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    Election Deniers Are Still Shaping Arizona Politics

    There have been few political consequences for many Republicans accused of helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.Two years ago, a group of election deniers ran for office in Arizona, with Kari Lake’s campaign for governor topping the ticket. When many of them lost, it seemed like a convincing rebuke of the conspiracy theory-steeped Republicans who wanted to control the levers of electoral power in 2024.It turned out, though, that the small matter of losing was not going to keep election deniers out of the spotlight, nor away from key roles in the Arizona Republican Party and beyond.And neither will an indictment, it seems.Last week, the Democratic attorney general of Arizona charged 17 people with counts including conspiracy, fraud and forgery, alleging they made efforts to overturn former President Donald Trump’s narrow loss in the 2020 election that amounted to a crime. Eleven of the people charged cast fake electoral votes in support of Trump.The defendants who got the most attention are the ones who were closest to Trump at the time, like former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Boris Epshteyn, who is one of Trump’s legal advisers. (While their names were redacted in the indictment, detailed descriptions contained in the charging documents made it easy to tell who they are.)But the trajectory of some of the 11 local and lower-profile defendants is even more revealing. Their story shows how Republicans who sought to challenge the 2020 election results continue to face few political consequences, and how deeply their philosophy is woven into the politics of 2024 in Arizona and elsewhere.“The party has not only not created any distance, it has continued to forcefully embrace” election deniers, said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Phoenix.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Read the Arizona Election Indictment

    13-301, 13-302, 13-303, 13-304, 13-701, 13-702, 13-703, 13-801, 13-804, 13-811,
    13-2313, and 13-2314.
    COUNT 7
    FORGERY, A CLASS FOUR FELONY
    From on or about November 3, 2020 and continuing through on or about
    January 6, 2021, with intent to defraud, KELLI WARD (001), TYLER BOWYER
    (002), NANCY COTTLE (003), JACOB HOFFMAN (004), ANTHONY KERN (005),
    JAMES LAMON (006), ROBERT MONTGOMERY (007), SAMUEL MOORHEAD
    (008), LORRAINE PELLEGRINO (009), GREGORY SAFSTEN (010), MICHAEL WARD
    (011),
    falsely made, completed or altered a written instrument and/or
    offered or presented, whether accepted or not, a forged instrument or one that
    contained false information, to wit: one of two certificates of votes for President
    Donald J. Trump and Vice President Michael Pence, filed by the Arizona
    Republican electors with the Archivist of the United States, involving, but not
    limited to, the acts described in Section II, in violation of A.R.S. §§ 13-2002(A)(1) &
    (A)(3), 13-301, 13-302, 13-303, 13-304, 13-701, 13-702, 13-703, 13-801, 13-804,
    13-811, 13-2313, and 13-2314.
    10
    110 More

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    All of Trump’s Lawyers and How Much They’re Paid in Legal Fees

    Donald Trump’s PACs have spent millions of dollars on a small army of lawyers to defend him in four separate federal and state criminal cases.Former President Donald J. Trump has become entangled in a web of federal and state prosecution, and now faces 91 criminal charges in four separate state and federal cases.Political action committees supporting him have spent more than $27 million on legal costs in the first six months of 2023, and he has recruited a small army of lawyers to defend him. Here are a dozen of the prominent figures and their bills paid by Mr. Trump’s Save America PAC.Lawyers Involved in Multiple CasesTodd Blanche, 49, founder of Blanche Law in New York CityFees: $353,000 paid to his firm from April to June 2023Todd Blanche was hired as one of former President Donald Trump’s many lawyers in April.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTodd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor with wide experience in white-collar cases, has a reputation as an aggressive but measured advocate. He represented Paul J. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former 2016 campaign chairman, in a Manhattan case involving charges of mortgage fraud and other state felonies, as well as Igor Fruman, a Soviet-born former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani who pleaded guilty to soliciting foreign campaign contributions in 2021.Mr. Trump hired Mr. Blanche in April. His firm has been paid $353,000 for legal work by Save America, according to federal filings. Mr. Blanche is representing Mr. Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, the federal classified documents case and the federal election interference case.Boris Epshteyn, 41Fees: $195,000 paid in 2022Boris Epshteyn is thought to be one of six unnamed co-conspirators in the federal election interference case and has been enmeshed in other Trump investigations.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressBoris Epshteyn, a top adviser and longtime ally of Mr. Trump, serves as something of an in-house counsel, helping to coordinate the former president’s many lawyers. He was paid $195,000 by Mr. Trump’s PAC in 2022, though not specifically for legal consulting, and at least $30,000 by his 2024 campaign. He is thought to be one of six unnamed co-conspirators in the federal election interference case and has been enmeshed in other Trump investigations as a witness. He has been represented by Mr. Blanche, and had recommended adding Mr. Blanche to Mr. Trump’s legal team.Christopher M. Kise, 58, founder of Chris Kise & Associates in Tallahassee, Fla.Fees: $5.8 million in 2022 and the first six months of 2023Christopher M. Kise was hired to represent Mr. Trump in the federal documents case in the aftermath of the F.B.I. search at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort last year.Marco Bello/ReutersChristopher M. Kise is a former Florida solicitor general who has won four cases before the United States Supreme Court and who worked as a transition adviser for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. He was hired to represent Mr. Trump