack the investigators. Yet foundational to our government is the notion that no one is above the law.Assuming the reporting is accurate, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham behaved in a way that betrayed this bedrock principle. The question of who guards the guardians has plagued democracies since Juvenal. If Mr. Durham were not acting with the independence required for the position, it corrodes the rule of law and opens the door to the perception, if not the reality, of special treatment for the politically powerful.Mr. Garland has the power now to examine the accuracy of the reporting and to take the corrective action necessary to ensure that no adverse precedent is set for future investigations into high-level wrongdoing.Neal K. Katyal is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a co-author, with Sam Koppelman, of “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.” He was an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration.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