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      Trump’s Lawyers Could Face Legal Troubles of Their Own

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      Several of the former president’s lawyers are under scrutiny by federal investigators amid squabbling over competence.To understand the pressures, feuds and questions about competence within former President Donald J. Trump’s legal team as he faces potential prosecution on multiple fronts, consider the experience of Eric Herschmann, a former Trump White House lawyer who has been summoned to testify to a federal grand jury.For weeks this summer, Mr. Herschmann tried to get specific guidance from Mr. Trump’s current lawyers on how to handle questions from prosecutors that raise issues of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.After ignoring Mr. Herschmann or giving him what he seemed to consider perplexing answers to the requests for weeks, two of the former president’s lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and John Rowley, offered him only broad instructions in late August. Assert sweeping claims of executive privilege, they advised him, after Mr. Corcoran had suggested that an unspecified “chief judge” would ultimately validate their belief that a president’s powers extend far beyond their time in office.Mr. Herschmann, who served on Mr. Trump’s first impeachment defense team but later opposed efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, was hardly reassured and sounded confused by the reference to a chief judge.“I will not rely on your say-so that privileges apply here and be put in the middle of a privilege fight between D.O.J. and President Trump,” Mr. Herschmann, a former prosecutor, responded in an email, referring to the Justice Department. The exchange was part of a string of correspondence in which, after having his questions ignored or having the lawyers try to speak directly with him on the phone instead, Mr. Herschmann questioned the competence of the lawyers involved.The emails were obtained by The New York Times from a person who was not on the thread of correspondence. Mr. Herschmann declined to comment.Mr. Herschmann’s opinion was hardly the only expression of skepticism from current and former allies of Mr. Trump who are now worried about a turnstile roster of lawyers representing a client who often defies advice and inserts political rants into legal filings.Mr. Trump’s legal team just won one round in its battle with the Justice Department over the seizure of documents from his residence and private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, and it is not clear whether he will face prosecution from the multiple federal and state investigations swirling around him even as he weighs another run for the presidency.Mr. Trump has also just brought on a well-regarded lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, the former solicitor general of Florida, to help lead his legal team, after being rejected by a handful of others he had sought out, including former U.S. attorneys with experience in the jurisdictions where the investigations are unfolding.Mr. Kise agreed to work for the former president for a $3 million fee, an unusually high retainer for Mr. Trump to agree to, according to two people familiar with the figure. Mr. Kise did not respond to an email seeking comment.But Mr. Trump’s legal team has been distinguished in recent months mostly by infighting and the legal problems that some of its members appear to have gotten themselves into in the course of defending him.In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, Taylor Budowich, said that “the unprecedented and unnecessary weaponization of law enforcement against the Democrats’ most powerful political opponent is a truth that cannot be overshadowed and will continue to be underscored by the vital work being done right now by President Trump and his legal team.”Two members of the Trump legal team working on the documents case, Mr. Corcoran and Christina Bobb, have subjected themselves to scrutiny by federal law enforcement officials over assurances they provided to prosecutors and federal agents in June that the former president had returned all sensitive government documents kept in his residence and subpoenaed by a grand jury, according to people familiar with the situation.That assertion was proved to be untrue after the search of Mar-a-Lago in August turned up more than 100 additional documents with classification markings..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Investigators are seeking information from Ms. Bobb about why she signed a statement attesting to full compliance with the subpoena, and they have signaled they have not ruled out pursuing a criminal inquiry into the actions of either Ms. Bobb or Mr. Corcoran, according to two people briefed on the matter.The attestation was drafted by Mr. Corcoran, but Ms. Bobb added language to it to make it less ironclad a declaration before signing it, according to the people. She has retained the longtime criminal defense lawyer John Lauro, who declined to comment on the investigation.It is unclear whether the authorities have questioned Ms. Bobb yet or whether she has had discussions with Mr. Trump’s other lawyers about the degree to which she would remain bound by attorney-client privilege.Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Rowley did not respond to emails seeking comment.Mr. Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor and insurance lawyer, represented the former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon in his recent trial for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. In that case, Mr. Bannon claimed he believed he had immunity from testimony because of executive privilege; Mr. Trump later said he would not seek to invoke executive privilege for Mr. Bannon.Mr. Corcoran, the son of a former Republican congressman from Illinois, has told associates that he is the former president’s “main” lawyer and has insisted to colleagues that he does not need to retain his own counsel, as Ms. Bobb has.But several Trump associates have said privately that they believe Mr. Corcoran cannot continue in his role on the documents investigation. That view is shared by some of Mr. Trump’s advisers, who have suggested Mr. Corcoran needs to step away, in part because of his own potential legal exposure and in part because he has had little experience with criminal defense work beyond his stint as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. attorney in Washington more than two decades ago.Mr. Trump has at least 10 lawyers working on the main investigations he faces. Mr. Corcoran, Ms. Bobb and Mr. Kise are focused on the documents case, along with James M. Trusty, a former senior Justice Department official. Three lawyers on the team — Mr. Corcoran, Mr. Rowley and Timothy Parlatore — represent other clients who are witnesses in cases related to Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power.To the extent anyone is regarded as a quarterback of the documents and Jan. 6-related legal teams, it is Boris Epshteyn, a former campaign adviser and a graduate of the Georgetown University law school. Some aides tried to block his calls to Mr. Trump in 2020, according to former White House officials, but Mr. Epshteyn now works as an in-house counsel to Mr. Trump and speaks with him several times a day.Mr. Epshteyn played a key role coordinating efforts by a group of lawyers for and political allies of Mr. Trump immediately after the 2020 election to prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr. from becoming president. Because of that role, he has been asked to testify in the state investigation in Georgia into the efforts to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory there.Mr. Epshteyn’s phone was seized by the F.B.I. last week as part of the broad federal criminal inquiry into the attempts to overturn the election results and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. That prompted alarm among some of Mr. Trump’s allies and advisers about him remaining in a position of authority on the legal team.It is not clear how much strategic direction and leadership Mr. Kise may provide. But he is joining a team defined by warring camps and disputes over legal issues.In his emails to Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Rowley, Mr. Herschmann — a prominent witness for the House select committee on Jan. 6 and what led to it — invoked Mr. Corcoran’s defense of Mr. Bannon and argued pointedly that case law about executive privilege did not reflect what Mr. Corcoran believed it did.Mr. Herschmann made clear in the emails that absent a court order precluding a witness from answering questions on the basis of executive privilege, which he had repeatedly implored them to seek, he would be forced to testify.“I certainly am not relying on any legal analysis from either of you or Boris who — to be clear — I think is an idiot,” Mr. Herschmann wrote in a different email. “When I questioned Boris’s legal experience to work on challenging a presidential election since he appeared to have none — challenges that resulted in multiple court failures — he boasted that he was ‘just having fun,’ while also taking selfies and posting pictures online of his escapades.”Mr. Corcoran at one point sought to get on the phone with Mr. Herschmann to discuss his testimony, instead of simply sending the written directions, which alarmed Mr. Herschmann, given that Mr. Herschmann was a witness, the emails show.In language that mirrored the federal statute against witness tampering, Mr. Herschmann told Mr. Corcoran that Mr. Epshteyn, himself under subpoena in Georgia, “should not in any way be involved in trying to influence, delay or prevent my testimony.”“He is not in a position or qualified to opine on any of these issues,” Mr. Herschmann said.Mr. Epshteyn declined to respond to a request for comment.Nearly four weeks after Mr. Herschmann first asked for an instruction letter and for Mr. Trump’s lawyers to seek a court order invoking a privilege claim, the emails show that he received notification from the lawyers — in the early morning hours of the day he was scheduled to testify — that they had finally done as he asked.His testimony was postponed.Michael S. 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      Durham Inquiry Appears to Wind Down as Grand Jury Expires