in the federal documents case in the aftermath of the F.B.I. search at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and he was paid an upfront retainer fee of $3 million, a figure that CNN reported had was much noticed by Mr. Trump’s other lawyers, as the former president has a long history of not paying his legal fees.Mr. Trump’s PAC paid Mr. Kise’s firm an additional $2.8 million since he was hired last year, and paid nearly $2.9 million in 2022 and 2023 to Continental, a law firm at which Mr. Kise is of counsel, according to federal filings. M. Evan Corcoran, 59, partner at Silverman Thompson in BaltimoreFees: $3.4 million in 2022 and the first half of 2023M. Evan Corcoran has become a key figure in the documents case. Jose Luis Magana/Associated PressM. Evan Corcoran quickly became a central figure in the documents case after he began representing Mr. Trump. A federal appeals court ordered Mr. Corcoran to hand over documents related to his legal work, records that eventually became crucial evidence for prosecutors in the case. Mr. Corcoran accompanied Mr. Trump for his arraignment this month in the election interference case. Mr. Corcoran’s firm has been paid a total of $3.4 million by Mr. Trump’s PAC in 2022 and the first six months of 2023.Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case in New YorkJoe Tacopina, 57, founder of Tacopina Seigel & DeOreo in New York CityFees: $1.7 million in the first half of 2023Joe Tacopina was a central figure in the civil case against Mr. Trump by E. Jean Carroll.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesOnce described as “to the defense bar what Donald Trump is to real estate,” Joe Tacopina’s custom of defending his clients vociferously and in public has helped him earn and maintain a seat of prominence on Mr. Trump’s legal team. He was a central figure in the civil case against Mr. Trump by E. Jean Carroll and aggressively questioned Ms. Carroll in an attempt to cast doubt on her allegations of sexual assault. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid Mr. Tacopina’s firm $1.7 million in the first half of 2023.Susan Necheles, 64, partner at NechelesLaw in New York CityFees: $465,000 in the first half of 2023Susan Necheles has been defending Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in a variety of investigations since 2021.Amr Alfiky/ReutersSusan R. Necheles was counsel to Venero Mangano, the late Genovese crime family underboss known as “Benny Eggs,” and recently represented Jeremy Reichberg, a former fundraiser for Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, in a federal bribery case. She has been defending Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in a variety of investigations since 2021. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid her firm $465,000 in the first six months of 2023.Federal Classified Documents CaseStephen Weiss, 35, counsel at Blanche Law in New York CityStephen Weiss worked as an associate at the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft for six years before joining Mr. Blanche in June at his firm. Mr. Weiss was present at a pretrial hearing for Mr. Trump in the documents case last month.Lindsey Halligan, 34Fees: $212,000 in 2022 and the first half of 2023Lindsey Halligan was part of an effort by Mr. Trump’s legal team to have a special master appointed to review documents.Marco Bello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLindsey Halligan was part of an aggressive effort by Mr. Trump’s legal team last year to have a special master appointed to review documents the F.B.I. had seized in the raid on Mar-a-Lago. She was also part of a team of lawyers who met with Justice Department officials in June in a final effort to stave off charges in the documents case. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid her $212,000 from June 2022 to June 2023.Federal Election Interference CaseJohn Lauro, 65, principal of Lauro & Singer in New York City and Tampa, Fla.Fees: $288,000 in 2022 and the first half of 2023John Lauro formally joined Mr. Trump’s legal team in the election interference case earlier this month, although he had earlier advised the former president on legal matters. He was paid $288,000 for his legal work in 2022 and the first six months of 2023 by Mr. Trump’s PAC. He accompanied the former president to his arraignment in the federal election interference case earlier this month.Mr. Lauro gained notoriety for representing Tim Donaghy, a former N.B.A. referee who pleaded guilty to betting on games and taking payoffs from gamblers. He also previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.Election Interference Case in GeorgiaDrew Findling, 63, founder of Findling Law Firm in AtlantaFees: $816,000 in 2022 and the first half of 2023Drew Findling has represented an array of famous rap stars, including Cardi B, Gucci Mane and Migos.Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressDrew Findling, a prolific figure in the world of Atlanta rap known as the #BillionDollarLawyer, joined Mr. Trump’s legal team a year ago. Mr. Findling has represented an array of famous rap stars — including Cardi B, Gucci Mane and Migos — and is well regarded for his defense work, with decades of trial experience ranging from high-profile murder cases to local political corruption scandals in Georgia. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid his firm $816,000 from July 2022 to May 2023.Marissa Goldberg, 40, partner at Findling Law Firm in AtlantaMarissa Goldberg, a partner at Mr. Findling’s law firm, has worked alongside Mr. Findling and Ms. Little in an effort to quash the entire Georgia election case and to disqualify Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney leading the case.Jennifer Little, 44, founder of Jennifer Little Law in AtlantaFees: $100,000Jennifer Little began her career as a prosecutor in DeKalb County, Ga., before becoming a partner at the firm Fried Bonder White. She later started her own firm, Jennifer Little Law. Like Mr. Corcoran, Ms. Little was compelled to testify about her legal work representing Mr. Trump in the federal documents case. She was paid $100,000 by Mr. Trump’s PAC in April 2022.Kitty Bennett More

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    Trump Indictment Leaves Alleged Co-Conspirators Facing Tough Choices

