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      In a Different Capitol Siege, Republicans in Oregon Call for Accountability

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      G.O.P. lawmakers in the state are calling for the resignation of a legislator who appears to have encouraged protesters to breach the State Capitol in December.A little more than two weeks before a mob of supporters of Donald J. Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol, falsely claiming that he had won the election, a strikingly similar event had unfolded on the other side of the country, at the State Capitol in Oregon.There, in December, a restive crowd had breached the exterior doors and battled law enforcement officers in a building that is capped by a gold-leaf pioneer wielding an ax. The agitators, waving Trump flags and clad in body armor, wielded pepper spray and smashed windows. “Arrest Kate Brown!” the crowd chanted, referring to the state’s Democratic governor.Republicans in Congress have resisted a full, formal investigation into the much larger attack by protesters on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, but in Oregon, lawmakers facing new evidence about the Dec. 21 siege in Salem are taking a different approach. On Monday, the state’s House Republican caucus signed a letter encouraging the resignation of a colleague, Representative Mike Nearman, who in a newly discovered video appeared to be coaching protesters on how they might gain access to the building.The House Republican leader, Christine Drazan, said on Tuesday that she believed there was enough support in her caucus to expel Mr. Nearman from the State Legislature if he did not resign. Legislators in the state have never before expelled one of their own.“I would hope that Representative Nearman would make the decision to not be the first,” Ms. Drazan said in an interview.The protest in Salem was part of a series of demonstrations that broke out across the country after the Nov. 3 election as supporters egged on by Mr. Trump mobilized to contest an election they falsely believed had been stolen. Some of the protests targeted state leaders who had imposed lockdowns and mask orders to counter the coronavirus pandemic.In Salem on Dec. 21, dozens of people mobilized outside the Capitol, expressing frustration that the building had been closed to the public amid the pandemic. Carrying signs condemning the “lying lockdown” and shouting, “Let us in,” some in the crowd surged through an open door on the building’s north side before law enforcement officers moved to confront them.A larger crowd later managed to push in through the doorway but, facing a line of officers in riot gear, they did not reach the rotunda area or areas of the building where legislators were working. Officers later made some arrests and cleared the building.In the months since the breach, videos have made it clear that the crowd had assistance from someone on the inside. Security footage made public days afterward showed Mr. Nearman, who has represented a district that lies south and west of Salem for the past six years, opening a door in a way that allowed protesters inside as he left the building. Mr. Nearman, who walked around the building and re-entered it, faces misdemeanor charges of official misconduct and criminal trespass.After the first video emerged, Mr. Nearman said he did not condone violence but also said he believed that legislative proceedings should be open to the public.Then last week, new footage surfaced, suggesting not only that he may have expected protesters to enter the building, but that he had offered to help them. The video, earlier reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting, appeared to be streamed online a few days before the December intrusion. It showed Mr. Nearman making public remarks in which he coyly gives out his own cellphone number with a suggestion that anyone who might need to enter the Capitol building could text him if they needed a way inside. He referred to the idea as “Operation Hall Pass.”“That is just random numbers that I spewed out. That’s not anybody’s actual cellphone,” Mr. Nearman said after giving out his cell number. “And if you say, ‘I’m at the West entrance’ during the session and text to that number there, that somebody might exit that door while you’re standing there. But I don’t know anything about that.”Barbara Smith Warner, a Democratic lawmaker from Portland who is the House majority leader, said she found it hard to believe that a sitting legislator would put everyone in the building at risk, not only by intentionally opening the door but by doing it in a premeditated way.“That is mind-boggling,” Ms. Smith Warner said. “If that’s not traitorous, I don’t know what is.”Mr. Nearman did not respond to messages seeking comment. In an interview with the conservative radio host Lars Larson, Mr. Nearman said he had been “clowning around” in the video and “setting up” for what he had assumed would be a peaceful protest. He said he had been speaking in the video to a group that was not known to be violent.“I’m willing to have some consequences for what I did, or whatever, but this is super extreme,” Mr. Nearman said.Ms. Smith Warner said she came to see the Dec. 21 siege as a kind of dress rehearsal for what happened in the nation’s Capitol a few weeks later, with the same types of grievances on display. While Republican legislators in Oregon had been largely silent about the December siege until now, she said, she applauded those who were now willing to take on the issue.“I don’t want to minimize that at least some of the Republicans here are doing the right thing,” Ms. Smith Warner said. “That is no small thing. I do think their base will consider that a betrayal.”The U.S. House voted in May to create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, which left several people dead, injured law enforcement officers and had lawmakers fleeing for safety as a mob ransacked the complex. But that plan for a broader accounting of the day was stalled by Republicans in the Senate who appeared to fear the political consequences of an open-ended inquiry.In Oregon, House Speaker Tina Kotek announced that a bipartisan special committee would convene this week to consider whether Mr. Nearman should be expelled. Ms. Drazan, the Republican leader, said she believed that the matter should have been handled by a different committee but supported the idea of considering expulsion.If a resolution to expel goes to the full House, it would need 40 of the chamber’s 60 lawmakers to approve it. The chamber has 37 Democrats.Ms. Drazan said she did not see much of a parallel between the siege in Washington and the one in Salem, and said she preferred to keep her focus on events in Oregon rather than weighing in on how Republicans in Congress should handle the Jan. 6 events. She said she hoped Republican lawmakers would be as focused on doing the right thing in their own party as they have been on criticizing the opposing party.“I am just exhausted by national politics,” Ms. Drazan said. “They just need to get their act together. They need to start to serve the greater good.”Ms. Drazan noted that when Republican Party leadership in Oregon passed a resolution that embraced the unfounded conspiracy theory that the Jan. 6 attack was a left-wing “false flag” plot to frame Mr. Trump’s supporters, her caucus in the Legislature disavowed the resolution, declaring that there was no evidence of a false flag effort and that the election was over.“We have, I hope, a clear-minded view of what is public service and what is not,” Ms. Drazan said.Mr. Nearman was among those who signed the letter. More

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      How Eric Adams, Mayoral Candidate, Mixed Money and Political Ambition

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      Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has called money the “enemy of politics.” But his fund-raising has repeatedly pushed the boundaries of campaign-finance and ethics laws.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, had begun making the rounds for a nascent mayoral campaign when he arrived at a small gathering in spring 2018.The real estate developer David Schwartz had invited associates to meet Mr. Adams — and cut him a check — at his company’s Manhattan offices. Mr. Adams delivered a short stump speech, talking about his conversion to a plant-based diet and how as mayor he would ensure that schoolchildren no longer ate pizza that resembled cardboard, according to people who were there. He raised $20,000 that day, records show.Mr. Schwartz’s company, Slate Property Group, had recently sought city permission to erect a tower in Downtown Brooklyn nearly twice as tall as zoning allowed. Six months after the fund-raiser, Mr. Adams endorsed Slate’s zoning change, despite objections from the local community board.Mr. Adams, 60, a former police officer who is among the leading candidates in the June Democratic primary for mayor, has termed money the “enemy of politics” and called for complete public financing of campaigns. Yet his dealings with Mr. Schwartz offer but one example of how, across his 15 years in elected office, he has used government power to benefit donors and advance his political ambitions.Mr. Adams’s relationships with his donors, as a state senator and then as borough president, have at times drawn attention and prompted investigations. His ties to developers have increasingly come under fire by critics of the gentrification that is sweeping across Brooklyn and much of the city. He has never been formally accused of wrongdoing. But a review by The New York Times of campaign filings, nonprofit filings, lobbying reports and other records shows that, to a greater degree than is publicly known, he has continued to push the boundaries of campaign-finance and ethics laws.Since taking office as borough president in 2014, Mr. Adams has cut a wide swath in raising money for his campaign. He has amassed the largest war chest of any of the mayoral candidates, with about $7.9 million on hand, according to the city’s Campaign Finance Board. More than a third of the money he has raised from private sources has come from people associated with the real estate industry.At the same time, he has promoted Brooklyn and himself through a nonprofit group, One Brooklyn Fund Inc., that has permitted donors to support him without the spending limits city law imposes on political campaigns.Mr. Adams has taken money from developers who, like Mr. Schwartz, have lobbied him or won his recommendation for crucial zoning changes. In several cases, he appears to have violated city campaign-finance law by failing to report that developers and others have raised money for him. That may have allowed him to obtain public matching funds to which he was not entitled.He has solicited and received donations from people and entities that sought, and in some cases were awarded, grants from his office’s annual $59 million capital fund. And he has wielded the megaphone of his office for the causes, people and groups he favors, including his contributors.Mr. Adams has also forged close ties with lobbyists who have registered to influence him for their clients. Two of the lobbyists sit on his nonprofit’s board, and a third was recently hired as a campaign consultant.Mr. Adams declined to be interviewed but issued a statement about his fund-raising record.