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      The special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to examine the Russia investigation seems to be wrapping up its work with no further charges in store.WASHINGTON — When John H. Durham was assigned by the Justice Department in 2019 to examine the origins of the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, President Donald J. Trump and his supporters expressed a belief that the inquiry would prove that a “deep state” conspiracy including top Obama-era officials had worked to sabotage him.Now Mr. Durham appears to be winding down his three-year inquiry without anything close to the results Mr. Trump was seeking. The grand jury that Mr. Durham has recently used to hear evidence has expired, and while he could convene another, there are currently no plans to do so, three people familiar with the matter said.Mr. Durham and his team are working to complete a final report by the end of the year, they said, and one of the lead prosecutors on his team is leaving for a job with a prominent law firm.Over the course of his inquiry, Mr. Durham has developed cases against two people accused of lying to the F.B.I. in relation to outside efforts to investigate purported Trump-Russia ties, but he has not charged any conspiracy or put any high-level officials on trial. The recent developments suggest that the chances of any more indictments are remote.After Mr. Durham’s team completes its report, it will be up to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to decide whether to make its findings public. The report will be Mr. Durham’s opportunity to present any evidence or conclusions that challenge the Justice Department’s basis for opening the investigation in 2016 into the links between Mr. Trump and Russia.The Justice Department declined to comment. Mr. Durham and his team used a grand jury in Washington to indict Michael Sussmann, a prominent cybersecurity lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Sussmann was indicted last year on a charge of making a false statement to the F.B.I. at a meeting in which he shared a tip about potential connections between computers associated with Mr. Trump and a Kremlin-linked Russian bank.Mr. Sussmann was acquitted of that charge at trial in May.A grand jury based in the Eastern District of Virginia last year indicted a Russia analyst who had worked with Christopher Steele, a former British spy who was the author of a dossier of rumors and unproven assertions about Mr. Trump. The dossier played no role in the F.B.I.’s decision to begin examining the ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. It was used in an application to obtain a warrant to surveil a Trump campaign associate.The analyst, Igor Danchenko, who is accused of lying to federal investigators, goes on trial next month in Alexandria, Va.In the third case, Mr. Durham’s team negotiated a plea deal with an F.B.I. lawyer whom an inspector general had accused of doctoring an email used in preparation for a wiretap renewal application. The plea deal resulted in no prison time.Mr. Trump and his allies have long hoped that Mr. Durham would prosecute former F.B.I. and intelligence officials responsible for the Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane. Mr. Trump has described the investigation as a witch hunt and accused the F.B.I. of spying on his presidential campaign.What to Know About the Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      MyPillow’s Mike Lindell Is Served Search Warrant

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      Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of 2020 election misinformation, was served with a search warrant, and his cellphone was seized, by F.B.I. agents who questioned him about his ties to a Colorado county clerk who is accused of tampering with voting machines, Mr. Lindell said.Tina Peters, the county clerk in Mesa County, Colo., is under indictment on state charges related to a scheme to download data from election equipment after the 2020 presidential contest. Ms. Peters has pleaded not guilty to the charges.The search is a sign that a federal investigation into Ms. Peters has reached a prominent figure in the national movement to investigate and overturn the 2020 election. Mr. Lindell, the chief executive and founder of MyPillow, is a major promoter of debunked theories that keep alive the false notion that the election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump.The Mesa County episode is one of several instances in which local officials and activists motivated by those theories have gained access to voting machines in hopes of proving the theories true. Prosecutors in Michigan and Georgia are also investigating whether data was improperly copied from machines.It is not clear if Mr. Lindell is a target of the investigation. The F.B.I. field office in Denver confirmed late Tuesday that the bureau had served Mr. Lindell with a warrant, but Deborah Takahara, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver, said the office had no further comment. It is also unclear whether others were served search warrants on Tuesday.In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday night, Mr. Lindell said that he had been in a drive-through line at a Hardee’s fast food restaurant in Mankato, Minn., on Tuesday afternoon, while returning with a friend from a duck-hunting trip in Iowa, when his vehicle was surrounded by several cars driven by federal agents. The agents presented him with a search and seizure warrant and interviewed him for about 15 minutes.The agents asked him about his relationship to Ms. Peters, he said, and about an image copied from a voting machine in Mesa County that had appeared on Frank Speech, a website and hosting platform that Mr. Lindell operates.A letter handed to Mr. Lindell by the F.B.I. asked that he not tell anyone about the investigation, but he displayed a copy of the letter and the search warrant on his online TV show Tuesday evening, reading portions of it