Ethics and Official Misconduct

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      Donald Trump también debe responder ante la justicia

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      Por primera vez en la historia de Estados Unidos, un gran jurado ha acusado formalmente a un expresidente del país. Donald Trump estuvo durante años, como candidato, en la presidencia y tras su salida de ella, ignorando las normas y los precedentes democráticos y legales, intentando plegar al Departamento de Justicia y al poder judicial a sus caprichos y comportándose como si él no estuviese sujeto a las reglas.Como demuestra su acusación, sí lo está.El reiterado desprecio por la ley suele conducir a una acusación penal, y esa es la consecuencia a la que se enfrenta hoy Trump. Los fiscales federales y estatales hicieron bien en dejar de lado las preocupaciones por las consecuencias políticas, o la reverencia por la presidencia, e iniciar exhaustivas investigaciones penales sobre la conducta de Trump en al menos cuatro casos. La investigación del fiscal de distrito de Manhattan es la primera que conduce a una acusación formal.Trump transformó por completo la relación entre la presidencia y el Estado de derecho, y a menudo afirmaba que el presidente está por encima de la ley. De modo que es adecuado que sus actos como presidente y como candidato sean ahora ponderados oficialmente por jueces y jurados, con la posibilidad de que se enfrente a sanciones penales. Trump dañó gravemente las instituciones políticas y legales de Estados Unidos, y volvió a amenazarlas con llamados a protestas generales cuando fuera acusado. Sin embargo, esas instituciones han demostrado ser lo bastante fuertes para exigirle responsabilidades por ese daño.Un sano respeto por el sistema legal también requiere que los estadounidenses dejen de lado sus opiniones políticas a la hora de formarse un juicio sobre estos casos. Aunque Trump pidió habitualmente que el FBI investigara a sus enemigos, que fueran imputados o enfrentaran la pena de muerte, su indiferencia hacia las garantías procesales para los demás no debería negarle los beneficios del sistema, incluidos un juicio imparcial y la presunción de inocencia. Al mismo tiempo, ningún jurado debería extenderle ningún privilegio como expresidente. Debería seguir los mismos procedimientos que cualquier otro ciudadano.La acusación es aún confidencial, y es posible que no se conozcan los cargos contra Trump hasta dentro de unos días. Pero Alvin Bragg, el fiscal de distrito, ha estado investigando un caso de posible fraude e infracciones por parte de Trump en la financiación de su campaña, al ocultar los pagos que le hizo a la estrella del cine porno Stormy Daniels antes de las elecciones de 2016. Sus actos —utilizar dinero para silenciar a los críticos y ocultar información políticamente perjudicial— estuvieron mal. La pregunta que se le planteará al jurado es si esa conducta alcanza el umbral suficiente para ser susceptible de una condena por delito grave.Si son esas las acusaciones, la condena dependerá de demostrar que Trump participó en la falsificación de registros mercantiles mientras se infringía la ley sobre financiación de campañas, una estrategia jurídica un tanto novedosa. La falsificación de registros puede ser imputable como delito menor en Nueva York; para que sea un delito más grave, se debe probar que lo hizo junto con un segundo delito, en este caso, una posible vulneración de la ley en la financiación de la campaña. El expresidente, que aspira a un segundo mandato en 2024, ha negado las acusaciones y ha dicho que la causa presentada contra él por Bragg, demócrata, obedece a motivaciones políticas.Si bien algunos expertos jurídicos han cuestionado la teoría en que se apoya el caso de Bragg, no hay ninguna base para acusarlo de motivaciones políticas, una afirmación que Trump ha hecho durante muchos años, cada vez que se investigaba su conducta. Del mismo modo que a los miembros del jurado se les instruye para que ignoren las pruebas indebidamente introducidas en un juicio, también deberán ignorar todas las insinuaciones sin fundamento de los partidarios y los defensores de Trump en estos casos, y juzgarlas estrictamente por sus méritos.Tres de las otras investigaciones que podrían dar lugar a acusaciones son más graves, porque conllevan acusar a Trump, no solo de haber vulnerado la ley, sino también de haber abusado de su cargo presidencial.Las imputaciones contra él en Georgia están entre las más vergonzosas. Fani Willis, fiscal de distrito del condado de Fulton, está considerando presentar cargos penales contra varias personas, incluido Trump, por intentar anular los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales de 2020 en ese estado, que ganó el presidente Biden por 11.779 votos. Trump presionó repetidas veces al secretario de Estado de Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, para que “buscara” votos adicionales que pudieran cambiar el resultado de las elecciones en el estado, parte de un plan para socavar la voluntad de los votantes.Un gran jurado especial formado por Willis recomendó en febrero que se presentaran cargos en el caso; todavía se desconoce qué personas o acusaciones se incluirán en las recomendaciones del gran jurado o a quién podría intentar acusar Willis, si es que procede.Una investigación del Departamento de Justicia federal dirigida por un fiscal especial, Jack Smith, también podría dar lugar a acusaciones formales contra Trump. Smith está investigando los intentos del expresidente de impedir el traspaso pacífico del poder el 6 de enero de 2021, cuando Trump incitó a una turba armada que atacó el Capitolio de Estados Unidos, amenazando a los legisladores allí reunidos para certificar los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales. Un informe del Senado realizado por los dos partidos concluyó que siete muertes estaban relacionadas con el ataque.El equipo de Smith también está investigando al expresidente por su indebido manejo de los documentos clasificados que fueron retirados de la Casa Blanca y llevados a Mar-a-Lago, su residencia privada en Florida. En el caso se han recuperado unos 300 documentos clasificados. Los fiscales también están estudiando si Trump, sus abogados o miembros de su personal trataron de confundir a los funcionarios del Estado que pidieron la devolución de los documentos.Además de los cargos penales, Trump se enfrenta a varias demandas civiles. La fiscal general de Nueva York, Letitia James, ha demandado al expresidente por inflar de forma “flagrante” y fraudulenta el valor de sus activos inmobiliarios. Tres de los hijos adultos de Trump también figuran en la demanda. Un grupo de policías del Capitolio y legisladores demócratas han demandado al presidente, aduciendo que sus actos del 6 de enero incitaron a la turba que les provocó daños físicos y emocionales. E. Jean Carroll, una escritora que acusó a Trump de haberla violado, ha demandado al expresidente por difamación. Trump niega las acusaciones.Sin duda, procesar al expresidente ahondará las divisiones políticas existentes que tanto daño han hecho al país en los últimos años. Trump ya ha avivado esa división, al tachar a los fiscales que están detrás de las investigaciones —varios de ellos personas negras— de “racistas”. Afirmó en un mensaje publicado en las redes sociales que sería detenido, y se dirigió así a sus simpatizantes: “¡PROTESTEMOS, RECUPEREMOS NUESTRA NACIÓN!”. Con ese lenguaje, estaba repitiendo el grito de guerra que precedió a los disturbios en el Capitolio. Las autoridades de la ciudad de Nueva York, que no se arriesgan a que se repitan los actos de los partidarios de Trump, se han estado preparando para la posible agitación.Esas acusaciones del expresidente están claramente dirigidas a socavar las denuncias contra él, protegerse de las consecuencias de su mala conducta y utilizar los casos para su beneficio político. Los dos fiscales de distrito en estas causas son demócratas electos, pero su raza y sus afinidades políticas no tienen ninguna relevancia para los procesos judiciales. (Smith no está afiliado a ninguno de los dos partidos). No obstante, el presidente de la Cámara de Representantes, Kevin McCarthy, demostró de inmediato la intención de su partido de politizar la imputación al calificar a Bragg de “fiscal radical” que persigue “la venganza política” contra Trump. McCarthy no tiene la jurisdicción sobre el fiscal de distrito de Manhattan ni le corresponde interferir en un proceso penal y, sin embargo, se ha comprometido a que la Cámara de Representantes determine si la fiscalía de Bragg está recibiendo fondos federales.La decisión de procesar a un expresidente es una tarea solemne, sobre todo teniendo en cuenta las profundas fisuras nacionales que Trump exacerbará, inevitablemente, a medida que se acerque la campaña de 2024. Pero el costo de no buscar la justicia contra un dirigente que puede haber cometido esos delitos sería aún más alto.El Comité Editorial es un grupo de periodistas de opinión cuyas perspectivas están sustentadas en experiencia, investigación, debate y ciertos valores arraigados por mucho tiempo. Es una entidad independiente de la sala de redacción. More