“Black candidates for office are often held to a higher, unfair standard — especially those from lower-income backgrounds such as myself,” he said.“No campaign of mine has ever been charged with a serious fund-raising violation, and no contribution has ever affected my decision-making as a public official — yet I am still being cross-examined for accusations made and answered more than a decade ago. I hope that by becoming mayor I can change minds and create one equal standard for all.”Seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor, Mr. Adams handed out fliers last month in Corona, Queens.James Estrin/The New York TimesIn many ways, Mr. Adams’s mix of money and politics reflects a career spent disregarding established norms in favor of nurturing constituencies that have helped him rise through New York’s civic life. He has gone from gadfly, an outspoken advocate for Black police officers, to political insider in Albany and Brooklyn, from Democrat to Republican and back again. As borough president, he has embraced real estate developers while appealing to public-housing residents and railing against gentrification.Politics is, of course, inherently transactional, and generations of elected officials have raised money from people with interests before their government. That nexus has traditionally been challenging ground for regulators and prosecutors to police.That was the case in 2017, when federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York examined episodes in which Mayor Bill de Blasio or his surrogates sought donations from people seeking favors from the city, and then made inquiries to city agencies on their behalf. In deciding not to bring charges, the acting United States attorney, Joon H. Kim, cited “the particular difficulty in proving criminal intent in corruption schemes where there is no evidence of personal profit.” Mr. de Blasio received a warning letter about those activities from the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board.Mr. de Blasio, like Mr. Adams, used a nonprofit to raise money. Amid the controversy, he shut it down.Richard Briffault, a former chairman of the Conflicts of Interest Board, said that while self-enrichment was the primary focus of local ethics laws, soliciting contributions for a campaign or nonprofit from people who stand to benefit from one’s actions would also present ethical issues.“If somebody is using their public position in order to sway donations, that would certainly be, if not officially barred, clearly unethical,” said Mr. Briffault, who now teaches election law and government ethics at Columbia Law School.Conflicts of interest can also be more nuanced. Elected officials, he said, may feel an unconscious bias: “It’s reciprocity in some fundamental sense. We want to be nice to people who have been nice to us.”A Prodigious Fund-RaiserMr. Adams speaking about the Police Department in front of City Hall in 1998. He was on the force for more than two decades.  Chester Higgins Jr./The New York TimesMr. Adams rose to prominence in the 1990s as an outspoken critic of the city’s Police Department from within the ranks, calling out what he saw as institutional racism and arguing for criminal justice reform. He eventually became president of the Grand Council of Guardians, an advocacy group for Black officers, and co-founded a second group, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. Through that activism, he has said, he gained experience raising money for causes across New York.Mr. Adams further honed that skill when, after 22 years on the police force, he won election to the State Senate in 2005. After Democrats claimed the Senate majority, he was named chairman of the plum Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee. According to a 2010 analysis by Bennett Liebman, then the executive director of Albany Law School’s Government Law Center, Mr. Adams raised nearly $74,000 that year from racing and gaming interests.“Has there ever been as active a committee chair receiving political contributions as Senator Eric Adams?” Mr. Liebman wrote.Mr. Adams soon became embroiled in a scandal after his committee helped choose a purveyor of video-lottery machines at Aqueduct Racetrack. The state inspector general found that he and other Senate Democrats had fraternized with lobbyists and accepted significant campaign contributions from people affiliated with the contenders.Mr. Adams disavowed responsibility.“This process — it disturbed me,” he told investigators, according to an interview transcript, adding that “it was created beyond my arrival.”Mr. Adams at the State Senate in 2009. He would soon be entangled in a scandal involving lobbyists and Aqueduct Racetrack.Mike Groll/Associated PressBut documents from the investigation, never previously disclosed, show that during the bidding process, several contenders were invited to a Sept. 3, 2009, birthday fund-raiser for Mr. Adams at the Grand Havana Room, a Midtown Manhattan cigar bar and haunt of the politically powerful.“Team, we will absolutely need to be present at this event for Senator Adams,” Andrew Frank, a consultant to the Aqueduct Entertainment Group, wrote in an email to its principals, according to a transcript of his interview with investigators. The company’s lobbyists had recommended going, Mr. Frank recalled in the interview.With the support of Senate leaders including Mr. Adams, Gov. David A. Paterson selected Aqueduct Entertainment Group for the contract. Among other issues, the inspector general’s report faulted Mr. Adams and other senators for attending a celebratory dinner at the home of a company lobbyist before the contract was finalized. The senators, the inspector general said, had used “exceedingly poor judgment.”Ultimately, state officials rescinded the contract award and restarted the process. Federal prosecutors investigated but did not bring charges.For Mr. Adams, though, the episode was both a warning and a prologue.Promoting His Borough, and HimselfIn 2014, Mr. Adams became Brooklyn borough president. An inquiry opened that year into his solicitation of funding.James Estrin/The New York TimesOn the next-to-last day of February 2014, leaders of Brooklyn businesses, schools and hospitals filtered into Borough Hall for a discussion of how they might help “enhance the lives of Brooklynites.” They were handed lists of ready-planned events — a turkey drive, concerts, holiday celebrations — along with fliers featuring corporate logos to show how they would be recognized for their sponsorship.“I was a little puzzled about what was going on,” said Lyn Hill, who attended as a representative of New York Methodist Hospital in Park Slope.Their host was Mr. Adams, newly inaugurated to a job, borough president, with limited power — making detailed recommendations, but not deciding, on zoning changes, awarding capital grants and appointing community board members — but abundant opportunity for civic boosterism.The cheerleading art had been perfected by Mr. Adams’s predecessor, Marty Markowitz, “Mr. Brooklyn,” who had elevated the borough’s profile, and his own, with an array of events. To pay for them, he had created a network of nonprofit groups that raised millions of dollars, much of it from donors with business before the city.Mr. Adams would follow in his footsteps. To enlist supporters for his new nonprofit, One Brooklyn, he had organized the Borough Hall event, with an invitation list based in part on the donor rolls for Mr. Markowitz’s nonprofits, records show.One Brooklyn had yet to register with the state, and after the event drew media attention, the city’s Department of Investigation opened an inquiry into whether it had violated conflict-of-interest laws. In an August 2014 memo, the inspector general, Andrew Sein, concluded that Mr. Adams and his nonprofit appeared to have improperly solicited funding from groups that either had or would soon have matters pending before his office.At least three entities that sent representatives were seeking capital grants from Mr. Adams’s office at around the time of the event, investigators found. There is no indication that those organizations ultimately donated.Mr. Adams’s office emphasized to investigators that the slip-ups had occurred early in his administration and promised to comply with the law going forward. The Department of Investigation normally refers such cases to the Conflict of Interest Board to determine penalties. Neither agency would comment, but no enforcement action was taken.Mr. Adams is the only one of the city’s current borough presidents with such a nonprofit, which under city law is permitted to raise private money to augment limited government funding. The group has given out grants and staged dozens of events for Mr. Adams to host, to celebrate holidays, to honor constituent groups, and more. At a candidate forum last week, Mr. Adams said he was proud of that work and had hired a compliance officer to ensure rules were followed.“I did not go from being a person that enforced the law to become one that breaks the law,” he said.But One Brooklyn has also proven to be an effective vehicle for him in circumventing the city’s campaign-finance laws. In all, it has reported taking in at least $2.2 million.Under the campaign-finance laws, citywide candidates cannot accept corporate donations and may take no more than $400 per election cycle from people doing business with the city. Nonprofits like One Brooklyn, however, can accept unlimited contributions, provided they adhere to certain strictures.To be eligible to accept unlimited contributions, One Brooklyn must certify that it spends no more than 10 percent of its funding on communications for Mr. Adams. The intent is to blunt a nonprofit’s political messaging power.But Mr. Adams found a workaround — using advertising dollars and taxpayer resources to publicize One Brooklyn’s events and himself.A newsletter, also called One Brooklyn, displayed Mr. Adams’s picture on some pages six times and featured events staged by the nonprofit and the borough president’s office. The newsletter, last published before the coronavirus pandemic, was funded by advertisers, some of whom are also Mr. Adams’s donors.The January 2018 issue, for instance, depicted the borough president and his mother on the cover with the headline “How I Got Mom Off Insulin in 30 Days.” Broadway Stages, a film-production company that deals with the city government on permitting and real estate issues, bought a full-page ad congratulating Mr. Adams “for your dedication and commitment to Brooklyn.” The company has given $25,000 to One Brooklyn, and its employees have contributed to Mr. Adams’s campaign fund. A company spokesman, Juda Engelmayer, said the owners had long been friends with Mr. Adams and supported many community causes.A newsletter, paid for by advertisers, that Mr. Adams has used to promote himself and events hosted by his nonprofit.Mr. Adams has also used his government website to promote One Brooklyn’s events and his nonprofit’s donors.The city’s conflict-of-interest rules prohibit public servants from soliciting or accepting donations from anyone with a “particular matter” pending before them. On its website, One Brooklyn says the borough president’s office does not accept such donations. But the nonprofit appears to have done so.Over four years beginning in 2015, Green-Wood Cemetery, a national historic landmark, was awarded three grants from the borough president’s capital fund, totaling $907,000, for an education center and a new trolley and caboose. The cemetery was twice invited to One Brooklyn’s annual gala and donated $5,000 each time. The first gift, in 2017, was accepted; the second was returned because of a possible conflict, Green-Wood’s president, Richard J. Moylan, said by email. Green-Wood’s final grant — for $500,000, to finish the education center — was awarded in 2019, with Mr. Adams announcing the gift with a gigantic mock check.