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      U.S. Declines to Defend Trump Ally in Lawsuit Over Jan. 6 Riot

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      The move could mean that the Justice Department is also unlikely to defend former President Donald J. Trump in the case.WASHINGTON — The Justice Department declined on Tuesday to defend a congressional ally of former President Donald J. Trump in a lawsuit accusing them both of inciting supporters at a rally in the hours before the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.Law enforcement officials determined that Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, was acting outside the scope of his duties in an incendiary speech just before the attack, according to a court filing. Mr. Brooks had asked the department to certify that he was acting as a government employee during the rally; had it agreed to defend him, he would have been dismissed from the lawsuit and the United States substituted as a defendant.“The record indicates that Brooks’s appearance at the Jan. 6 rally was campaign activity, and it is no part of the business of the United States to pick sides among candidates in federal elections,” the Justice Department wrote.“Members of Congress are subject to a host of restrictions that carefully distinguish between their official functions, on the one hand, and campaign functions, on the other.”The Justice Department’s decision shows it is likely to also decline to provide legal protection for Mr. Trump in the lawsuit. Legal experts have closely watched the case because the Biden Justice Department has continued to fight for granting immunity to Mr. Trump in a 2019 defamation lawsuit where he denied allegations that he raped the writer E. Jean Carroll and said she accused him to get attention.Such a substitution provides broad protections for government officials and is generally reserved for government employees sued over actions that stem from their work. In the Carroll case, the department cited other defamation lawsuits as precedent.The Brooks decision also ran counter to the Justice Department’s longstanding broad view of actions taken in the scope of a federal employee’s employment, which has served to make it harder to use the courts to hold government employees accountable for wrongdoing.Mr. Brooks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Lawyers for the House also said on Tuesday that they declined to defend Mr. Brooks in the lawsuit. Given that it “does not challenge any institutional action of the House,” a House lawyer wrote in a court filing, “it is not appropriate for it to participate in the litigation.”The Justice Department and House filed their briefs on Tuesday, the deadline set by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. The lawsuit, filed in March by Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, accuses Mr. Brooks of inciting a riot and conspiring to prevent a person from holding office or performing official duties.Mr. Swalwell accused Mr. Brooks, Mr. Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and his onetime personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani of playing a key role in inciting the Jan 6. attack during a rally near the White House in the hours before the storming of the Capitol.Citing excerpts from their speeches, Mr. Swalwell accused the men of violating federal law by conspiring to prevent an elected official from holding office or from performing official duties, arguing that their speeches led Mr. Trump’s supporters to believe they were acting on orders to attack the Capitol.Mr. Swalwell alleged that their speeches encouraged Mr. Trump’s supporters to unlawfully force members of Congress from their chambers and destroy parts of the Capitol to keep lawmakers from performing their duties.During the rally, Mr. Brooks told attendees that the United States was “at risk unlike it has been in decades, and perhaps centuries.” He said that their ancestors “sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes and sometimes their lives” for the country.“Are you willing to do the same?” he asked the crowd. “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?”Mr. Swalwell said defendants in his lawsuit had incited the mob and had continued to stoke false beliefs that the election was stolen.“As a direct and foreseeable consequence of the defendants’ false and incendiary allegations of fraud and theft, and in direct response to the defendants’ express calls for violence at the rally, a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol,” Mr. Swalwell said in his complaint. “Many participants in the attack have since revealed that they were acting on what they believed to be former President Trump’s orders in service of their country.”In June, Mr. Brooks asked that the Justice Department defend him in the case. He cited the Westfall Act, which essentially substitutes the Justice Department as the defendant when federal employees are sued for actions deemed within the scope of their employment, according to a court document.He described his speech on Jan. 6 as part of his job, saying that his duties include delivering speeches, making pronouncements on policy and persuading lawmakers.The Justice Department rejected that assertion.“Inciting or conspiring to foment a violent attack on the United States Congress is not within the scope of employment of a representative — or any federal employee — and thus is not the sort of conduct for which the United States is properly substituted as a defendant under the Westfall Act,” the department wrote. “Brooks does not argue otherwise. Instead, he denies the complaint’s allegations that he conspired to incite the attack on the Capitol.”Mr. Trump has not sought to have the government substitute for him as a defendant in the lawsuit under the Westfall Act. But he has argued in court filings that the statements he made on Jan. 6 are covered by broad immunity, that he could not be sued for making them and that the lawsuit violated his free speech rights.Should a judge deny Mr. Trump’s claims, he could ask the Justice Department to intervene on his behalf. But its decision in Mr. Brooks’s case lowered the chances that it would comply. More

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      Pulling Levers in Exile, Belarus Opposition Leader Works to Keep Her Influence Alive

