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      Material From Russia Investigation Went Missing as Trump Left Office

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      A binder given to the Trump White House contained details that intelligence agencies believe could reveal secret sources and methods.Material from a binder with highly classified information connected to the investigation into Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election disappeared in the final days of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, two people familiar with the matter said.The disappearance of the material, known as the “Crossfire Hurricane” binder for the name given to the investigation by the F.B.I., vexed national security officials and set off concerns that sensitive information could be inappropriately shared, one of the people said.The material’s disappearance was reported earlier Friday by CNN. The matter was so concerning to officials that the Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed about it last year, a U.S. official said.The binder consists of a hodgepodge of materials related to the origins and early stages of the Russia investigation that were collected by Trump administration officials. They included copies of botched F.B.I. applications for national-security surveillance warrants to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser as well as text messages between two F.B.I. officials involved in the inquiry, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, expressing animus toward Mr. Trump.The substance of the material — a redacted version of which has since been made public under the Freedom of Information Act and is posted on the website of the F.B.I. — is not considered particularly sensitive, the official said.But the raw version in the binder contained details that intelligence agencies believe could reveal secret sources and methods. (The publicly available version contains numerous portions that were whited out as classified.)It is not clear if the missing material comprises the entire original binder of material provided to the White House for Mr. Trump’s team to review and declassify in part before leaving office. Among other murky details, it is not known how many copies were made at the White House or how the government knows one set is missing.The binder has been a source of recurring attention since January 2021, just before Mr. Trump left office. At the time, Mr. Trump’s aides prepared redactions to some of the material it contained because the president — who was obsessed with the Russia investigation and believed his political enemies had used it to damage his presidency — planned to declassify it and make it public.Officials made several copies of the version with the redactions, which some Trump aides planned to release publicly.Mr. Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had a copy of material from the binder given to at least one conservative writer, according to testimony and court filings.But when Justice Department officials expressed concerns that sharing some of the material would breach the Privacy Act at a time when the department was already being sued by Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page for having publicly released some of their texts, the copies were hastily retrieved, according to two people familiar with the matter.Mr. Trump was deeply focused on what was in the binder, a person close to him said. Even after leaving the White House, Mr. Trump still wanted to push information from the binder into the public eye. He suggested, during an April 2021 interview for a book about the Trump presidency, that Mr. Meadows still had the material.“I would let you look at them if you wanted,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “It’s a treasure trove.”Mr. Trump did not address a question about whether he himself had some of the material. But when a Trump aide present for the interview asked him, “Does Meadows have those?” Mr. Trump replied, “Meadows has them.”“We had pretty much won that battle,” Mr. Trump added, referring to questions about whether his 2016 campaign had worked with Russia. “There was no collusion. There was no nothing. And I think it was maybe past its prime. It would be sort of a cool book for you to look at.”George J. Terwilliger III, a lawyer for Mr. Meadows, said the former chief of staff was not responsible for any missing material. “Mark never took any copy of that binder home at any time,” he said.A person familiar with the matter said, shortly after the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 by F.B.I. agents looking for classified documents, that they had not found any Crossfire Hurricane material.Adding to the confusion about the material and who was in possession of it, a set of the Russia investigation documents that Mr. Trump believed he had declassified did not have their classification markings changed when they were given to the National Archives, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.At the time, Mr. Trump was in a standoff with the archives over the reams of presidential material he had taken with him upon leaving the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, and was resisting giving back. So Mr. Trump told advisers he would give back those boxes in exchange for the Russia-related documents.Aides never pursued his suggestion.In the run-up to the 2020 election, John Ratcliffe, then Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, declassified around 1,000 pages of intelligence materials related to the Russia investigation, which Trump allies used to try to discredit the inquiry.In 2022, Mr. Trump made John Solomon, a conservative writer who had been briefly given the binder before it was retrieved, one of his representatives to the National Archives. This allowed Mr. Solomon to see Trump White House records deposited with the agency. He later filed a lawsuit against the government asking a court to order the Justice Department to send the binder to the archives so that he could have access to it.A court filing he submitted in August described the binder as about 10 inches thick and containing about 2,700 pages. The publicly released version includes fewer than 600 pages, many heavily redacted; it is not clear what accounts for the discrepancy.The filing said Mr. Solomon had been allowed to thumb through a version of the binder at the White House on Jan. 19, 2021. The contents, it said, included a 2017 F.B.I. report about its interview of Christopher Steele, the author of a dossier of unverified claims about Trump-Russia ties; “tasking orders” related to an F.B.I. confidential human source; “lightly-redacted” copies of botched surveillance warrant applications; and text messages between the F.B.I. officials.The filing said Mr. Solomon or an aide had gone back to the White House that evening and had been given a copy of the materials in the binder in a paper bag, and that separately a Justice Department envelope containing some of the documents had been delivered to his office.But as Mr. Solomon’s office was scanning the larger set, the filing said, the White House requested that the documents be returned so certain private details could be removed. Mr. Meadows promised Mr. Solomon he would get back the revised binder, it said, but he never did.When Mr. Solomon later tried to see the binder within the Trump White House records at the National Archives, he said, the agency denied him access to a box of 2,700 pages “with varying types of classification and declassification markings” that it said it was obligated to treat as highly classified. The agency also told him it did not have the declassified version of the binder that Mr. Solomon had briefly possessed, because the Justice Department still has it. More