aloud. “Although the law does not require nondisclosure unless a court order is issued, we believe that the impact of any disclosure could be detrimental to the investigation,” read the letter, signed by Aaron Teitelbaum, an assistant U.S. attorney.A copy of the search warrant, parts of which were also read aloud by Mr. Lindell, said the government was seeking “all records and information relating to damage to any Dominion computerized voting system.”Prosecutors have accused Ms. Peters of attempting to extract data from voting machines under her supervision in Mesa County and of enlisting help from a network of activists, some close to Mr. Lindell. The effort was ostensibly an attempt to prove that voting machines had been used to steal the 2020 presidential election. Data that was purported to have come from the machines was later distributed at a conference hosted by Mr. Lindell last year at which Ms. Peters appeared onstage.The F.B.I. agents “asked if I gave her any money after the symposium,” Mr. Lindell said.Mr. Lindell once told a local reporter that he had funded Ms. Peters’s legal efforts directly. He now says he was mistaken about his contributions and that he did not directly contribute to her defense. “I was financing everything back then,” he said, referring to the various lawsuits that had been filed in relation to the 2020 election. “I thought I’d financed hers, too.”Mr. Lindell earlier told The Times that he had funneled as much as $200,000 to her legal defense via his legal fund, the Lindell Legal Offense Fund, through which he had said third-party donors supported various lawsuits and projects. Ms. Peters had directed supporters to donate to that fund.On his web TV show, which is streamed on Facebook and several other platforms, Mr. Lindell claimed that in their brief interview, F.B.I. agents had also asked about his connection with Douglas Frank, an activist who claims to have mathematical proof that the 2020 election was stolen. Lindell said that the F.B.I. had asked him whether he had employed Mr. Frank.Mr. Lindell is the target of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which provides voting machines to Mesa County and other jurisdictions and which Mr. Lindell has claimed was responsible for changing the outcome of the 2020 election. He said the warrant had specifically sought data related to Dominion and its machines.“They think they’re going to intimidate me,” Mr. Lindell told The Times. “That’s disgusting.” More

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      F.B.I. Sought Interview With Trump Aide in Capitol Riot Case

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      Federal prosecutors issued a subpoena to William Russell, who served as a special assistant to the former president, and went to his home in Florida.Federal prosecutors issued a subpoena to a personal aide to former President Donald J. Trump as part of the investigation into the events leading up to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, people familiar with the matter said.The move suggests that investigators have expanded the pool of people from whom they are seeking information in the wide-ranging criminal investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse his loss in the 2020 election and that agents are reaching into the former president’s direct orbit.This week, F.B.I. agents in Florida tried to approach William S. Russell, a 31-year-old aide to Mr. Trump who served as a special assistant and the deputy director of presidential advance operations in the White House. He continued to work for Mr. Trump as a personal aide after he left office, one of a small group of officials who did so.It was not immediately clear what the F.B.I. agents wanted from Mr. Russell; people familiar with the Justice Department’s inquiry said he has not yet been interviewed. But a person with knowledge of the F.B.I.’s interest said that it related to the grand jury investigation into events that led to the Capitol attack by Mr. Trump’s supporters.That investigation is said to have focused extensively on the attempts by some of Mr. Trump’s advisers and lawyers to create slates of fake electors from swing states. Mr. Trump and his allies wanted Vice President Mike Pence to block or delay certification of the Electoral College results during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to allow consideration of Trump electors whose votes could have changed the outcome.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsMaking a case against Trump. More

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      How Michigan Resisted Far Right Extremism

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      ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A brutal plot to abduct the governor. An armed protest in the galleries of the State Capitol. A candidate for governor who stormed the halls of Congress — only to see his popularity rise.In Michigan, you can feel extremism creeping into civic life.Michigan is far from the only state in the grip of politicians who peddle disinformation and demonize their opponents. But it may also be the one best positioned to beat back the threat of political violence.Unlike, say, Arizona and Pennsylvania, two purple states where Republicans have also embraced a toxic brew of political violence and denialism, Michigan is home to voters who, to date, have avoided succumbing to the new conservative dogma, thanks in large part to its Democratic politicians, who