    The special counsel’s decision not to charge six people said to have played critical roles in the effort to keep Donald Trump in office seemed to give them a chance to cooperate with prosecutors. Some appear to be unwilling.By the time Jack Smith, the special counsel, was brought in to oversee the investigation of former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the inquiry had already focused for months on a group of lawyers close to Mr. Trump.Many showed up as subjects of interest in a seemingly unending flurry of subpoenas issued by a grand jury sitting in the case. Some were household names, others less familiar. Among them were Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell.On Tuesday, most of these same lawyers showed up again — albeit unnamed — as Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in a federal indictment accusing him of a wide-ranging plot to remain in office despite having lost the election.The appearance of the lawyers at the center of the case suggests how important prosecutors judged them to be to the conspiracy to execute what one federal judge who considered some of the evidence called “a coup in search of a legal theory.”The lawyers’ placement at the heart of the plot while remaining uncharged — for now — raised questions about why Mr. Smith chose to bring the indictment with Mr. Trump as the sole defendant.In complex conspiracy cases, prosecutors often choose to work from the bottom up, charging subordinates with crimes to put pressure on them to cooperate against their superiors. It remains unclear precisely what Mr. Smith may be seeking to accomplish by flipping that script.Some legal experts theorized on Wednesday that by indicting Mr. Trump alone, Mr. Smith might be seeking to streamline and expedite the case ahead of the 2024 election. If the co-conspirators were indicted, that would almost certainly slow down the process, potentially with the other defendants filing motions and seeking to splinter their cases from Mr. Trump’s.“I think it’s a clean indictment to just have Donald Trump as the sole defendant,” said Soumya Dayananda, a former federal prosecutor who served as a senior investigator for the House Jan. 6 committee. “I think it makes it easier to just tell the story of what his corrupt activity was.”Another explanation could be that by indicting Mr. Trump — and leaving open the threat of other charges — Mr. Smith was delivering a message: cooperate against Mr. Trump, or end up indicted like him. By not charging them for now, Mr. Smith could be giving the co-conspirators an incentive to reach a deal with investigators and provide information about the former president.While the threat of prosecution could loom indefinitely, it is possible that the judge overseeing the case might soon ask Mr. Smith’s team to disclose whether it plans to issue a new indictment with additional defendants. And some legal experts expect additional charges to come.“It’s clearly a strategic decision not to charge them so far, because it’s out of the ordinary,” said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney who is now a University of Alabama law professor. “I don’t see an advantage to giving people this culpable a pass.”That said, at least one of the co-conspirators — Mr. Giuliani — and another possible co-conspirator — Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer and strategic adviser close to Mr. Trump — have already sat with prosecutors for extended voluntary interviews. To arrange for such interviews, prosecutors typically consent not to use any statements made during the interview in future criminal proceedings against them unless the subject is determined to have been lying.Boris Epshteyn has sat with prosecutors for an extended voluntary interview.Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via ShutterstockBut those protections do not prevent Mr. Smith from charging anyone who sat for an interview. He still has the option of filing charges against any or all of the co-conspirators at more or less any time he chooses.He used that tactic in a separate case against Mr. Trump related to the former president’s mishandling of classified documents, issuing a superseding indictment last week that accused a new defendant — the property manager of Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida — of being part of a conspiracy to obstruct the government’s attempts to retrieve the sensitive materials.Some of the lawyers named as Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in the indictment filed on Tuesday have effectively acknowledged to being named in the case through their lawyers.In a statement issued Tuesday night, Robert J. Costello, a lawyer for Mr. Giuliani, said it “appears” as if the former New York City mayor were Co-Conspirator 1. The statement also leveled a blistering attack on the indictment — and a defense of Mr. Trump — suggesting that Mr. Giuliani was an unlikely candidate for cooperating against the former president.“Every fact that Mayor Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good-faith basis President Donald Trump had for the action that he took,” Mr. Costello said.Not long after, Charles Burnham, a lawyer for Mr. Eastman, implicitly admitted his client’s role as Co-Conspirator 2 by issuing a statement “regarding United States v. Donald J. Trump indictment” in which he insisted Mr. Eastman was not “involved in plea bargaining.”John Eastman after a hearing in Los Angeles. His lawyer implicitly admitted his client’s role as Co-Conspirator 2.Jae C. Hong/Associated Press“The fact is, if Dr. Eastman is indicted, he will go to trial,” the statement said. “If convicted, he will appeal.”Some sleuthing was required to determine the identities of the other co-conspirators.The indictment refers to Co-Conspirator 3, for instance, as a lawyer whose “unfounded claims of election fraud” sounded “crazy” to Mr. Trump.That description fits Ms. Powell. She was best known during the postelection period for filing four lawsuits in key swing states claiming that a cabal of bad actors — including Chinese software companies, Venezuelan officials and the liberal financier George Soros — conspired to hack into voting machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems and flip votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.Mr. Clark is a close match to the description of Co-Conspirator 4, who is identified in the charges as a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and