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      Trump Seeks to Use Trial to Challenge Findings That 2020 Election Was Fair

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      The former president’s lawyers in his federal trial on charges of trying to overturn the election are asking to collect a wide range of evidence — including on unrelated issues like Hunter Biden.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump said in court papers that they planned to question the findings of several government agencies that the 2020 election was conducted fairly as part of their efforts to defend Mr. Trump against federal charges that he sought to overturn the results of the race.The lawyers also suggested in the papers that they intended to raise a host of distractions as part of their defense, indicating that they want to drag unrelated matters like Hunter Biden’s criminal prosecution and the investigation into former Vice President Mike Pence’s handling of classified documents into the election interference case.The twin filings by Mr. Trump’s lawyers late on Monday were formal requests to the prosecution to provide them with reams of additional material that they believe can help them fight the conspiracy indictment accusing Mr. Trump of seeking to subvert the lawful transfer of presidential power three years ago and stay in office despite his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr.Criminal defendants routinely make such requests in what are known as motions to compel discovery, but many of those made in Mr. Trump’s two filings were long-shot efforts that are likely to be rejected. Ultimately, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the election interference case, will have the power to decide which, if any, of the records Mr. Trump will get.But even if his lawyers get far less than what they asked for, the scope of their requests can be read as a kind of outline of how they plan to fight the case, which is set to go to trial in March in Federal District Court in Washington.At the heart of their strategy, the court papers say, is a plan to call into question findings made by the intelligence community, the F.B.I. and other federal agencies that the election was not marred by widespread fraud.The lawyers intend to argue that government reports upholding the integrity of the election were in fact a “partisan effort to provide false assurances to the public.” By questioning the consensus that the election was secure, the lawyers are hoping to show that Mr. Trump was acting in good faith when he spread lies that the vote count had been rigged — a move that could weaken the prosecution’s attempts to prove his criminal intent.To make that argument, Mr. Trump’s legal team has asked Judge Chutkan to force the special counsel, Jack Smith, who is prosecuting the federal cases against the former president, to give it any internal government records that cut against the dominant view that the election had been conducted fairly.Those requests were only some of the 59 separate demands for records made in more than 70 pages of court papers submitted by Mr. Trump’s legal team. Looking for anything that could help them prove the race was not secure, the lawyers made additional requests for information about how federal officials assessed cyberattacks around the time of the election and about attempts by foreign governments to interfere in it.Suggesting yet another defense strategy, the lawyers also asked for any records that could help them undermine Mr. Smith’s contention that Mr. Trump was responsible for the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They specifically asked Judge Chutkan to allow them access to any information about security measures implemented at the Capitol before the attack and about the presence of federal agents or informants who were on the ground during the riot.Almost from the moment the election interference indictment was handed up in August, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have tried to paint the case as a direct attempt by Mr. Biden to sabotage the man who is likely to be his chief rival in the 2024 election. They have advanced that argument not only without any evidence, but also in spite of the fact that the charges were filed by Mr. Smith, an independent prosecutor.The lawyers have specifically accused Mr. Biden of seeking to have Mr. Trump indicted in retaliation for the investigation of Hunter Biden, who was indicted in September on federal gun charges in a separate prosecution. And the discovery filings on Monday suggested that Mr. Trump’s lawyers would like nothing better than to muddy the waters of the election interference case by introducing evidence at trial about Hunter Biden.To that end, the lawyers requested any information concerning “coordination” between the Justice Department and the Biden administration or Mr. Biden’s family.In another far-fetched request, the lawyers asked for any records concerning dealings that the Justice Department had with Mr. Pence, who was investigated earlier this year after he returned to federal officials several classified documents he had kept when he left office.In their filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers suggested without citing any evidence that Mr. Pence, who is likely to be a key government witness at the election interference trial, had “an incentive to curry favor with authorities” because of the potential charges he faced in his classified documents inquiry.Judge Chutkan will not issue a ruling on Mr. Trump’s requests until after prosecutors working for Mr. Smith respond to them next month. And her eventual decree about discovery is only one of several important decisions she will have to make in coming days.She is poised to issue an order about Mr. Trump’s claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election charges because the indictment arose from official actions he took while in the White House. She is also expected to decide whether to allow cameras into her courtroom and televise the trial. More

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      For Election Workers, Fentanyl-Laced Letters Signal a Challenging Year