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      Justices Must Disclose Travel and Gifts Under New Rules

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      The change comes as members of Congress have called for the justices to be held to ethics standards similar to those for the executive and legislative branches.WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices will be required to disclose more of their activities, including some free trips, air travel and other types of gifts, according to rules adopted earlier this month.Under the new rules, justices and other federal judges must report travel by private jet, as well as stays at commercial properties, such as hotels, resorts or hunting lodges.The move comes as members of Congress have called for the justices, who have long faced less stringent reporting requirements, to be held to ethics standards similar to those for the executive and legislative branches.“To the extent this becomes a model for further activity for the Judicial Conference to clean up the Supreme Court mess, I think that’s significant,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat of Rhode Island who sits on the Judiciary Committee’s panel that oversees federal courts.Some advocates pushing for greater transparency on the court cautioned that the rules would be hard to enforce and that it would be nearly impossible to know whether a justice had failed to disclose a trip, flight or other perk.“The problem with any sort of transparency rule within the judiciary is the question of enforcement, the question of accountability,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, an organization critical of the court’s transparency. Without additional requirements, including a quicker turnaround for disclosing travel and gifts and penalties for failures to comply, the new measures are likely to have a limited effect, Mr. Roth said.“The bar is so low that you can get credit for doing the bare minimum,” he said. “Small but significant is where I’m at.”The new rules, which went into effect March 14, were adopted by a financial disclosure committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policymaking body for the federal courts.At a meeting in January, the committee discussed whether judges and justices would be required to file disclosures when they are hosted at commercial properties, such as resorts, according to a letter to Mr. Whitehouse from Judge Roslynn R. Mauskopf, the director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, which provides support for the court system.By federal law, justices must file forms each year disclosing financial ties, including gifts. However, the rules for travel that is considered “personal hospitality” were not clearly defined, including for stays at commercial properties or trips in which a third-party pays.It is unclear precisely how oversight and enforcement would work for the justices. A court spokeswoman declined to comment.The most common enforcement mechanism stems from the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act, which describes “misconduct” as “knowingly violating requirements for financial disclosure.” If an allegation arose, the chief judge of a circuit could review it and determine whether a punishment is warranted, but the act does not apply to the Supreme Court.Questions around travel by the justices have persisted for years, particularly since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. Justice Scalia died while on a hunting trip at a lodge in West Texas owned by a businessman involved in a case that the court declined to hear in 2015.Justice Scalia, who had been staying at the ranch for free, had taken more than 250 subsidized trips from 2004 to 2014.In 2014 alone, he went on at least 23 privately funded trips, including to Ireland, Switzerland and Hawaii. Justice Scalia had been invited to the ranch by John Poindexter, owner of a Texas manufacturing firm. One of Mr. Poindexter’s companies, the Mic Group, had been the defendant in an age discrimination lawsuit by a former employee who had unsuccessfully sought review by the Supreme Court the year before.But Justice Scalia was hardly alone in accepting privately paid trips. From 2004 to 2014, Justice Stephen G. Breyer took 185 such trips, according to a database by the Center for Responsive Politics.The issue of privately paid travel also emerged in 2011, a year after the landmark campaign finance case Citizens United, which allowed unlimited corporate spending in elections. A liberal advocacy group, Common Cause, argued that Justices Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have recused themselves from hearing the case because they traveled to a political conference in Palm Springs, Calif., sponsored by the businessman Charles G. Koch, one of the biggest donors to Republicans.Legal experts greeted this month’s move with cautious optimism.“In my world of transparency and judicial ethics, what we had until now was little more than a joke,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor emeritus at the New York University School of Law who specializes in legal ethics. “The rules were very lax and tolerated circumvention, and now we’ve taken a giant step away from that.”However, he said there was still a long way to go toward transparency and accountability, pointing to the lag time between when a gift is received and when it must be reported. Justices have until May 15 of the year after receiving a gift before they must report it.In theory, if a justice “knowingly and willfully” failed to comply with the rules, the attorney general could bring a case. In practice, though, he said, that has never happened. He added that it was also impossible to know how individual justices would respond to the stricter rules.“There’s no enforcement mechanism at the Supreme Court,” he said. “It will be up to each justice.” More

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      Pro-Trump Super PAC Files an Ethics Complaint Against DeSantis