“Green-Wood is proud of our role as a good corporate citizen,” Mr. Moylan said.One Brooklyn has allowed campaign donors to support Mr. Adams’s political ambitions far more generously than they can under the city’s campaign-finance law.Jed Walentas, who runs the development firm Two Trees Management, is limited to $400 in campaign contributions per election cycle, because he is on the list of people doing business with the city. But Mr. Walentas’s family foundation has given One Brooklyn $50,000, records show. (Mr. Adams’s campaign has also received at least $24,000 from other donors solicited by or connected to Mr. Walentas.)Jed Walentas is a property developer with business before the city. His family foundation has given Mr. Adams’s nonprofit $50,000.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesFor his part, Mr. Adams championed a $2.7 billion streetcar plan that Mr. Walentas has promoted through a group he founded, Friends of Brooklyn Queens Connector Inc. The streetcar, Mr. Adams tweeted in 2018, “has real potential to be one of those solutions for our disconnected waterfront.” The project stalled, and Mr. Adams has recently distanced himself from it in the glare of the mayoral race.The borough president is also in line to issue an opinion on a rezoning request for Two Trees’ next big project, River Ring, a pair of apartment and commercial towers with a waterfront park in Williamsburg. In city filings, Kenneth Fisher, a lobbyist for Two Trees, has identified the borough president as a potential lobbying target.Mr. Adams, in a recent interview, said he was already “extremely impressed” with the way the Two Trees plan had taken account of rising sea levels. “This is how we need to start thinking,” he added. Mr. Walentas declined to comment.The lines between Mr. Adams’s nonprofit and his campaign can sometimes blur.Edolphus Towns, a former congressman and one of two lobbyists on One Brooklyn’s board, has bundled about $7,000 in campaign contributions for Mr. Adams, records show.Mr. Towns has also registered to lobby Mr. Adams on behalf of Arker Diversified Companies, an affordable-housing developer that worked on the Fountains, a project in East New York that was supported by the borough president, according to city lobbying filings. A political action committee created by Arker executives gave Mr. Adams’s campaigns $6,350 between 2013 and 2016. They declined to comment.Mr. Towns said he had not lobbied Mr. Adams and did not recall registering to do so. He said they had become friends when Mr. Adams, then in the Police Department, worked with Mr. Towns, then a congressman, on criminal justice issues. “Eric was very helpful in getting rid of toy guns that look like real guns,” Mr. Towns said.‘What Oil Is to Texas’Mr. Adams leaving a campaign event last week in Manhattan.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesThe borough president’s relationship to the real estate industry has become something of a campaign issue, and several other candidates have pledged to refuse developers’ contributions.Mr. Adams, who owns the small rental building where he lives, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, dismisses that suggestion, arguing that all landlords should not be tarred for the sins of the bad ones. And while he has come out in favor of a number of his donors’ projects, and of development in general, he has decried the gentrification that has displaced longtime residents and businesses.“Go back to Iowa,” he said in remarks directed at newcomers during a January 2020 event in Harlem. After the comments drew criticism, Mr. Adams tried to clarify: He said he welcomed people from elsewhere but wanted them to invest in their new neighborhoods.In interviews, several figures in the real estate industry said contributions to Mr. Adams’s campaign were not simply transactional but reflective of his overall support..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Whatever the precise dynamic, Mr. Adams had amassed at least $937,000 from developers, property managers, architects, contractors and others as of his campaign filing in March. That represented more than a third of his total private contributions, excluding public matching funds, an analysis shows, and included money from developers of luxury buildings in gentrifying neighborhoods.(In order to qualify for public matching funds under a new city program, Mr. Adams’s campaign voluntarily returned more than $300,000 of that real estate industry money — including portions of several donations referenced in this article — because it exceeded the program’s contribution limits.)Among the early backers of Mr. Adams’s mayoral bid was Mr. Schwartz, the Slate group co-founder.On May 25, 2018, a Slate affiliate filed a city land-use application to build a 40-story tower on a wedge-shaped plot in Downtown Brooklyn zoned for roughly 24 stories. Mr. Adams would have to issue an advisory opinion on the proposed zoning change.Three weeks after the filing, on the evening of June 13, Mr. Schwartz hosted the fund-raiser for Mr. Adams at his East 29th Street offices. According to people who attended, Mr. Schwartz organized the event and personally invited guests.Mr. Schwartz, who was on the city’s doing-business list, distanced himself and Slate from the event. He did not personally contribute; he had last given Mr. Adams’s campaign $320 in 2015. And he sent the invitation in the name of a management company that operates in the same offices as Slate. The invitation — in blue, yellow and white, with an “Eric Adams 2021” logo — suggested contributions ranging from $300 for a “friend” to $1,000 for a “sponsor.”Several of Mr. Schwartz’s vendors donated: a demolition contractor gave $2,000, a real estate lawyer $2,500 and an appliance vendor $5,000.Under city campaign-finance law, amounts greater than $500 spent by third parties on fund-raising events and the value of event spaces are supposed to be reported as in-kind contributions, and their organizers, in most cases, must be listed as intermediaries. But Mr. Adams’s disclosures did not list Mr. Schwartz as an in-kind contributor; nor did he report paying for the event himself. What’s more, he did not report Mr. Schwartz as an intermediary, or “bundler,” of others’ donations. Had Mr. Adams done so, the donations Mr. Schwartz solicited would not have been eligible for public matching funds, since he was on the doing-business list.A lawyer for Slate, David Grandeau, said in a statement that “the value of hosting the event was de minimis, and all of the host’s obligations were fulfilled.”David Schwartz, a developer, organized a fund-raising event for Mr. Adams in 2018. Mr. Adams later opposed a community board and came out in favor of an application Mr. Schwartz had before the city.Emily AssiranThe Times identified several other fund-raisers others had hosted for which Mr. Adams’s campaign did not report any expenditures, in-kind contributions or intermediaries. A campaign spokesman said that he did not use a professional finance team, and that paperwork had sometimes fallen through the cracks.Four months after Mr. Schwartz’s event, Brooklyn’s Community Board 2 recommended against Slate’s zoning change, citing what its acting chairwoman, Irene Janner, called the distressing “Manhattanization” of the borough’s central business district.But on Nov. 30, Mr. Adams came out in favor of the rezoning, provided the developer met certain conditions, such as affordable housing designed for families and the elderly, using Brooklyn-based contractors and incorporating features like solar panels. In his report, he referred to the need for office space, among other considerations, but did not disclose his fund-raising relationship with Mr. Schwartz. The City Council later approved Slate’s rezoning.The Slate executive was one of at least three donors receiving the borough president’s endorsement for zoning changes against the wishes of community boards. The others were also later approved by the City Council.Last September, for example, Mr. Adams came out in favor of a rezoning for a proposed 13-story building on Coney Island Avenue in Windsor Terrace, overlooking Prospect Park.Some local residents and Community Board 7 had opposed the plans by JEMB Realty, the developer, arguing mainly that the building’s height would be inappropriate for the neighborhood. Mr. Adams’s endorsement came with several conditions, including more parking for cars and bicycles.In March, JEMB’s founder, Joseph L. Jerome, contributed $2,000 to the borough president’s campaign. Mr. Jerome had last donated to Mr. Adams in March 2015.Mr. Jerome said the donations had nothing to do with Mr. Adams’s actions. “He’s a very good candidate,” Mr. Jerome said.Late last year, Mr. Adams appeared by Zoom as a special guest at an investor meetingfor SL Green, Manhattan’s largest office landlord, offering reassurance after a pandemic year of empty buildings.Mr. Adams called SL Green an “amazing company,” addressed its investors as “partners” and assured them that he would push for a speeded return to offices, suggesting that up to 90 percent of workers could do so safely.“What oil is to Texas, real estate is to New York,” Mr. Adams said. “And we take great pride in having the real oil fields here in our real estate community.”Not long afterward, on March 11, the wife and the sister of SL Green’s chairman, Marc Holliday, along with three company executives, donated a total of $10,000 to Mr. Adams’s campaign. None had contributed before. Mr. Holliday, who is on the city’s doing-business list, did not donate. Mr. Holliday and SL Green declined to comment.The Bully PulpitMr. Adams has used news conferences to promote donors’ products and causes.Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York TimesIn March, Mr. Adams stood in front of Borough Hall, his thumb up, as the influential New York City local of the Service Employees International Union endorsed him for mayor. Beside him stood Tiffany Raspberry, a lobbyist who is also a consultant on his campaign payroll.