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      Jury Rules Against Project Veritas in Lawsuit

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      The conservative group was found to have violated wiretapping laws and fraudulently misrepresented itself to a Democratic consulting firm, to which it was ordered to pay $120,000.WASHINGTON — A jury in a federal civil case on Thursday found that Project Veritas, a conservative group known for its deceptive tactics, had violated wiretapping laws and fraudulently misrepresented itself as part of a lengthy sting operation against Democratic political consultants.The jury awarded the consulting firm, Democracy Partners, $120,000. The decision amounted to a sharp rebuke of the practices that Project Veritas and its founder, James O’Keefe, have relied on. During the trial, lawyers for Project Veritas portrayed the operation as news gathering and its employees as journalists following the facts.“Hopefully, the decision today will help to discourage Mr. O’Keefe and others from conducting these kind of political spy operations and publishing selectively edited, misleading videos in the future,” Robert Creamer, a co-founder of Democracy Partners, said in a statement after the jury had reached a verdict.Project Veritas said it would appeal the decision.In 2016, according to testimony and documents introduced at the trial, Project Veritas carried out a plan to infiltrate Democracy Partners, which worked for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign through the Democratic National Committee.As part of the ruse, a Project Veritas operative posing as a wealthy donor named Charles Roth mentioned to Mr. Creamer that he wanted to make a $20,000 donation to a progressive group that was also a client of Mr. Creamer.Later, the man posing as Mr. Roth told Mr. Creamer that his niece was interested in continuing her work in Democratic circles. After the money was wired from an offshore account in Belize to the group, Mr. Creamer spoke with the woman playing the role of Mr. Roth’s niece and offered her an unpaid internship at Democracy Partners.The niece used a fake name and email account along with a bogus résumé. In his book, “American Pravda,” Mr. O’Keefe wrote that the “donation certainly greased the wheels.”The operative, whose real name is Allison Maass, secretly taped conversations and took documents while working at Democracy Partners. She then supplied the information to her superiors at Project Veritas, which edited the videos and made them public.The videos suggested that Mr. Creamer and another man, Scott Foval, were developing a plan to provoke violence by supporters of Donald J. Trump at his rallies. Mr. Creamer’s lawsuit said the “video was heavily edited and contained commentary by O’Keefe that drew false conclusions.” According to documents filed with the court in the case, the man playing Mr. Roth had proposed an “illegal voter registration scheme, and Creamer rejected it outright as illegal.”The lawsuit contended that Mr. Creamer had lost more than $500,000 worth of contracts because of the deceptions behind the Project Veritas operation..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Joseph E. Sandler, a lawyer for Democracy Partners, said during opening arguments last week that Mr. O’Keefe was a “strong supporter” of Mr. Trump and had tried to tip the scales in favor of him during the 2016 election. The operation, Mr. Sandler said, was “all carried out for the principal purpose of embarrassing Hillary Clinton and electing Donald Trump.”He described the elaborate operation as a “painstaking web of lies conjured up by Project Veritas.”According to a Project Veritas email and trial exhibit, Mr. O’Keefe offered cash bonuses to his employees to obtain incriminating statements, and $2,500 bonuses if Mr. Trump mentioned their videos in the presidential debates later that October. The email is marked “highly confidential.”At the trial, Mr. Sandler said Project Veritas was trying to “uncover what they themselves concocted.”Paul A. Calli, a lawyer for Project Veritas, argued that the videos were newsworthy and pointed out that media outlets had published stories about the undercover operation. He said the lawsuit was just “sour grapes.”In his closing statement, Mr. Calli said Project Veritas had engaged in “deceit, deception and dishonesty.” The group used those tactics, he said, so Project Veritas “can speak truth to power.”He said there was no evidence this was a political spying operation and that the lawsuit was an attack on journalism.“The sole purpose of the operation was journalism,” Mr. Calli said.Before the trial, a federal judge ruled that Democracy Partners could refer to Project Veritas’s conduct as a “political spying operation.”Project Veritas is facing legal fights on several fronts. In August, some of its former employees sued the group, depicting a “highly sexualized” work culture in which daytime drinking and drug use were common and employees worked additional hours without pay.That same month, two Florida residents pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to stealing a diary belonging to the president’s daughter, Ashley Biden, and selling it to Project Veritas. According to court documents, prosecutors asserted that an employee of Project Veritas had directed the defendants to steal additional items to authenticate the diary and paid them additional money after receiving them.No charges have been filed against Project Veritas or any of its operatives in the Ashley Biden case, and the group never published the diary. But in a sign that the investigation into the group will continue, the authorities said one of the Florida residents had agreed to cooperate. As part of that investigation, F.B.I. agents conducted court-authorized searches last year at three homes of Project Veritas employees, including Mr. O’Keefe.Project Veritas was also ordered in August to pay Stanford University about $150,000 in legal fees after a federal judge tossed the defamation lawsuit the group filed in 2021.Project Veritas also has an ongoing defamation suit against The New York Times. More