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      As a crackdown widens in her country, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is trying to build a broad phalanx of Western opposition to a dictatorship that she says is on its “last breaths.”VILNIUS, Lithuania — She has met Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and President Emmanuel Macron of France. Just this week, she was feted in Washington, where she was received by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.But while Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the unlikely pro-democracy leader from Belarus, may have little trouble getting a meeting, her high-flying company only underscores her predicament.It’s been almost a year since Ms. Tikhanovskaya was forced to flee Belarus after claiming victory in presidential elections. Now the challenge she faces is how to maintain influence in Belarus from abroad. The support of Western leaders may help, but goes only so far.Still, the meetings are part Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s strategy to build a broad Western phalanx against the Belarus dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, who has limited her ability to challenge him inside the country, where her return would mean certain imprisonment.Only months ago, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets to demand that Mr. Lukashenko resign. It was a rare democratic outburst in an eastern European country — outside the European Union and NATO — that has carefully tried to maneuver between Russia and the West, but has turned to Moscow as a primary source of support.But now opposition figures are disappearing into prisons, and protests are dwindling.“Now it’s impossible to fight openly,” Ms. Tikhanovskaya said. “It’s difficult to ask people to go out for demonstrations because of a sense of fear. They see the brutality of the regime, that the most outstanding leaders and prominent figures are in jail. It’s really scary.”An opposition rally protesting the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus, in October, 2020.Associated PressUnable to encourage protests inside Belarus, and with Moscow supporting Mr. Lukashenko, Ms. Tikhanovskaya is using the primary tool available to her in exile: Western support.This week, she had meetings at the State Department, the White House, the Senate and attended the launch of the Friends of Belarus Caucus in the House of Representatives.“I asked the U.S. to be the guarantors of our independence,” she told the Voice of America on Tuesday after meeting with Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser.In a series of meetings, she sought more comprehensive sanctions on Belarus’s elites and businesses, to show them that it was “becoming more costly for them to support Lukashenko.”Though there were statements of support and admiration from members of Congress and the Washington elite, no new measures were announced.She and her team also sought to postpone a nearly $1 billion planned disbursement by the International Monetary Fund to Belarus, but have so far been unable to convince the institution to cancel the payment.Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s trip will continue in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, underscoring the value of Western support — and its limits.Her task, she said in an interview in Vilnius, Lithuania, where she and her team have made their base, was to convince her international supporters that change can come to Belarus with their assistance.“We can’t postpone this aim because we postpone freedom of our prisoners and we have to convince other countries in this as well,” she said before leaving for the United States.Supporters of Ms. Tikhanovskaya rallied in June in Warsaw, Poland, where they held up posters of prominent opposition bloggers who are in detention.Omar Marques/Getty Images“And with these detentions, with this violence, they show that they don’t have other methods of persuading people that they are strong, except violence,” she said. “It can’t last long, really. This is like the last breaths before death, because you can’t tighten the screws endlessly.”Some who support Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s movement worry about how it can remain relevant inside Belarus with its leader abroad.“When you are abroad in a safe situation, then all your calls to action will be very skeptically accepted in Belarus,” said Pavel Slunkin, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former Belarusian diplomat.Ms. Tikhanovskaya was clear that local actors make the decisions, and that when she sought funding, it was for supporters in Belarus. “When they are ready, it’s they who decide, not us,” she said.Mr. Slunkin acknowledged that Ms. Tikhanovskaya has been a tireless and effective advocate for her country internationally. Even so, the repression in Belarus is widening.This month, the Belarus Supreme Court sentenced Viktor Babariko, a former bank chief who was barred from running for president in elections last August, to 14 years in prison for bribery and money laundering in a verdict widely seen as politically motivated.On July 14, Belarusian law enforcement officers conducted what Amnesty International called an “unprecedented wave of searches and detentions,” raiding the offices of at least a dozen civil society and human rights organizations and opposition groups.In the past year, more than 35,000 people have been detained, according to the United Nations. Tens of thousands of Belarusians have fled abroad. The list of political prisoners kept by the human rights organization Viasna, itself raided recently, includes 577 individuals.In May, a European plane traveling through Belarus’ airspace was forced to land in Minsk, where Roman Protasevich, a prominent Belarusian dissident aboard, was seized.Belarus riot police detaining a demonstrator during an opposition rally in Minsk, Belarus, in 2020.Associated PressThe environment was “very dangerous,” Ms. Tikhanovskaya acknowledged, but she insisted she and her supporters could still be effective.“God bless the internet,” she said. “I am in constant dialogue with people who are on the ground. I don’t feel like I am in exile.”There are complications as she tries to coordinate the opposition from Lithuania, which borders Belarus and where she and her team were give special diplomatic status in early July.“The more time you spend abroad, the more time you are detached from the public you represent,” Artyom Shraibman, founder of Sense Analytics and a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said by phone from his self-imposed exile from Belarus in Ukraine.“If we are honest, spending a year outside of the country where the society is changing and you have not been observing it — you are only communicating with the part of society that is as engaged as you are.”Many experts, like Mr. Slunkin, believe the key way to resolve the crisis is to increase the price of Russian support for Belarus. Ms. Tikhanovskaya has been careful not to criticize Moscow openly, but neither have they succeeded in reaching out to Russian officials.“She is being perceived by many as being pro-Western, and unacceptable to Moscow, which is true,” Mr. Shraibman said. “And this is not her choice.”President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus with his primary backer, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in May.Pool photo by Sergei IlyinWith everything she does, Ms. Tikhanovskaya said, she is mindful of how her actions can affect people behind bars in Belarus, including her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, who ran a popular YouTube channel before announcing his own candidacy for president.He, like Mr. Babariko, and a prominent opposition politician, Valery Tsepkalo, was barred from running and jailed ahead of the ballot. Ms. Tikhanovskaya collected signatures for her candidacy and ran in the place of her husband.In detention since May 2020, he is currently on trial, accused of organizing riots and “inciting social hatred.”“I’m always keeping in mind that my husband is a hostage, the same as thousands of people,” Ms. Tikhanovskaya said.But she was adamant that she wants to keep the promise she campaigned on last August: new elections in which she is not necessarily on the ballot.“I’m the same woman, already with experience, already with more braveness than I had before. But look, I’m not I’m not making my career here. After elections, I will step away from all this with ease.” More

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      Why Jim Banks and Jim Jordan Were Blocked From the Capitol Riot Panel

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      Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was barring them from a committee scrutinizing the attack based on Democrats’ concerns about their “statements made and actions taken” around the assault.WASHINGTON — The two House Republicans Speaker Nancy Pelosi barred from a select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol are both staunch defenders of former President Donald J. Trump who backed his efforts to invalidate the election and have opposed investigating the assault on Congress.Ms. Pelosi said she had decided to disqualify Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana because of widespread Democratic dismay about “statements made and actions taken by these members.”Her decision enraged Republican leaders, who announced that they would boycott the investigation altogether. But Democrats insisted that the pair’s support for the election lies that fueled the deadly attack and their subsequent statements downplaying the violence that occurred that day were disqualifying.Here is a roundup of what they have said.‘No way’ Trump should concede, Jordan said as he helped plan the challenge to Biden’s victory.Mr. Jordan said in December that there was “no way” Mr. Trump should concede the election, even after the Electoral College certified Mr. Biden’s victory.“No. No way, no way, no way” Mr. Trump should concede, he told CNN in December, adding: “We should still try to figure out exactly what took place here. And as I said, that includes, I think, debates on the House floor — potentially on Jan. 6.”Later that month, he participated in a meeting at the White House, where Republican lawmakers discussed plans with Mr. Trump’s team to use the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to challenge the election outcome.‘There was something wrong with this election’: Jordan continued to suggest Biden’s victory was illegitimate.“Americans instinctively know there was something wrong with this election,” Mr. Jordan said, arguing for invalidating electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6. “During the campaign, Vice President Biden would do an event and he’d get 50 people at the event. President Trump at just one rally gets 50,000 people.”‘Democrats created this environment’: Jordan compared the riot to racial justice protests.Mr. Jordan has repeatedly sought to equate the attack on the Capitol to unrest around last summer’s racial justice protests, and accused Democrats of hypocritically trying to punish Mr. Trump for the riot while refusing to condemn left-wing violence. He signaled that he would use the Jan. 6 investigation to push that narrative.“I think it’s important to point out that Democrats created this environment, sort of normalizing rioting, normalizing looting, normalizing anarchy, in the summer of 2020, and I think that’s an important piece of information to look into,” Mr. Jordan said this week.He also said the select committee was a politically motivated effort to harm Mr. Trump, calling it “impeachment Round 3.”Banks questioned the ‘legality’ of some votes cast in the 2020 election.Mr. Banks, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, took a more reserved approach when discussing Mr. Trump’s election fraud claims, telling constituents he had questions “about the legality of some votes cast in the 2020 election” while steering clear of some of the former president’s more fantastical claims.But like Mr. Jordan, he supported a Texas lawsuit seeking to toss out key Biden victories and voted to overturn the results in Congress.Banks claimed the select committee was created ‘to malign conservatives.’Mr. Banks released a statement after he was chosen to serve as the top Republican on the panel that seemingly referred to the violent rioters as patriotic Americans expressing their political views. He said he would use the committee to turn the spotlight back on Democrats, scrutinizing why the Capitol was not better prepared for the attack, as well as unrelated “political riots” last summer during the national wave of protest against systemic racism.“Make no mistake, Nancy Pelosi created this committee solely to malign conservatives and to justify the left’s authoritarian agenda,” Mr. Banks said. “I will not allow this committee to be turned into a forum for condemning millions of Americans because of their political beliefs.” More