“Let’s Go #TeamAdams!” Ms. Raspberry tweeted afterward.Ms. Raspberry has registered to lobby Mr. Adams on behalf of at least three clients over the past few years. Executives from all three organizations have donated to Mr. Adams’s campaign fund, as has Ms. Raspberry. She has given to One Brooklyn as well.One of the clients was Mr. Schwartz of Slate. Another, Core Services Group, is a shelter provider for the homeless.In 2017, after city officials announced that Core would open a shelter in Crown Heights, local residents complained that their area was unfairly burdened. Mr. Adams took Core’s side, using a potent tool he has wielded for some donors: the platform of his office. In his newsletter, he urged the community to embrace the shelter and its occupants, writing that his mother had called to tell him that when he was a child, they had routinely been on the verge of homelessness.“Although I still believe that the city should have opened the first of its new shelters in communities that don’t currently have any, my mom has assisted me in amending my thinking on this issue,” Mr. Adams wrote.Over the next three years, 13 Core executives and employees contributed nearly $7,000 to his campaign, records show. In a statement, Core said its employees know “the importance of supporting leaders who champion policies that leave no New Yorker behind.”In an email, Ms. Raspberry said she had known Mr. Adams for 25 years, since her mother worked in the same police precinct as him, and had supported him because he had “consistently been there for people in need and communities of color.”She added, “I find it disturbing that any time a Black woman achieves any level of success on her own merits, questions are raised.”Mr. Adams has publicized products as well.In 2018, he held a news conference at Borough Hall to tout BolaWrap, a Spider-Man-like device that he said the police could use to subdue criminal suspects or the emotionally disturbed.“I’m formally requesting the department pilot this nonlethal restraint technology,” Mr. Adams tweeted later.Scot Cohen, executive chairman of Wrap Technologies, the company that sells the device, had given Mr. Adams’s campaign $1,500 four months before the news conference and gave $2,500 more three months later. The chief financial officer, James Barnes, contributed $5,000. And during the same period, Mr. Adams received $5,100 from Richard Abbe, a former business associate of Mr. Cohen’s and co-founder of Iroquois Capital Management, a Wrap investor. Mr. Abbe and Wrap executives did not respond to requests for comment.The company has featured Mr. Adams prominently on its website.Others who have contributed to Mr. Adams and benefited from his bully pulpit say they simply appreciate his attentiveness to their causes.In 2015, a year into his first term, Mr. Adams organized a news conference on a snowy Sunday to highlight the plight of Hurricane Sandy victims. He stood with two lawyers outside the Gerritsen Beach home of a family that said an insurance company had fraudulently denied its claim for damage from the 2012 storm. Mr. Adams urged homeowners to refile their rejected claims, and called on the state attorney general’s office to oversee the process.Three days earlier, records show, the two lawyers, along with the father and brother of one of them, had donated a total of $8,500 to the Adams campaign. The lawyers’ donations were the largest they had ever made to a city official, records show.One of the lawyers, Benjamin Pinczewski, said he and his partner later recovered millions of dollars in settlements for the hurricane victims.Mr. Pinczewski said the donations and news conference were unrelated and noted that he had donated to Mr. Adams on many other occasions. After learning that insurance companies were wrongly denying claims from hurricane victims, he said, he had reached out to many politicians. Only Mr. Adams and a local councilman responded.“Eric showed me right then and there that he wasn’t just talk,” Mr. Pinczewski said.Reporting was contributed by More

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      How Georgia's New Law Risks Making Election Subversion Easier

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      A reminder from a January phone call that the reform bill by congressional Democrats may not have the proper protections.What would have happened if the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had responded, “OK, I’ll try,” in a January phone call after President Trump asked him to “find” 11,000 votes?No one can be sure. What is clear is that the question has been overlooked in recent months. Public attention has mostly moved on from Mr. Trump’s bid to overturn the election; activists and politicians are focused more on whether to restrict or expand voting access, particularly by mail.But trying to reverse an election result without credible evidence of widespread fraud is an act of a different magnitude than narrowing access. A successful effort to subvert an election would pose grave and fundamental risks to democracy, risking political violence and secessionism.Beyond any provisions on voting itself, the new Georgia election law risks making election subversion easier. It creates new avenues for partisan interference in election administration. This includes allowing the state elections board, now newly controlled by appointees of the Republican State Legislature, to appoint a single person to take control of typically bipartisan county election boards, which have important power over vote counting and voter eligibility.The law also gives the Legislature the authority to appoint the chair of the state election board and two more of its five voting members, allowing it to appoint a majority of the board. It strips the secretary of state of the chair and a vote.Even without this law, there would still be a risk of election subversion: Election officials and administrators all over the country possess important powers, including certification of election results, that could be abused in pursuit of partisan gain. And it’s a risk that H.R. 1, the reform bill congressional Democrats are pushing, does relatively little to address.The new Georgia law does not inherently make it easier to “find” 11,000 votes. Almost all of the powers that the Legislature might use already existed — they were just vested in other people or bodies. They could have been abused before and could be in the future, regardless of the new law.And the law has eligibility requirements for a chair that exclude many of the sort of people who would seem likeliest to abuse their authority, including anyone who has been a political candidate, campaign contributor or party organizer in the two years before the appointment. This is not guaranteed to preclude a rabid partisan leading the board, but no such checks had existed on the secretary of state. (Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican, previously served in the Georgia House of Representatives.)The law takes power from the very person, Mr. Raffensperger, who a mere three months ago rebuffed Mr. Trump’s plea to find 11,000 votes. State legislators demoted Mr. Raffensperger for a reason: Many were probably sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s allegations. And if the Legislature had a problem with how Mr. Raffensperger handled the 2020 election, it is reasonable to wonder whether it might have supported board members aggressively backing the claims advanced by Mr. Trump.Can state boards, county boards or anyone else use their administrative powers to flip electoral outcomes? After the November election, a majority of Republican members of Congress and state attorneys general signed on to efforts that would have invalidated millions of votes and brought about a constitutional crisis. With that backdrop, it seems naïve to assume that no one would try to abuse such power, whether in Georgia or elsewhere.It’s worth going back to Mr. Trump’s infamous call. While the oft-quoted line about “finding” votes makes it sound as if he wanted Mr. Raffensperger to manufacture votes out of thin air, Mr. Trump said he had already found the votes, in the form of thousands of ballots he said were cast illegally:“We have all the votes we need. You know, we won the state. If you took, these are the most minimal numbers, the numbers that I gave you, those are numbers that are certified, your absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses, your out-of-state voters, 4,925. You know when you add them up, it’s many more times, it’s many times the 11,779 number.”In addition to the 4,925 out-of-state voters mentioned, Mr. Trump baselessly asserted in the call that there were hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots with forged signatures. He alleged, based on imperfect matches between lists of voters, that there were 4,502 voters who voted but weren’t registered; 18,325 voters with vacant addresses; 904 voters who voted only with a P.O. box address; and nearly 5,000 votes by dead people. And with virtually no evidence whosever, he alleged great malfeasance in Atlanta’s Fulton County, including 18,000 votes having to do with someone who did something nefarious and “3,000 pounds” of shredded ballots.County and state election officials hold a variety of powers relevant to such claims. They evaluate whether to accept or reject ballots, and they certify results. In Georgia, they hear eligibility challenges. It would have been hard to employ these powers to aid Mr. Trump, let alone to survive a subsequent court challenge. But there are levers that they could have at least tried to pull, even if it’s not clear what would have come of it.One option is that the state board could have usurped the power of Fulton County, based on the president’s allegations in the general election and other allegations from the primary (the law requires evidence of failed administration in at least two elections over the prior two years). The state board could have either used the president’s allegations as a basis to refuse to certify the result or to disqualify otherwise eligible voters.It would be hard or even impossible to pull this off immediately after an election. The law requires a fairly drawn-out hearing process before the state can interfere in county elections. The preliminary hearing can’t be held for at least 30 days after an initial petition, which is after the Georgia certification deadline. But perhaps a nefarious board could lay the groundwork earlier, potentially putting a newly appointed superintendent in control before the elections, when he or she would have the ability to pre-emptively disqualify voters and ballots.County election boards heard similar kinds of challenges to voter eligibility during the Georgia runoff. The state Republican Party and a Texas group challenged the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in December, based on whether a voter appeared to match someone on the Postal Service list of people in the National Change of Address Registry. A few small counties actually went through with trying to invalidate voters on this basis.This eligibility challenge was rejected by the