Federal Criminal Case Against Trump (2020 Election Case)

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      Trump’s Lead in Iowa Is Less Dominant, Poll Shows

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      New polling suggests that Gov. Ron DeSantis’s efforts in Iowa have been having an effect, but that the challenge of defeating Mr. Trump there is complicated by multiple factors.Former President Donald J. Trump’s pull among likely Republican voters is less dominant in Iowa than it is nationwide, though he still leads his nearest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in the key early state by double digits, according to a new New York Times/Siena College poll.The survey of 432 likely Iowa caucusgoers was taken before a third indictment against Mr. Trump was made public on Tuesday, this one charging him with federal crimes connected to his efforts to cling to office after losing re-election in 2020.But any dent in his dominance in the Hawkeye state may have more to do with factors like personality flaws and voters’ fatigue after eight years of Trumpian drama than his latest legal travails. Iowa Republicans showed some real doubts about which candidate — Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis — is more moral, likable or able to beat President Biden in 2024.Though some Iowa voters see Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as more moral and likable than former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Trump still leads.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesOverall, Mr. Trump has the support of 44 percent of Iowans polled, 10 percentage points lower than the commanding position he holds with Republicans nationwide. Mr. DeSantis is second with 20 percent, slightly better than his 17 percent standing nationwide. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has the support of 9 percent of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers, triple his national standing. Mr. Scott’s favorability rating among Iowa Republicans — 70 percent — is on par with Mr. Trump’s 72 percent and just behind Mr. DeSantis’s 77 percent.Further down, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and former Vice President Mike Pence each have single-digit support. Support for former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey did not reach a full percent.The poll suggests that Mr. DeSantis’s efforts in Iowa have been having an effect, but that the challenge of defeating Mr. Trump there is doubly complicated: Several rivals are siphoning off the support he would need from voters who are open to alternatives to the former president, and Mr. Trump’s voters are still overwhelmingly behind him. And as with the national race, it seemed Mr. DeSantis was failing to win over voters with the issues he has made central to his campaign, including defeating so-called woke ideologies.The state is the first of the G.O.P. presidential nominating contests, and it looms large for Mr. Trump’s comeback. In 2016, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas edged out Mr. Trump and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Iowa’s Republican base is strongly religious and white, and its position on the political calendar has ensured that voters get a good look at the candidates before they go to the caucuses. The power of evangelical leaders, some of whom are ready to move past Mr. Trump, could give other candidates an advantage when Iowans caucus on Jan. 15.A Trump victory in Iowa — despite mounting legal challenges — could give the former president a clear path to the nomination.Even Iowa Republicans who say they favor other candidates could still swing Mr. Trump’s way.“Each indictment gets me leaning toward Trump,” said John-Charles Fish, 45, a Waukon, Iowa, social media consultant who said he still supported Mr. DeSantis, but barely. “It wouldn’t take much for me to change my mind,” he said.For Mr. DeSantis and other competitors, the Iowa survey yielded glimmers of bright spots. About 47 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters said they would consider other candidates. Among Republicans with at least a college degree, Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis are tied at 26 percent when the whole field is under consideration.In a head-to-head match between the front-runner and his closest rival, Mr. Trump leads Iowa handily, 55 percent to 39 percent, but he is well behind Mr. DeSantis among college-educated Republicans, 38 percent to 53 percent.Iowa Republicans More Likely Than National G.O.P to See DeSantis as Likable, ElectableRepublicans saying the following words or phrases better describe Ron DeSantis than Donald Trump:

      Based on New York Times/Siena College polls of the Republican nominating contests nationally and in IowaBy Ruth IgielnikAccording to the poll, Mr. DeSantis is seen as the more moral candidate, and although the Florida governor has been knocked for some awkward moments on the campaign trail, he is seen as considerably more likable than Mr. Trump. More than half of those surveyed said the term “likable” was a better fit for Mr. DeSantis, compared with 38 percent for Mr. Trump.The poll also suggests that Mr. DeSantis’s argument that he is the more electable Republican may be resonating with voters, at least in Iowa. Just under half of those surveyed said Mr. Trump is the candidate more able to beat Mr. Biden, while 40 percent said Mr. DeSantis is. Nationally, Mr. Trump holds a 30-percentage-point lead on the same question.Robert Corry, a business consultant in Grinnell, Iowa, praised Mr. DeSantis’s stewardship of Florida’s sprawling economy, his ability to “get things done” and his “exemplary, outstanding life.”Robert Corry, a business consultant in Grinnell, Iowa, said he preferred Gov. Ron DeSantis, worrying that nominating Mr. Trump in 2024 could mean Republicans losing the election.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThe contrast between Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump “couldn’t be greater,” said Mr. Corry, 55, who worries that making Trump the Republican nominee could cost the party another election.Still, Mr. Trump remains a powerful and resilient force among Republicans, nationally and in Iowa. Of the Iowans supporting the former president, 97 percent say they support him strongly, compared with the 76 percent of Mr. DeSantis’s supporters who said the same for him. Among those who support other candidates, just over half — 54 percent — say they back their candidate strongly.“As far as the other candidates go, I feel that they’re all RINOs,” said Pamela Harrmann, 74, a retired intensive care nurse in Paullina, Iowa, and a Trump supporter who referred to the former president’s opponents as Republicans in name only. “And they’re all with the left agenda. They’re just covered up.”Tuesday’s indictment, which accuses Mr. Trump of defrauding the nation in his quest to subvert the will of its voters after he lost the 2020 election, may not change the depth or intensity of the front-runner’s support. Nor does the perception of Mr. DeSantis as the more moral candidate seem to carry much weight among the voters who might be expected to be more sensitive to such traits.Trump Weaker in Iowa Than NationallyIf the only choices were Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, who would you be more likely to vote for? More

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      Trump, Arraigned on Election Charges, Pleads Not Guilty

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      The former president appeared in federal court in Washington after being indicted over his efforts to overturn his defeat in 2020. His first pretrial hearing was set for Aug. 28.Former President Donald J. Trump appeared in federal court in Washington on Thursday for the first time to face charges that he conspired to remain in office despite his 2020 election loss, pleading not guilty at a hearing conducted in the shadow of the Capitol, where his supporters, fueled by his lies, had rampaged to block the peaceful transfer of power.Mr. Trump was booked and fingerprinted before entering the courtroom and offering a soft-spoken “not guilty” to each of the four counts lodged against him on Tuesday by Jack Smith, the special counsel.He was allowed to leave court without paying any bail or agreeing to any travel restrictions. A first pretrial hearing was set for Aug. 28.Mr. Trump arrived in Washington in the remarkable position of being under indictment in three separate cases as he is running for president again. In addition to the election case, he faces federal charges of mishandling classified documents and accusations in New York related to hush money payments to a porn star.But even as he sped in and out of Federal District Court in about an hour and a half, he was leading his rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination by wide margins and remained defiant.Crowds gathered outside the federal courthouse where Mr. Trump appeared for his arraignment on Thursday.Jason Andrew for The New York Times“This is a very sad day for America,” Mr. Trump said at the airport in Washington before boarding his plane back to his golf club in New Jersey. “This is a persecution of a political opponent. This was never supposed to happen in America.”Holding his umbrella for him as he emerged from his SUV on the tarmac was Walt Nauta, his personal aide, who was charged alongside him in the classified-documents case.Thursday’s hearing was held inside a courthouse that has been the venue for hundreds of trials stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. His lawyers used the procedural hearing to hint at one of his central defense strategies — a request to delay a second pending federal trial for months, if not years.The arraignment took place about six weeks after he entered another not-guilty plea in a Miami courtroom after being indicted on charges of illegally retaining classified documents at his resort in Florida and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them.Thursday’s arraignment had deeper historical resonance. It began a process in which federal prosecutors will seek to hold Mr. Trump to account for what they say was his refusal to adhere to core democratic principles, a trial that will be held little more than a mile and a half from the White House and at the foot of the Capitol complex where his supporters chanted two and a half years ago for his vice president to be hanged and tried to block Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory.The indictment charged that Mr. Trump lied repeatedly to promote false claims of fraud, sought to bend the Justice Department toward supporting those claims and oversaw a scheme to create false slates of electors pledged to him in states that Mr. Biden had won. And it described how he ultimately pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to use so-called fake electors to subvert the certification of the election at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, that was cut short by the violence at the Capitol.Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya, who oversaw the roughly half-hour intake hearing on Thursday, ordered Mr. Trump not to communicate about the case with any witnesses except through lawyers or in the presence of lawyers. She set the first hearing before the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, for Aug. 28 — the date chosen by Mr. Trump’s lawyers from among the three options she provided and the latest of them.Police officers near the federal courthouse.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesDelaying the proceedings as much as possible is widely expected to be part of Mr. Trump’s legal strategy, given that he could effectively call off federal cases against him if he wins the 2024 election.The jockeying began on Thursday. After Judge Upadhyaya gave prosecutors a week to propose a trial date, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, John F. Lauro, complained that the government had had years to investigate and that he and his colleagues were going to need time to defend their client. She directed him to bring it up with the trial judge and prosecutors to respond within five days of his filing.“Mr. Trump is entitled to a fair and just trial,” Mr. Lauro said after Justice Department prosecutors requested invocation of a provision that could result in a start date within 90 days.Mr. Trump’s defense team has signaled that it intends to employ a variety of arguments to fight the charges.They include asserting that Mr. Trump had a First Amendment right to promote his view that the 2020 election was marred by fraud, and making a case that Mr. Trump sincerely believed his claims that he had been robbed of victory, an argument intended to make it more difficult for prosecutors to establish that he intended to violate the law.The defense team has also suggested that it will argue that Mr. Trump was relying on advice from lawyers when he sought to block certification of Mr. Biden’s victory, and that it could seek to move the trial out of Washington — a Democratic stronghold — to a more politically friendly setting.The wrangling over the timetable underscored the logistical and political complexities facing Mr. Trump and his team as they juggle three criminal proceedings and a presidential campaign.To give a sense of the crowded calendar his legal team will face, some of its members are scheduled to be in Fort Pierce, Fla., for a hearing in the classified-documents case on Aug. 25, and then to turn around and be in Washington on Aug. 28. Mr. Trump does not need to be in the courtroom for the pretrial hearings.Judge Upadhyaya arrived for the hearing 14 minutes late — creating long periods of awkward silence and pen-twiddling as Mr. Trump and his team sat across from equally antsy prosecutors.While the lawyers sparred, most eyes in the courtroom were on the second face-to-face encounter between the former president and Mr. Smith, who has filed charges that could put the 77-year-old Mr. Trump in a federal prison for the rest of his life. This time, unlike in Miami, the two men were positioned in such a way that they could be visible to each other.Jack Smith, the special counsel, announced the indictment of Mr. Trump in Washington on Tuesday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Smith entered the courtroom — normally used by the district’s chief judge, James E. Boasberg — about 15 minutes before the scheduled 4 p.m. start, with his lead prosecutor in the case, Thomas P. Windom, and positioned himself in a chair behind his team, with his back against the rail dividing participants from the gallery.Mr. Trump walked in very slowly in his signature long red tie and long blue suit coat, surveying the room and mouthing a greeting to no one in particular. He glanced briefly in the direction of Mr. Smith — whom he has called “deranged” — but he did not seem to make eye contact.Mr. Trump spoke in respectful tones when questioned by Judge Upadhyaya, the magistrate judge who presided over the proceeding.Yet if he had seemed chastened and ill at ease in Florida, he was more his defiant self on Thursday.When she asked his name, he replied, “Donald J. Trump” and then added “John!”When she asked his age, he raised his voice a notch and intoned, “Seven-seven!”At the end of the proceeding, Judge Upadhyaya thanked Mr. Trump, who said, “Thank you, your honor.” On the “all rise” command, he stood up. One of his lawyers put his arm on Mr. Trump’s back and guided him away from the table and out the courtroom door.Mr. Smith, known for his implacable demeanor, remained still for most of the hearing. But after Mr. Trump’s entourage exited, he appeared to let his guard down, smiling broadly as he shook hands with F.B.I. agents who had been working on the case.But the gravity of the case weighed heavily