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      Pelosi Bars Trump Loyalists From Jan. 6 Inquiry, Prompting a G.O.P. Boycott

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      Democrats said Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan, who amplified Donald J. Trump’s lies of a stolen election and opposed investigating the assault, could not be trusted to scrutinize it.WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved on Wednesday to bar two of former President Donald J. Trump’s most vociferous Republican defenders in Congress from joining a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, saying their conduct suggested they could not be trusted to participate.In an unusual move, Ms. Pelosi announced that she was rejecting Representatives Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio, both of whom amplified Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud, joined their party’s efforts to challenge President Biden’s victory on Jan. 6 and have opposed efforts to investigate the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters. She agreed to seat the other three Republicans who had been chosen for the panel.But Ms. Pelosi said she could not allow the pair to take part, based on their actions around the riot and comments they had made undercutting the investigation. Mr. Banks, who has equated the deadly attack to unrest during the racial justice protests last summer, said the Jan. 6 inquiry was created to “malign conservatives and to justify the left’s authoritarian agenda.” Mr. Jordan, one of the biggest cheerleaders of Mr. Trump’s attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election, pressed Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud on the House floor as protesters breached the Capitol, and has called the select committee “impeachment Round 3.”The speaker’s decision drew an angry response from Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, who announced that Republicans would boycott the panel altogether. He seized on Ms. Pelosi’s intervention as confirmation of his charge that the investigation was nothing more than a political exercise to hurt the G.O.P.The partisan brawl, unfolding even before the select committee has begun its work, underscored the difficult task it faces in scrutinizing an attack on the lawmakers now charged with dissecting it. It was also the latest evidence of how poisonous relations have become between the two parties, especially in the House, in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s defeat and the violent bid to block certification of the outcome.Many Democrats no longer wish to work with or hear from Republicans who helped spread Mr. Trump’s lie of a stolen election, especially those who led the effort and have sought to downplay the severity and significance of the assault that it inspired. Some said allowing two of the most prominent defenders to serve on a panel examining the attack was akin to allowing criminals to investigate their own crimes.In a statement, Ms. Pelosi said she had rejected Mr. Banks and Mr. Jordan “with respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these members.”“The unprecedented nature of Jan. 6 demands this unprecedented decision,” she added.A visibly agitated Mr. McCarthy hastily called a news conference to condemn Ms. Pelosi’s move and accuse her of excessive partisanship. He pledged to carry out a Republican-only investigation into the events of Jan. 6, focused on how Ms. Pelosi should have done more to protect the Capitol from a mob of Trump loyalists.“Why was the Capitol so ill-prepared for that day, when they knew on Dec. 14 that they had a problem?” Mr. McCarthy said, referring to Democrats. “Pelosi has created a sham process.”In a television studio on Capitol Hill, Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Banks and Mr. Jordan — appearing with the three other Republicans chosen to sit on the panel — sought to divert blame for the riot from Mr. Trump and their own political supporters who carried it out, instead faulting Democrats who they said had not adequately planned for the onslaught.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, the chairman of the select committee, said he would “not be distracted by sideshows” and pledged to move forward with the panel’s work, including its first public hearing next week where Capitol and District of Columbia police officers are set to testify about how they fought off the mob.Ms. Pelosi had quietly debated her options with Democratic members of the panel, who had expressed reservations about allowing firebrands like Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks to serve on the committee.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Pelosi had quietly debated her options with Democratic members of the panel, who had expressed reservations about allowing firebrands like Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks, so closely associated with Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the election, to serve alongside them.“There are people who want to derail and thwart an investigation and there are people who want to conduct an investigation,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the panel. “That’s the fault line here.”Democrats received high-profile backing from Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Mr. McCarthy’s former No. 3 whom Ms. Pelosi appointed to the committee after she was ousted from her leadership position in May for criticizing Mr. Trump.“The rhetoric that we have heard from the minority leader is disingenuous,” Ms. Cheney told reporters on the steps of the Capitol. “At every opportunity, the minority leader has attempted to prevent the American people from understanding what happened, to block this investigation.”She said Ms. Pelosi had been right to bar Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks from the panel, saying that Mr. Jordan was a potential “material witness” and Mr. Banks had “disqualified himself” with recent comments disparaging the committee’s work.Mr. Banks has come under criticism for arranging a recent trip for House Republicans to join Mr. Trump at the southwestern border, in which a participant in the Capitol riot at times served as a translator. He had also released a combative statement Monday night in which he blamed the Biden administration for its response to the riot — which occurred during the final days of the Trump administration — and said he would not allow the committee “to be turned into a forum for condemning millions of Americans because of their political beliefs.”On Wednesday, both he and Mr. Jordan accused Ms. Pelosi of failing to secure the Capitol from the rioters, who stalked her through the corridors on Jan. 6, chanting “Nancy.”Congressional leaders do not oversee security in the Capitol, though they hire those who do. It is controlled by the Capitol Police Board, which includes the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms and the architect of the Capitol. At the time of the attack, the House sergeant-at-arms, Paul D. Irving, had been on the job since 2012, when he was hired under Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio. The Senate sergeant-at-arms at the time, Michael Stenger, was hired in 2018 when Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, led the chamber.Mr. Jordan, who has called the committee’s work a political attack on Mr. Trump, was among a group of House Republicans who met with the former president in December to help plan the effort to challenge Mr. Biden’s victory. Democratic members of the select committee were considering calling him as a witness in their investigation.Ms. Cheney reportedly clashed with Mr. Jordan on the House floor on Jan. 6, blaming him for the riot, according to a new book by two reporters for The Washington Post.Ms. Pelosi had said she would accept Mr. McCarthy’s three other nominees to the panel — Representative Rodney Davis of Illinois, Representative Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota and Representative Troy Nehls of Texas — and said she encouraged Mr. McCarthy to offer two new picks to replace Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks.But following Mr. McCarthy’s lead, those three also said they would not participate.“I was certainly prepared to help this committee get to the truth,” said Mr. Nehls, brandishing a binder of research. “But unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi has shown she’s more interested in playing politics.” More

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      US Backed Haiti's Jovenel Moïse Even as Democracy Eroded