U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, who happens to be the sister of Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost the 2018 governor’s race in Georgia to Brian Kemp. But although the eligibility challenge faltered in the runoff, it is not obvious that ironclad protections exist against eligibility challenges, either as a matter of court precedent or federal law. A narrower challenge could have had a better chance of surviving a court challenge. And the new Georgia law makes these kinds of challenges easier, by allowing a single person to challenge the eligibility of an unlimited number of voters.Another option to thwart an election might be to stop certification. The new Georgia law does not do much to make it easier to block certification, as the secretary of state — not the board or the Legislature — still certifies results statewide.But county election boards, including in Georgia, generally certify their election results, which the secretary of state then certifies statewide. Mr. Trump tried to thwart efforts to certify the results certification, turning routine hearings into televised events. In the end, Mr. Trump’s effort failed. Election officials overwhelmingly acted to preserve the integrity of the election, despite immense political pressure to act. Even so, the president did manage to persuade a handful of officials to vote against certification on dubious grounds.If secretaries of state had not certified election results, whether in Georgia or elsewhere, it might have plunged the country into crisis with uncertain consequences. It is not unreasonable to wonder whether there’s a chance of something similar occurring in the future, given how many House Republicans refused to certify the electoral count.Election administrators may have other options to undermine elections, besides disqualifying ballots and voters or decertifying the results, either in Georgia or in other states.All of this represents an obvious threat to American democracy. And yet the risk of election subversion has been overshadowed by the fight over new restrictions on voting, especially by mail. Progressives have been concerned about these kinds of restrictions for years, and the reform bill H.R. 1 was written in part as a response. But since the law was mainly devised before the 2020 election, its provisions don’t directly address the new risk that election officials could subvert election results. There’s no provision, for instance, requiring nonpartisan administration or certification of federal elections.H.R. 1 does have provisions that would indirectly limit the options available to actors who might try to subvert elections. One notable example is a provision against voter caging, which precludes eligibility challenges based on matched lists, like the change of address notification challenge attempted in December. It also includes provisions that ensure basic election administration, like requiring that people don’t wait in line longer than 30 minutes.But with the main focus of the proposed law being to improve democracy, by expanding voting access and more, it is not at all obvious whether H.R. 1 amounts to a comprehensive effort to protect democracy. And even if it does have the protections it needs, the risk of election subversion has received such little attention that relevant provisions might not be included in a slimmed-down bill. Those provisions have not been mentioned in most proposals for a narrower bill. More

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      Ronny Jackson Harassed Staff as White House Doctor, Watchdog Says

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCongressman Harassed Staff and Got Drunk as White House Doctor, Watchdog SaysRonny Jackson, a Republican who enthused that President Donald J. Trump had “incredible genes,” sexually harassed a woman on a White House trip and had “meltdowns” with his staff, a report found.Investigators found that Representative Ronny Jackson, Republican of Texas and the former White House physician, created a hostile work environment and engaged in inappropriate behavior.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesCatie Edmondson and March 3, 2021, 7:17 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Ronny Jackson, the White House doctor who rhapsodized about Donald J. Trump’s “incredible genes” and went on to win a Texas congressional seat with the former president’s help, cursed and belittled his subordinates, drank and took sleeping pills on the job, and sexually harassed a woman, according to a detailed report released Wednesday by the Pentagon’s inspector general.Dr. Jackson, a rear admiral in the Navy when he served as White House physician, became infamous for his rosy assessment of Mr. Trump’s “excellent health” in early 2018, when he said that had the commander in chief, 71 at the time, simply adhered to a better diet over the previous two decades, he could have lived to be 200.His effusive praise of Mr. Trump later helped win him a nomination to become the secretary of veterans affairs. But Mr. Trump abandoned the nomination several weeks later after numerous news accounts reported that Dr. Jackson was a bully to his staff, kept sloppy medical records, drank too much and loosely dispensed strong drugs on Air Force One and in the White House to curry favor with top officials.With the endorsement of Mr. Trump, who tweeted that “Ronny is strong on Crime and Borders, GREAT for our Military and Vets,” Dr. Jackson went on to win a Republican primary in Texas and was elected to Congress in 2020.On Wednesday, Dr. Jackson vehemently disputed the findings of the report. In a statement released by his congressional office, he accused the Pentagon’s investigators, who are nonpartisan, of seeking to punish him for his support of Mr. Trump.The searing report, which came after a nearly three-year investigation started by Glenn A. Fine, the acting inspector general for the Defense Department at the time, went further than previous news reports. It concluded that “Jackson’s overall course of conduct toward subordinates disparaged, belittled, bullied and humiliated them,” and documented instances in which Dr. Jackson was drunk or under the influence of a powerful sleeping drug while he was responsible for the president’s health and safety.The report also detailed evidence of what it said was Dr. Jackson’s harassment of a woman he worked with in the medical unit. In 2014, before a presidential trip to Manila as the physician for President Barack Obama, the report said Dr. Jackson told a male subordinate that he thought a female medical professional they were working with had a nice body, using coarse and demeaning language, and said he would “like to see more of her tattoos.”While in Manila, witnesses said, Dr. Jackson went out for a night of drinking. After he came back to the hotel where the medical team was staying, they said, he began yelling and pounding on the female subordinate’s hotel room door between 1 and 2 a.m. while “visibly intoxicated.” Witnesses said he created so much noise they worried it would wake Mr. Obama.“He had kind of bloodshot eyes,” the woman recalled to investigators. “You could smell the alcohol on his breath, and he leaned into my room and he said, ‘I need you.’ I felt really uncomfortable.”“When a drunk man comes to your room and they say, ‘I need you,’ your mind goes to the worst,” she said.The report, first described by CNN, painted a picture of a physician who engaged in reckless and sometimes threatening behavior that created a toxic environment for subordinates. Nearly all of the 60 witnesses interviewed by investigators described Dr. Jackson’s “screaming, cursing” behavior and his “yelling, screeching, rage, tantrums and meltdowns” when dealing with subordinates.Investigators found that Dr. Jackson also engaged in inappropriate behavior on trips abroad with Mr. Trump.In Argentina, a witness recalled that Dr. Jackson “smelled of alcohol” as he assumed his duties as the primary physician on the trip, and that the doctor had a beer a few hours before going on duty, in defiance of a policy prohibiting White House medical personnel from drinking on presidential trips. Dr. Jackson had previously recounted to witnesses that he found that rule to be “ridiculous,” investigators said.Former subordinates interviewed by investigators raised concerns that Dr. Jackson took Ambien, a sleep-aid medication, to help him sleep during long overseas travel. Though it appears Dr. Jackson never was called upon to provide medical care after he had taken the drug, his subordinates worried that it could have left him incapacitated and unable to perform his duties.In his statement, Dr. Jackson accused the inspector general of resurrecting “false allegations” because “I have refused to turn my back on President Trump.”“I flat-out reject any allegation that I consumed alcohol while on duty,” Dr. Jackson said. “I also categorically deny any implication that I was in any way sexually inappropriate at work, outside of work or anywhere with any member of my staff or anyone else. That is not me, and what is alleged did not happen.”In a fact sheet also provided to reporters, Dr. Jackson’s office noted that Mr. Obama had promoted him to rear admiral “after the alleged events” outlined in the report, and had profusely praised him for his work.A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not reply to requests for comment on the report.Former Obama administration officials declined to comment Wednesday on the report or Dr. Jackson’s behavior while he served as White House physician. In 2018, several aides to Mr. Obama said they were surprised by the revelations about Dr. Jackson.Former White House officials said at the time that they had heard rumors about Dr. Jackson drinking, though all of them said they never saw him drunk on the job. But many said Dr. Jackson earned the nicknames “Candyman” and “Dr. Feelgood” for dispensing sleeping pills, muscle relaxants and other drugs with ease.“I didn’t see any of the alleged behaviors,” David Axelrod, who served as Mr. Obama’s senior adviser from 2009 to 2011, said in spring 2018. “My experience was consistently positive.”But the Pentagon report is unsparing in its details.Investigators were told that Dr. Jackson “yelled and cursed over the telephone at a medical subordinate while the subordinate was dealing with a medical emergency in Africa.” During a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, where Mr. Obama often vacationed, Dr. Jackson “cursed at subordinates for failing to purchase a specific type of bug spray,” the report said.“He would rage all the time,” one person is quoted anonymously in the report as saying about Dr. Jackson. “Screeching, red in the face, bug-eyed, sweating, ears red, jaw clenched. I mean I’m talking rage, and I’m a clinician. I’m a board-certified physician. Rage.”Investigators for the inspector general’s office said in the report that officials in Mr. Trump’s White House tried to stonewall the investigation, instructing Dr. Jackson not to answer any questions about his time as White House physician and insisting on having White House lawyers sit in on interviews with anyone who was employed by the administration at the time.“We determined that the potential chilling effect of their presence would prevent us from receiving accurate testimony,” investigators wrote in the report. Despite that, they wrote that interviews with former employees of the medical unit “and the documents we could access” were “sufficient to determine the facts and reach conclusions regarding these allegations based on a preponderance of available evidence.”In April 2020, Mr. Trump pushed out Mr. Fine as he purged a number of inspectors general with whom he disagreed. A person familiar with the incident said the investigation into Dr. Jackson played a role in Mr. Fine’s dismissal.Investigators were unable to corroborate accusations in 2018 by Senate Democrats that Dr. Jackson crashed a government vehicle after becoming intoxicated at a going-away party for a Secret Service agent. Dr. Jackson has consistently denied that he was ever involved in any accident involving alcohol, and the report said that “no information or witness testimony supported the allegation.”Jennifer Steinhauer More