plotted with Mr. Trump to use the department to “open sham election crime investigations” and “influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.”Against the advice of top officials at the Justice Department, Mr. Trump sought to install Mr. Clark, a high-ranking official in the department’s civil division, as the acting attorney general in the waning days of his administration after Mr. Clark agreed to support his claims of election fraud.Sidney Powell was best known during the postelection period for filing four lawsuits in key swing states claiming that a cabal of bad actors conspired to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. Clark also helped draft a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, urging him to call the state legislature into a special session to create a slate of false pro-Trump electors even though the state was won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.A batch of documents obtained by The New York Times helped to identify Mr. Chesebro as Co-Conspirator 5, who is described in the indictment as a lawyer who helped to craft and implement “a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.”The emails obtained by The Times laid out a detailed picture of how several lawyers, reporting to Mr. Giuliani, carried out the so-called fake elector plot on behalf of Mr. Trump, while keeping many of their actions obscured from the public — and even from other lawyers working for the former president.Several of these emails appeared as evidence in the indictment of Mr. Trump, including some that showed lawyers and the false electors they were seeking to recruit expressing reservations about whether the plan was honest or even legal.“We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted,” a lawyer based in Phoenix who helped organize the pro-Trump electors in Arizona wrote to Mr. Epshteyn on Dec. 8, 2020.In another example, Mr. Chesebro wrote to Mr. Giuliani that two electors in Arizona “are concerned it could appear treasonous.”At one point, the indictment quotes from a redacted message sent by an Arizona lawyer on Dec. 8, 2020, that reads, “I just talked to the gentleman who did that memo, [Co-Conspirator 5]. His idea is basically. …”Jeffrey Clark appears to be a close match to Co-Conspirator 4, who is described in the charges as a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and plotted with Mr. Trump.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAn unredacted version of that email obtained by The Times has the name “Ken Cheseboro” in the place of Co-Conspirator 5.The indictment also cites a legal memo dated Nov. 18, 2020, that proposed recruiting a group of Trump supporters who would meet and vote as purported electors for Wisconsin. The court filing describes it as having been drafted by Co-Conspirator 5. That memo, also obtained by The Times, shows it was written by Mr. Chesebro.A separate email, reviewed by The Times, gives a hint that Mr. Epshteyn could be Co-Conspirator 6.The email — bearing a subject line reading, “Attorney for Electors Memo” — was sent on Dec. 7, 2020, to Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Giuliani’s son, Andrew.“Dear Mayor,” it reads. “As discussed, below are the attorneys I would recommend for the memo on choosing electors,” adding the names of lawyers in seven states.Paragraph 57 of the indictment asserts that Co-Conspirator 1, or Mr. Giuliani, spoke with Co-Conspirator 6 about lawyers who “could assist in the fraudulent elector effort in the targeted states.”It also says that Co-Conspirator 6 sent an email to Mr. Giuliani “identifying attorneys in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin” — the same seven states mentioned in the email reviewed by The Times.Maggie Haberman More

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    Messages Point to Identity of Co-Conspirator 6 in Trump Indictment

    An email sent by Boris Epshteyn, an adviser to the Trump campaign, matches the description of an email that the indictment attributed to one of six unnamed co-conspirators.The indictment of former President Donald J. Trump in connection with his efforts to retain power after his 2020 election loss left a number of unanswered questions, among them: Who is Co-Conspirator 6?The indictment asserted that six people aided Mr. Trump’s schemes to remain in office. It did not name any of them, but most were reasonably easy to identify through details contained in the indictment, like Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and lawyer for Mr. Trump (Co-Conspirator 1), and John Eastman, the lawyer behind the idea that Vice President Mike Pence could block or delay certification of Mr. Trump’s loss on Jan. 6 (Co-Conspirator 2).Co-Conspirator 6 was more of a mystery. Identified by the indictment as “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding,” the person could have been a number of figures in Mr. Trump’s orbit.But a close look at the indictment and a review of messages among people working with Mr. Trump’s team provides a strong clue. An email from December 2020 from Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser to the Trump campaign in 2020, to Mr. Giuliani matches a description in the indictment of an interaction between Co-Conspirator 6 and Mr. Giuliani, whose lawyer has confirmed that he is Co-Conspirator 1.The email, sent on Dec. 7, 2020, and reviewed by The New York Times, was from Mr. Epshteyn to Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Giuliani’s son, Andrew, and had the subject line, “Attorneys for Electors Memo.” It says, “Dear Mayor, as discussed, below are the attorneys I would recommend for the memo on choosing electors,” and it goes on to identify lawyers in seven states.Paragraph 57 of the indictment says that Co-Conspirator 1, Mr. Giuliani, “spoke with Co-Conspirator 6 regarding attorneys who could assist in the fraudulent elector effort in the targeted states” and received an email from Co-Conspirator 6 “identifying attorneys in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”Those are the seven states in the email that Mr. Epshteyn sent to Mr. Giuliani and that was reviewed by The Times. The existence of the email from Mr. Epshteyn does not eliminate the possibility that someone else sent Mr. Giuliani a similar note.Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Mr. Epshteyn, declined to comment, as did Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel Jack Smith. Mr. Blanche also represents Mr. Trump in the two federal indictments against him.The indictment also says Co-Conspirator 6 participated in a conference call organized by Mr. Trump’s campaign with pro-Trump electors in Pennsylvania, a state won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. When the electors expressed concern about going along with the plan, Co-Conspirator 1, Mr. Giuliani, “falsely assured them that their certificates would be used only if” Mr. Trump succeeded in fighting the election in court, according to the indictment.The actions described in the indictment are consistent with previous reporting by The Times about Mr. Epshteyn’s actions. During the push to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. Epshteyn worked with people inside and outside the Trump campaign as he helped to organize slates of so-called fake electors. Mr. Epshteyn is currently a top adviser to Mr. Trump, helping to coordinate various lawyers in the cases in which he is involved.Glenn Thrush More

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    Prosecutors Ask Witnesses Whether Trump Acknowledged He Lost 2020 Race

    Jared Kushner was questioned before a federal grand jury as prosecutors appeared to be trying to establish if the former president knew his efforts to stay in power were built on a lie.Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election have questioned multiple witnesses in recent weeks — including Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner — about whether Mr. Trump had privately acknowledged in the days after the 2020 election that he had lost, according to four people briefed on the matter.The line of questioning suggests prosecutors are trying to establish whether Mr. Trump was acting with corrupt intent as he sought to remain in power — essentially that his efforts were knowingly based on a lie — evidence that could substantially bolster any case they might decide to bring against him. Mr. Kushner testified before a grand jury at the federal courthouse in Washington last month, where he is said to have maintained that it was his impression that Mr. Trump truly believed the election was stolen, according to a person briefed on the matter.The questioning of Mr. Kushner shows that the federal investigation being led by the special counsel Jack Smith continues to pierce the layers closest to Mr. Trump as prosecutors weigh whether to bring charges against the former president in connection with the efforts to promote baseless assertions of widespread voter fraud and block or delay congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory.A spokesman for Mr. Kushner and a spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment.Mr. Trump is already facing federal charges brought by Jack Smith, the special counsel, in connection with classified documents taken from the White House. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesBut others in Mr. Trump’s orbit who interacted with him in the weeks after the 2020 election, who have potentially more damaging accounts of Mr. Trump’s behavior, have been questioned by the special counsel’s office recently.Among them is Alyssa Farah Griffin, the White House communications director in the days after the 2020 election. Repeating an account she provided last year to the House select committee on Jan. 6, she told prosecutors this spring that Mr. Trump had said to her in the days after the election: Can you believe I lost to Joe Biden?“In that moment I think he knew he lost,” Ms. Griffin told the House committee.Ms. Griffin’s lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, declined to comment.Still other witnesses have been asked whether aides told Mr. Trump that he had lost, according to people familiar with some of the testimony, another topic explored by the House committee. Witnesses have also been asked about things the former president was telling people in the summer months leading up to Election Day and even as far back as the spring of 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began.The question of Mr. Trump’s intent could be important in strengthening the hand of prosecutors if they decide to charge Mr. Trump in the case. It is not known what charges they might be considering, but the House select committee, controlled by Democrats, referred a number of possible charges to the Justice Department last year, including inciting an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstructing an act of Congress.Prosecutors may be trying to establish whether Mr. Trump was acting with corrupt intent as he sought to remain in power after the election.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Trump is already facing federal charges brought by Mr. Smith in connection with classified documents taken from the White House, and he is under indictment in New York on charges related to hush-money payments to a pornographic film actress before the 2016 election. A district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., has been investigating efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia.Legal experts and former federal prosecutors say that establishing Mr. Trump’s mind-set to show he knew that what he was doing was wrong would give prosecutors in Mr. Smith’s election-focused inquiry a more robust case to put in front of a jury if they choose to bring charges.Prosecutors do not need hard evidence of a defendant saying: I know that I am breaking the law. But their cases are made stronger when they can produce evidence that the defendant knows there is no legal or factual basis for a claim but goes ahead with making it anyway.Daniel Zelenko, a partner at the firm Crowell & Moring and a former federal prosecutor, said that being able to cite a defendant’s own words can go a long way in helping prosecutors convince a jury that the defendant should be convicted.“Words are incredibly powerful in white-collar cases because in a lot of them you’re not going to hear from a defendant, as they are seldom going to take the stand,” he said. “So, having those words put in front of a jury gives them more importance and makes them more consequential.”Andrew Goldstein, the lead prosecutor in the investigation into Mr. Trump for obstruction during the Russia investigation and a partner at the law firm Cooley, said there were other benefits to having Mr. Trump’s own statements that were critical in such a potentially weighty case.