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      As overheated rhetoric and threats rise, people are leaving election jobs in record numbers.For the people who run elections at thousands of local offices nationwide, 2024 was never going to be an easy year. But the recent anonymous mailing of powder-filled envelopes to election offices in five states offers new hints of how hard it could be.The letters, sent to offices in Washington State, Oregon, Nevada, California and Georgia this month, are under investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the F.B.I. Several of them appear to have been laced with fentanyl; at least two contained a vague message calling to “end elections now.” The letters are a public indicator of what some election officials say is a fresh rise in threats to their safety and the functioning of the election system. And they presage the pressure-cooker environment that election officials will face next year in a contest for the White House that could chart the future course of American democracy.“The system is going to be tested in every possible way, whether it’s voter registration, applications for ballots, poll workers, the mail, drop boxes, election results websites,” said Tammy Patrick, chief executive for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. “Every way in which our elections are administered is going to be tested somewhere, at some time, during 2024.”Ms. Patrick and other experts said they were confident that those staffing the next election would weather those stresses, just as poll workers soldiered through a 2020 vote at the height of a global pandemic that all but rewrote the playbook for national elections.But they did not minimize the challenges. Instead, they said, in some crucial ways — such as the escalation of violent political rhetoric, and the increasing number of seasoned election officials who are throwing in the towel — the coming election year will impose greater strains than in any of the past.Temporary employees at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix processed mail-in ballots last year.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesBy several measures, an unprecedented number of top election officials have retired or quit since 2020, many in response to rising threats and partisan interference in their jobs.Turnover in election jobs doubled over the past year, according to an annual survey released last week by the Elections & Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore. Nearly one-third of election officials said that they knew someone who had left an election post, at least in part because of fears over safety.Another recent report by Issue One, a pro-democracy advocacy group, said that 40 percent of chief election administrators in 11 Western states — in all, more than 160 officials, typically in county positions — had retired or quit since 2020.“They feel unsafe,” said Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials. “They have great amounts of stress. They don’t feel respected by the state or the public. So they find other employment.”A certain number of departures is normal, and in many cases, experienced subordinates can take over the tasks.But departures can create collateral damage: Promoting an insider to a top elections job leaves a vacancy to be filled at a time when it is increasingly difficult to recruit newcomers to a profession that is only becoming more stressful. Experts also worry that the aura of nastiness and even danger attached to election work will drive away volunteers, many of them older Americans, who are essential to elections in all states except the handful in which residents largely vote by mail.Each election requires many hundreds of thousands of volunteers to staff polls. At a recent meeting of election administrators, roughly half were “really worried” about recruiting enough help for next year’s elections, said David J. Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C.Experts worry that threats to election workers could drive away volunteers, many of whom are older Americans.Anna Watts for The New York TimesLike Ms. Patrick, of the election officials association, Mr. Becker said he expected that any election-season staffing problems next year would be localized, not widespread. He noted, for example, that groups that are new to recruiting poll workers, such as sports teams, universities and private businesses, are helping to find volunteers.One wild card is the extent to which threats to election workers and other attempts to disrupt the vote will ramp up as the presidential-year political atmosphere kicks in.Harassment and threats against election officials were widely reported in the months after former President Donald J. Trump began to claim falsely that fraud had cost him a victory in the 2020 election. But election officials say that the threats have not stopped since then.In June, the downtown office of Paul López, the Denver clerk and recorder, was attacked overnight with a fusillade of bullets, pockmarking the building’s facade and a ballot drop box and bursting through a window into an office cubicle. And from mid-July to mid-August, the Maricopa County elections office in Phoenix recorded 140 violent threats, including one warning that officials would be “tied and dragged by a car,” Reuters reported.The challenges go beyond threats to demands that can make the requirements of the job feel limitless.In the last year, for example, election offices nationwide have been bombarded with requests, usually from election skeptics and allies of Mr. Trump, for millions of pages of public records relating to voter rolls and internal election operations. Similarly, offices in some states were hit this year with challenges to the legitimacy of thousands of voter registrations.In both cases, the ostensible purpose was to serve as a check on the integrity of the ballot. The practical effect — and sometimes the intent, experts say — has been to disrupt election preparations and, in some cases, to make it harder for some people to vote.“It’s impacting thousands of election officers,” Ms. Patrick said. “It isn’t the case that those who are driving the narrative are numerous. But we know there are large numbers of people listening to them and reiterating what they hear.”Election offices nationwide have been bombarded with requests for millions of pages of public records relating to voter rolls and internal election operations.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesSome of the language is beyond the bounds of normal political discourse.Mr. Trump, in a speech in New Hampshire this month used language more in keeping with fascism than democracy when he threatened to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”Such toxic language has an effect, said Rachel Kleinfeld, an expert on political violence and the rule of law at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.“There is a very clear link between the rhetoric of politicians and other leaders who both dehumanize and posit another group as a threat to incidents of political violence,” she said. “Trump himself seems to have a particular knack for this.”“What’s distressing,” Ms. Kleinfeld added, “is not just that election officials are quite worried by these threats, but that they’re not dissipating” in what should have been a quiet period between national elections.Ms. Patrick said she was distressed as well. “I feel like we’re in a very tenuous time, but there are bright lights to see,” she said. “In 2022, we had candidates who lost and conceded admirably and civilly. This month, we saw people continuing to serve as poll workers and people raising their hands to run for office on platforms of truth and legitimacy. As long as we have people who are willing to believe in facts, we’ll get through this.” More