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      Washington dismissed warnings that democracy was unraveling under President Jovenel Moïse, leaving a gaping leadership void after his assassination.As protesters hurled rocks outside Haiti’s national palace and set fires on the streets to demand President Jovenel Moïse’s resignation, President Trump invited him to Mar-a-Lago in 2019, posing cheerfully with him in one of the club’s ornate entryways.After members of Congress warned that Mr. Moïse’s “anti-democratic abuses” reminded them of the run-up to the dictatorship that terrorized Haiti in decades past, the Biden administration publicly threw its weight behind Mr. Moïse’s claim on power.And when American officials urged the Biden administration to change course, alarmed that Haiti’s democratic institutions were being stripped away, they say their pleas went unheeded — and sometimes never earned a response at all.Through Mr. Moïse’s time in office, the United States backed his increasingly autocratic rule, viewing it as the easiest way of maintaining stability in a troubled country that barely figured into the priorities of successive administrations in Washington, current and former officials say.Even as Haiti spiraled into violence and political upheaval, they say, few in the Trump administration took seriously Mr. Moïse’s repeated warnings that he faced plots against his life. And as warnings of his authoritarianism intensified, the Biden administration kept up its public support for Mr. Moïse’s claim to power, even after Haiti’s Parliament emptied out in the absence of elections and Mr. Moïse ruled by decree.President Donald Trump welcomed Mr. Moïse and other Caribbean leaders to his Mar-a-Lago resort in March 2019.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Moïse was assassinated this month, it left a gaping leadership void that set off a scramble for power with the few elected officials remaining. The United States, which has held enormous sway in Haiti since invading the country more than 100 years ago, was suddenly urged to send in troops and help fix the mess.But in interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials, a common refrain emerged: Washington bore part of the blame, after brushing off or paying little attention to clear warnings that Haiti was lurching toward mayhem, and possibly making things worse by publicly supporting Mr. Moïse.“It was predictable that something would happen,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont. “The message that we send by standing alongside these people is that we think they are legitimate representatives of the Haitian people. They’re not.”Critics say the American approach to Mr. Moïse followed a playbook the United States has used around the world for decades, often with major consequences for democracy and human rights: reflexively siding with or tolerating leaders accused of authoritarian rule because they advance American interests, or because officials fear instability in their absence.Mr. Moïse’s grip on power tightened notably under Mr. Trump, who spoke admiringly of a range of foreign autocrats. Mr. Trump was also bent on keeping Haitian migrants out of the United States (they “all have AIDS,” American officials recounted him saying). To the extent that Trump officials focused on Haitian politics at all, officials say, it was mainly to enlist the country in Mr. Trump’s campaign to oust his nemesis in the region: Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela in Caracas in 2018.Miraflores Palace, via ReutersThe Biden administration arrived in January consumed by the pandemic and a surge of migrants at the border with Mexico, leaving little bandwidth for the tumult convulsing Haiti, officials say. It publicly continued the Trump administration policy that Mr. Moïse was the legitimate leader, infuriating some members of Congress with a stance that one senior Biden official now calls a mistake.“Moïse is pursuing an increasingly authoritarian course of action,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, now the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement with two other Democrats in late December, warning of a repeat of the “anti-democratic abuses the Haitian people have endured” in the past.“We will not stand idly by while Haiti devolves into chaos,” they said.In a February letter to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, they and other lawmakers called on the United States to “unambiguously reject” the push by Mr. Moïse, who had already ruled by decree for a year, to stay in power. They urged the Biden administration to push for “a legitimate transitional government” to help Haitians determine their own future and emerge from “a cascade of economic, public health, and political crises.”But Mr. Biden’s top adviser on Latin America, Juan Gonzalez, said that at the time, the administration did not want to appear to be dictating how the turmoil should be resolved.Rep. Gregory Meeks during a hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs after testimony from Secretary of State Antony Blinken in March.Pool photo by Ken Cedeno“Tipping our finger on the scale in that way could send a country that was already in a very unstable situation into crisis,” Mr. Gonzalez said.Past American political and military interventions into Haiti have done little to solve the country’s problems, and have sometimes created or aggravated them. “The solution to Haiti’s problems are not in Washington; they are in Port-au-Prince,” Haiti’s capital, Mr. Gonzalez said, so the Biden administration called for elections to take place before Mr. Moïse left office.“The calculus we made was the best decision was to focus on elections to try to use that as a way to push for greater freedom,” he added.In reality, critics say, the Biden administration was already tipping the scales by publicly supporting Mr. Moïse’s contention that he had another year in office, enabling him to preside over the drafting of a new Constitution that could significantly enhance the president’s powers.Mr. Moïse was certainly not the first leader accused of autocracy to enjoy Washington’s backing; he was not even the first in Haiti. Two generations of brutal Haitian dictators from the Duvalier family were among a long list of strongmen around the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere who received resolute American support, particularly as allies against Communism.“He may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt supposedly said of one of them (though accounts vary about whether the president was referring to American-backed dictators in Nicaragua or in the Dominican Republic).Supporters of the former dictators held photos of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier during a court hearing in Port-au-Prince in 2013.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressThe debate has continued in both Democratic and Republican administrations about how hard to push authoritarian allies for democratic reforms. Once the threat of Communist expansionism faded, American administrations worried more about instability creating crises for the United States, like a surge of migrants streaming toward its shores or the rise of violent extremism.Elliott Abrams, a foreign policy official in multiple Republican administrations and a special representative on Venezuela in the Trump administration, argued that Washington should support democracy when possible but sometimes has few alternatives to working with strongmen.“In Haiti, no one has developed a good formula for building a stable democracy, and the U.S. has been trying since the Marines landed there a hundred years ago,” he said.Early on in the Trump administration, Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former co-star on “The Apprentice” and new adviser to the president, began pressing Mr. Trump and his aides to engage with Haiti and support Mr. Moïse.Officials were wary. Haiti supported Venezuela at two meetings of the Organization of American States in 2017, turning Mr. Moïse into what one official called an enemy of the United States and scuttling her efforts to arrange a state visit by him..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“I believed that a state visit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Moïse would have been a strong show of support for Haiti from the U.S. during a time of civil unrest,” Ms. Newman said, adding in a separate statement: “Jovenel was a dear friend and he was committed to being a change agent for his beloved Haiti.”Mr. Moïse just after being sworn in as president of Haiti in February 2017.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressThe episode underscored the degree to which some top Trump officials viewed Haiti as just a piece of its strategy toward Venezuela. And in the eyes of some lawmakers, Mr. Trump was not going to feel empathy for Haiti’s problems.“We are all aware of his perception of the nation — in that he spoke about ‘s-hole’ countries,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, a co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus.By 2019, nationwide protests grew violent in Haiti as demonstrators demanding Mr. Moïse’s ouster clashed with the police, burned cars and marched on the national palace. Gang activity became increasingly brazen, and kidnappings spiked to an average of four a week.Mr. Trump and his aides showed few public signs of concern. In early 2019, Mr. Trump hosted Mr. Moïse at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of a meeting with Caribbean leaders who had lined up against Mr. Maduro of Venezuela.By the next year, Mr. Moïse’s anti-democratic practices grew serious enough to command the attention of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who publicly warned Mr. Moïse against delaying parliamentary elections.A Haitian police officer aimed his weapon at protesters who were calling for the resignation of President Moïse in Port-au-Prince in 2019.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressBut beyond a few statements, the Trump administration did little to force the issue, officials said.“No one did anything to address the underlying weaknesses, institutionally and democratically,” over the past several years, said Peter Mulrean, who served as the American ambassador to Haiti from 2015 to 2017. “And so we shouldn’t really be surprised that the lid blew off again.”After Mr. Biden’s election, lawmakers and officials in Washington took up the issue with new urgency. Mr. Moïse, who came to office after a vote marred by low turnout and allegations of fraud, had been ruling by decree for a year because the terms of nearly all members of Parliament had expired and elections to replace them were never held.Mr. Moïse won a five-year term in 2016, but did not take office until 2017 amid the allegations of fraud, so he argued that he should stay until 2022. Democracy advocates in Haiti and abroad cried foul, but on Feb. 5, the Biden administration weighed in, supporting Mr. Moïses’s claim to power for another year. And it was not alone: International bodies like the Organization of American States took the same position.Port-au-Prince at dusk last week.Federico Rios for The New York TimesMr. Blinken later criticized Mr. Moïse’s rule by decree and called for “genuinely free and fair elections this year.” But the Biden administration never withdrew its public position upholding Mr. Moïse’s claim to remain in office, a decision that Rep. Andy Levin, a co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus, blamed for helping him retain his grip on the country and continue its anti-democratic slide.“It’s a tragedy that he was able to stay there,” Mr. Levin said.The Biden administration has rebuffed calls by Haitian officials to send troops to help stabilize the country and prevent even more upheaval. A group of American officials recently visited to meet with various factions now vying for power and urge them “to come together, in a broad political dialogue,” Mr. Gonzalez said.The Americans had planned to visit the port to assess its security needs, but decided against it after learning that gangs were occupying the area, blocking the delivery of fuel.“How can we have elections in Haiti when gang members control 60 percent of the territory?” said Pierre Esperance, executive director of the Haitian National Human Rights Defense Network. “It will be gangs that organize the elections.”David Kirkpatrick contributed reporting. More