“Just as important, if the Department of Justice has this kind of evidence, it could help justify to the public why charges in this case would be necessary to bring,” Mr. Goldstein said.Some aides and allies who interacted with Mr. Trump in the days after the election have previously disclosed that Mr. Trump indicated that he knew he lost the election. In testimony before the House select committee, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, said that in an Oval Office meeting in late November or early December 2020, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he had lost the election.“He says words to the effect of: Yeah, we lost, we need to let that issue go to the next guy,” Mr. Milley said, adding: “Meaning President Biden.”“And the entire gist of the conversation was — and it lasted — that meeting lasted maybe an hour or something like that — very rational,” General Milley said. “He was calm. There wasn’t anything — the subject we were talking about was a very serious subject, but everything looked very normal to me. But I do remember him saying that.”General Milley said, though, that in subsequent meetings Mr. Trump had increasingly discussed how the election was stolen from him.“It wasn’t there in the first session, but then all of a sudden it starts appearing,” General Milley said. A text message from early December 2020 between some of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, disclosed on Tuesday night, shows Mr. Trump searching at that time for reports of how the election was stolen, if they had not been substantiated. The text was sent by one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, Boris Epshteyn, to other members of the legal team, including Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Epshteyn said that he was relaying a direct message from Mr. Trump’s communications aide Jason Miller.Rudolph W. Giuliani urged Mr. Trump to follow through with a plan to simply declare victory in the 2020 election.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“Urgent POTUS request need best examples of ‘election fraud’ that we’ve alleged that’s super easy to explain,” the text message said. “Doesn’t necessarily have to be proven, but does need to be easy to understand.”He continued, “Is there any sort of ‘greatest hits’ clearinghouse that anyone has for best examples? Thank you!!!”That same day, Mr. Giuliani replied: “The security camera in Atlanta alone captures theft of a minimum of 30,000 votes which alone would change result in Georgia.” He continued, “Remember it will live in history as the theft of a state if it is not corrected by State Legislature.”The text messages were made public in connection with a defamation lawsuit being brought by two Georgia election workers against Mr. Giuliani.Mr. Trump has continued to maintain publicly, without any credible evidence, that he lost his re-election bid because of fraud and has defended the motivations of the mob that sought to disrupt the certification of his loss on Jan. 6, 2021. Even if Mr. Kushner, a key White House adviser to Mr. Trump, did not provide prosecutors with evidence to bolster any charge they might bring, his testimony gives them a sense of what he might say if called by the defense to testify in any trial.The New York Times reported in February that Mr. Smith’s office had subpoenaed Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, to testify before the grand jury. The special counsel’s office has yet to question her before the grand jury. Ms. Trump testified before the House committee last year.The House Jan. 6 committee determined that Mr. Trump’s decision to declare victory on election night even though the votes had not been fully counted yet was not spontaneous, but rather a “premeditated” plan promoted by a small group of his advisers.The panel found evidence, for instance, that Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, was in direct communication with Mr. Trump even before Election Day and understood that he “would falsely declare victory on election night and call for the vote counting to stop.”Similarly, congressional investigators unearthed an audio recording made on Oct. 31, 2020, of Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, who told associates that the president was going to summarily declare he had won the election.“But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” Mr. Bannon said in the recording. “He’s just going to say he’s a winner.”Mr. Bannon was issued a subpoena last month to appear before the grand jury in Washington investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.In the last two years, reported accounts of Mr. Trump’s final months in office included his former White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, describing to a friend how Mr. Trump had acted out a script the month before the election that he planned to deliver on election night, saying he had won if he was ahead in the early returns. Mr. Trump at the White House on election night. The House Jan. 6 committee determined that Mr. Trump’s decision to declare victory was a “premeditated” plan.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn election night, Mr. Giuliani — who, witnesses testified to the House committee, appeared inebriated — wanted Mr. Trump to follow through with the plan to simply declare victory. Mr. Giuliani was the sole adviser encouraging Mr. Trump to pursue that course, the committee found.Among those telling Mr. Trump on election night that it was too early to know if he had won or lost were his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and Mr. Miller, the communications adviser. In the weeks that followed, several other aides and advisers told Mr. Trump there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the results of the election, including William P. Barr, his former attorney general.Alan Feuer More

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    Trump Lawyer Resigns From Defense Team in Special Counsel Inquiries