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      The group, the MAGA Inc. super PAC, accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of violating Florida laws by operating a shadow presidential campaign. A DeSantis spokeswoman called it a politically motivated attack.Donald J. Trump spent much of the past year teasing a presidential campaign, telling New York magazine last summer that he had “already made that decision” on whether to run and promising his rally crowds for months that they would be “very happy” about his choice.Now, Mr. Trump’s allies are accusing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida of doing the same — but insisting that he has violated state law.MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump, filed a complaint with Florida officials on Wednesday, alleging that Mr. DeSantis — the former president’s chief potential rival for the Republican Party’s 2024 nomination — is operating a shadow presidential campaign.The super PAC said that Mr. DeSantis should be considered a presidential candidate because he has taken meetings with donors, raised money for a political committee and toured the country to sell books, while allies are reaching out to potential campaign aides.“Governor DeSantis’s failure to declare his candidacy is no mere oversight,” reads the MAGA Inc. complaint to the Florida Commission on Ethics. “It is a coordinated effort specifically designed for him to accept, as unethical gifts, illegal campaign contributions and certain personal benefits.”The pro-Trump super PAC, which sent the complaint via certified mail on Wednesday, is asking the state commission to impose “the most severe penalties” under Florida ethics law, which include, among other things, impeachment, removal from office, public censure and ballot disqualification. NBC News earlier reported on the complaint on Wednesday.A spokeswoman in the governor’s office, Taryn Fenske, said the complaint was part of a “list of frivolous and politically motivated attacks,” adding, “It’s inappropriate to use state ethics complaints for partisan purposes.”While Mr. DeSantis hasn’t formally declared a White House bid, he is checking all the boxes of a potential candidate. He published a book that could double as the outline of a 2024 campaign platform and has been promoting the book on a nationwide tour — including stops in states that are hosting the first three Republican primary contests. He has also laid out foreign policy positions this week on Fox News.The allegations from the pro-Trump group echo a similar complaint filed against Mr. Trump last year in March by a Democratic super PAC. In that complaint, the Democratic group, American Bridge, argued to the Federal Election Commission that Mr. Trump had been behaving like a 2024 presidential candidate while avoiding federal oversight by not filing a statement of candidacy.The group filed a lawsuit in July against the federal commission, seeking to force it to take action against Mr. Trump within 30 days. The lawsuit accused Mr. Trump of trying to disguise his run for the presidency in order to leave voters “in the dark about the contributions and expenditures he has received, which is information they are entitled to.”The F.E.C. did not take action against Mr. Trump. He eventually announced a formal presidential campaign four months later.Mr. Trump’s allies could face a similarly tough road in persuading the state ethics commission to act. Mr. DeSantis has appointed five of the nine members of the commission.Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis were once political allies, but have grown increasingly antagonistic toward each other.Mr. DeSantis, who has branded himself as one of his party’s most ruthless political brawlers, has so far declined to directly confront Mr. Trump. Instead, he has made thinly veiled contrasts with Mr. Trump, telling crowds that his administration in Tallahassee has been free of leaks and chaos — such as the kind that often plagued the Trump White House — and excoriating the leadership of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, one of Mr. Trump’s key public health advisers during the Covid-19 pandemic.Mr. Trump, on the other hand, has grown increasingly aggressive in his attacks on Mr. DeSantis.At an event in Davenport, Iowa, on Monday, Mr. Trump drew a mix of applause and groans from the crowd as he attacked Mr. DeSantis over attempts to cut ethanol production and said the Florida governor wanted to “decimate” Social Security and Medicare by supporting proposals that would have increased the age to receive benefits.Mr. Trump scheduled his event three days after Mr. DeSantis made his first introduction to Iowa voters in the same Mississippi River town. More

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      Inside Ron DeSantis’s Politicized Removal of an Elected Prosecutor