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      EE. UU. apoyó a Jovenel Moïse incluso al deteriorarse la democracia

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      Washington desestimó las advertencias de que la democracia se desmoronaba durante el mandato de Jovenel Moïse, lo que ha dejado un vacío de liderazgo después de su asesinato.Mientras los manifestantes lanzaban piedras afuera del palacio nacional de Haití y encendían hogueras en las calles para exigir la renuncia del presidente Jovenel Moïse, el presidente de Estados Unidos Donald Trump lo invitó a Mar-a-Lago en 2019, para luego posar sonriente junto a él en una de las entradas decoradas del club.Después de que miembros del Congreso advirtieron que los “abusos contrarios a la democracia” de Moïse les recordaban el periodo previo a la dictadura que aterrorizó a Haití en décadas pasadas, el gobierno de Biden respaldó en público el reclamo del poder de Moïse.Y, cuando los funcionarios estadounidenses instaron al gobierno de Biden a cambiar de rumbo, alarmados por el hecho de que las instituciones democráticas de Haití estaban desapareciendo, según dicen, sus súplicas no fueron escuchadas y en ocasiones no obtuvieron respuesta alguna.Durante el mandato de Moïse, Estados Unidos apoyó su gobierno, cada vez más autócrata, por considerarlo la manera más sencilla de mantener la estabilidad en un país con problemas que apenas figuraba en las prioridades de los sucesivos gobiernos de Washington, según funcionarios actuales y de gobiernos anteriores.Incluso cuando Haití entró en una espiral de violencia y agitación política, dicen, pocos en el gobierno de Trump tomaron en serio las repetidas advertencias de Moïse de que había complots para acabar con su vida. Y mientras se intensificaban las advertencias sobre su autoritarismo, el gobierno de Biden mantuvo su apoyo público al reclamo de poder de Moïse, incluso después de que el Parlamento de Haití quedó vacío por falta de elecciones y Moïse gobernó por decreto.El presidente Donald Trump recibió a  Moïse y otros líderes caribeños en Mar-a-Lago en marzo de 2019.Tom Brenner para The New York TimesEl asesinato de Moïse este mes dejó un enorme vacío de liderazgo que desencadenó una lucha por el poder entre los pocos funcionarios electos que quedaban. Estados Unidos, que ha tenido una enorme influencia en Haití desde que invadió el país hace más de cien años, de repente, se vio instado a enviar a su ejército y a ayudar a arreglar el desorden.Sin embargo, en entrevistas con más de una decena de funcionarios actuales y anteriores un comentario se repitió con frecuencia: Washington tiene parte de la culpa, después de haber ignorado o prestado poca atención a las claras advertencias de que Haití se tambaleaba hacia el caos y de que tal vez haya empeorado las cosas al apoyar de manera abierta a Moïse.“Era predecible que ocurriera algo”, aseveró el senador de Vermont Patrick Leahy. “El mensaje que enviamos al apoyar a estas personas es que creemos que son representantes legítimos del pueblo haitiano. No lo son”.Los críticos afirman que la estrategia que Estados Unidos aplicó con Moïse se basó en un manual que este país ha usado en todo el mundo desde hace décadas, a menudo con serias consecuencias para la democracia y los derechos humanos: aliarse o tolerar por reflejo a líderes acusados de gobernar de manera dictatorial porque promueven los intereses estadounidenses o porque los funcionarios temen la inestabilidad en su ausencia.El control de Moïse sobre el poder se fortaleció de manera importante durante el mandato de Trump, quien profesó su admiración por varios autócratas extranjeros. Trump también se empeñó en mantener a los migrantes haitianos fuera de Estados Unidos (funcionarios estadounidenses recordaron haberlo escuchado decir que “todos tienen SIDA”). Según fuentes oficiales, si los funcionarios de Trump se centraron en la política haitiana, fue principalmente para reclutar al país en la campaña de Trump para derrocar a su némesis en la región: el líder de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.El presidente Nicolás Maduro de Venezuela en Caracas en 2018Palacio de Miraflores, vía ReutersLos funcionarios agregan que el gobierno de Biden llegó a la Casa Blanca en enero consumido por la pandemia y una oleada de migrantes en la frontera con México, lo que dejó poco espacio de maniobra para el tumulto que convulsiona a Haití. El nuevo gobierno dio continuidad a la política del gobierno de Trump, según la cual Moïse era el líder legítimo, postura que enfureció a algunos miembros del Congreso y que un alto funcionario de Biden ahora califica de error.“Moïse está siguiendo un curso de acción cada vez más autoritario”, dijo el representante Gregory Meeks, quien preside la Comisión de Asuntos Exteriores de la Cámara de Representantes, en una declaración conjunta con otros dos demócratas a finales de diciembre en la que advirtió de una repetición de los “abusos antidemocráticos que el pueblo haitiano ha soportado” en el pasado.“No vamos a quedarnos de brazos cruzados mientras Haití se sumerge en el caos”, dijeron.En una carta enviada en febrero al Secretario de Estado Antony J. Blinken, ellos y otros legisladores pidieron a Estados Unidos que “rechazara sin ambigüedades” el intento de Moïse, que ya había gobernado por decreto durante un año, de mantenerse en el poder. Instaron al gobierno de Biden a impulsar “un gobierno de transición legítimo” para ayudar a los haitianos a determinar su propio futuro y salir de “un torrente de crisis económica, de salud pública y política”.No obstante, el principal asesor de Biden para América Latina, Juan González, declaró que en ese momento el gobierno no quería dar la impresión de que quería imponer cómo debía resolverse la crisis.El congresista Gregory Meeks durante una audiencia del Comité de Asuntos Exteriores de la Cámara de Representantes después de la comparecencia del secretario de Estado Antony Blinken en marzo.Foto de consorcio por Ken Cedeno“Hacer que la balanza se inclinara de esa manera podría llevar a un país que ya estaba en una situación muy inestable a la crisis”, afirmó González.Las anteriores intervenciones políticas y militares de Estados Unidos en Haití hicieron poco por resolver los problemas del país y en ocasiones los generaron o agravaron. “La solución a los problemas de Haití no está en Washington, sino en Puerto Príncipe”, la capital de Haití, dijo González, por lo que el gobierno de Biden pidió que se celebraran elecciones antes de que Moïse dejara el cargo.“El cálculo que hicimos fue que la mejor decisión era centrarse en las elecciones para tratar de utilizarlas como una forma de impulsar una mayor libertad”, añadió.A decir de los críticos, la realidad es que el gobierno de Biden ya había inclinado la balanza al apoyar de manera pública el argumento de Moïse de que le quedaba un año más en el cargo, lo que le permitiría presidir la redacción de una nueva Constitución que podría aumentar de manera significativa las facultades del presidente.Moïse no es el primer gobernante acusado de ser un autócrata que cuenta con el apoyo de Washington; ni siquiera es el primero en Haití. Dos generaciones de brutales dictadores haitianos de la familia Duvalier forman parte de una larga lista de autócratas de todo el Caribe, América Latina, el Medio Oriente y otros lugares que recibieron el apoyo decidido de Estados Unidos, en particular como aliados contra el comunismo.