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      Trump Investigations Face a Dilemma Before the Midterm Elections

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      Justice Department officials are debating how an unwritten rule should affect the criminal investigations into Jan. 6 and the former president’s handling of sensitive documents.WASHINGTON — As the midterm elections near, top Justice Department officials are weighing whether to temporarily scale back work in criminal investigations involving former President Donald J. Trump because of an unwritten rule forbidding overt actions that could improperly influence the vote, according to people briefed on the discussions.Under what is known as the 60-day rule, the department has traditionally avoided taking any steps in the run-up to an election that could affect how people vote, out of caution that such moves could be interpreted as abusing its power to manipulate American democracy.Mr. Trump, who is not on the ballot but wields outsize influence in the Republican Party, poses a particular dilemma for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, whose department is conducting two investigations involving the former president. They include the sprawling inquiry into the Jan. 6 riot and his related effort to overturn the 2020 election and another into his hoarding of sensitive government documents at his Florida club and residence.A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. But as the 60-day deadline looms this week, the highly unusual situation offers no easy answers, said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.“It’s an unwritten rule of uncertain scope, so it’s not at all clear that it applies to taking investigative steps against a noncandidate former president who is nevertheless intimately involved in the November election,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “But its purpose of avoiding any significant impact on an election seems to be implicated.”Despite its name, the 60-day rule is a general principle rather than a written law or regulation. Its breadth and limits are undefined. The Justice Department has some formal policies and guidelines that relate to the norm, but they offer little clarity to how it should apply to the present situation.The department manual prohibits deliberately selecting the timing of any official action “for the purpose of affecting any election” or to intentionally help or hurt a particular candidate or party. It is vaguer about steps that do not have that motive but might still raise that perception; in such a case, it says, officials should consult the department’s public integrity section.In recent presidential election cycles, attorneys general have also issued written memos reminding prosecutors and agents to adhere to department policy when it comes to such sensitivities. In 2020, Attorney General William P. Barr required high-level approval for investigations to be opened into candidates running for certain offices.In May, Mr. Garland reiterated Mr. Barr’s edict in a memo issued during a midterm cycle. But none of those measures specifically forbid indicting political candidates or taking investigative or prosecutorial steps that could affect an election in the last 60 days before Election Day.In October 2016, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, departed from the Justice Department’s 60-day rule by telling Congress that the bureau was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.Al Drago/The New York TimesA 2018 report by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael Horowitz, shed some rare insights into the 60-day rule. It examined the decisions by the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, less than two weeks before the 2016 election, to depart from the practice by reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and by telling Congress about it. Many believe Mr. Comey’s actions contributed to her narrow loss.A section of the 2018 report cited interviews with former senior Justice Department and F.B.I. officials who acknowledged the 60-day rule as an unwritten practice that informs department decisions. (It is unclear when or how it became a recognized norm.)The report quoted one former official as saying, “People sometimes have a misimpression there’s a magic 60-day rule or 90-day rule. There isn’t. But … the closer you get to the election the more fraught it is.” Another former top official told the inspector general that while drafting rules for 2016 election year sensitivities, the department’s leaders had “considered codifying the substance of the 60-day rule, but that they rejected that approach as unworkable.”The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6The Trump InvestigationsNumerous inquiries. More

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      Myanmar’s Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Gets More Prison Time

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      Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the politician and Nobel laureate, was found guilty of election fraud on Friday, a sign that the junta has no intention of easing its pressure on her.Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s ousted civilian leader who was detained in a coup last year, was sentenced to three more years in prison, with hard labor, on Friday when a court found her guilty of election fraud in a case that the army brought against her after her political party won in a landslide in 2020.The latest sentence brings her total prison term to 20 years, an indication that the junta is not easing its pressure on Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi despite international condemnation. The guilty verdict comes as the military seeks to erase her influence in the country. Last month, Myanmar’s military-backed Supreme Court announced that it would auction off her residence, where she spent nearly 15 years under house arrest under a previous regime.The election fraud case stems from a November 2021 charge brought by the junta-controlled Election Commission: Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior officials were accused of manipulating voter lists to clinch the 2020 election. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League for Democracy, crushed the military-backed party in that vote, which independent international observers declared free and fair.The election commission’s previous members also pushed back against the claim of voter fraud, saying there was no evidence. A day after announcing the coup in February 2021, the army dismissed all the members of the commission and installed their own people. It later announced that the election results had been canceled.In July, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi testified for the first time on the election fraud charge, saying she was not guilty. On Friday, a judge in Naypyidaw, the capital, also sentenced U Win Myint, the country’s ousted president, to three years, the maximum term, on the same charge.The junta, which has long rejected criticisms that the charges against Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi were politically motivated, has accused her of breaking the law. In the election fraud case, it said it had found nearly 10.5 million instances of irregularities and had identified entries where a person’s national identification number had been repeated — either under the same name or a different one. It also said it found ballots with no national identification number listed at all.Supporters of the National League for Democracy, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, celebrating her victory in Yangon in November 2020. A court found her guilty of election fraud after her political party won in a landslide in 2020.Sai Aung Main/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe U.S.-based Carter Center, which had more than 40 observers visiting polling stations on Election Day, said voting had taken place “without major irregularities being reported by mission observers.”Friday’s sentencing was the fifth verdict meted out against Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 77, who has already stood trial on a series of other charges that include inciting public unrest and breaching Covid-19 protocols. It was the first time she had been sentenced to hard labor, which forces convicts to carry heavy rocks in quarries, a practice international rights groups have denounced. She is appealing the sentence, according to a source familiar with the legal proceedings.She had already been sentenced to a total of 17 years in prison, starting in December 2021. She still faces eight more charges relating to corruption and violating the official secrets act. If found guilty on all remaining charges, she could face a maximum imprisonment of 119 years.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, has denied all of the charges against her, while the United Nations and many other international organizations have demanded her freedom.No one has heard from Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi since she was detained, except for her lawyers, who are banned from speaking to the media. She is being held in solitary confinement, whereas previous military regimes allowed her to remain under house arrest.Despite the regime’s effort to make her disappear, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is still revered by many in Myanmar. A paper fan that belonged to her sold in an online auction for more than $340,000 last month to help a victim who had been burned by the military in an arson attack. Her son, Kim Aris, auctioned off a piece of art that sold for more than $1 million, money that will go toward helping victims of the military’s brutality.Myanmar has been wracked by widespread protests since the coup. Thousands of armed resistance fighters are battling the army, carrying out bombings and assassinations that have handicapped the military in some parts of the country. The civil disobedience movement, started by striking doctors, teachers and railway workers, is still going strong.Protestors in Yangon in March 2021. Myanmar has been wracked by widespread protests since the coup.The New York TimesOn Friday, the junta sentenced Vicky Bowman, a former British ambassador, and her Burmese husband, Ko Htein Lin, to one year in prison for breaching immigration laws, according to a prison official.The Tatmadaw, as Myanmar’s army is known, has long resented Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, whose widespread popularity threatens military rule. Before her most recent arrest, she had kept a distance from Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the army and the general behind the coup.The two leaders were part of a delicate power-sharing arrangement in which Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi headed the civilian side of government and General Min Aung Hlaing maintained absolute control over the military, the police and the border guards. The two rarely spoke, choosing instead to send messages through an intermediary.Many political experts point to the time in 2016 when Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, the N.L.D., introduced a bill in Parliament to create a new post for her as state counselor as a moment when ties fractured between the army and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi. As state counselor, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi declared herself above the president and named herself foreign minister, a move that the military saw as a power grab.In November 2020, the N.L.D. won by an even greater margin compared with its previous election showing. Three months later, and hours before the new Parliament was scheduled to be sworn in, soldiers and the police arrested Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and other party leaders.General Min Aung Hlaing announced the coup later that day, declaring on public television that there had been “terrible fraud” during the vote. More