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      The Florida governor accused the Democratic prosecutor of undermining public safety. But a close examination of the episode reveals just how fueled it was by Mr. DeSantis’s political aims.When Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida announced last summer that he had taken the extraordinary step of removing a local prosecutor from his job, he cast his decision as a bold move to protect Floridians.The prosecutor, Andrew H. Warren, a twice-elected state attorney for Hillsborough County and a Democrat, had signed a public pledge not to prosecute those who seek or provide abortions. Moreover, he was among a group of progressive prosecutors around the country who, in Mr. DeSantis’s words, think “they get to pick and choose which laws that they are enforcing,” the governor told reporters and handpicked supporters at a news conference.Those left-leaning prosecutors, he said, had “undermined public safety” and been “devastating to the rule of law.”Left unsaid, however, was that Mr. DeSantis and his advisers had failed to find a connection between Mr. Warren’s policies and public safety in his community.In fact, just the day before, writing in blue pen on a draft of an executive order, the governor had personally removed any mention of crime statistics justifying Mr. Warren’s suspension, after Mr. DeSantis’s lawyers lamented that they could find nothing in them to support the idea that Mr. Warren’s policies had done harm, according to internal documents and testimony.As he travels the country promoting a new book and his expected presidential campaign, Mr. DeSantis repeatedly points to his ouster of Mr. Warren as an example of the muscular and decisive way he has transformed Florida — and could transform the nation. He casts Mr. Warren as a rogue ideologue whose refusal to enforce the law demanded action.But a close examination of the episode, including interviews, emails, text messages and thousands of pages of government records, trial testimony, depositions and other court records, reveals a sharply different picture: a governor’s office that seemed driven by a preconceived political narrative, bent on a predetermined outcome, content with a flimsy investigation and focused on maximizing media attention for Mr. DeSantis.Andrew H. Warren, a Democrat who served as the state attorney for Hillsborough County, had signed a public pledge not to prosecute those who seek or provide abortions. Chasity Maynard/Tallahassee Democrat, via Associated PressTwo weeks after his removal, Mr. Warren sued the governor in federal court seeking his reinstatement. The lawsuit, which Mr. Warren appealed after it was dismissed in January, produced a significant quantity of discovery, which The New York Times reviewed in detail.Months before suspending Mr. Warren, Mr. DeSantis had ordered his staff to find progressive prosecutors who were letting criminals walk free. Under oath, his aides later acknowledged that they had deliberately avoided investigating Mr. Warren too closely, so that they would not tip him off and prompt him to reverse his policies — thwarting the goal of making an example of him. When contrary information did materialize, Mr. DeSantis and his lawyers dismissed or ignored it, the records show.Only after Mr. Warren was removed did the governor’s aides seek records from Mr. Warren’s office that might help justify Mr. DeSantis’s action.If the investigation into Mr. Warren was cursory at best, the preparation to remove him while simultaneously publicizing that ouster involved greater planning. And those plans were executed with military precision. The governor’s aides gave special attention to news outlets they referred to as “friendly.” Immediately after the news conference, DeSantis aides exerted influence over communications at the state attorney’s office, an independent county agency, working to ensure that the takeover did not result in negative coverage.And that night, the governor headlined Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to promote his move. Mr. Carlson opened with a 12-minute speech about prosecutors who disregard the law, then turned to an exclusive interview with the governor.“Ron DeSantis is the man who put an end to it today in the state of Florida,” Mr. Carlson said.Although Mr. DeSantis’s move was cheered in the conservative news media as a victory in his war on “wokeness,” a federal judge ruled in January that the governor had violated Mr. Warren’s First Amendment rights and the Florida Constitution in a rush to judgment. “The actual facts,” Judge Robert L. Hinkle wrote, “did not matter. All that was needed was a pretext.” Mr. DeSantis’s office, the judge said from the bench, had conducted a “one-sided inquiry” meant to target Mr. Warren. (The judge said he did not have the authority to reinstate Mr. Warren, who is appealing in state and federal court.)Mr. Warren, in an interview, said he believed Mr. DeSantis had disregarded the will of the voters in his county for political gain.“He’s willing to abuse his power to attack his political enemies,” Mr. Warren said.Mr. DeSantis, who declined to be interviewed, insists in his new book, “The Courage to Be Free,” that his action was justified by Mr. Warren’s public statements. He argues that prosecutors who want “to ‘reform’ the criminal justice system” should quit and run for the Legislature.In response to written questions, a spokesman for the governor referred to public statements and the trial record, adding, “Mr. Warren remains suspended from the office he failed to serve.”Like other Republicans, Mr. DeSantis has railed against prosecutors elected on platforms promising alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent crimes or avoiding the death penalty. Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesIn recent weeks, Mr. DeSantis has indicated that he intends to target other prosecutors with whom he disagrees, lashing out at another Democratic state attorney.Gov. Ron DeSantis and His AdministrationThe Republican governor of Florida has turned the swing state into a right-wing laboratory by leaning into cultural battles.Legislative Wish List: From immigration to gun rights to education, Florida lawmakers are advancing Gov. Ron DeSantis’s agenda, giving him a broader platform from which to launch a widely expected presidential campaign.A Rare Interview: Mr. DeSantis granted a rare interview to The Times of London. The paper is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire has already thrown its considerable influence behind the prospect of the governor’s 2024 bid.Rift with Disney: In the latest development in a battle between Mr. DeSantis and Disney, the governor has gained control of the board that oversees development at Walt Disney World, a move that restricts the autonomy of Disney over its theme-park complex.Earlier this month, he told donors at a private gathering in Palm Beach that because he’d won only 50 percent of the vote in his 2018 election, people had told him to tread lightly.“But I won 100 percent of the executive power,” he said, “and I intended to use it to advance an agenda that I campaigned on.”‘All roads led to Mr. Warren’Midway through a meeting with his closest advisers in December 2021, Mr. DeSantis abruptly asked a pointed question: Did they know of any prosecutors in the state who weren’t enforcing the law?The topic was not on the meeting’s agenda, but it hardly came out of the blue.Right-wing pundits and podcasters had for years railed against local prosecutors elected on platforms promising alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent crimes or avoiding the death penalty. The critics painted those prosecutors as agents of George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor, and as giving rise to a scourge of crime. One such prosecutor at the time, Chesa Boudin, was facing a recall election in San Francisco.A top DeSantis aide, Larry Keefe, set out to answer the governor’s question. A former United States attorney, Mr. Keefe’s title is public safety czar. But he has served in a broad role for the governor, executing high-profile projects including helping to coordinate the flight of scores of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in September.Mr. Keefe began by asking Florida sheriffs whether they knew of any progressive prosecutors. Several mentioned the state attorney from Hillsborough County. Communicating over encrypted text messages and personal email, Mr. Keefe assembled a dossier on Mr. Warren’s policies and charging decisions.Mr. Warren was the only prosecutor he scrutinized, Mr. Keefe said later in a deposition: “All roads led to Mr. Warren.”A former federal prosecutor, Mr. Warren, 46, was elected in 2016 promising to create a new unit to search for wrongful convictions, focus resources on prosecuting violent offenders, reduce prosecutions for first-time misdemeanors and curb the number of children charged as adults.Mr. Warren, who had been a frequent critic of Mr. DeSantis, has sued the governor over his removal. Octavio Jones/ReutersAfter Mr. DeSantis took office in 2019, Mr. Warren became a frequent critic. When the governor barred local governments from enacting their own Covid restrictions, Mr. Warren called the order “weak and spineless.” In 2021, he sought to organize opposition to a DeSantis-backed law that restricted political protests. In January 2022, Mr. Warren instituted a policy that made prosecutions of pedestrians and bicyclists for resisting arrest an exception rather than the rule, responding to studies that show the charge disproportionately affected Black people.Florida’s Constitution allows governors to suspend local office holders for reasons including “malfeasance” or “neglect of duty” until the Legislature votes on whether to permanently remove or reinstate them. Mr. DeSantis was the first Florida governor in many decades known to have suspended an elected prosecutor over a policy difference.By contrast, his predecessor, Rick Scott, publicly clashed with a prosecutor who refused to seek capital punishment and took death penalty cases away from her, but he did not force her from office.For months, Mr. Keefe’s dossier on Mr. Warren failed to cross the threshold to take action against him, Mr. DeSantis’s lawyers later testified. Then, in June, after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion, an advocacy group released a statement signed by Mr. Warren and 91 other prosecutors around the country.In it, they vowed to “exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide or support abortions.”Whether the pledge would have any practical impact in Hillsborough County was unclear. Criminal cases of any kind involving abortion had been exceptionally rare in Florida. A new law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy was being appealed.Florida legislators passed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but the measure has been held up in court.Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Warren told a TV reporter that the statement should not be read as a blanket policy: He would individually evaluate any cases that emerged. The governor’s aides saw the TV report and disregarded it, according to court records.Ryan Newman, the governor’s general counsel, and Ray Treadwell, Mr. Newman’s deputy, testified that the pledge was the evidence they needed. Mr. Warren had said he would not enforce abortion laws, and could therefore be considered negligent and incompetent.The lawyers discussed asking Mr. Warren to clarify whether his pledge would apply to existing abortion restrictions. But they decided not to, one later testified, because they worried that this would have “tipped him off” and given Mr. Warren a chance to walk it back, short-circuiting their effort to remove him.Records obtained through litigation show that Mr. Keefe and the lawyers began drafting the executive order suspending Mr. Warren.The tone of an early draft, written by Mr. Keefe in July, was highly partisan. The document named Mr. Soros six times, pointing to reports that Mr. Warren had received indirect support for his campaign from the billionaire Jewish philanthropist, a frequent target of conservatives and of antisemitic tropes.(In a deposition, Mr. Keefe said he had not known that Mr. Soros was Jewish, but said he was “concerned” that “one of Florida’s state attorneys had been co-opted” by the philanthropist.)In another draft, Mr. Treadwell highlighted a passage referring to Mr. Soros and wrote, “I would prefer to remove these allegations, but they may be valuable for the larger political narrative.”The signed executive order included no references to Mr. Soros.Editing out the dataOn July 26, Mr. Newman, Mr. Keefe and James Uthmeier, the governor’s chief of staff, met with Mr. DeSantis to present their plan, according to sworn deposition testimony.The governor was initially skeptical, transcripts show. He questioned whether Mr. Warren could be removed based on his signed pledge alone, lacking evidence that he had declined to prosecute an abortion-related crime.Mr. Newman argued that Mr. DeSantis should act while Mr. Warren’s refusal to prosecute was still hypothetical: It could be both impractical and unwise to wait to challenge Mr. Warren over a specific decision, Mr. Newman explained under oath at trial.Mr. DeSantis was persuaded. He asked for additional information about Mr. Warren’s record but gave a green light to charge ahead.Still, the governor seemed reluctant to hang Mr. Warren’s removal narrowly on the abortion pledge.In handwritten instructions on a draft of the executive order, he told his lawyers to list “non-abortion infractions first,” including language accusing the prosecutor of “acting as if he is a law unto himself.”Mr. DeSantis also crossed out three paragraphs packed with statistics about prosecution rates in Hillsborough County. Aides had dug up the data in hopes of showing a declining rate of prosecution during Mr. Warren’s tenure, but the numbers weren’t clear.“You can kind of tell we didn’t have any definitive proof of a correlation,” Mr. Treadwell later testified.In December, during a three-day trial over Mr. Warren’s removal, Judge Hinkle, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, said the evidence suggested that the goal of the governor’s review of Mr. Warren’s record was really “to amass information that could help bring down Mr. Warren, not to find out how Mr. Warren actually runs the office.”“A cynic would say, ‘I just needed one pelt — just needed to nail one pelt to the wall,’” the judge added.Mixed signals in the messagingThe day before he was suspended, Mr. Warren and his staff were putting the finishing touches on a major announcement set for the next day: indictments in two decades-old rape and murder cases.Aides to Mr. DeSantis were planning a starkly different event, the legal records show.Mr. Keefe was sending over talking points for Susan Lopez, a state judge who had agreed to replace Mr. Warren.“Love it!” Ms. Lopez texted Mr. Keefe. “Sounds like me!”Christina Pushaw, the governor’s spokeswoman at the time, teased the coming news on Twitter: “Major announcement tomorrow morning” from Mr. DeSantis, she wrote. “Prepare for liberal media meltdown of the year.” Her tweet alone generated headlines by Fox News and other conservative news outlets.But Mr. DeSantis wanted to avoid the appearance that his ouster of Mr. Warren was an overtly partisan act.Susan Lopez, left, agreed to replace Mr. Warren as state attorney for Hillsborough County. Chris O’Meara/Associated PressHe told Ms. Pushaw he was displeased with her tweet, she later testified, saying he wanted the public message to be about protecting Floridians from a dangerous prosecutor, adding that his decision “had nothing to do with the media.”Ms. Pushaw, a combative force on social media, called this the only time the governor had ever “reprimanded” her over her tweets.And Mr. Uthmeier, the governor’s chief of staff, warned another aide that Mr. DeSantis wanted them to tone down the “sensationalism.”“Every comment impacts what will be contentious litigation,” Mr. Uthmeier wrote in a text message disclosed in litigation.The heated language, however, was coming from the legal department, too. Mr. DeSantis’s general counsel, Mr. Newman, added language to the governor’s speech calling Mr. Warren “a woke ideologue masquerading as a prosecutor.”Under oath, Mr. Newman later said he did not believe the statement to be true. He wrote it, he said, “to channel what I think the press shop wants.”That press shop was in high gear as the governor’s office removed Mr. Warren. It discussed handing out copies of the executive order to friendly news outlets. Other aides, meanwhile, contacted Republican Party groups to to find DeSantis supporters to fill the room.A few minutes before 10 a.m. on Aug. 4, Mr. Warren received an email notifying him that he had been suspended. He rushed to his office, but Mr. Keefe soon arrived with an armed sheriff’s deputy and ordered him to leave, according to testimony from Mr. Keefe. Mr. Keefe texted the governor’s staff: “Warren is out of the building.” And the news conference began.‘We’ll put the nail in the coffin’With Mr. Warren out, the governor’s office stepped in. Mr. Keefe and Taryn Fenske, the governor’s communications chief, had already discussed in text messages what Ms. Lopez’s first steps should be, planning for the new state attorney to issue a memo rescinding Mr. Warren’s prosecution policies.A memo that Ms. Lopez sent out days later mirrored that plan, saying, “The legislature makes the law and we, as prosecutors, enforce it.” (She testified that she did not recall consulting with anyone other than her chief of staff.)Two aides to the governor were dispatched to the state attorney’s office in Hillsborough to “help make sure there’s no funny business over there,” Savannah Kelly Jefferson, director of external affairs, wrote in a text message to her staff.Mr. Keefe, who had stuck around at the state attorney’s office, told Melanie Snow-Waxler, the office’s chief communications officer, to cancel Mr. Warren’s news conference on the cold cases, she said in an interview. The office said its chief of staff had made the decision.He listened in on a speaker phone as she called one murder victim’s aunt to tell her not to come.“I was confused. I didn’t know what was going on,” Ms. Snow-Waxler, who was fired soon after for reasons that are in dispute, said in the interview. “This is not someone who has been your boss, but it’s not like I was given an option. It was an order.”A former DeSantis spokesman, Fred Piccolo, was brought in as a communications consultant for the state attorney’s office. In an interview, Mr. Piccolo said his job included keeping the prosecutor’s office on the same page with the governor’s office in publicly discussing Mr. Warren’s suspension. In a text message to colleagues, Ms. Fenske said she would lean on Mr. Piccolo to push back on Mr. Warren’s contention that his suspension was invalid: “We’ll put the nail in the coffin.”Six days later, as the controversy continued to generate headlines and Mr. Warren publicly blasted his dismissal, the Hillsborough County state attorney’s office received a curious piece of correspondence from the governor’s office, documents from a public records request show.It was from Mr. Treadwell, the governor’s deputy general counsel, making his first request for information from the prosecutor’s office that might reveal whether Mr. Warren had done anything wrong.Jonathan Swan More