“Puede que sea un desgraciado, pero ese desgraciado está con nosotros”, se dice que declaró el presidente Franklin Delano Roosevelt sobre uno de ellos (aunque las versiones varían sobre si el presidente se refería a los dictadores apoyados por Estados Unidos en Nicaragua o en la República Dominicana).Los partidarios de los exdictadores sostienen fotos de Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier y Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier durante una audiencia judicial en Puerto Príncipe en 2013.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressEl debate sobre cómo presionar a los aliados autócratas para que realicen reformas democráticas ha continuado durante gobiernos demócratas y republicanos. Después de que la amenaza del expansionismo comunista se desvaneció, los gobiernos estadounidenses se preocuparon más por la inestabilidad que creaba crisis para Estados Unidos, como la oleada de migrantes que llegaban a sus costas o el aumento del extremismo violento.Elliott Abrams, funcionario de relaciones exteriores en varios gobiernos republicanos y representante especial en Venezuela durante el gobierno de Trump, argumentó que Washington debe apoyar la democracia cuando sea posible, pero a veces tiene pocas alternativas cuando se trata de autócratas.“En Haití, nadie ha desarrollado una buena fórmula para construir una democracia estable y Estados Unidos lo ha intentado desde que los marines desembarcaron allí hace cien años”, aseveró.Al principio del mandato de Trump, Omarosa Manigault Newman, ex coprotagonista de “El Aprendiz” y luego asesora del presidente, comenzó a presionar a Trump y a sus asesores para que se comprometieran con Haití y apoyaran a Moïse.Funcionarios del gobierno se mostraron cautelosos. Haití apoyó a Venezuela en dos reuniones de la Organización de Estados Americanos en 2017, lo cual convirtió a Moïse en lo que un funcionario calificó de enemigo de Estados Unidos y echó por tierra sus esfuerzos para organizar una visita de Estado a Estados Unidos.“Creía que una visita de Estado entre Trump y Moïse habría sido una muestra contundente del apoyo de Estados Unidos a Haití en un momento de agitación civil”, dijo Newman, quien agregó en otra declaración: “Jovenel era un buen amigo y estaba comprometido a ser un agente del cambio para su amado Haití”.Moïse poco después de tomar posesión como presidente en febrero de 2017.Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated PressEl episodio subrayó hasta qué punto algunos altos funcionarios de Trump consideraban a Haití como una pieza más de su estrategia hacia Venezuela. Y a los ojos de algunos legisladores, Trump no iba a sentir empatía por los problemas de Haití.“Todos somos conscientes de su percepción de la nación, cuando hizo referencia a los países de mierda”, comentó la representante republicana de Nueva York Yvette Clarke, quien copreside el caucus de Haití de la Cámara de Representantes.Para 2019, las protestas en todo Haití se volvieron violentas cuando los manifestantes que exigían la destitución de Moïse se enfrentaron a la policía, quemaron automóviles y marcharon hacia el palacio nacional. La actividad de las pandillas se volvió cada vez más descarada y los secuestros se dispararon a un promedio de cuatro a la semana.Trump y sus asesores mostraron escasos signos públicos de preocupación. A principios de 2019, Trump recibió a Moïse en su club Mar-a-Lago en Palm Beach, Florida, como parte de una reunión con los líderes del Caribe que se habían alineado contra el presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.Al año siguiente, las prácticas antidemocráticas de Moïse se agravaron lo suficiente como para llamar la atención del Secretario de Estado Mike Pompeo, quien advirtió en una declaración que Moïse no debía retrasar las elecciones parlamentarias.Un oficial de policía haitiano dirige su arma hacia los manifestantes que pedían la renuncia del presidente Moïse en Puerto Príncipe en 2019.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressSin embargo, salvo algunas declaraciones, el gobierno de Trump hizo poco para impulsar la cuestión, dijeron los funcionarios.“Nadie hizo nada para abordar las debilidades subyacentes, institucionales y democráticas” en los últimos años, afirmó Peter Mulrean, quien se desempeñó como embajador estadounidense en Haití entre 2015 y 2017. “Y, por lo tanto, no deberíamos sorprendernos realmente de que la situación se haya desbordado de nuevo”.Después de que Biden resultó electo, los legisladores y funcionarios en Washington retomaron el tema con nueva urgencia. Moïse, quien llegó al cargo tras una votación empañada por la escasa participación y las acusaciones de fraude, llevaba un año gobernando por decreto debido a que el mandato de casi todos los miembros del Parlamento había expirado y nunca se celebraron elecciones para sustituirlos.Moïse ganó un mandato de cinco años en 2016, pero no tomó posesión sino hasta 2017 en medio de acusaciones de fraude, por lo que argumentó que debía permanecer en el cargo hasta 2022. Los defensores de la democracia en Haití y en el extranjero manifestaron su descontento, pero el 5 de febrero, el gobierno de Biden se pronunció y apoyó el reclamo de Moïse de permanecer un año más en el poder. Y no fue el único: organismos internacionales como la Organización de Estados Americanos adoptaron la misma postura.Puerto Príncipe al atardecer esta semanaFederico Rios para The New York TimesPosteriormente, Blinken criticó que Moïse gobernara por decreto y convocó a que hubiera “elecciones de verdad libres y justas este año”. No obstante, el gobierno de Biden nunca se retractó de su postura pública de apoyar el reclamo de Moïse de permanecer en el cargo, una decisión que según el representante Andy Levin, quien copreside el Caucus de Haití de la Cámara de Representantes, ayudó a que el presidente haitiano mantuviera su control sobre el país y a que continuara su declive antidemocrático.“Es una tragedia que haya podido permanecer allí”, dijo Levin.El gobierno de Biden ha rechazado los llamados de las autoridades haitianas para que envíe al ejército a ayudar a estabilizar el país y así evitar más disturbios. Hace poco, un grupo de funcionarios estadounidenses visitó el país para reunirse con las distintas facciones que se disputan el poder e instarlas a “unirse en un amplio diálogo político”, comentó González.Los estadounidenses habían planeado visitar el puerto para evaluar sus necesidades de seguridad, pero decidieron no hacerlo tras enterarse de que las pandillas se habían apoderado de la zona y bloqueaban la entrega de combustible.“¿Cómo podemos celebrar elecciones en Haití cuando los miembros de las pandillas controlan el 60 por ciento del territorio?”, preguntó Pierre Esperance, director ejecutivo de la Red Nacional de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos de Haití. “Serán las pandillas las que organicen las elecciones”.David Kirkpatrick colaboró con este reportaje. More