have remained relentlessly focused on kitchen table issues. In that sense, Michigan may hold lessons for residents of other states looking to withstand the tide of authoritarianism and violence, restoring faith in the American institutions under siege from the right.Certainly, recent history is concerning. Although a jury last month convicted two men who plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer over her Covid shutdown orders, that verdict came only after a jury in an earlier trial could not reach a unanimous verdict on the charges against them and acquitted two other co-defendants, despite chilling evidence that members of a militia group known as the Wolverine Watchmen had been building homemade bombs, photographing the underside of a bridge to determine how best to destroy it to slow a police pursuit and using night-vision goggles to surveil Ms. Whitmer’s vacation home.In that first trial, the defense argued that the F.B.I.’s informants had egged on the men, and it was persuasive enough to deadlock the jury. But I doubt the jurors would have been so receptive to that line of argument without Donald Trump persistently blasting government employees as “the deep state” and calling the conduct of the F.B.I. “a disgrace.”For the upcoming November elections, the G.O.P. nominees for attorney general and secretary of state are election deniers, and the candidate for governor has also cast doubt on the results of the 2020 vote for president. And not only are Republican candidates consumed with signaling an allegiance to Mr. Trump, but we are also seeing an alarming rise in political extremism in Michigan.In spring 2020, armed protesters demonstrated against Covid shutdown orders by occupying the galleries over the Senate chamber in the State Capitol while brandishing assault rifles. After the 2020 election, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson faced a deluge of threats and harassment from election deniers, including an armed protest at her home, where a mob chanted “stop the steal” while she was inside with her 4-year-old son. Ryan Kelley, who sought the Republican nomination for governor, was charged with four misdemeanor offenses for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. After his involvement in the attack became well known, his polling numbers actually went up.Still, there is reason for some cautious optimism. In the Republican primary, voters rejected Mr. Kelley. An independent citizens redistricting commission has been created by a voter initiative to end the gerrymandering that has led to a Republican-controlled State Legislature. Recent polling shows Ms. Whitmer, Ms. Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel, who are all Democrats, with comfortable leads as the general election approaches, and their resilience in the face of threats has only strengthened their political stock. And the convictions in the Whitmer kidnapping case show that 12 random people can still be found who will set aside their biases and decide a case based on the law and the facts they hear in court. My hunch is that there are more fair-minded people out there who will go to the polls in November.Governor WhitmerPatrick Semansky/Associated PressPragmatic problem-solving still seems to appeal to Michigan voters. Many families’ fortunes are tied inextricably to the auto industry, the health of which can swing sharply with every economic trend. Ms. Whitmer has championed economic development legislation that has helped create 25,000 auto jobs during her administration. She recently made a pitch to leverage federal legislation to lure companies to manufacture semiconductors in Michigan.In a state sometimes referred to as the birthplace of the middle class, labor unions carry more influence with working-class voters than the MAGA movement. From the rebirth of Detroit to the expansion of tourism Up North, Michigan is also a place that has long welcomed newcomers. Whether they be laborers on the assembly lines of Henry Ford or engineers for autonomous vehicles, workers from all over the world have always been needed and accepted as part of the work force, making it more difficult to demonize outsiders as “other.” As a result, voters tend to be less susceptible to the politics of fear that are driving the culture wars. Indeed, Ms. Whitmer was elected with a slogan to “Fix the Damn Roads.”Maybe it is a Midwestern sensibility, but Michiganders seem more interested in candidates who will help advance their financial bottom lines than those who traffic in conspiracy theories. And, four years later, Ms. Whitmer has fixed a lot of the damn roads.By focusing on economic outcomes of working families, Democrats in Michigan have managed to clinch not only the top state offices, but also the state’s two U.S. Senate seats.And while every state is different, politicians in other states could learn from Michigan to ignore the bait Republicans use to demonize them and focus on the bottom line issues that matter to voters.Barbara McQuade (@BarbMcQuade) is a professor of law at the University of Michigan. She served as the U.S. attorney for Michigan’s Eastern District from 2010 to 2017.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump Investigations Face a Dilemma Before the Midterm Elections

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

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      Republicans Signal Worries About Trump and the Midterms