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      What We Know About the Criminal Investigation into Eric Adams’s Campaign

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      Federal authorities are examining whether the mayor’s 2021 campaign accepted illegal donations, including from the Turkish government.After federal authorities raided the home of Mayor Eric Adams’s chief fund-raiser on Nov. 2, a broad criminal inquiry into the fund-raising practices of Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign spilled into public view.Federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. are examining whether the campaign conspired with members of the Turkish government, including its consulate in New York, to receive illegal donations, according to a search warrant obtained by The New York Times.Only two years into his first term, Mr. Adams has confronted a migrant crisis and the city’s struggle to recover from the pandemic, along with intense scrutiny of chaotic and violent conditions at the Rikers Island jail complex. But from a personal and a public relations perspective, the investigation into his fund-raising poses perhaps the steepest challenge yet for the mayor, who has already raised more than $2.5 million for his re-election bid in 2025.Here’s what we know about the investigation.What are the federal authorities investigating?The full scope of the federal criminal inquiry is not yet clear, but the investigation has focused at least in part on whether Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and Turkish nationals to receive illegal donations.According to the search warrant, federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. are also examining the role of a Brooklyn building company, KSK Construction, which is owned by Turkish immigrants and which organized a fund-raising event for Mr. Adams in May 2021.The search warrant also indicated that investigators were reviewing whether anyone affiliated with the mayor’s campaign provided any legal or illegal benefits — which could range from governmental action to financial favors — to the construction company and its employees, or to Turkish officials.The search warrant was executed on Nov. 2, the day that federal agents raided the Brooklyn home of Mr. Adams’s chief fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs.Who is Brianna Suggs?Ms. Suggs was an inexperienced 23-year-old former intern when Mr. Adams’s campaign tapped her to run its fund-raising operation for his successful 2021 mayoral bid. Now 25, she has become embroiled in a sprawling federal investigation.Even before graduating from Brooklyn College in 2020, Ms. Suggs was on Mr. Adams’s staff in his previous job as Brooklyn borough president. She has a close relationship both with Mr. Adams and his top aide and confidante, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, and she impressed some who interacted with her at campaign fund-raisers as smart and easy to work with.After the election, Ms. Suggs remained an essential cog in Mr. Adams’s fund-raising machine. She has not been accused of wrongdoing.During the raid of her house in Crown Heights, federal agents seized two laptop computers, three iPhones and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams.”How does Mr. Adams fit in?Mr. Adams has not been accused of wrongdoing. The mayor was in Washington, D.C. on the morning of the raid and had plans to speak with White House officials and members of Congress about the migrant crisis. He abruptly canceled the meetings and returned to New York.He later said he hurried back to be present for his team and to show support for Ms. Suggs.“Although I am mayor, I have not stopped being a man and a human,” he said, but added that he did not speak with his aide on the day of the raid.Have the authorities approached Mr. Adams directly?Days after Ms. Suggs’s house was raided, federal agents approached Mr. Adams after an event in Manhattan, asked his security detail to step aside and got into his SUV with him. The F.B.I. seized at least two cellphones and an iPad from the mayor, copied the devices and returned them within days, the mayor’s lawyer said.After The Times reported on the seizure, a lawyer for Mr. Adams and his campaign said in a statement that the mayor was cooperating with federal authorities and had already “proactively reported” at least one instance of improper behavior.“After learning of the federal investigation, it was discovered that an individual had recently acted improperly,” said the lawyer, Boyd Johnson. “In the spirit of transparency and cooperation, this behavior was immediately and proactively reported to investigators.”Mr. Johnson reiterated that Mr. Adams had not been accused of wrongdoing and had “immediately complied with the F.B.I.’s request and provided them with electronic devices.”Mr. Johnson did not identify the individual who was alleged to have acted improperly. He also did not detail the conduct reported to authorities or make clear whether the reported misconduct was related to the seizure of the mayor’s devices. A spokesman for Mr. Adams’s campaign said it would be inappropriate to discuss those issues because the investigation is ongoing.In his own statement, Mr. Adams said, “As a former member of law enforcement, I expect all members of my staff to follow the law and fully cooperate with any sort of investigation — and I will continue to do exactly that.”He added that he had “nothing to hide.”What does Turkey have to do with it?Federal authorities have been examining an episode involving Mr. Adams and the newly built Turkish consulate building in New York that occurred after he had won the Democratic nomination for mayor in the summer of 2021, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.The Turkish consulate general planned to open its new building in time for the start of the United Nations General Assembly that September. But the Fire Department had not signed off on its fire safety plans, which had several problems — an obstacle that threatened to derail the Turkish government’s plans.As Brooklyn borough president, Mr. Adams cultivated ties with local Turkish community members as well as Turkish government officials, who paid for part of a trip he made to Turkey in 2015. Mr. Adams has said he has visited Turkey six or seven times in all.After winning the Democratic nomination, Mr. Adams was all but guaranteed to become the next mayor of New York. He contacted then-Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro, relaying the Turkish government’s desire to use the building at least on a temporary basis, the people said.The city ultimately issued a temporary certificate of occupancy for the building, near the United Nations in Midtown Manhattan.The unusual intervention paved the way for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to preside over the grand opening of the $300 million, 35-story tower on his September 2021 visit to New York, despite the numerous flaws in its fire safety system, according to the people familiar with the matter and city records. The skyscraper reflected Turkey’s “increased power,” Mr. Erdogan said at its ribbon-cutting.In response to questions from The Times, Mr. Adams’s campaign issued a statement from the mayor.“As a borough president, part of my routine role was to notify government agencies of issues on behalf of constituents and constituencies,” Mr. Adams said. “I have not been accused of wrongdoing, and I will continue to cooperate with investigators.” More