    Timothy Parlatore, who has been defending the former president in the investigations into classified documents and Jan. 6, is leaving as federal prosecutors appear to be nearing decisions about bringing charges.Timothy Parlatore, one of the lawyers representing former President Donald J. Trump in the federal investigations into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has resigned from the former president’s legal team.In a brief interview on Wednesday, Mr. Parlatore declined to discuss the specific reasons for his departure, but said it was not related to the merits of either inquiry — both of which are being led by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Mr. Parlatore said that he informed Mr. Trump of his decision directly and that he left the legal team on good terms with the former president.His departure was reported earlier by CNN.Mr. Parlatore’s withdrawal from the twin special counsel cases leaves Mr. Trump a lawyer short at a moment when prosecutors under Mr. Smith seem to be nearing the end of their sprawling grand jury investigations and may be approaching a decision about whether to bring charges.Two other lawyers — James Trusty and John Rowley — will for now continue to take the lead in representing Mr. Trump in both of the cases.Mr. Parlatore informed Mr. Trump’s team on Monday that he anticipated withdrawing, according to a person familiar with the events.Since last summer and until recently, Mr. Parlatore played a key role in Mr. Trump’s attempts to use attorney-client and executive privilege to limit the scope of the testimony provided by a series of witnesses who appeared in front of grand juries hearing evidence in both of the matters.Over and over in sealed filings and at closed-door hearings, Mr. Parlatore and his colleagues sought to assert privilege on behalf of Mr. Trump in the hopes of narrowing testimony from top Trump aides like Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff, and former Vice President Mike Pence. But their efforts were almost completely unsuccessful.At one point, Mr. Parlatore himself was subpoenaed to appear in front of the grand jury investigating the documents case. During his appearance, he answered questions about efforts made by Mr. Trump’s legal team to comply with a subpoena issued by the Justice Department last May demanding the return of all classified material in the former president’s possession.Among the things that Mr. Parlatore said he discussed with the grand jury were searches — ordered by a judge in response to a push from the Justice Department — that he oversaw at the end of last year of several properties belonging to Mr. Trump, including Trump Tower in New York; Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J.; and a storage site in West Palm Beach, Fla. During the search of the storage site, investigators found at least two more documents with classified markings.Those searches followed a search in August of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, by the F.B.I., which led to the discovery of more than 100 classified documents that had not been returned in response to the earlier subpoena.Mr. Parlatore was brought on to the legal team by Boris Epshteyn, who had been serving as something of an in-house counsel, hiring and negotiating contracts for lawyers. Mr. Epshteyn has shown a penchant for delivering sunny news to Mr. Trump despite bad circumstances, and for creating a bottleneck for the lawyers in dealing with the client, according to several people familiar with the events.Last month, Mr. Parlatore wrote a letter to Congress asking lawmakers for help in taking the documents investigation away from prosecutors and giving it to the intelligence community — a move that, among other things, would have removed the threat of a criminal indictment against Mr. Trump.The letter also seemed to preview some of Mr. Trump’s potential defenses in the documents case, noting that during his chaotic departure from the White House, aides “quickly packed everything into boxes and shipped them to Florida.” This hasty process, Mr. Parlatore argued, suggested that “White House institutional processes,” not “intentional decisions by President Trump,” were responsible for sensitive material being hauled away.Last week, Mr. Trump appeared to undercut those assertions on live television, declaring at a CNN town hall event that he knowingly removed government records from the White House and claiming that he was allowed to take anything he wanted with him as his personal property.“I took the documents,” he said at the event. “I’m allowed to.” More

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    Trump’s Bet: Criminal Case Could Help His Campaign, and Vice Versa

    The former president aims to apply political pressure to prosecutors — while revving up support for his campaign by portraying himself as a victim of Democratic persecution.PALM BEACH, Fla. — At one end of the palatial Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, the former president made his first public comments about his arrest. At the opposite end of the hall — a space illuminated by 16 crystal chandeliers and bigger than four professional basketball courts — were several cardboard boxes stuffed with white campaign T-shirts.The shirts read “I STAND WITH TRUMP,” and had a date printed on them in bold type: 03-30-2023 — the day Mr. Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for his role in a hush-money scandal.After Mr. Trump’s indictment, it has become impossible to tell where his legal defense ends and his presidential campaign begins.The blurring of the lines between his White House bid and his mounting court battles is at the center of a high-stakes, norm-shattering bet from Mr. Trump: that he is capable of swaying public opinion to such a degree that he can simultaneously bolster his legal case and gin up enthusiasm — and campaign contributions — from his supporters.His legal calculation, according to aides and allies close to him, is that his pressure campaign against the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, will lead to his acquittal and deter other prosecutors from seeking additional indictments — though some of his lawyers have warned him that’s unlikely.Politically, Mr. Trump’s strategy is to paint himself as a victim of Democratic persecution, generating sympathy and good will to aid his campaign for a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination.Trump supporters outside the Manhattan courthouse where Mr. Trump was arraigned on Tuesday over his role in a hush-money payment.Ahmed Gaber for The New York Times“President Trump isn’t just right to speak this way, he has a duty to