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      Few Republicans appeared on the major Sunday talk shows to defend the former president. Those who did indicated that they would rather be talking about almost anything else.WASHINGTON — Headed into 2022, Republicans were confident that a red wave would sweep them into control of Congress based on the conventional political wisdom that the midterm elections would produce a backlash against President Biden, who has struggled with low approval ratings.But now some are signaling concern that the referendum they anticipated on Mr. Biden — and the high inflation and gas prices that have bedeviled his administration — is being complicated by all-encompassing attention on the legal exposure of a different president: his predecessor, Donald J. Trump.Those worries were on display on Sunday morning as few Republicans appeared on the major Washington-focused news shows to defend Mr. Trump two days after a redacted version of the affidavit used to justify the F.B.I. search of his Mar-a-Lago estate revealed that he had retained highly classified material related to the use of “clandestine human sources” in intelligence gathering. And those who did appear indicated that they would rather be talking about almost anything else.Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, acknowledged that Mr. Trump “should have turned the documents over” but quickly pivoted to the timing of the search.“What I wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and, less than 100 days before the election, suddenly we’re talking about this rather than the economy or inflation or even the student loan program,” Mr. Blunt lamented on ABC’s “This Week.”Gov. Chris Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, also pointed to a fear that Mr. Trump’s legal troubles could hurt his party’s midterm chances.“Former President Trump has been out of office for going on two years now,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “You think this is a coincidence just happening a few months before the midterm elections?”The Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, which followed repeated requests over more than a year and a half for Mr. Trump to turn over sensitive documents he took when he left office, initially prompted most Republicans to rally around the former president, strengthening his grip on the party. Some reacted with fury, attacking the nation’s top law enforcement agencies as they called to “defund” or “destroy” the F.B.I. Others invoked the Nazi secret police, using words like “Gestapo” and “tyrants.”Polls showed an increase in Republican support for Mr. Trump, and strategists quickly began incorporating the search into the party’s larger anti-big-government messaging. They combined denunciation of the F.B.I.’s actions with criticism of Democrats’ plans to increase the number of I.R.S. agents in hopes of rallying small-government conservatives to the polls.But as more revelations emerge about Mr. Trump’s handling of some of the government’s most sensitive documents, some of those voices have receded.Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago SearchCard 1 of 4Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago SearchThe release on Aug. 26 of a partly redacted affidavit used by the Justice Department to justify its search of former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence included information that provides greater insight into the ongoing investigation into how he handled documents he took with him from the White House. Here are the key takeaways:Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago SearchThe government tried to retrieve the documents for more than a year. More

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      There Is No Happy Ending to America’s Trump Problem

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      Debate about the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence has settled into well-worn grooves. Mr. Trump and many Republicans have denounced the act as illegitimate. Attorney General Merrick Garland is staying mostly mum. And Democrats are struggling to contain their enthusiasm.Liberal excitement is understandable. Mr. Trump faces potential legal jeopardy from the Jan. 6 investigation in Congress and the Mar-a-Lago search. They anticipate fulfilling a dream going back to the earliest days of the Trump administration: to see him frog-marched to jail before the country and the world.But this is a fantasy. There is no scenario following from the present that culminates in a happy ending for anyone, even for Democrats.Down one path is the prosecution of the former president. This would be a Democratic administration putting the previous occupant of the White House, the ostensible head of the Republican Party and the current favorite to be the G.O.P. presidential nominee in 2024, on trial. That would set an incredibly dangerous precedent. Imagine, each time the presidency is handed from one party to the other, an investigation by the new administration’s Justice Department leads toward the investigation and possible indictment of its predecessor.Some will say that Mr. Trump nonetheless deserves it — and he does. If Mr. Garland does not press charges against him for Jan. 6 or the potential mishandling of classified government documents, Mr. Trump will have learned that becoming president has effectively immunized him from prosecution. That means the country would be facing a potential second term for Mr. Trump in which he