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      Brian Kemp Must Testify in Trump Inquiry After Election

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      ATLANTA — A judge ruled on Monday that Gov. Brian P. Kemp of Georgia must appear before a special grand jury investigating election interference by former President Donald J. Trump, but will not be compelled to do so until after the Nov. 8 election.Mr. Kemp, who is running for a second term this year, is one of a number of high-profile Republicans who have been fighting subpoenas that call upon them to testify in the sprawling case. Unlike many of those other Republicans, Mr. Kemp does not appear to have been involved in efforts after the November 2020 election to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss in Georgia.Indeed, Mr. Kemp resisted a personal entreaty from Mr. Trump, in December 2020, to convene the state Legislature in order to appoint pro-Trump electors from Georgia, even though Joseph R. Biden, a Democrat, had won the popular vote in the state.Nevertheless, Mr. Kemp’s lawyers in recent days have tried to persuade Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court that under Georgia law, the sitting governor should not be subject to subpoenas. They argued, among other things, that the governor was protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, and that the subpoena had been issued “for improper political purposes” because his presence was being demanded before the November 2022 election. The investigation is being overseen by a Democrat, District Attorney Fani T. Willis of Fulton County, which encompasses most of Atlanta.In a prepared statement on Monday, a spokesperson for Mr. Kemp said the court had “correctly paused” his testimony until after the election, saying the governor’s office would work “to ensure a full accounting of the governor’s limited role in the issues being investigated is available to the special grand jury.”Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationCard 1 of 5Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationAn immediate legal threat to Trump. More

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      Florida Pair Pleads Guilty in Theft of Ashley Biden’s Diary

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      Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander admitted to participating in a conspiracy in which Ashley Biden’s diary ended up in the hands of the conservative group Project Veritas near the end of the 2020 campaign.Federal prosecutors presented new evidence on Thursday implicating the conservative group Project Veritas in the theft of a diary and items belonging to Ashley Biden, President Biden’s daughter, laying out in court papers their fullest account yet of how allies of President Donald J. Trump tried to use the diary to undercut Mr. Biden in the final days of the 2020 campaign.The court papers were filed in connection with the guilty pleas on Thursday of two Florida residents who admitted in federal court in Manhattan that they had stolen the diary and sold it to Project Veritas.Prosecutors directly tied Project Veritas to the theft of Ms. Biden’s items in the court papers, saying that an employee for the group had directed the defendants to steal additional items to authenticate the diary and paid them additional money after receiving them.Citing a text message between the defendants who pleaded guilty — Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander — prosecutors provided new insights into how Project Veritas tried to authenticate the diary and what the group had planned to do with it.“They are in a sketchy business and here they are taking what’s literally a stolen diary and info,” Mr. Kurlander wrote, adding that Project Veritas was “trying to make a story that will ruin” Ms. Biden’s life “and try and effect the election.”Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been investigating the theft of the diary and Project Veritas’s role in it since they were alerted to the theft just days before the 2020 election, as the group sought to interview Mr. Biden about the contents of the diary.The investigation has spurred questions about how much the First Amendment can protect a group that claims it is a news media organization even though its methods fall far outside traditional journalistic norms.And it has put Mr. Biden’s Justice Department in the highly unusual position of investigating a crime in which the president’s daughter was a victim at the same time it is weighing whether to charge his son, Hunter Biden, in a separate case involving potential tax and foreign lobbying violations.In their pleas, Ms. Harris, 40, and Mr. Kurlander, 58, admitted they took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ms. Biden had been living, to New York, where Project Veritas has its headquarters.“Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.“They sold the property to an organization in New York for $40,000 and even returned to take more of the victim’s property when asked to do so,” Mr. Williams said. “Harris and Kurlander sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property, and they now stand convicted of a federal felony as a result.”As part of the investigation, the authorities have executed a search warrant at the homes of two former employees and Project Veritas’s founder, James O’Keefe, and they have obtained a trove of the group’s emails from around the time it purchased the diary.No charges have been filed against Project Veritas or any of its operatives, and the group never published the diary. But in a sign that the investigation into the group will continue, the authorities said Mr. Kurlander had agreed to cooperate with the authorities.Ms. Harris’s lawyer, Sanford Talkin, declined after the hearing to discuss whether she would cooperate with the authorities, saying: “She has accepted responsibility for her actions, and she looks forward to moving forward with her life.”In a brief statement, Project Veritas said its “news gathering was ethical and legal.”