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      How Investigative Journalism Flourished in Hostile Russia

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Aleksei NavalnyNavalny’s Life in OppositionKremlin AnxietyCourt DecisionWhat Will Yulia Navalnaya Do?Putin’s ‘Palace’AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storythe media equationHow Investigative Journalism Flourished in Hostile RussiaA new wave of news outlets has used conventional, and unconventional, methods to pierce the veil of Putin’s power.Roman Dobrokhotov, the founder of The Insider, one of a wave of new investigative news outlets in Russia, said that Russia “is possibly the most transparent country in the world.”Credit…Pierre Crom/Getty ImagesFeb. 21, 2021Updated 5:25 p.m. ETThe Russian language has introduced a few words that in recent years have been widely used and misused in English: disinformation, kompromat, Novichok.But the one that blows my mind is “probiv.” It’s drawn from the word that means “to pierce” — or to enter something into a search bar. Today, it refers to the practice by which anyone can buy, for a couple of dollars on the social media app Telegram or hundreds on a dark web marketplace, the call records, cellphone geolocation or air travel records of anyone in Russia you want to track. Probiv is purchased by jealous spouses or curious business partners, and criminals of various sorts. But it has also been used recently, and explosively, by journalists and political activists, overlapping categories in Russia, where the chief opposition leader, Aleksei A. Navalny, often makes use of the tools of investigative journalism.Probiv is only one of the factors that have made Russia, of all places, the most exciting place in the world for investigative journalism. There is a new wave of outlets, many using more conventional sourcing to pierce the veil of President Vladimir V. Putin’s power. And there is a growing online audience for their work in a country where the state controls, directly or indirectly, all of the major television networks.The boom in independent journalism and criticism of the government has reached a level “unseen in our country since the end of the 1990s,” Denis Volkov, the deputy director of the Levada Center, a Russian public opinion research group, wrote recently.Probiv has been a crucial part of that revival. The practice was at the heart of a stunning revelation late last year by the international investigative collective Bellingcat, working with the Russian site The Insider and other partners, identifying the agents from a secret Russian spy unit who poisoned Mr. Navalny. A reporter spent “a few hundred euros worth of cryptocurrency” for a trove of data. Then, in a riveting piece of theater, Mr. Navalny, working with Bellingcat, called one of those agents, pretending to be a senior government official, and tricked him into a confession. When Mr. Navalny returned to Russia after his treatment in Germany, he was promptly jailed for a parole violation in a case he has called fabricated, and now faces transport to a penal colony.The irony is delicious, of Mr. Putin seeing his own tools of corruption and surveillance turned against him by the underpaid police and intelligence officials who put the secrets up for sale. “Whatever Putin does keeps backfiring,” said Maria Pevchikh, who runs the investigative unit at Mr. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.Aleksei Navalny, the chief opposition leader to President Vladimir Putin, at a court hearing in Moscow this month. He faces transport to a penal colony.Credit…Babushkinsky District CourtProbiv is almost exclusively a Russian phenomenon. When Roman Dobrokhotov, who founded The Insider in 2013, was in Kyiv a couple of years ago, he said he asked a local journalist where he could find the phone records for someone he was researching and was surprised to learn that wasn’t a common practice. He said he realized that “Russia is possibly the most transparent country in the world,” adding, “If you have 10 bucks, you can find any information on anyone.”The New York Times and some other major Western outlets don’t use probiv, on the principle that you shouldn’t pay for stolen information. Many Russian journalists debate the ethics and legality of it as well. Bellingcat’s probiv maestro, Christo Grozev, has said he spent his own money — the independent news site Meduza estimated it at more than $13,000 — unmasking murderous Russian spies. (He told The Washington Post that his vendor assumed he was a criminal, and was horrified to learn he was a journalist.) Mr. Dobrokhotov said he wouldn’t buy probiv himself, but had analyzed the data Mr. Grozev purchased. (CNN and Der Spiegel also collaborated on the investigation of Mr. Navalny’s poisoning.) Other reporters said it’s routine to use for research, but not to cite in a finished article. But for some, those norms are shifting, too.“The audience doesn’t care whether you bought data or got it from a source,” said Roman Anin, the founder of iStories, a nonprofit Russian investigative site with a staff of 15. He said he had concluded that “since we live in a country where authorities are killing opposition leaders, let’s forget about these rules, because these stories are more important than our ethical rules.”A bot on Telegram that offers to identify the owner of any car.Credit…The New York TimesThat portal into Vladimir Putin’s world has opened even as some American journalists covering Russian interference in the 2016 election produced overheated essays and viral Twitter threads. They cast Mr. Putin, in the American imagination, as an all-powerful puppet master and everyone whose name ends in the letter “v” as his agent. But it was actual Russians, running their websites on the margins of legality or from abroad, who opened windows into Mr. Putin’s real Russia. And what they’ve uncovered is unbelievable personal corruption, shadowy figures behind international political interference and murderous but sometimes inept security services.Here are a few examples of these revelations:The investigative nonprofit outlet Proekt identified Mr. Putin’s “secret family,” and found that the woman it linked to the president had acquired some $100 million in wealth from sources tied to the Russian state.IStories used a trove of hacked emails to document how Mr. Putin’s former son-in-law built a huge fortune out of state connections.Bellingcat, which was founded in London, and the Russia-based Insider identified, by name and photograph, the Russian agents who poisoned the defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018.The media group RBC delved into the political machinery behind the troll farm interfering in U.S. elections.Meduza exposed deep corruption in all corners of the Moscow city government, down to the funeral business.Mr. Navalny’s foundation flew drones over Mr. Putin’s palace, a vast estate on the Black Sea that Mr. Navalny labeled “the World’s Biggest Bribe” in a scathing, mocking nearly two-hour video he released on his return to Russia last month. The video has been viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube.There’s a tendency in parts of the American media right now to reflexively decry the rise of alternative voices and open platforms on social media, seeing them solely as vectors for misinformation or tools of Donald J. Trump. Russia is a potent reminder of the other side of that story, the power of these new platforms to challenge one of the world’s most corrupt governments. That’s why, for instance, Mr. Navalny was a vocal critic of Twitter’s decision to ban Mr. Trump, calling it an “unacceptable act of censorship.”The new Russian investigative media is also resolutely of the internet. And much of it began with Mr. Navalny, a lawyer and blogger who created a style of YouTube investigation that draws more from the lightweight, meme-y formats of that platform than from heavily produced documentaries or newsmagazine investigations.Mr. Navalny doesn’t cast himself as a journalist. “We are using investigative reporting as a tool to achieve our political ends,” his aide, Ms. Pevchikh, said. (One convention they don’t follow: getting comment from the target of an investigation.) Indeed, his relationship with the independent journalists can be complicated. Most are careful to maintain their identity as independent actors, not activists. They criticize him, but also message him their stories, hoping he’ll promote them to his own vast audience, and he publicly criticizes them, in turn, for being too soft on the Kremlin.The new news outlets learned from Mr. Navalny as well. Many of them have imitated his style on YouTube. And he proved that certain lines could be crossed. What’s more, they all undoubtedly benefit from the homogeneity of the television networks. Imagine how much YouTube you would watch if the only news channels available were Fox News, Newsmax and OAN.The traffic they see online also tells them they’re connecting.For Roman Badanin, the founder of Proekt, reporting on Mr. Putin’s hidden life has been a career-long obsession.Credit…James Hill for The New York Times“I see the numbers and I think that all this is not in vain,” said Roman Badanin, the founder of Proekt, for whom Mr. Putin’s hidden life has been a career-long obsession. (A confusingly high percentage of the founders of these new outlets are named Roman.) In a particularly surreal moment this month, the young woman who Proekt suggested was Mr. Putin’s daughter said — in a conversation on the social audio app Clubhouse with the reporter who wrote the article — that she was “grateful” for all the attention his reporting had brought … to her Instagram account.Mr. Badanin, who modeled Proekt on the American nonprofit news organization ProPublica, said he had begun to see another sign of intense interest: financial support from his audience. About a third of the budget that supports a staff of 12, he said, now comes from donations averaging $8, mirroring the global trend toward