use his bully pulpit to expose corrupt and uncontrolled prosecutors,” said Rod R. Blagojevich, a former Democratic governor of Illinois who was imprisoned for corruption until Mr. Trump commuted his sentence in 2020. “I applaud him for it.”Mr. Trump and his allies repeatedly have made baseless accusations of wrongdoing by Mr. Bragg.No one can say for certain whether a recent uptick for Mr. Trump in presidential primary polls has been the result of his braiding of legal and political tactics, or the recent stumbles by his chief potential Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, or some combination of the two.But Mr. Trump’s conflation of his political and legal campaigns has been on display for weeks.His public remarks about his arrest on Tuesday were made from the same stage — surrounded by the same “Make America Great Again” banners and American flags — where he announced his 2024 White House bid nearly five months earlier. One of the lawyers seated near Mr. Trump during his arraignment in the New York courthouse was Boris Epshteyn, who has provided both political and legal advice to the former president and other Republican candidates.At Mr. Trump’s first major rally of the race last month in Texas, his campaign distributed “Witch Hunt” signs for the crowd to wave. The campaign has sent more than three dozen fund-raising appeals to supporters this week — each one referring to Mr. Trump’s legal battles. On Tuesday, one email solicited campaign contributions in return for T-shirts printed with a fake mug shot of the former president and the words “not guilty.” (The authorities in New York opted not to take an actual mug shot.)“Donald Trump has been masterful at blurring the line between his own potential legal and political peril,” said Rob Godfrey, a longtime Republican strategist based in South Carolina. “But now that he faces actual legal peril, it will be fascinating to see how loyal his supporters are, whether they have the same tolerance for chaos he continues to and whether any of his opponents figure out a way to peel anyone away from him.”Mr. Trump has long viewed public opinion as the solution to an increasingly lengthy list of personal dramas, political scandals and legal crises. He used similar tactics as president during the 22-month investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, and his approval rating was virtually unchanged. Mr. Trump’s legal advisers had urged him to create a team outside the White House structure to respond publicly to the Mueller inquiry, but he declined.One of Mr. Trump’s political high-water marks — in terms of re-election polling and fund-raising — came in February 2020, after a Republican-controlled Senate acquitted him in his first impeachment trial.More recently, he has spent months seeking to make state and federal prosecutors investigating his behavior appear indistinguishable from the Democratic and Republican opponents actively trying to stunt his political career.Mr. Trump has proved his skills at using investigations, impeachments and indictments to inflate his campaign coffers (and using a portion of those contributions to pay legal fees). His campaign has claimed to have raised more than $12 million from online contributions during the past week since he was indicted by the grand jury.But his strategy in the hush-money case to mingle his legal troubles with his 2024 presidential campaign carries significant risks and masks, at least for now, potential problems.While the Trump team has celebrated the recent influx of campaign cash, there have been questions about how many more new donors he can tap and whether he can maintain his fund-raising prowess without an immediate crisis to leverage. His only public campaign finance report so far showed a less-than-stellar haul for such a prominent political figure.The bigger question for the former president is how attacks on the court system and law enforcement — on Wednesday he called on his party to defund the F.B.I. and Justice Department in response to his criminal indictment — will help him win back moderate Republicans and independent voters who have abandoned him, and his preferred candidates and causes, for three consecutive election cycles.At Mr. Trump’s first big campaign rally of the 2024 race, in Waco, Texas.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesMr. Trump has used his standing as a former president — and as the front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination — to repeatedly describe the felony charges in New York (and open criminal investigations in Georgia and Washington) as a politically motivated attack aimed at undermining his White House bid.But that message ignores a series of electoral disappointments for Republicans since Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory made him the face of the party. Those defeats — in 2018, 2020 and 2022 — have been largely the result of a Democratic base motivated to vote against him and a significant defection of moderate Republicans turned off by his antics.Additionally, every major investigation focusing on Mr. Trump started well before he announced his third presidential campaign. By the time he opened his White House bid in November, Mr. Trump had spent months pushing for an unusually early campaign introduction, a move intended in part to shield him from a stream of damaging revelations emerging from the investigation into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.Similarly, Mr. Trump has been using his legal battle to energize his enthusiastic backers and coalesce support in a divided Republican Party. While public opinion polls show Mr. Trump has a wide lead over most other primary contenders and potential rivals, about half of the party remains opposed to his candidacy.In the Mar-a-Lago ballroom on Tuesday, Mr. Trump’s campaign set up the room with a center aisle for the former president and his V.I.P.s to walk to their seats.The aisle resembled something a wedding party might use to make an entrance. But it also appeared to embody the very line that Mr. Trump has sought to blur: Mr. Epshteyn, one of Mr. Trump’s legal counselors, smiled and waved as the crowd cheered his arrival along with several campaign aides and family members.“The only crime that I have committed,” Mr. Trump said a few minutes later from center stage, “is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.” More