“A journalist’s lawful receipt of material later alleged to be stolen is routine, commonplace and protected by the First Amendment,” it said.It is unclear what impact the disclosure about Project Veritas’s role in the scheme will have on its operations, which are often funded by donors. The pleas mark the first time criminal charges have been filed in the theft of Ms. Biden’s diary, which she kept while she recovered from addiction and which contained intimate information about her and her family.“I know what I did was wrong and awful, and I apologize,” Mr. Kurlander said in court.“I sincerely apologize for any actions and know what I did was illegal,” Ms. Harris said.Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris, who surrendered to the authorities early Thursday, were released from custody after the hearing. Both are scheduled to be sentenced in December.Ms. Biden had left the diary at a friend’s home where she had been staying in Delray Beach, Fla., in 2020 and planned to return to retrieve it that year, according to interviews and court documents.After Ms. Biden left, her friend allowed Ms. Harris, who was in a bitter custody dispute and struggling financially, to stay at the home. Ms. Harris learned that Ms. Biden had been living there and found her belongings, including the diary, in August.She told Mr. Kurlander, who texted her that they could make a lot of money from the diary and family photos she had also found among Ms. Biden’s belongings. Mr. Kurlander, The New York Times has reported, then informed a Trump supporter and fund-raiser, Elizabeth Fago.Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander took the diary to a Trump fund-raiser at Ms. Fago’s home, where it was passed around, The Times reported last year, an event also documented in the court filing on Thursday. Before the event, the court papers said, Mr. Kurlander texted Ms. Harris: “On Sunday you may have a chance to make so much money.” Prosecutors said by that time she had stolen additional items belonging to Ms. Biden.“Omg. Coming with stuff that neither one of us have seen or spoken about,” Ms. Harris texted Mr. Kurlander. “I can’t wait to show you what Mama has to bring Papa.”Prosecutors said the pair had hoped to sell the items to the Trump campaign. But a representative of the campaign who was not identified in the court papers told the pair that they were not interested in buying the property and that they should take it to the F.B.I. Instead, The Times has reported, Ms. Fago ultimately helped direct Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander to Project Veritas.Aimee Harris admitted she took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ms. Biden had been living, to New York.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesIn September, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander traveled to Manhattan to show Project Veritas the diary, telling two operatives for the group that they had found it and other items at the Delray Beach home where Ms. Biden had been staying with a friend. Project Veritas paid for the pair to go to New York and stay at a luxury hotel, prosecutors said.Prosecutors said that a Project Veritas operative wanted more of Ms. Biden’s property to try to authenticate the diary and would pay more for those additional items. Mr. Kurlander realized there was an opportunity to make more money from Project Veritas.Mr. Kurlander texted Ms. Harris, the court filing said, that they had “to tread even more carefully and that stuff needs to be gone through by us and if anything worthwhile it needs to be turned over and MUST be out of that house.”Ultimately, Project Veritas paid them $40,000.Prosecutors did not name the Project Veritas employees who met with Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander in New York, but last year the F.B.I. searched the home of Spencer Meads, a confidant of Mr. O’Keefe. The Times has previously reported that Mr. Meads was sent to Florida to authenticate the diary.Prosecutors said that one of the Project Veritas employees traveled to Florida on the same day that Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander stole the additional items. All three of them met, and Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris gave the Project Veritas operative the items. Mr. Kurlander also met with the operative the next day and provided an additional bag, prosecutors said.Project Veritas, which uses deceptive tactics to ensnare targets, undertook a wide-ranging effort to authenticate the diary. As part of that effort, an operative tried to trick Ms. Biden during a phone call into confirming that the diary was hers.Project Veritas later contacted Ms. Biden’s lawyers about the diary in an attempt to secure an interview with her father before the election. Ms. Biden’s lawyers told the group that the idea that she had abandoned the diary was “ludicrous” and accused the group of an “extortionate effort to secure an interview,” according to emails obtained by The Times. Ms. Biden’s lawyers then contacted federal prosecutors in Manhattan.In the midst of this exchange, a conservative website, National File, published excerpts from the diary on Oct. 24, 2020, and its full contents two days later. The disclosure drew little attention.National File said it had obtained the diary from someone at another organization that was unwilling to publish it in the campaign’s final days. Mr. O’Keefe was said to be furious that the diary ended up in the hands of National File.In early November 2020 — days after the election — Project Veritas arranged for Ms. Biden’s items to be taken to the Delray Beach Police Department, where a lawyer was captured on video saying the belongings might have been stolen. The police then contacted the F.B.I. More

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      Arkansas violated the Voting Rights Act by limiting help to voters, a judge rules.