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      Conservative Media Pay Little Attention to Revelations About Fox News

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      Even in today’s highly partisan media world, experts said, the lack of coverage about the private comments of Fox’s top executives and hosts stands out.Fox News and its sister network, Fox Business, have avoided the story. Newsmax and One America News, Fox’s rivals on the right, have steered clear, too. So have a constellation of right-wing websites and podcasts.Over the past two weeks, legal filings containing private messages and testimony from Fox hosts and executives revealed that many of them had serious doubts that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election through widespread voter fraud, even as those claims were made repeatedly on Fox’s shows. The revelations, made public in a defamation lawsuit against Fox brought by Dominion Voting Systems, have generated headlines around the world.But in the conservative media world? Mostly crickets.On 26 of the most popular conservative television news networks, radio shows, podcasts and websites, only four — The National Review, Townhall, The Federalist and Breitbart News — have mentioned the private messages from Fox News hosts that disparaged election fraud claims since Feb. 16, when the first batch of court filings were released publicly, according to a review by The New York Times.The majority — 18 in all, including Fox News itself — did not cover the lawsuit at all with their own staff. (Some of those 18 published wire stories originally written by The Associated Press or other services.)Four outlets mentioned the lawsuit in some way, but did not mention the comments from Fox News hosts. One of those, The Gateway Pundit, published three articles that included additional unfounded allegations about Dominion, including a suggestion that security vulnerabilities at one election site using Dominion machines could have led to some fraud, despite no evidence that votes were mismanaged.“These results are shocking,” one article asserted.The Gateway Pundit did not respond to requests for comment.Even in a media world often divided along partisan lines, the paucity of coverage stands out, media experts said. And it means that many of the people who heard the conspiracy theories about election fraud on Fox’s networks may not be learning that Fox’s leaders and on-air stars privately dismissed those claims.The Spread of Misinformation and FalsehoodsCutting Back: Job cuts in the social media industry reflect a trend that threatens to undo many of the safeguards that platforms have put in place to ban or tamp down on disinformation.A Key Case: The outcome of a federal court battle could help decide whether the First Amendment is a barrier to virtually any government efforts to stifle disinformation.A Top Misinformation Spreader: A large study found that Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast had more falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims than other political talk shows.Artificial Intelligence: For the first time, A.I.-generated personas were detected in a state-aligned disinformation campaign, opening a new chapter in online manipulation.“Choosing not to do stories is a form of bias,” said Tom Rosenstiel, a veteran press critic and a journalism professor at the University of Maryland. “The things you ignore and the things you choose to highlight are an important part of how you show whether you are a serious news organization.”Mainstream news organizations often report on themselves when they are at the center of a scandal, Mr. Rosenstiel said, because they get “much more credit when they expose the lens on themselves as aggressively as they would anyone else.”Who Is Covering Dominion’s Lawsuit?A review of 26 conservative news and opinion sources showed little coverage of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News. More

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      Takeaways From the Report on the Trump Georgia Investigation

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      The released excerpts from the special grand jury’s report suggest that the jurors probably recommended indictments on more charges than just perjury.On Thursday, after a lengthy criminal investigation by a Georgia special grand jury into allegations of election interference by Donald J. Trump and his allies, a judge released excerpts from a report drafted by the panel. The grand jury’s recommendations were redacted, and little new information was released, but a close reading, together with earlier reporting, offers some insights into where the case is headed. Here are some key takeaways.Legal experts say Mr. Trump remains in real jeopardy in Georgia.In a post on Truth Social on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump thanked the special grand jury for its “Patriotism & Courage.“Total exoneration,” he added. “The USA is very proud of you!!!”In fact, the portions of the grand jury’s report that included recommendations on possible indictments were not revealed. Many legal experts continue to see two significant areas of exposure for Mr. Trump.The first is his direct involvement in recruiting a slate of alternative presidential electors after the 2020 election, even after Georgia’s results were recertified by the state’s Republican leadership. The second are the telephone calls he made to pressure state officials after the election, including one in which Mr. Trump told Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, that he needed to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than President Biden’s margin of victory in the state.“Even before we got these initial statements from the special grand jury, we knew Trump was in deep criminal peril because of the mountain of evidence that has accumulated that he violated Georgia statutes,” said Norman Eisen, a lawyer who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment and trial of Mr. Trump, and a co-author of a lengthy Brookings Institution report on the Fulton County investigation.The jurors did make recommendations about indictments.The special grand jury noted in its report that it had voted on indictment recommendations, though the released excerpts do not reveal what the results of those votes were. The jurors wrote that they had “set forth for the Court our recommendations on indictments and relevant statutes.” (A special grand jury cannot bring indictments, but can make recommendations to the district attorney.)In ordering that only portions of the report be released, with all names redacted, the judge handling the case may have provided a clue to the grand jury’s recommendations. The judge, Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court, said he was limiting the extent of the release because the grand jury inquiry, by its nature, allowed for only “very limited due process” for potential defendants. The judge’s stance would have been unlikely if the grand jury had not recommended indictments.Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election InterferenceCard 1 of 5A legal threat to Trump. More

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      Manhattan Prosecutors Begin Presenting Trump Case to Grand Jury