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      F.B.I. Seizes Eric Adams’s Phones as Campaign Investigation Intensifies

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      Days after a raid at Mr. Adams’s chief fund-raiser’s home, federal agents took the mayor’s phones and iPad, two people with knowledge of the matter said.F.B.I. agents seized Mayor Eric Adams’s electronic devices early this week in what appeared to be a dramatic escalation of a criminal inquiry into whether his 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers.The agents approached the mayor after an event in Manhattan on Monday evening and asked his security detail to step away, a person with knowledge of the matter said. They climbed into his S.U.V. with him and, pursuant to a court-authorized warrant, took his devices, the person said.The devices — at least two cellphones and an iPad — were returned to the mayor within a matter of days, according to that person and another person familiar with the situation. Law enforcement investigators with a search warrant can make copies of the data on devices after they seize them.A lawyer for Mr. Adams and his campaign said in a statement that the mayor was cooperating with federal authorities, and had already “proactively reported” at least one instance of improper behavior.“After learning of the federal investigation, it was discovered that an individual had recently acted improperly,” said the lawyer, Boyd Johnson. “In the spirit of transparency and cooperation, this behavior was immediately and proactively reported to investigators.”Mr. Johnson said that Mr. Adams has not been accused of wrongdoing and had “immediately complied with the F.B.I.’s request and provided them with electronic devices.” Mr. Adams had attended an anniversary celebration for an education initiative at New York University.The statement did not identify the individual, detail the conduct reported to authorities or make clear whether the reported misconduct was related to the seizure of the mayor’s devices. It was also not immediately clear whether the agents referred to the fund-raising investigation when they took the mayor’s devices.Mr. Adams, in his own statement, said that “as a former member of law enforcement, I expect all members of my staff to follow the law and fully cooperate with any sort of investigation — and I will continue to do exactly that.” He added that he had “nothing to hide.”The surprise seizure of Mr. Adams’s devices was an extraordinary development and appeared to be the first direct instance of the campaign contribution investigation touching the mayor. Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, said on Wednesday that he is so strident in urging his staff to “follow the law” that he can be almost “annoying.” He laughed at the notion that he had any potential criminal exposure.Spokesmen for the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, whose prosecutors are also investigating the matter, declined to comment.The federal investigation into Mr. Adams’s campaign burst into public view on Nov. 2, when F.B.I. agents searched the home of the mayor’s chief fund-raiser and seized two laptop computers, three iPhones and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams.”The fund-raiser, a 25-year-old former intern named Brianna Suggs, has not spoken publicly since the raid.Mr. Adams responded to news of the raid by abruptly returning from Washington, D.C., where he had only just arrived for a day of meetings with White House and congressional leaders regarding the migrant influx, an issue he has said threatens to “destroy New York City.”On Wednesday, he said his abrupt return was driven by his desire to be present for his team, and out of concern for Ms. Suggs, who he said had gone through a “traumatic experience.”“Although I am mayor, I have not stopped being a man and a human,” he said.But he also said he did not speak with Ms. Suggs on the day of the raid, to avoid any appearance of interfering in an ongoing investigation.The seizure of Mr. Adams’s devices took place days after the F.B.I. raided the Brooklyn home of his chief fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs.Stephanie Keith for The New York TimesThe warrant obtained by the F.B.I. to search Ms. Suggs’s home sought evidence of a conspiracy to violate campaign finance law between members of Mr. Adams’s campaign, the Turkish government or Turkish nationals, and a Brooklyn-based construction company, KSK Construction, whose owners are originally from Turkey. The warrant also sought records about donations from Bay Atlantic University, a Washington, D.C., college whose founder is Turkish and is affiliated with a school Mr. Adams visited when he went to Turkey as Brooklyn borough president in 2015.The warrant, reviewed by The New York Times, indicated authorities were looking at whether the Turkish government or Turkish nationals funneled donations to Mr. Adams using a so-called straw donor scheme, in which the contributors listed were not the actual source of the money. The warrant also inquired about Mr. Adams’s campaign’s use of New York City’s generous public matching program, in which New York City offers an eight-to-one match of the first $250 of a resident’s donation.The federal authorities also sought evidence of whether any Adams campaign member provided any benefit to Turkey or the construction company in exchange for campaign donations.The Turkish Consulate in Manhattan on Thursday.Sara Hylton for The New York TimesThis is not the first time Mr. Adams or people in his orbit have attracted law enforcement scrutiny. In September, Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former buildings commissioner and senior adviser, was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, on 16 felony charges, including counts of bribetaking and conspiracy.In July, Mr. Bragg indicted six people, including a retired police inspector who once worked and socialized with Mr. Adams, on charges of conspiring to funnel illegal donations to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.Separately, the city’s Department of Investigation was investigating the role of Timothy Pearson, one of the mayor’s closest advisers, in a violent altercation at a migrant center in Manhattan.Mr. Adams has also had skirmishes with the law before becoming mayor. Soon after he was elected Brooklyn borough president, he organized an event to raise money for a new nonprofit, One Brooklyn, which had not yet registered with the state. The invitation list was based on donor rolls for nonprofits run by his predecessor, records show.A city Department of Investigation inquiry concluded 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. 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.Earlier, while Mr. Adams was a New York state senator, the state inspector general found that he and other Senate Democrats had fraternized with lobbyists and accepted significant campaign contributions from people affiliated with contenders for a video lottery contract at Aqueduct Racetrack.In response to a Times examination of his fund-raising record in 2021, Mr. Adams attributed the scrutiny in part to his race.“Black candidates for office are often held to a higher, unfair standard — especially those from lower-income backgrounds such as myself,” he said in a statement then. “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.” He added: “I did not go from being a person that enforced the law to become one that breaks the law.”Mr. Adams is not the first city mayor whose fund-raising has attracted federal scrutiny. In 2017, federal prosecutors examined episodes in which Bill de Blasio, who was then the mayor, 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. More