news organizations relying on their readers. In Russia, some of this is still nascent. For instance, a colleague in Russia, Anton Troianovski, tells me that there’s a cafe near the Kurskaya Metro station where you can add to your bill a donation to MediaZona, which was founded by two members of the protest group Pussy Riot to hold the Russian justice system to account. But the protests against Mr. Navalny’s imprisonment also seem to be driving support for independent media, a phenomenon that The Bell, another of the new independent websites, christened “the Navalny Effect.”That might help these outlets navigate a narrowing legal window in Mr. Putin’s decades-long game of cat-and-mouse with independent journalism. (The government is also struggling to balance its citizens’ love of the open internet with the threat it can pose to government power.)Many of the new outlets, along with BBC Russia, have drawn talent from a previous wave of independent voices that the government effectively put out of the investigations business. Some of the new outlets, like the Latvia-based Meduza, have their operations abroad. But many are incorporated overseas, even as their journalists live and work in Moscow. Some subsist on grants whose sources they keep confidential — a vulnerability the Russian government appears likely to exploit under a new law broadening restrictions on what it considers “foreign agents.”MediaZona’s editor, Sergei Smirnov, center, at a hearing at the Moscow City Court this month. He was arrested for retweeting a joke with an image that included the date and time of a protest.Credit…Moscow City Court Press OfficeIndeed, the sense of possibility is rivaled only by the sense of menace. Virtually every journalist I spoke to in Russia said they expected this period to end at any moment. In a particularly ominous sign, police arrested the editor of MediaZona, Sergei Smirnov, on Jan. 30 for retweeting a joke with an image that included the date and time of a protest. He was sentenced to 15 days in jail for violating the rules on holding public events, and journalists debated whether it was an incompetent mistake or a deliberate warning to his peers.“To be an independent journalist in Russia is like being a lobster in a pot,” said Meduza’s editor in chief, Ivan Kolpakov. “They are boiling you, but you don’t know exactly when you will die.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Georgia Officials Review Trump's Phone Call to Raffensperger

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionTrump’s RoleKey TakeawaysExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGeorgia Officials Review Trump Phone Call as Scrutiny IntensifiesThe office of Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has initiated a fact-finding inquiry into Donald Trump’s January phone call to Mr. Raffensperger pressuring him to “find” votes.Former President Donald J. Trump boarding Air Force One on Jan. 12. He made several attempts to pressure top Republican officials in Georgia to help reverse the outcome of the election.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesRichard Fausset and Feb. 8, 2021Updated 5:33 p.m. ETATLANTA — The office of Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Monday started an investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the state’s election results, including a phone call he made to Mr. Raffensperger in which Mr. Trump pressured him to “find” enough votes to reverse his loss.Such inquiries are “fact-finding and administrative in nature,” the secretary’s office said, and are a routine step when complaints are received about electoral matters. Findings are typically brought before the Republican-controlled state board of elections, which decides whether to refer them for prosecution to the state attorney general or another agency.The move comes as Fani Willis, the Democratic district attorney of Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta, is weighing whether to begin a criminal inquiry of her own. A spokesman for Ms. Willis declined to comment on Monday.The January call was one of several attempts Mr. Trump made to try to persuade top Republican officials in the state to uncover instances of voting fraud that might change the outcome, despite the insistence of voting officials that there was no widespread fraud to be found. He also called Gov. Brian Kemp in early December and pressured him to call a special legislative session to overturn his election loss. Later that month, Mr. Trump called a state investigator and pressed the official to “find the fraud,” according to those with knowledge of the call.“The Secretary of State’s office investigates complaints it receives,” Walter Jones, a spokesman for the office, said in a statement on Monday. “The investigations are fact-finding and administrative in nature. Any further legal efforts will be left to the Attorney General.” David Worley, the sole Democrat on the state elections board, said Monday that administrative inquiries by the secretary of state’s office could result in criminal charges. “Any investigation of a statutory violation is a potential criminal investigation depending on the statute involved,” he said, adding that in the case of Mr. Trump, “The complaint that was received involved a criminal violation.” Mr. Worley said that now that an inquiry had been started by the secretary of state’s office, he would not introduce a motion at Wednesday’s state board of election meeting, as he had originally planned to do, in an effort to refer the case to the Fulton County district attorney’s office.Not long after the call to Mr. Raffensperger became public, several complaints were filed. One came from John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University law professor. Former prosecutors said Mr. Trump’s calls might run afoul of at least three state laws. One is criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, which can be either a felony or a misdemeanor; as a felony, it is punishable by at least a year in prison. There is also a related conspiracy charge, which can be prosecuted either as a misdemeanor or a felony. A third law, a misdemeanor offense, bars “intentional interference” with another person’s “performance of election duties.”Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, said in a statement: “There was nothing improper or untoward about a scheduled call between President Trump, Secretary Raffensperger and lawyers on both sides. If Mr. Raffensperger didn’t want to receive calls about the election, he shouldn’t have run for secretary of state.” Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia was reaffirmed after election officials recertified the state’s presidential election results in three separate counts of the ballots: the initial election tally; a hand recount ordered by the state; and another recount, which was requested by Mr. Trump’s campaign and completed by machines. The results of the machine recount show Mr. Biden won with a lead of about 12,000 votes.Mr. Biden was the first Democrat to win the presidential election in Georgia since 1992. Mr. Trump accused Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger, both Republicans, of not doing enough to help him overturn the result in the weeks after the election. Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger had each resisted numerous attacks from Mr. Trump, who called the governor “hapless” and called on the secretary of state to resign.Maggie Haberman More

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      District Attorney Charged in Sexual Assaults on Former Clients

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDistrict Attorney Charged in Sexual Assaults on Former ClientsChad Salsman, the elected prosecutor of Bradford County, Pa., was accused of preying on female clients who were in vulnerable legal or personal situations while he was their defense lawyer.Chad Salsman, the district attorney of Bradford County, Pa., being escorted into court in Towanda, Pa., on Wednesday.Credit…Brianne Ostrander/The Daily Review, via Associated PressFeb. 7, 2021Updated 9:02 a.m. ETThe women were targeted because they needed help with child custody cases or criminal charges, prosecutors said. Some had struggled with drug use or were survivors of sexual abuse.But once Chad M. Salsman had guided the women into his private law office, ostensibly to discuss their cases, he forced them onto his desk and sexually assaulted them, prosecutors said. He then told the women not to tell anyone what had happened.Mr. Salsman, who was a practicing defense lawyer at the time, went on to win election as the district attorney of Bradford County, Pa., in 2019.But his pattern of predatory behavior was not publicly known until he was arrested on Wednesday and charged with more than a dozen crimes, including sexual assault, indecent assault and intimidation of a witness or victim, prosecutors said.Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, said the charges reflected crimes against five women over the past several years, although he said that his office knew of additional victims whose cases could not be prosecuted because the crimes had occurred too long ago under the statute of limitations.“The details of these assaults are incredibly disturbing, and they are criminal,” Mr. Shapiro said at a news conference in Bradford County, a rural part of Pennsylvania about 65 miles northwest of Scranton, along the New York State line.“Mr. Salsman abused his position of authority as a lawyer and as a public official here in this county,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The victims in this case were relying on him to be their advocate, to represent them at a time when they felt powerless, and instead they ended up being preyed upon.”Mr. Salsman, 44, pleaded not guilty and plans to fight the charges, his lawyer, Samuel Stretton, said.Mr. Salsman has rejected calls to resign, although he has handed over the day-to-day handling of cases to his first assistant district attorney, Mr. Stretton said.“He has denied any misconduct,” Mr. Stretton said. “There was never any nonconsensual sex. There was never any inappropriate touching. It’s just not true, and we have adequate corroboration to prove that.”Mr. Salsman began practicing law in 2001 and won a contested race as a Republican in 2019 to replace the district attorney, who was retiring. He said that his three daughters had inspired him to run and that he hoped to rid the county of its reputation as “Meth Valley.”