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      The Manhattan district attorney’s decision represents a dramatic escalation of the inquiry, and potentially sets the case on a path toward criminal charges against the former president.The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday began presenting evidence to a grand jury about Donald J. Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months, according to people with knowledge of the matter.The grand jury was recently impaneled, and the beginning of witness testimony represents a clear signal that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is nearing a decision about whether to charge Mr. Trump.On Monday, one of the witnesses was seen with his lawyer entering the building in Lower Manhattan where the grand jury is sitting. The witness, David Pecker, is the former publisher of The National Enquirer, the tabloid that helped broker the deal with the porn star, Stormy Daniels.As prosecutors prepare to reconstruct the events surrounding the payment for grand jurors, they have sought to interview several witnesses, including the tabloid’s former editor, Dylan Howard, and two employees at Mr. Trump’s company, the people said. Mr. Howard and the Trump Organization employees, Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff, have not yet testified before the grand jury.The prosecutors have also begun contacting officials from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, one of the people said. And in a sign that they want to corroborate these witness accounts, the prosecutors recently subpoenaed phone records and other documents that might shed light on the episode.A conviction is not a sure thing, in part because a case could hinge on showing that Mr. Trump and his company falsified records to hide the payout from voters days before the 2016 election, a low-level felony charge that would be based on a largely untested legal theory. The case would also rely on the testimony of Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who made the payment and who himself pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money in 2018.Still, the developments compound Mr. Trump’s legal woes as he mounts a third presidential campaign. A district attorney in Georgia could seek to indict him for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, and he faces a special counsel investigation into his removal of sensitive documents from the White House as well as his actions during the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Bragg’s decision to impanel a grand jury focused on the hush money — supercharging the longest-running criminal investigation into Mr. Trump — represents a dramatic escalation in an inquiry that once appeared to have reached a dead end.Under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney’s office had begun presenting evidence to an earlier grand jury about a case focused on Mr. Trump’s business practices, including whether he fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure favorable loans and other benefits. Yet in the early weeks of his tenure last year, Mr. Bragg developed concerns about the strength of that case and decided to abandon the grand jury presentation, prompting the resignations of the two senior prosecutors leading the investigation.One of them, Mark F. Pomerantz, was highly critical of Mr. Bragg’s decision and has written a book that is scheduled to be published next week, “People vs. Donald Trump,” detailing his account of the inquiry. Mr. Bragg’s office recently wrote to Mr. Pomerantz’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, expressing concern that the book might disclose grand jury information or interfere with the investigation.District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, center right, jump-started the inquiry last summer into Mr. Trump’s role in the hush money paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAlthough he balked at charging Mr. Trump over the asset valuations, this is a different case, and Mr. Bragg is now a bolder prosecutor. He has ramped up the hush money inquiry in the weeks since his prosecutors convicted Mr. Trump’s company in an unrelated tax case, a far cry from his unsteady early days in office, when Mr. Bragg was under fire from all quarters for unveiling a host of policies designed to put fewer people behind bars.For his part, Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing and chalked up the scrutiny to a partisan witch hunt against him. He has also denied having an affair with Ms. Daniels. If Mr. Trump were ultimately convicted, he would face a maximum sentence of four years, though prison time would not be mandatory.“This is just the latest act by the Manhattan D.A. in their never-ending, politically motivated witch hunt,” the Trump Organization said in a statement, adding that reviving the case under what it called a “dubious legal theory” was “simply reprehensible and vindictive.”A spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg’s office declined to comment. Mr. Pecker’s lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Mr. McConney and Ms. Tarasoff declined to comment.The panel hearing evidence is likely what’s known as a special grand jury. Like regular grand juries, it is made up of 23 Manhattan residents chosen at random. But its members are sworn in to serve for six months to hear complex cases, rather than for 30 days, as is the case with panels that review evidence and vote on whether to bring charges in more routine matters.The investigation, which has unfolded in fits and starts for more than four years, began with an examination of the hush money deal before expanding to include Mr. Trump’s property valuations. Last summer, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors returned to the hush money anew, seeking to jump-start the inquiry after the departures of Mr. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne, the other senior prosecutor in the investigation.The district attorney’s office, working with the New York attorney general, Letitia James, is also continuing to scrutinize the way that the former president valued his assets, the people with knowledge of the matter said.Over the course of the investigation into Mr. Trump, the hush money payment was discussed within the district attorney’s office with such regularity that prosecutors came to refer to it as the “zombie theory” — an idea that just won’t die.The first visible sign of progress for Mr. Bragg came this month when Mr. Cohen appeared at the district attorney’s office to meet with prosecutors for the first time in more than a year. He is expected to return for at least one additional interview in February, one of the people said.The lawyer who represented Ms. Daniels in the hush money deal, Keith Davidson, is also expected to meet with prosecutors.Mr. Trump’s company was instrumental in the deal, court records from Mr. Cohen’s federal case show.Although Mr. McConney and Ms. Tarasoff were not central players, they helped arrange for Mr. Cohen to be reimbursed for the $130,000 he paid Ms. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.Allen H. Weisselberg, the company’s former chief financial officer, was also involved in reimbursing Mr. Cohen. And, according to Mr. Cohen, Mr. Weisselberg was involved in a discussion with Mr. Trump about whether to pay Ms. Daniels.Mr. Weisselberg is serving jail time after pleading guilty to a tax fraud scheme unrelated to the hush money deal, a case that also led to the conviction of the Trump Organization in December. Although he was the star witness for the district attorney’s office in that case, Mr. Weisselberg has never implicated Mr. Trump in any wrongdoing.Without his cooperation, prosecutors could struggle to link Mr. Trump directly to the misconduct.In 2018, when Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance charges stemming from his role in the hush money payments, he pointed the finger at Mr. Trump, saying the payout was done “in coordination with, and at the direction of” the president. Federal prosecutors agreed that Mr. Trump was behind the deal but never charged him or his company with a crime.The cooperation of Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, will be key to the prosecution’s case against Mr. Trump.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesThere is some circumstantial evidence suggesting that Mr. Trump was involved: He and Mr. Cohen spoke by phone twice the day before Mr. Cohen wired the payment to Ms. Daniels’s lawyer, according to records in the federal case.For prosecutors, the core of any possible case is the way in which Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the $130,000 he paid Ms. Daniels and how the company recorded that payment. According to court papers in Mr. Cohen’s federal case, Mr. Trump’s company falsely identified the reimbursements as legal expenses.The district attorney’s office now appears to be focusing on whether erroneously classifying the payments to Mr. Cohen as a legal expense ran afoul of a New York law that prohibits the falsifying of business records.Violations of that law can be charged as a misdemeanor. To make it a felony, prosecutors would need to show that Mr. Trump falsified the records to help commit or conceal a second crime — in this case, violating a New York State election law, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. That second aspect has largely gone untested, and would therefore make for a risky legal case against any defendant, let alone the former president.Defense lawyers might also argue that Mr. Trump, who was a first-time presidential candidate, did not know that the payments violated election law. And they could take aim at Mr. Cohen, arguing that he is a convicted criminal who has an ax to grind against Mr. Trump.In its statement, the Trump Organization noted that “the narrow issue of whether payments to Michael Cohen were properly recorded in a personal accounting ledger back in 2017 was thoroughly examined” by the federal prosecutors who charged Mr. Cohen and concluded he had engaged in a “pattern of deception.”Mr. Pecker’s testimony, however, could bolster the prosecution’s contention that Mr. Trump was involved in planning the hush money payment. A longtime ally of Mr. Trump, the publisher agreed to look out for potentially damaging stories about Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign. He agreed to this at a meeting in Mr. Trump’s office.In October 2016, Ms. Daniels’s agent and lawyer discussed the possibility of selling exclusive rights to her story to The National Enquirer, which would then never publish it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”But Mr. Pecker balked at the deal. He and the tabloid’s editor, Mr. Howard, agreed that Mr. Cohen would have to deal with Ms. Daniels’s team directly.When Mr. Cohen was slow to pay, Mr. Howard pressed him to get the deal done, lest Ms. Daniels reveal their discussions about suppressing her story. “We have to coordinate something,” Mr. Howard texted Mr. Cohen in late October 2016, “or it could look awfully bad for everyone.”Two days later, Mr. Cohen transferred the $130,000 to an account held by Ms. Daniels’s attorney.Michael Rothfeld More

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      John Eastman Is Defiant as Trump-Related Investigations Proliferate