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      Cheney to Join Jan. 6 Inquiry, Drawing Threats of G.O.P. Retribution

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      Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to offer a slot to the Wyoming Republican was an effort to bring a veneer of bipartisanship to an investigation the G.O.P. has denounced as one-sided.Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday named Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming to a newly created special committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, choosing a Republican who has blamed former President Donald J. Trump for fomenting the assault to help conduct an inquiry that the rest of her party has fought to block at every turn.The appointment drew an angry response from the top House Republican, who suggested that Ms. Cheney — already ousted from party leadership for her insistence on calling out Mr. Trump’s election lies — could face fresh retribution for agreeing to help Democrats investigate the deadliest attack on Congress in centuries.The reaction was the latest bid by Republican leaders to turn public attention away from the assault on the Capitol and punish those who insist on scrutinizing the riot. It came as a fuller picture is emerging of how violent extremists, taking their cues from Mr. Trump, infiltrated the seat of American democracy just as Congress was meeting to validate President Biden’s election.A New York Times visual investigation published this week revealed in vivid detail how members of extremist groups incited others to riot and assault police officers, and underscored how the former president’s words resonated with the mob in real time as it staged the attack.Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, responded angrily to Ms. Cheney’s decision to accept the post, calling it “shocking” and implying that she could lose her seat on the Armed Services Committee as payback.“I don’t know in history where someone would get their committee assignments from the speaker and then expect to get them from the conference as well,” Mr. McCarthy said.Should he follow through with the threat, it would be a striking move for Mr. McCarthy, who has declined to penalize Republicans who have made anti-Semitic comments, called for the imprisoning of their Democratic colleagues or spread false conspiracy theories about the origins of the assault on the Capitol.It would also be the second time in two months that Mr. McCarthy punished Ms. Cheney for insisting that Congress should scrutinize the attack and Mr. Trump’s role in spreading the falsehoods about voting fraud that inspired it. In May, Mr. McCarthy led the charge to oust Ms. Cheney from her post as the No. 3 House Republican, saying her criticisms of Mr. Trump and efforts to sound the alarm about the riot were undermining party unity and hurting its chances of reclaiming the House in the 2022 elections.“My oath, my duty is to the Constitution, and that will always be above politics,” Ms. Cheney told reporters in the Capitol on Thursday, appearing alongside the seven Democrats Ms. Pelosi had selected for the 13-member panel.According to its rules, Mr. McCarthy has the right to offer five recommendations for Republican members, but he declined on Thursday to say whether he would do so.The select committee was established at Ms. Pelosi’s behest after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of a bipartisan commission to scrutinize the riot. It will investigate what its organizing resolution calls “the facts, circumstances and causes relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack.” The committee is also charged with reporting its findings, conclusions and recommendations for preventing such attacks in the future.The panel’s creation comes as some far-right House Republicans have stepped up their efforts to deny or distort the riot, including by spreading misinformation about it. They have sought to portray it as a mostly peaceful event and voted against honoring police officers who responded. One House Republican accused a U.S. Capitol Police officer of “lying in wait” to carry out an “execution” of a rioter. Another compared the events of that day to a “normal tourist visit” to the Capitol. Still others have amplified the baseless theory that the F.B.I. was secretly behind the siege.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, called Ms. Cheney’s decision to accept the post “shocking.”Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesOn Thursday, Mr. Trump amplified those narratives, releasing a one-sentence statement questioning the killing of Ashli Babbitt. Ms. Babbitt was shot as she tried to break into an area off the House floor where several lawmakers were taking cover, and her death has become a rallying cry of the far right.In taking the unusual step of giving one of her seats on the panel to a member of the opposing party, Ms. Pelosi was making a tactical move that appeared intended to drive a wedge among Republicans while putting a veneer of bipartisanship on an investigation that most of them have already dismissed as politically motivated and one-sided.The selection also all but ensures that Ms. Cheney, a prominent conservative from a storied Republican family, remains a high-profile voice countering her party’s attempts to downplay and deny the horrors of the attack, risking her political career to do so.For weeks, Republican leaders have tried to silence and ostracize Ms. Cheney, but she has remained undeterred. On Thursday, said she was “honored” to serve on the committee.“Those who are responsible for the attack need to be held accountable, and this select committee will fulfill that responsibility in a professional, expeditious and nonpartisan manner,” she said.Ms. Pelosi called Ms. Cheney personally on Thursday morning to offer her the post, and Ms. Cheney accepted on the spot, according to aides to both lawmakers. The two had not spoken previously about the prospect, the aides said, although Ms. Pelosi had let it be known this week that she was weighing naming a Republican to her side of the panel.Ms. Cheney’s selection was announced during Ms. Pelosi’s Thursday morning news conference, when she laid out a list of powerful lawmakers who would carry out the inquiry. The panel is to be led by Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. It includes two other committee leaders, Representatives Adam B. Schiff of the Intelligence Committee and Zoe Lofgren of the Administration Committee, both of California.Speaker Nancy Pelosi also selected, from left, Representatives Adam B. Schiff, Zoe Lofgren and Bennie Thompson to serve on the committee.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesAlso included are Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead prosecutor in the impeachment case against Mr. Trump for “incitement of insurrection,” and Representative Pete Aguilar of California, a member of the party leadership. Ms. Pelosi also chose two moderate Democrats, Representative Elaine Luria of Virginia and Representative Stephanie Murphy of Florida, the leader of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Thompson pledged to deliver “a definitive accounting of the attack — an undertaking so vital to guarding against future attacks.”“We have to get to the bottom of finding out all the things that went wrong on Jan. 6,” he said.He also said the panel would hold a hearing in which “Capitol Police officers themselves could be able to testify about their experiences” during the attack.Several congressional investigations into the assault are already underway, but none have a mandate to look comprehensively at the event similar to how fact-finding commissions scrutinized the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941; and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.The F.B.I. has arrested nearly 500 people involved in the Capitol breach and is pursuing potentially hundreds more. Two Senate panels carrying out a joint investigation into the riot produced a report outlining large-scale failures that contributed to the assault. And several inspectors general have begun their own inquiries, finding lapses and miscalculations around the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.But those inquiries, which have mostly focused on security failures, are no substitute for a select committee that can focus solely on investigating the attack and its root causes, Ms. Lofgren said.“It’s not a substitute for finding out what happened here,” Ms. Lofgren said. “What caused a mob of Americans to think they were somehow supporting the Constitution when they tried to disrupt the constitutional process of counting the Electoral College votes? Who paid for it? How was it organized? We need to find that out to keep the country safe.”The measure that created the panel was adopted on Wednesday over the opposition of nearly every Republican. Only Ms. Cheney and one other Republican, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, supported it.“We cannot ignore what happened on January 6th; we cannot ignore what caused it,” Mr. Kinzinger wrote Thursday on Twitter, appending the hashtag “TheBigLie.” He pointed to the visual investigation The Times published on Wednesday, which provided the most complete picture to date of how supporters of Mr. Trump planned and carried out the deadly assault.Mr. McCarthy faces a challenge in deciding whom to recommend for the panel. Republicans, many of whom initially called for a full investigation, have long since lost their appetite for scrutinizing the assault, following Mr. Trump’s lead.Even without Mr. McCarthy’s appointments, however, the committee would have enough members to proceed with its work.Mr. McCarthy initially denied on Thursday that he would penalize any Republican for accepting an appointment to the panel from Ms. Pelosi, saying he was “not making any threats” on the matter.But he then appeared to do just that, saying that no Republican should expect to keep committee posts granted by the G.O.P. after accepting an appointment from the other party. He noted with displeasure that Ms. Cheney had not talked to him before taking Ms. Pelosi’s offer.“Maybe she’s closer to her than us,” Mr. McCarthy said. More