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      A federal judge ruled that Arkansas violated the Voting Rights Act with its six-voter limit for those who help people cast ballots in person, which critics had argued disenfranchised immigrants and people with disabilities.In a 39-page ruling issued on Friday, Judge Timothy L. Brooks of the U.S. District Court in Fayetteville, Ark., wrote that Congress had explicitly given voters the choice of whom they wanted to assist them at the polls, as long as it was not their employer or union representative.Arkansas United, a nonprofit group that helps immigrants, including many Latinos who are not proficient in English, filed a lawsuit in 2020 after having to deploy additional employees and volunteers to provide translation services to voters at the polls in order to avoid violating the state law, the group said. It described its work as nonpartisan.State and county election officials have said the law was intended to prevent anyone from gaining undue influence.Thomas A. Saenz is the president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represented Arkansas United in the case. He said in an interview on Monday that the restrictions, enacted in 2009, constituted voter suppression and that the state had failed to present evidence that anyone had gained undue influence over voters when helping them at the polls.Read More About U.S. ImmigrationA Billion-Dollar Business: Migrant smuggling on the U.S. southern border has evolved over the past 10 years into a remunerative operation controlled by organized crime.Migrant Apprehensions: Border officials already had apprehended more migrants by June than they had in the entire previous fiscal year, and are on track to exceed two million by the end of September.An Immigration Showdown: In a political move, the governors of Texas and Arizona are offering migrants free bus rides to Washington, D.C. People on the East Coast are starting to feel the effects.“You’re at the polls,” he said. “Obviously, there are poll workers are there. It would seem the most unlikely venue for undue voter influence to occur, frankly.”Mr. Saenz’s organization, known as MALDEF, filed a lawsuit this year challenging similar restrictions in Missouri. There, a person is allowed to help only one voter.In Arkansas, the secretary of state, the State Board of Election Commissioners and election officials in three counties (Washington, Benton and Sebastian) were named as defendants in the lawsuit challenging the voter-assistance restrictions. It was not immediately clear whether they planned to appeal the ruling.Daniel J. Shults, the director of the State Board of Election Commissioners, said in an email on Monday that the agency was reviewing the decision and that its normal practice was to defend Arkansas laws designed to protect election integrity. He said that voter privacy laws in Arkansas barred election officials from monitoring conversations between voters and their helpers and that this made the six-person limit an “important safeguard” against improper influence.“The purpose of the law in question is to prevent the systematic abuse of the voting assistance process,” Mr. Shults said. “Having a uniform limitation on the number of voters a third party may assist prevents a bad actor from having unlimited access to voters in the voting booth while ensuring voter’s privacy is protected.”Chris Powell, a spokesman for the secretary of state, said in an email on Monday that the office was also reviewing the decision and having discussions with the state attorney general’s office about possible next steps.Russell Anzalone, a Republican who is the election commission chairman in Benton County in northwestern Arkansas, said in an email on Monday that he was not familiar with the ruling or any changes regarding voter-assistance rules. He added, “I follow the approved State of Arkansas election laws.”The other defendants in the lawsuit did not immediately respond on Monday to requests for comment.In the ruling, Judge Brooks wrote that state and county election officials could legally keep track of the names and addresses of anyone helping voters at the polls. But they can no longer limit the number to six voters per helper, according to the ruling.Mr. Saenz described the six-voter limit as arbitrary.“I do think that there is a stigma and unfair one on those who are simply doing their part to assist those who have every right to be able to cast a ballot,” he said. More

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      Two Trump Scenarios