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      Letters With Suspicious Substances Sent to Election Offices Spur Alarm

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      Letters, some apparently containing fentanyl or other substances, were sent to local election offices in Georgia, Oregon and Washington State.Local election offices in at least three states were sent letters containing fentanyl or other suspicious-looking substances, the authorities said on Thursday. The letters come at a time when election offices are seeing a growing array of threats and aggressive behavior that has followed baseless charges of election fraud in recent years.The letters targeted election offices in Fulton County, Ga., which includes much of Atlanta; Lane County, Ore., which includes Eugene; and King, Spokane, Pierce and Skagit Counties in Washington. At least two of the mailings were reported to include messages, but beyond an apparent call to stop the election sent to the Pierce County Elections office in Tacoma, their nature was unclear.The Pierce County mailing included a white powder later identified as baking soda. A preliminary analysis of letters sent to King and Spokane Counties in Washington identified the presence of fentanyl, law enforcement authorities said. The letter sent to Fulton County was identified and flagged as a possible threat but had not yet been delivered, said Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state.Fentanyl can be fatal if ingested even in small doses, but in general, experts say, skin contact such as might occur when opening a letter poses little risk. None of the affected election offices reported injuries to employees.The F.B.I. and the U.S. Postal Service are investigating the letters, most of which arrived in Wednesday’s mail. In Washington State, they arrived only days after at least two synagogues in Seattle, the largest city in King County, received packages containing white crystalline or powdery substances.Officials in the affected states called the mailings threats to the democratic process. Mr. Raffensperger called on candidates for political office to denounce them.“This is domestic terrorism and needs to be condemned by anyone who holds elected office and wants to hold elected office,” he said. “If they don’t condemn this, then they’re not worthy of the office they’re running for.” He said his own son died five and a half years ago of a fentanyl overdose.While the mailings drew national attention, intimidation and threats of violence against election officials have become commonplace since former President Donald J. Trump and other Republican officeholders began raising baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.The Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections, singled out early by Mr. Trump and others claiming fraud, has been a frequent target, but hardly the only one. It was not clear whether the mailing to Atlanta had any connection to the racketeering trial playing out in Fulton County court. But election offices nationwide have tightened security, screening visitors and sometimes even installing bulletproof glass, in recent years.Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state, said on Thursday that she had received more than 60 death threats since she was named as a defendant in September in a lawsuit challenging Mr. Trump’s right to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot. Threats against officials statewide are common enough that her office has established a process for detecting them.“We’re seeing a high threat environment toward election workers,” said Ms. Griswold, a Democrat. In Oregon, “the very charged interactions with patrons, voting or not, the aggressive pursuits of staff — we’re starting to see that here as well,” said Devon Ashbridge, the spokeswoman for the Lane County Elections office. “This has been a frankly frightening situation.”Nationally, the tide of threatening behavior toward election workers is a factor in the growing number of people leaving the profession and the difficulty in recruiting replacements.“We do see trends in retirements, but this is on a much grander scale than we’ve ever seen before,” said Tammy Patrick, the chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials.The Justice Department has filed criminal charges involving election-related threats against at least 14 people since it formed a task force on the issue in June 2021. Ms. Griswold and others say, however, that both the federal and state responses have fallen short of what is needed.And they say they worry that the supercharged atmosphere surrounding the coming presidential election will only make matters worse.Election workers are “our neighbors, our grandparents, Republicans, Democrats together,” Ms. Griswold said. “They didn’t sign up for a really hostile environment for participating in American democracy.” More

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      New York City Is Getting Tired of Mayor Adams’s Scandals

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      No sooner did Mayor Eric Adams of New York land in Washington, D.C., on city business Thursday than he had to turn right back around to take care of his own.The F.B.I. had raided the Brooklyn home of Mr. Adams’s top fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. Parts of a search warrant obtained by The Times suggest that federal prosecutors in Manhattan are trying to determine if the mayor’s 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and a Brooklyn construction company to direct foreign money into the campaign through straw donations.A spokesman said Mr. Adams had rushed back to New York from Washington “to deal with a matter.” You don’t say.Mr. Adams so far has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But this kind of drama and foolishness doesn’t serve the city, or him. Though he will have to answer for it, a fund-raising scandal engulfing the mayor is about the last thing New York needs.The city, home to large Jewish and Muslim communities, is reeling from the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Hate crimes against both groups are on the rise. Posters of missing loved ones kidnapped by Hamas line the city streets. Palestinian American New Yorkers are getting word of relatives killed in Israeli airstrikes.More than 130,000 migrants have arrived in the city over the past year and a half, and the city has run out of places to put them. That’s the very issue that led Mr. Adams to visit the nation’s capital on Thursday to seek federal help.Thanks to the city’s continuing housing crisis, more than 119,320 students enrolled in New York’s public schools are homeless, according to new data released this week. That figure is based on last year’s enrollment and is likely roughly 30,000 higher. The city is also still struggling to recover from the pandemic, in myriad ways.Mr. Adams is working on all of these issues. So I’m hopeful that the mayor, who is up for re-election in 2025, can take this moment to think carefully about the people he wants to surround himself with while running America’s biggest city. This seems to be a blind spot for him, as he has formed an inner circle that often appears to be particularly shaped by loyalty, sometimes at the expense of ethics or the interest of taxpayers.It isn’t just Ms. Suggs. Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams’s former building commissioner and a former campaign adviser, was indicted on bribery charges in September. In July the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, charged six people — including a former N.Y.P.D. inspector who is also a friend of the mayor — with campaign finance violations, accusing them of being part of a conspiracy to direct public matching funds to Mr. Adams’s campaign through straw donors in a bid to seek political favors.More often, though, the mayor’s personnel decisions have simply raised questions about his judgment. There’s Timothy Pearson, a senior adviser and friend who is under review by the city’s Department of Investigation for an altercation in which he shoved a security guard at a migrant center and threatened her job, according to reports. The mayor appointed his brother Bernard Adams to a senior position at City Hall, leading to public concerns about nepotism. An agreement with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board prevented the mayor’s brother from receiving a $210,000 salary for the position. He received a salary of $1 per year and resigned in February.And far more alarming than nepotism was the mayor’s decision this week to promote the commissioner of the corrections department, Louis Molina, to a job at City Hall. Mr. Molina has run the Rikers Island jail complex since January 2022, and it is verging on collapse. In September, as the violence and chronic staff absenteeism continued at the jails, Mr. Molina and his top aides took a taxpayer-funded trip to Europe to visit jails in London and Paris, according to The New York Daily News. Instead of holding Mr. Molina accountable for this questionable use of city funds, Mr. Adams announced on Oct. 31 that Mr. Molina would serve at City Hall as the assistant deputy mayor for public safety. “Lou has demonstrated exceptional leadership,” the mayor said of Mr. Molina in a statement this week.Maybe I’m naïve to expect more from the mayor. Public corruption scandals have become commonplace. Trust in institutions is at a serious low. All the more reason to hold Mr. Adams to account for the way he conducts the city’s business, and his own.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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      As Trump Prosecutions Move Forward, Threats and Concerns Increase

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      As criminal cases proceed against the former president, heated rhetoric and anger among his supporters have the authorities worried about the risk of political dissent becoming deadly.At the federal courthouse in Washington, a woman called the chambers of the judge assigned to the election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump and said that if Mr. Trump were not re-elected next year, “we are coming to kill you.”At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, agents have reported concerns about harassment and threats being directed at their families amid intensifying anger among Trump supporters about what they consider to be the weaponization of the Justice Department. “Their children didn’t sign up for this,” a senior F.B.I. supervisor recently testified to Congress.And the top prosecutors on the four criminal cases against Mr. Trump — two brought by the Justice Department and one each in Georgia and New York — now require round-the-clock protection.As the prosecutions of Mr. Trump have accelerated, so too have threats against law enforcement authorities, judges, elected officials and others. The threats, in turn, are prompting protective measures, a legal effort to curb his angry and sometimes incendiary public statements, and renewed concern about the potential for an election campaign in which Mr. Trump has promised “retribution” to produce violence.Given the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, scholars, security experts, law enforcement officials and others are increasingly warning about the potential for lone-wolf attacks or riots by angry or troubled Americans who have taken in the heated rhetoric.In April, before federal prosecutors indicted Mr. Trump, one survey showed that 4.5 percent of American adults agreed with the idea that the use of force was “justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.” Just two months later, after the first federal indictment of Mr. Trump, that figure surged to 7 percent.Given the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, scholars, security experts and others are increasingly warning about the potential for lone-wolf attacks by angry Americans.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe indictments of Mr. Trump “are the most important current drivers of political violence we now have,” said the author of the study, Robert Pape, a political scientist who studies political violence at the University of Chicago.Other studies have found that any effects from the indictments dissipated quickly, and that there is little evidence of any increase in the numbers of Americans supportive of a violent response. And the leaders of the far-right groups that helped spur the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 are now serving long prison terms.But the threats have been steady and credible enough to prompt intense concern among law enforcement officials. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland addressed the climate in testimony to Congress on Wednesday, saying that while he recognized that the department’s work came with scrutiny, the demonization of career prosecutors and F.B.I. agents was menacing not only his employees but also the rule of law.“Singling out individual career public servants who are just doing their jobs is dangerous — particularly at a time of increased threats to the safety of public servants and their families,” Mr. Garland said.“We will not be intimidated,” he added. “We will do our jobs free from outside influence. And we will not back down from defending our democracy.”Security details have been added for several high-profile law enforcement officials across the country, including career prosecutors running the day-to-day investigations.The F.B.I., which has seen the number of threats against its personnel and facilities surge since its agents carried out the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, in August 2022, subsequently created a special unit to deal with the threats. A U.S. official said threats since then have risen more than 300 percent, in part because the identities of employees, and information about them, are being spread online.