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      House Opens Jan. 6 Investigation Over Republican Opposition

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      With all but two Republicans voting no, the House created a select committee, controlled by Democrats, to scrutinize the security failures and root causes that contributed to the Capitol riot.WASHINGTON — The House voted mostly along party lines on Wednesday to create a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, pushing ahead over near-unanimous Republican opposition with a broad inquiry controlled by Democrats into the deadliest attack on Congress in centuries.The panel, established at the behest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of a bipartisan independent commission to scrutinize the assault, will investigate what its organizing resolution calls “the facts, circumstances and causes relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack.”The 13-member panel, which has subpoena power, will have eight members named by the majority party and five with input from Republicans, and is meant to examine President Donald J. Trump’s role in inspiring the riot. While the measure creating it does not mention him, it charges the committee with looking at the law enforcement and government response to the storming of the Capitol and “the influencing factors that fomented such an attack on American representative democracy while engaged in a constitutional process.”It passed by a vote of 222 to 190, with only two Republicans joining Democrats to support it.“We have a duty to the Constitution and to the American people to find the truth of Jan. 6 and to ensure that such an assault on our democracy can never happen again,” Ms. Pelosi said, calling Jan. 6 “one of the darkest days of our history.”“The sheer scale of the violence of that day is shocking,” she added. “But what is just as shocking is remembering why this violence occurred: to block the certification of an election and the peaceful transfer of power that is the cornerstone of our democracy.”Several officers who responded to the riot that day were on hand to watch the vote from Ms. Pelosi’s box in the House gallery. They included Harry Dunn of the Capitol Police and two District of Columbia police officers, Michael Fanone, who has lobbied Republicans to support an investigation, and Daniel Hodges, who was crushed in a door during the rampage. Relatives of Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who died after clashing with the rioters, joined them.While the measure says that five members of the panel are to be named “after consultation with the minority leader,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, he has not said whether he will recommend anyone. Last week, he told Mr. Fanone and Mr. Dunn in a private meeting that he would take the appointment process seriously, even as he declined to publicly denounce members of his party who have sought to downplay or spread lies about the riot.Ms. Pelosi is considering picking a Republican who has acknowledged the gravity of the attack for one of her eight slots, according to an aide. But her options are exceedingly slim.Shortly after the breach, many Republicans expressed outrage and vowed to hold the perpetrators accountable. But their support for an investigation has eroded steadily in the months since, and all but evaporated after Mr. Trump issued a statement in May calling the idea of an independent inquiry a “Democrat trap.”Many have speculated that Ms. Pelosi might select Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was removed from her House leadership post after she pushed Republicans to hold themselves and Mr. Trump responsible for fomenting the riot with the lie that the 2020 election had been stolen.Ms. Cheney, one of only 35 House Republicans who voted to create the independent commission, which was to be modeled after the one that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, also broke with her party on Wednesday to vote in favor of forming the panel.“I believe this select committee is our only remaining option,” she said in a statement. “The committee should issue and enforce subpoenas promptly, hire skilled counsel, and do its job thoroughly and expeditiously.”Ms. Pelosi, center, embracing officers who responded to the riot, including Harry Dunn, right, of the Capitol Police, and Michael Fanone, left, of the District of Columbia police. Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesOnly one other Republican, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, supported the move.Few Republicans spoke during the debate and about two dozen missed the vote altogether to fly to the southern border to attend an event with Mr. Trump, who praised some of them by name.But whether in person or remotely, the party lined up in opposition to the panel, which their leaders insisted would be a one-sided forum for Democrats to censure Mr. Trump and try to kneecap Republicans in the 2022 elections.Representative Michelle Fischbach, Republican of Minnesota, argued that the committee would duplicate existing investigations and engage in “partisan, divisive politics.”“We gave you bipartisan,” Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, responded, referring to the proposed independent inquiry, which would have had an equal number of Democrat- and Republican-appointed members. “Give me a break. This is clear: They don’t want to get to the truth.”In particular, the select committee is charged with investigating failures in law enforcement, such as intelligence gathering, and the root causes that influenced so many to turn violent, scrutinizing online platforms and any potential “malign foreign influence operations.”During the debate on Wednesday, several Democrats spoke of the emotional toll Jan. 6 had taken on them. Representative Jackie Speier, Democrat of California — who was shot in 1978 on a remote airstrip in Guyana during the Jonestown massacre, which killed her boss at the time, Representative Leo J. Ryan, Democrat of California, and four others — recalled being trapped in the House chamber and hearing a gunshot outside.“My heart is racing right now and I’m trembling,” she said, thinking back on Jan. 6. “I thought at that moment, ‘My God, I survived Guyana. But I’m not going to survive this in the house of democracy.’ ”Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, called the riot, which unfolded as Congress officially tallied electoral votes to formalize President Biden’s victory, “one of the most shattering times of my life — to see the work of our government violated and stopped by an insurrection.”“I don’t know what would have happened if they had captured the vice president,” Ms. Maloney said, referring the mob’s threats to hang Mike Pence, for whom they built a gallows outside the Capitol. “His life would have been in danger, no question.”Nearly 140 police officers were injured in the attack and at least seven people died in connection with it, including two officers who were on duty on Jan. 6 and later took their own lives.Several investigations into the assault are already underway, but none have a mandate to look comprehensively at the event similar to the fact-finding commissions that scrutinized Sept. 11, the attack of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.The F.B.I. has arrested nearly 500 people involved in the Jan. 6 breach, and is pursuing potentially hundreds more, the agency’s director told Congress. Several congressional committees are conducting their own investigations, including two Senate panels that outlined large-scale failures that contributed to the assault. And several inspectors general have begun their own inquiries, finding lapses and miscalculations around the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.The select committee is similar in design to the panel the Republican-controlled House formed in 2014 to investigate an attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, which Democrats denounced as intended to damage the presidential prospects of Hillary Clinton, who had been secretary of state at the time. It ultimately became one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history.That panel was made up of seven Republicans and five Democrats. More