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      What should you make of the F.B.I.’s search of Donald Trump’s home? We offer a guide.Perhaps the central question about the F.B.I.’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida home is whether it is a relatively narrow attempt to recover classified documents — or much more than that.Either scenario is plausible at this point. The Justice Department has long been aggressive about investigating former officials whom it suspects of improperly handling classified material, including Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus. If the F.B.I. search merely leads to a legalistic debate about what’s classified, it probably will not damage Trump’s political future.But it also seems possible that the search is a sign of a major new legal problem for him. People familiar with the search told The Times that it was not related to the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack and Trump’s role in it. And it’s unlikely that Merrick Garland, the attorney general, would have allowed the search-warrant request — or that a federal judge would have approved it, as was required — unless it involved something important.“I don’t think you get a judge to sign off on a search warrant for an ex-president’s house lightly,” Charlie Savage, a Times reporter who has been covering legal issues since the George W. Bush administration, said. “I think the world looks pretty different today than it did 48 hours ago.” (It’s even possible that Trump could be prosecuted over classified documents alone, although that might not keep him from holding office again.)Support for Trump outside Mar-a-Lago yesterday.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesAs Charlie emphasizes, there is still much more that’s unknown about the search than known. That probably won’t change until the Justice Department gets much closer to making a decision about how to conclude its investigation. “A central tenet of the way in which the Justice Department investigates and a central tenet of the rule of law is that we do not do our investigations in public,” Garland recently said.But at least two big points seem clear. First, even though Garland has said that nobody is above the law, the Justice Department will not treat Trump like any other citizen. The bar for filing criminal charges against him will be higher, given that he is a former president who may run again — against the current president.“The considerations when you’re talking about a political leader are certainly different and harder,” Andrew Goldstein, a former federal prosecutor who investigated Trump’s ties to Russia, recently told The Times. “You have the very clear and important rule that the Department of Justice should try in every way possible not to interfere with elections, to not take steps using the criminal process that could end up affecting the political process.”Still, some legal experts who previously criticized Garland for moving too timidly in investigating Trump said they were encouraged by the Justice Department’s recent signs of boldness, including the Mar-a-Lago search. Andrew Weissmann, another former prosecutor who previously investigated Trump, is one of those experts (as he explained in this New Yorker interview). Quinta Jurecic, a senior editor at Lawfare, is another. “At what point does not investigating and not prosecuting a former president itself indicate that the rule of law is being undermined because it sends a signal that this person is above the law?” Jurecic told us.She added: “That doesn’t mean that this is going to translate to an indictment of the president.”The second point is that Trump appears to be a subject of multiple criminal investigations — and prosecutors may decide that his violations of the law were so significant as to deserve prosecution. One of those investigations is by state prosecutors in Georgia, who may not be as cautious about charging a former president as Garland seems likely to be.Either way, the answer will probably become clear well before November 2024. Prosecutors — especially at the Justice Department — generally try to avoid making announcements about investigations into political candidates during a campaign. (James Comey’s decision to ignore that tradition and announce he had reopened an investigation into Clinton late in the 2016 campaign was a notable exception, and many experts believe he erred in doing so.)The rest of today’s newsletter summarizes the latest Times reporting about the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago — and also gives you a quick overview of the multiple investigations Trump is facing.The latestBefore the raid, Justice Department officials had grown concerned that Trump had kept some documents, despite returning others.If convicted, could Trump be barred from holding office? A relevant law is untested.The Justice Department did not give the White House advance notice of the search, President Biden’s press secretary said.Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican who pushed to overturn Trump’s loss, said the F.B.I. had seized his cellphone.The Trump investigationsProsecutors in Georgia are investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss there, including a phone call in which Trump asked an election official to “find” additional votes. The Times’s Annie Karni explains the possible charges.The Justice Department is also questioning witnesses before a grand jury about Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss. And federal prosecutors are examining his allies’ plan to submit fake electors from key states to disrupt certification of Biden’s win.Trump faces a few other investigations, some of which could result in civil but not criminal penalties. The main exception is a criminal inquiry into his business by the Manhattan district attorney, but that seems to have unraveled.Trump will face questioning under oath today by the New York attorney general’s office, which is investigating his business practices.THE LATEST NEWSPrimary NightTim Michels at his election party.