on participants and observers alike.At least three of the district court judges who have presided over trials of the Trump supporters charged for their roles in the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6 filed into the back row of the visitors’ gallery to observe. One was Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who had criticized what she called Mr. Trump’s “irresponsible and knowingly false claims that the election was stolen” in imposing a harsh sentence on a rioter who had bludgeoned a Capitol Police officer into unconsciousness.Outside the courthouse, security was heavy, with officers on foot and on horseback and barricades erected on the sidewalk. The crowd, made up of Mr. Trump’s critics and his supporters, clogged the area outside the courthouse, with some carrying pro-Trump signs and others shouting anti-Trump slogans, including “Lock him up!”The former president arrived in Washington by motorcade in the remarkable position of being under indictment in three separate cases.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMaggie Haberman More

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      Fact-Checking Trump Defenders’ Claims After Indictment in Election Case

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      Former President Donald Trump’s supporters have made inaccurate claims about the judge presiding over his case and misleadingly compared his conduct to that of other politicians.Allies of former President Donald J. Trump have rushed to his defense since he was charged on Tuesday in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.They inaccurately attacked the judge assigned to oversee the trial, baselessly speculated that the timing of the accusations was intended to obscure misconduct by the Bidens and misleadingly compared his conduct to that of Democratic politicians.Here’s a fact check.What Was Said“Judge Chutkan was appointed to the D.C. District Court by Barack Obama, and she has a reputation for being far left, even by D.C. District Court standards. Judge Chutkan, for example, has set aside numerous federal death-penalty cases, and she is the only federal judge in Washington, D.C., who has sentenced Jan. 6 defendants to sentences longer than the government requested.”— Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, in a podcast on WednesdayThis is exaggerated. Mr. Cruz is correct that Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the trial judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s prosecution in the case, was appointed by President Barack Obama. While she has gained a reputation for handing down tough sentences to people convicted of crimes in the Jan. 6 riot, she is not the only federal judge who has exceeded prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations.Of the more than 1,000 people who have been charged for their activities on Jan. 6, 2021, about 561 people have received a sentence, including 335 in jail and another 119 in home detention, as of July 6, according to the Justice Department. Judges have largely issued sentences shorter than what prosecutors sought and what federal sentencing guidelines recommend, data compiled by NPR and The Washington Post shows.Senator Ted Cruz described Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s appointment as “highly problematic,” but in the Federal District Court in Washington, cases are randomly assigned.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesJudge Chutkan ordered longer penalties in at least four cases, according to NPR, and appears to have done so more frequently than her peers. But other judges in Federal District Court in Washington have also imposed harsher sentences.Those include Judge Royce C. Lamberth, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, who sentenced a man to 60 days in prison while the government had asked for 14 days. He sentenced another to 51 months, rather than 46 months, and another to 60 days, rather than 30.Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, sentenced another defendant to 30 days, twice as long as the government recommendation. Judge Reggie B. Walton, nominated by President George W. Bush, sentenced a defendant to 50 days compared with the recommended 30 days. And Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, appointed by President Bill Clinton, sentenced a man to 60 days rather than 45 days.Moreover, Mr. Cruz described Judge Chutkan’s appointment as “highly problematic” given her political leanings. But it is worth noting that in the Federal District Court in Washington, cases are randomly assigned — similar to how Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee, was randomly assigned to preside over the case involving Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left office.What Was Said“All of these indictments have been called into question because they come right after massive evidence is released about the Biden family. On June 7, the F.B.I. released documents alleging that the Bidens took in $10 million in bribes from Burisma. The very next day, Jack Smith indicted Trump over the classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. And then you go to July 26. That’s when Hunter Biden’s plea deal fell apart after the D.O.J. tried giving him blanket immunity from any future prosecutions. The very next day, Jack Smith added more charges to the Mar-a-Lago case. And now, just one day after Devon Archer gave explosive testimony about Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter Biden’s business deals, Smith indicts Trump for Jan. 6.”