“I want both my family and yours to feel safe living in Bradford County,” he told The Morning Times of Sayre, Pa., in October 2019. “I will be a tough but fair district attorney who always seeks justice for crime victims while protecting our constitutional rights.”But even before he took office in January 2020, Mr. Salsman was already under investigation, according to court records, which show that the case had been referred to the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office in late 2019 by Mr. Salsman’s predecessor as district attorney, Daniel Barrett.The investigation found that Mr. Salsman had a pattern of advances, coercion and assault against female clients who were in vulnerable legal or personal situations, Mr. Shapiro said.Mr. Salsman would begin by asking the women for explicit photos or groping them in court or in private meetings, Mr. Shapiro said. When the women said they were struggling financially, Mr. Salsman pressured them into sex instead of charging them legal fees, Mr. Shapiro said.After assaulting the women, Mr. Salsman directed them to a small bathroom in his office to clean up with paper towels or wipes, Mr. Shapiro said.Staff members at Mr. Salsman’s law office told a grand jury that he asked his secretaries play music or run a noise machine or an air-conditioner during client meetings. The staff members said they often saw women leave the office in tears, Mr. Shapiro said, adding that Mr. Salsman had told victims he could “ruin their lives” if they spoke out.Most of the misconduct charged in the case took place when Mr. Salsman was in private practice as a defense lawyer, although Mr. Shapiro said one assault had happened in November 2019, after Mr. Salsman had been elected district attorney but before he took office.Mr. Shapiro said that Mr. Salsman had also continued to intimidate his victims after he was sworn in.“Even during our office’s secret grand jury proceedings, while he was district attorney, Chad Salsman tried to pressure victims and members of his own staff to disclose what they had told the grand jury in these secret proceedings — a further attempt to scare them into silence, and an attempted corruption of the judicial process.”Mr. Shapiro said that Mr. Salsman “chose these victims purposefully by design,” adding: “He thought they would be easy to silence and likely they would be less believed if they ever came forward. We’ve seen this playbook before.”The Abuse and Rape Crisis Center of Bradford County called the charges “traumatizing and horrifying to our community” and said it believed there were probably more victims who had not come forward.The center said on Facebook that Mr. Salsman’s law license should be revoked and that he must resign.“While this case proceeds through the legal system,” it said, “there is a broken trust with the safety and integrity of the Bradford County District Attorney office that will not be healed while Salsman retains access to former, current and future victim files.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Watchdog to Examine Whether Justice Dept. Helped Trump Effort to Overturn Election

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWatchdog to Examine Whether Justice Dept. Helped Trump Effort to Overturn ElectionThe inquiry was announced after revelations about a plot between Donald Trump and a top former department official to promote false claims of voter fraud by replacing the acting attorney general.Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, said he would investigate whether officials aided President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesJan. 25, 2021, 7:28 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Justice Department watchdog announced Monday that he had opened an investigation into whether any of the department’s officials tried to undo the results of the presidential election, as scrutiny of former President Donald J. Trump and his associates builds ahead of his impeachment trial.The investigation by the department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, followed efforts by Mr. Trump and a top federal law enforcement official, Jeffrey Clark, to push other Justice Department leaders to falsely assert that continuing fraud investigations cast doubt on the election results. As detailed by The New York Times in recent days, Mr. Trump was said to have considered installing Mr. Clark as acting attorney general to carry out the scheme.“The inspector general is initiating an investigation into whether any former or current D.O.J. official engaged in an improper attempt to have D.O.J. seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” Mr. Horowitz said in a statement, adding that he was announcing the inquiry to reassure the public that the matter was being examined.The inquiry adds to the increasing scrutiny on Mr. Trump’s attempts to wield the power of the Justice Department to advance his false claims about the election in the final weeks of his presidency. It follows another inspector general investigation into whether a federal prosecutor in Georgia was improperly pushed to help and a broader Democratic-led Senate inquiry into pressure on the department to aid Mr. Trump’s cause.Mr. Trump sought repeatedly to compel the Justice Department to back his baseless claims of election irregularities, ultimately prompting the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, to publicly state early last month that the department had found no voting fraud on a scale that would affect the election results. Mr. Barr fell out of favor with Mr. Trump over the issue and left his post within weeks.A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.The investigation underscores fears among Senate Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, that if they do not distance themselves from Mr. Trump and undo his grip on the party, a steady drip of negative revelations paired with his own erratic behavior could damage their political fortunes.“If Trump loses credibility because it appears he’s acted in a way that no one can justify, the leverage that he might have over the Republican Party could be diffused,” said William Marshall, a professor at the University of North Carolina who teaches and writes on presidential power. “The more that indicates he behaved improperly makes it less easy to defend him and less easy to stand by him.”Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, had urged Mr. Horowitz over the weekend to open an investigation, saying that it was “unconscionable that a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people’s will.”The inspector general also noted that his inquiry would be limited to the Justice Department because other agencies did not fall within his purview, a nod to the array of people who sought during Mr. Trump’s final weeks in office to find a way to stop the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.This month, Mr. Horowitz opened an investigation into whether Trump administration officials pressured Byung J. Pak, at the time the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, who abruptly resigned after it became clear to Mr. Trump that he would not take actions to cast doubt on or undo the results of the election, according to a person briefed on the inquiry.Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee said this weekend that it had initiated its own oversight inquiry into officials including Mr. Clark, who was the head of the Justice Department’s environmental and natural resources division and the acting head of its civil division.Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, sent a letter to the Justice Department saying that he would investigate efforts by Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark to use the agency “to further Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.”Jeffrey Clark pushed Justice Department leaders to falsely assert that continuing voter fraud investigations cast doubt on the election results.Credit…Susan Walsh/Associated PressMr. Durbin asked the acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, to preserve documents, emails and messages related to meetings between top Justice Department officials under Mr. Trump, the White House and Mr. Trump, as well as any communications related to Mr. Pak’s resignation.Mr. Biden’s win was deemed valid after recounts in Wisconsin and Georgia declared him the victor and after the Trump campaign team was unable to prove widespread fraud in court cases in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Dozens of F.B.I. investigations uncovered no voter fraud on a scale that would have changed the results of the election, according to Justice Department officials briefed on the cases.Dozens of Republicans in Congress were among those who backed Mr. Trump’s false claims, including Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania. On Monday, he confirmed a Times report that he had introduced Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark, giving the president access to the sole top Justice Department official willing to entertain the idea that Mr. Biden had not won the election.Mr. Perry, a member of the pro-Trump, hard-line Freedom Caucus, said in a statement to a Pennsylvania public radio affiliate that he spoke with Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark about election fraud claims.“Throughout the past four years, I worked with Assistant Attorney General Clark on various legislative matters,” Mr. Perry said. “When President Trump asked if I would make an introduction, I obliged.”Allies of Mr. Clark have characterized the conversations as simply laying out the legal options available to Mr. Trump. But Mr. Clark’s former colleagues have said there were no more legal remedies that Mr. Trump could have pursued through the department.Still, their assessment did not stop Mr. Trump from pressuring the Justice Department to fight harder to find a way to help him. When Mr. Barr declined to appoint special counsels to examine voting irregularities or take other measures that would have helped to throw the election results into doubt, he and Mr. Trump agreed that he should leave the department, according to three people familiar with their conversation. Mr. Barr stipulated that the deputy attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, replace him, the people said.Mr. Trump began to push Mr. Rosen to promote baseless suspicions about voting fraud the day after announcing that Mr. Barr would leave and kept up the pressure through the last weeks of December, pushing him to open investigations and to challenge Mr. Biden’s win before the Supreme Court.But as the department’s top officials pushed back, Mr. Trump separately opened a line of communication with Mr. Clark, who seemed more amenable to his theory that he had won the election, according to five people familiar with the matter, asking him to publicize inquiries that could cast doubt on the election.Mr. Trump’s deliberations over whether to replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark also set off a crisis among other senior Justice Department officials, who pledged to quit should Mr. Rosen be fired. The vow was said to have helped persuade Mr. Trump not to act.Mr. Clark has said that this account is inaccurate without specifying further and has said that all of his conduct was legal.While the machinations between Mr. Trump, Mr. Clark and Mr. Perry will not be the focus of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial — which accuses him of inciting the riot at the Capitol — Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, suggested the matter would be presented to senators.“This is powerful motive evidence,” Mr. Swalwell said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More