“We’re seeing that all too often,” Christopher A. Wray, the bureau’s director, said in congressional testimony this summer.The threats are sometimes too vague to rise to the level of pursuing a criminal investigation, and hate speech enjoys some First Amendment protections, often making prosecutions difficult. But the Justice Department has charged more than a half dozen people with making threats.This has had its own consequences: In the past 13 months, F.B.I. agents confronting individuals suspected of making threats have shot and fatally wounded two people, including one in Utah who was armed and had threatened, before President Biden’s planned visit to the area, to kill him.Jack Smith, the special counsel, has sought a gag order against Mr. Trump.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn a brief filed in Washington federal court this month, Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the Justice Department’s prosecutions of Mr. Trump, took the extraordinary step of requesting a gag order against Mr. Trump. He linked threats against prosecutors and the judge presiding in the case accusing Mr. Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election to the rhetoric Mr. Trump had used before Jan. 6.“The defendant continues these attacks on individuals precisely because he knows that in doing so, he is able to roil the public and marshal and prompt his supporters,” the special counsel’s office said in a court filing.Mr. Trump has denied promoting violence. He says that his comments are protected by the First Amendment right to free speech, and that the proposed gag order is part of a far-ranging Democratic effort to destroy him personally and politically.“Joe Biden has weaponized his Justice Department to go after his main political opponent — President Trump,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the former president.But Mr. Trump’s language has often been, at a minimum, aggressive and confrontational toward his perceived foes, and sometimes has at least bordered on incitement.On Friday, Mr. Trump baselessly suggested in a social media post that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, might have engaged in treason, “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the penalty would have been DEATH.” (General Milley has been interviewed by the special counsel’s office.)The day before the threatening call last month to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s chambers in Federal District Court in Washington, Mr. Trump posted on his social media site: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING FOR YOU!” (A Texas woman was later charged with making the call.)Mr. Smith — whom Mr. Trump has described as “a thug” and “deranged” — has been a particular target of violent threats, and his office is on pace to spend $8 million to $10 million on protective details for him, his family and senior staff members, according to officials.Members of his plainclothes detail were conspicuously present as he entered an already locked-down Washington federal courtroom last month to witness Mr. Trump’s arraignment on the election interference charges — standing a few feet from the former president’s own contingent of Secret Service agents.On Friday, a judge presiding over a case in Colorado about whether Mr. Trump can be disqualified from the ballot there for his role in promoting the Jan. 6 attack issued a protective order barring threats or intimidation of anyone connected to the case. The judge cited the types of potential dangers laid out by Mr. Smith in seeking the gag order on Mr. Trump in the federal election case.There have been recent acts of political violence against Republicans, most notably the 2017 shooting of Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Last year an armed man arrested outside the home of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said he had traveled from California to kill the conservative Supreme Court jurist.But many scholars and experts who study political violence place the blame for the current atmosphere most squarely on Mr. Trump — abetted by the unwillingness of many Republican politicians to object to or tamp down the violent and apocalyptic language on social media and in the conservative media.In one example of how Mr. Trump’s sway over his followers can have real-world effects, a man who had been charged with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 was arrested in June looking for ways to get near former President Barack Obama’s Washington home. The man — who was armed with two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition and had a machete in the van he was living in — had hours earlier reposted on social media an item Mr. Trump had posted that same day, which claimed to show Mr. Obama’s home address.At his rallies and in interviews, Mr. Trump has described the Jan. 6 rioters who have been arrested as “great patriots” and said they should be released.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesIn his first two years out of office, Mr. Trump’s public comments largely focused on slowly revising the history of what happened on Jan. 6, depicting it as mostly peaceful. At his rallies and in interviews, he has described the rioters who have been arrested as “great patriots,” said they should be released, dangled pardons for them and talked repeatedly about rooting out “fascists,” “Marxists” and “communists” from government.Mr. Trump’s verbal attacks on law enforcement agencies intensified after the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, as they pursued the investigation that later led to his indictment on charges of mishandling classified documents and obstructing efforts to retrieve them. Some of his most aggressive comments were made as it became clear that the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, was likely to indict him last spring in connection with hush money payments to a porn actress.He posted a story from a conservative news site that featured a picture of Mr. Bragg with an image of Mr. Trump wielding a baseball bat right next to it.In another post, Mr. Trump predicted that there would be “potential death and destruction” if he were charged by Mr. Bragg. The district attorney’s office found a threatening letter and white powder in its mailroom hours later. (The powder was later determined not to be dangerous.)Professor Pape, of the University of Chicago, said that while the numbers of people who felt violence was justified to support Mr. Trump were concerning, he would rather focus on a different group identified in his survey: the 80 percent of American adults who said they supported a bipartisan effort to reduce the possibility of political violence.“This indicates a vast, if untapped, potential to mobilize widespread opposition to political violence against democratic institutions,” he said, “and to unify Americans around the commitment to a peaceful democracy.”Kirsten Noyes More