— Maria Bartiromo, anchor on Fox Business Network, on WednesdayThis lacks evidence. Mr. Trump and many of his supporters have suggested that the timing of developments in investigations into his conduct runs suspiciously parallel to investigations into the conduct of Hunter Biden and is meant as a distraction.But there is no proof that Mr. Smith, the special counsel overseeing the cases, has deliberately synced his inquiries into Mr. Trump with investigations into the Bidens, one of which is handled by federal prosecutors and others by House Republicans.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Mr. Smith as special counsel in November to investigate Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol as well as the former president’s retention of classified documents. After Republicans won the House that same month, lawmakers in the party said they would begin to investigate the Bidens. (The Justice Department separately began an inquiry into Hunter Biden’s taxes and business dealings in 2018.)Over the next few months, the inquiries barreled along, with some developments inevitably occurring almost in tandem. In some cases, Mr. Smith has little control over the developments or when they are publicly revealed.The first overlap Ms. Bartiromo cited centered on an F.B.I. document from June 2020 that contained an unsubstantiated allegation of bribery against President Biden and his son, and on charges filed against Mr. Trump over his handling of classified documents.Jack Smith was appointed in November 2022 to investigate Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot.Doug Mills/The New York TimesRepresentative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, issued a subpoena in May for the document. The F.B.I. allowed Mr. Comer and the committee’s top Democrat access to a redacted version on June 5. That same day, Mr. Comer said he would initiate contempt-of-Congress hearings against the F.B.I. director on June 8, as the agency was still resisting giving all members access to the document.Two days later, on June 7, Mr. Comer announced that the F.B.I. had relented and that he would cancel the contempt proceedings. Members of the committee viewed the document on the morning of June 8, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, held a news conference that afternoon describing the document.That night, Mr. Trump himself, not the Justice Department, announced that he had been charged over his mishandling of classified documents, overtaking any headlines about the Bidens. The department declined to comment, and the indictment was unsealed a day later, on June 9.In the second overlap, on July 26, a federal judge put on hold a proposed plea deal between Hunter Biden and the Justice Department over tax and gun charges. Ms. Bartiromo is correct that a grand jury issued new charges against Mr. Trump in the documents case on July 27.The timing of the latest developments in Ms. Bartiromo’s third example, too, was not entirely in Mr. Smith’s hands.Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer was first subpoenaed on June 12 to testify before the committee on June 16. Mr. Comer told The Washington Examiner that Mr. Archer rescheduled his appearance three times before his lawyer confirmed on July 30 that he would appear the next day. Mr. Archer then spoke to the House oversight committee in nearly five hours of closed-door testimony on July 31. Republicans and Democrats on the committee gave conflicting accounts of what Mr. Archer said.Mr. Trump announced on July 18 that federal prosecutors had informed him he was a target of their investigation into his efforts to stay in office, suggesting that he would soon be indicted. Mr. Trump’s lawyers met with officials in the office of Mr. Smith on July 27. A magistrate judge ordered the indictment unsealed at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 1.What Was Said“All of the people who claim that the 2016 election wasn’t legitimate, all of the people who claimed in 2004, with a formal objection in the Congress, that that election wasn’t legitimate, and in fact, objected to the point where they said that the voting machines in Ohio were tampered with and that President Bush was selected, not elected — and not to mention former presidents of the United States and secretary of states, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter and a whole slew of House Democrats who repeatedly led the nation to believe — lied to the nation, that they said Russia selected Donald Trump as president, that the election was completely illegitimate — all of that was allowed to pass, but yet, once again, we see a criminalization when it comes to Donald Trump.”— Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, on CNN on WednesdayThis is misleading. Mr. Trump’s supporters have long argued that Democrats, too, have objected to election results and pushed allegations of voting malfeasance. None of the objections cited, though, have been paired with concerted efforts to overturn election results, as was the case for Mr. Trump.Democratic lawmakers objected to counting a state’s electors after the elections of recent Republican presidents in 2001, 2005 and 2017. In 2001 and 2017, objecting House members were unable to find a senator to sign on to their objections, as is required, and were overruled by the vice president. In 2005, two Democrats objected to counting Ohio’s electoral votes. The two chambers then convened debate and rejected the objections.In each case, the losing candidate had already conceded, did not try to overturn election results and did not try to persuade the vice president to halt proceedings as Mr. Trump is accused of doing in 2020.Mrs. Clinton has said repeatedly that Russian interference was partly to blame for her defeat in the 2016 presidential election. But she is not accused of trying to overthrow the results of the election. Prosecutors have not detailed any involvement on her part in a multifaceted effort to stay in power, including by organizing slates of false electors or pressuring officials to overturn voting results.What Was Said“Indicting political opponent candidates during a presidential election is what happens in banana republics and Third World countries.”— Representative Andy Harris, Republican of Maryland, in a Twitter post on TuesdayThis is exaggerated. Mr. Trump is the first former U.S. president to be indicted on criminal charges, but he is not the only presidential candidate to face charges in the United States and certainly not in the world.Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, was indicted in August 2014 and accused of abusing his power. Mr. Perry, who ran for president in 2012, had hinted that he would run again and set up a political action committee the same month he was indicted. He officially announced his presidential bid in 2015 but dropped out before a court dismissed the charges against him in 2016.Eugene V. Debs, the socialist leader, ran for president behind bars in 1920 after he was indicted on a charge of sedition for opposing American involvement in World War I. He was sentenced in 1918 to 10 years in prison.It is also not unheard-of for political leaders in advanced economies and democracies to face charges while campaigning for office. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of fraud and bribery. After losing power, he returned to his post in November 2022 while still facing charges. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi faced numerous charges and scandals over tax fraud and prostitution while he served as prime minister in the 2000s.And in Taiwan, prosecutors said in 2006 that they had enough evidence to bring corruption charges against the president at the time, Chen Shui-bian. Mr. Chen remained his party’s chairman through parliamentary elections in 2008 as the investigation loomed over him, and he was arrested and charged that November. More

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      The Charges That Were Notably Absent From the Trump Indictment

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      An indictment this week did not accuse former President Donald Trump of inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol, but it did show that some close to him knew violence might be coming.There was something noticeably absent when the special counsel, Jack Smith, unsealed an indictment this week charging former President Donald J. Trump with multiple conspiracies to overturn the 2020 election: any count that directly accused Mr. Trump of being responsible for the violence his supporters committed at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The indictment asserted that as violence erupted that day, Mr. Trump “exploited the disruption,” using it to further his goal of stopping the certification of his loss in the election. But it stopped short of charging him with actually encouraging or inciting the mob that stormed the building, chasing lawmakers from their duties.Still, the charging document, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, made abundantly clear that a group of aides and lawyers surrounding Mr. Trump were highly aware that he was playing with fire by pushing forward with his plan to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, to throw the election his way during the congressional proceeding on Jan. 6.While some of the aides and lawyers were aghast by what might, and ultimately did, take place, others seemed unconcerned, especially those who were later named as Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in the case.In one scene described in the indictment, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump warned the lawyer John Eastman just days before the Capitol was attacked that his plan to have Mr. Trump strong-arm Mr. Pence was “going to cause riots in the streets.”According to the indictment, Mr. Eastman “responded that there had previously been points in the nation’s history where violence was necessary to protect the republic.”More than 1,000 people have been charged so far with taking part in the Capitol attack, which caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage and injuries to more than 100 police officers. Among those accused are nearly 350 defendants charged with assaulting the police and 10 