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTim Michels, a Trump-endorsed construction magnate, will face Gov. Tony Evers in Wisconsin in November. The race will determine voting and abortion access.Minnesota Republicans nominated a 2020 election skeptic for secretary of state.Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington Republican who voted to impeach Trump over Jan. 6, conceded her primary.Representative Ilhan Omar survived a primary challenge from a more moderate Minnesota Democrat.War in UkraineSmoke near a Russian air base in Crimea.ReutersExplosions at a Russian air base in Crimea were evidently the result of a Ukrainian strike. Ukraine has rarely hit so deep in Russian-occupied territory.Russia controls large sections of eastern and southern Ukraine. It also occupies some of the cyberspace.Serena WilliamsSerena Williams at the 2018 U.S. Open.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesSerena Williams, 40, plans to retire from tennis after this year’s U.S. Open.In Vogue, Williams explained that she was retiring in part to grow her family. “If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this.”Williams has 23 Grand Slam titles — one short of the record. She’s still the sport’s most dominant figure.Williams helped redefine how to be a superstar athlete.Other Big StoriesThe police in Albuquerque detained a suspect in the recent killings of four Muslim men.The U.N. agency for sustainable development has joined with oil companies, pushing drilling sites in poor countries over residents’ objections.Iran is weighing what the European Union calls its “final” offer to restore the 2015 nuclear deal.A grand jury in Mississippi declined to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham, 88, whose accusation led to the 1955 murder of Emmett Till.OpinionsFor Naomi Jackson, carrying cash is a safeguard against the dangers of being a Black woman.“Yellowstone” is a conservative fantasy that liberals should watch, Tressie McMillan Cottom writes.The Democrats’ climate bill is a profound accomplishment, Paul Krugman says.MORNING READSOlivia Newton-John in the “Physical” music video.Everett CollectionAn appraisal: Olivia Newton-John’s transformation “unlocked something new that shot her to the top of pop’s Olympus.”A preppy classic: Customized L.L. Bean tote bags have become blank canvases.A Times classic: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.Advice from Wirecutter: Swimsuit-washing tips.Lives Lived: Clients of Bert Fields, the entertainment lawyer and master dealmaker, included Tom Cruise, Madonna and the Beatles. Fields died at 93.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICRoger Goodell makes his case: Yesterday, the N.F.L. commissioner said the league appealed Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson’s proposed six-game suspension because evidence clearly showed Watson engaged in “predatory behavior.” If the suspension lands closer to a full season, as Goodell prefers, there’s a case for Cleveland to bring in Jimmy Garoppolo.LIV golfers take an L: A judge upheld a ban for three PGA Tour defectors to LIV Golf who were seeking to compete in the FedEx Cup playoffs — which start today — in part, because they have been compensated so well by the rebel series. Whoops.Kevin Durant’s lack of leverage: The 33-year-old N.B.A. superstar might not have strong enough cards to force his way off the Brooklyn Nets in the wake of his latest demands. This is getting interesting.ARTS AND IDEAS The role of L.G.B.T.Q. museumsWhen putting together Queer Britain, England’s first L.G.B.T.Q. museum, organizers grappled with a question: Should they focus on celebrating history, aimed at a mainstream audience, or on reckoning with debates within the community?It’s a choice all L.G.B.T.Q. museums must make, Tom Faber writes in The Times. Berlin’s Schwules Museum, which opened in 1985, is overtly political; its latest exhibits address biases in the museum’s own history. Queer Britain has opted for a more mainstream approach, spotlighting artifacts from history — such as notes from the first parliamentary AIDS meeting — and notable Britons like Ian McKellen, Elton John and Virginia Woolf.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookRyan Liebe for The New York TimesFish sticks and green peas are childhood classics.What to ReadIn “Retail Gangster,” Gary Weiss explores the sketchy business practices of Eddie Antar.ComedyThe standup Jo Koy’s film “Easter Sunday” focuses on Filipino family themes dear to him.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was viaduct. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Hair braid (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. “I let them talk”: Rick Rojas, a Times national correspondent, on how he covered the devastation of Kentucky’s floods.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about the F.B.I. search on Mar-a-Lago. On “The Argument,” state legislatures are remaking America.Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More