is convinced that he can do whatever he wants with complete impunity.That seems to point to the need to push forward with a case, despite the risk of turning it into a regular occurrence. As many of Mr. Trump’s detractors argue, the rule of law demands it — and failing to fulfill that demand could end up being extremely dangerous.But we’ve been through a version of the turbulent Trump experience before. During the Trump years, the system passed its stress test. We have reason to think it would do so again, especially with reforms to the Electoral Count Act likely to pass during the lame duck session following the upcoming midterm elections, if not before. Having to combat an emboldened Mr. Trump or another bad actor would certainly be unnerving and risky. But the alternatives would be too.We caught a glimpse of those alternative risks as soon as the Mar-a-Lago raid was announced. Within hours, leading Republicans had issued inflammatory statements, and these statements would likely grow louder and more incendiary through any trial, both from Mr. Trump himself and from members of his party and its media rabble-rousers. (Though at a federal judge’s order a redacted version of the warrant affidavit may soon be released, so Mr. Trump and the rest of his party would have to contend with the government’s actual justification of the raid itself.)If the matter culminates in an indictment and trial of Mr. Trump, the Republican argument would be more of what we heard day in and day out through his administration. His defenders would claim that every person ostensibly committed to the dispassionate upholding of the rule of law is in fact motivated by rank partisanship and a drive to self-aggrandizement. This would be directed at the attorney general, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and other branches of the so-called deep state. The spectacle would be corrosive, in effect convincing most Republican voters that appeals to the rule of law are invariably a sham.But the nightmare wouldn’t stop there. What if Mr. Trump declares another run for the presidency just as he’s indicted and treats the trial as a circus illustrating the power of the Washington swamp and the need to put Republicans back in charge to drain it? It would be a risible claim, but potentially a politically effective one. And he might well continue this campaign even if convicted, possibly running for president from a jail cell. It would be Mr. Trump versus the System. He would be reviving an old American archetype: the folk-hero outlaw who takes on and seeks to take down the powerful in the name of the people.We wouldn’t even avoid potentially calamitous consequences if Mr. Trump somehow ended up barred from running or his party opted for another candidate to be its nominee in 2024 — say, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. How long do you think it would take for a freshly inaugurated President DeSantis to pardon a convicted and jailed Donald Trump? Hours? Minutes? And that move would probably be combined with a promise to investigate and indict Joe Biden for the various “crimes” he allegedly committed in office.The instinct of Democrats is to angrily dismiss such concerns. But that doesn’t mean these consequences wouldn’t happen. Even if Mr. Garland’s motives and methods are models of judiciousness and restraint, the act of an attorney general of one party seeking to indict and convict a former and possibly future president of the other party is the ringing of a bell that cannot be unrung. It is guaranteed to be undertaken again, regardless of whether present and future accusations are justified.As we’ve seen over and over again since Mr. Trump won the presidency, our system of governance presumes a certain base level of public spiritedness — at the level of the presidency, in Congress and in the electorate at large. When that is lacking — when an aspersive figure is elected, when he maintains strong popular support within his party and when that party remains electorally viable — high-minded efforts to act as antibodies defending the body politic from the spread of infection can end up doing enduring harm to the patient. Think of all those times during the Trump presidency when well-meaning sources inside and outside the administration ended up undermining their own credibility by hyping threats and overpromising evidence of wrongdoing and criminality.That’s why it’s imperative we set aside the Plan A of prosecuting Mr. Trump. In its place, we should embrace a Plan B that defers the dream of a post-presidential perp walk in favor of allowing the political process to run its course. If Mr. Trump is the G.O.P. nominee again in 2024, Democrats will have no choice but to defeat him yet again, hopefully by an even larger margin than they did last time.Mr. Trump himself and his most devoted supporters will be no more likely to accept that outcome than they were after the 2020 election. The bigger the margin of his loss, the harder it will be for Mr. Trump to avoid looking like a loser, which is the outcome he dreads more than anything — and one that would be most likely to loosen his grip on his party.There is an obvious risk: If Mr. Trump runs again, he might win. But that’s a risk we can’t avoid — which is why we may well have found ourselves in a situation with no unambivalently good options.Damon Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter “Eyes on the Right” and is a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More