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      A legal reckoning awaits a chief architect of Donald Trump’s effort to reverse his election loss. But in Mr. Eastman’s telling, he was far from a criminal.WASHINGTON — John C. Eastman, a legal architect of Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times under questioning by the House Jan. 6 committee.But in recently released testimony from the committee’s investigation, other witnesses had plenty to say about him.Many White House lawyers expressed contempt for Mr. Eastman, portraying him as an academic with little grasp of the real world. Greg Jacob, the legal counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence, characterized Mr. Eastman’s legal advice as “gravely, gravely irresponsible,” calling him the “serpent in the ear” of Mr. Trump. Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer, recounted “chewing out” Mr. Eastman. Pat A. Cipollone, the chief White House counsel, is described calling Mr. Eastman’s ideas “nutty.”In the coming months, Mr. Eastman will be facing a legal reckoning. He has been drawn into the criminal investigation into election interference in Atlanta, which is nearing a decision on potential indictments. The F.B.I. seized his iPhone. And the Jan. 6 committee, in one of its last acts, asked the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Eastman on a range of criminal charges, including obstructing a congressional proceeding. For good measure, he faces a disciplinary bar proceeding in California.A once-obscure scholar at the right-wing Claremont Institute, Mr. Eastman joined the Trump camp shortly after the election and was soon among a group of lawyers who, with the president’s blessing, largely commandeered decision-making from lawyers at the White House and on the Trump campaign.He championed a two-pronged strategy that the Jan. 6 committee portrayed as a coup plot. The first was enlisting party officials to organize slates of bogus electors in swing states where Mr. Trump lost, even after the results had been certified and recertified, as in Georgia. The second was pressuring Mr. Pence to deviate from the vice president’s traditionally ceremonial role and decline to certify all the electoral votes on Jan. 6.While Mr. Eastman refused to answer most of the committee’s questions, he has hardly been at a loss for words. At the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, held on the Ellipse moments before Trump supporters marched toward the Capitol, he spoke ominously of stolen elections, voting machine chicanery and ballots stuffed in a “secret folder.” Over the last two years he has remained defiant in a string of public appearances and interviews, and painted a picture sharply at odds with other accounts, most notably those of Mr. Pence and two of his aides who cooperated with the House committee.In Mr. Eastman’s telling of the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, he was far from a criminal. In fact, in a recent interview — a fuller version of one he gave to The New York Times in the fall of 2021 — he says he was helping to head off a potentially more perilous outcome.Mr. Eastman spoke of voter fraud at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, just before Trump supporters marched toward the Capitol.Jim Bourg/ReutersHe claims that in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4, he helped convince Mr. Trump that Mr. Pence did not have the power to pick whomever he wanted as president. And Mr. Eastman said his advice to the president and vice president was only that Mr. Pence should pause the certification of the election, giving legislatures more time to consider fraud allegations in certain states where Mr. Trump had lost.“I think my greatest contribution to this conversation is to have backed Trump away from the notion that Pence could just simply gavel him as re-elected,” Mr. Eastman said during the interview at his lawyer’s office in Washington, just blocks from the White House. “And, you know, you look at some of his tweets before that Jan. 4 meeting, he’s saying things like that, because that’s what people out there are saying. But if you look at his speech on Jan. 6, after I weigh in at that meeting, he’s saying exactly the opposite.”Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Few in the White House, however, saw him as anything close to a voice of moderation amid the riot that followed. And Mr. Eastman’s account differs in significant ways from those provided by Mr. Pence and his aides.The former vice president refused to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee but addressed the issue in a recent opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Pence wrote that on Jan. 5, a day after first meeting with Mr. Eastman in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump summoned the vice president for another meeting where “the president’s lawyers, including Mr. Eastman, were now requesting that I simply reject the electors.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.He said that he “later learned that Mr. Eastman had conceded to my general counsel that rejecting electoral votes was a bad idea and any attempt to do so would be quickly overturned by a unanimous Supreme Court. This guy didn’t even believe what he was telling the president.”The crux of Mr. Eastman’s defense is that he was simply a lawyer offering advice, and that he was acting in good faith, since he still believes many of the fraud claims that were made. “I’m not backing down on that,” he said. “I mean, the amount of evidence, even if I’m wrong about it, was certainly enough to have warranted further review.”In an email to Mike Pence’s lawyer on the night of Jan. 6, Mr. Eastman urged that the vice president should not certify the electoral vote.House Select Committee, via Associated PressAsked what he based such claims on, he cited a report issued last year by Michael J. Gableman, a former Wisconsin judge who was hired, and later fired, by the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, Robin Vos. The report endorsed a host of debunked claims. He also cited the deeply flawed documentary “2000 Mules,” directed by Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative activist who once pleaded guilty to felony campaign finance fraud. (He was later pardoned by Mr. Trump.)In recent weeks, Mr. Eastman has continued to assert himself as a far-right stalwart, signing a letter endorsing dissident Republicans’ ultimately failed efforts to block Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from becoming speaker of the House. Among the other signatories to the letter was Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for whom Mr. Eastman once clerked. In her own testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, Ms. Thomas referred to Mr. Eastman as “an active participant with the ‘Thomas clique’ clerks” who keep in touch.Perhaps Mr. Eastman’s most immediate potential exposure comes in the criminal investigation into election interference in Fulton County, Ga., which encompasses most of Atlanta. One of Mr. Eastman’s lawyers said last year that his client was “probably a target” in the inquiry, but his lawyers said this month that he had received no notification that he is one.Robert Sinners, the Trump campaign’s state director of Election Day operations in Georgia, testified to the Jan. 6 committee that he later felt “ashamed” at having taken part in the plan orchestrated by Mr. Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, to assemble bogus slates of Trump electors in Georgia and other states that Mr. Trump had lost.“I don’t think Rudy Giuliani’s intent was ever about legal challenges,” he said. “It was clear to me that he was working with folks like John Eastman and wanted to put pressure on the vice president to accept these slates of electors just regardless, without any approval from a governor, without any approval from, you know, the voters or a court, or anything like that.”Clark D. Cunningham, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law, said in an email that “if Sinner’s testimony, or similar testimony, is deemed credible, then John Eastman faces considerable risk of prosecution.”“If Eastman was part of a conspiracy to trick Georgia citizens into signing false election documents, neither his role as an attorney nor a personal belief that election results were tainted by fraud could justify such criminal conduct,” he added.In addition to his central role in the electors plan, Mr. Eastman appeared remotely before a Georgia State Senate panel on Dec. 3, 2020, and made several false claims about the election. Among them was the assertion that “the number of underaged individuals who were allowed to register” in the state “amounts allegedly up to approximately 66,000 people.”Asked about the claim during the interview last month, Mr. Eastman said that he had relied on a consultant who made an error that was later corrected, and that the actual number was about 2,000 who “were only 16 when they registered.” The new figure, he said, came from the same consultant. In a statement, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office said that “the system literally does not allow a person to register if they don’t have a birth date that makes them at least 17.5 years old.”A review of the data used by Mr. Eastman showed that he was referring to any Georgians who were recorded as having registered early going back to the 1920s; data entry errors appeared to be a common culprit, with many people’s registration year listed in place of their birth year. A review by The Times found only about a dozen Georgians who were recorded as having registered in 2020 when they were 16, in what appeared most likely to be another data-entry problem. Norman Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment and co-author of a lengthy report on the Fulton County inquiry, said Mr. Eastman “was referred for criminal prosecution by the Jan. 6 committee, with good reason,” adding that if charges are brought in Georgia “it’s hard to imagine that D.A. Fani Willis does not include him.”Jack Begg More