members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia who were convicted at trial of seditious conspiracy, a crime that requires showing that physical force was used against the government.In December, the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 recommended that the Justice Department charge Mr. Trump with several federal crimes, including inciting insurrection — a count that would have directly placed the blame for the attack on Mr. Trump’s shoulders. But Mr. Smith’s prosecutors did not include that charge in the indictment.Instead, they focused on counts that detailed Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging machinations to remain in power in the weeks leading up to the attack and on how he took his time in issuing a plea for calm to his supporters once the attack was underway.At a news conference announcing the charges, Mr. Smith asserted that the assault on the Capitol was “fueled by lies,” but over the course of its 45 pages, the indictment itself never quite makes that accusation directly against Mr. Trump.And yet the charges did lay out how Mr. Eastman, who is identified in the indictment only as Co-Conspirator 2, and Jeffrey Clark, a loyalist in Mr. Trump’s Justice Department who appears as Co-Conspirator 4, understood and even accepted that violence might result from their plans to subvert the democratic process and keep Mr. Trump in the White House.Three days before the Capitol was attacked, the indictment says, a deputy White House counsel told Mr. Clark that there had been no voting fraud sufficient to change the results of the election and that if Mr. Trump nonetheless maintained his grip on power, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.”Mr. Clark’s response, according to the indictment, was to bring up a federal law that allows the president to summon the military to quell domestic unrest.“That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act,” he said.For reasons that remain unknown, prosecutors chose not to include in the indictment any evidence from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows. In a gripping testimony last year in front of the House Jan. 6 committee, Ms. Hutchinson described how Mr. Trump, knowing his supporters were armed and threatening violence on Jan. 6, urged them to march to Capitol anyhow — and even sought to join them.Ms. Hutchinson told the panel that Mr. Trump had demanded that security checkpoints be removed outside his rally on the Ellipse, near the White House, even though he had been warned that some in the crowd had been spotted with weapons.“They’re not here to hurt me,” she quoted Mr. Trump as saying.In theory, Mr. Smith’s team could bring new charges against Mr. Trump at almost any time, using accounts like Ms. Hutchinson’s to support an accusation that Mr. Trump played some role in encouraging the violence at the Capitol. The incitement charge recommended by the House committee is written quite broadly, making it a crime to “incite, assist with or participate in” a rebellion or an insurrection against federal laws or government authority.Prosecutors could also try to connect Mr. Trump more directly with the violence through the statements made by scores of rioters charged in the Capitol attack who have said that they were answering Mr. Trump’s call when they traveled to Washington and joined in the assault.“Hey we’re going back to Washington January 6 — Trump has called all patriots,” an Iowa woman named Deborah Sandoval wrote on Facebook on Dec. 21, 2020, two days after Mr. Trump summoned his followers to a “wild” protest in the city. “If the electors don’t elect, we will be forced into civil war.”Still, prosecutors are often wary of bringing incitement charges because they typically involve behavior like speeches or social media posts that the First Amendment protects, within limits.And Mr. Trump’s lawyers have already signaled that he intends to use a First Amendment defense against the charges he is facing.During his speech before the attack, Mr. Trump did at one point tell his followers to march on the Capitol “peacefully,” and, after the building had been stormed, he posted messages on Twitter belatedly asking people in the crowd to “remain peaceful.”But prosecutors say that even though he issued those calls, he did not ask his supporters to leave the Capitol grounds until after 6 p.m. that day. And as he made that request, the indictment said, he continued to repeat his false claims that a “sacred landslide victory” had been “viciously stripped away” from him. More

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      DeSantis Wants to ‘Remove’ Trials From D.C. Legal Experts Say It’s a Non-Starter.

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      Legal experts say that an idea floated by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida about transferring criminal cases out of Washington, D.C., is a flawed concept.Mr. DeSantis made the unusual suggestion in the moments after his rival, former President Donald J. Trump, was indicted on Tuesday for trying to overturn the 2020 election, writing on Twitter that “we need to enact reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, D.C. to their home districts.” (Both men call Florida home.)“It’s going to be hard to square with the Constitution,” said Elizabeth Earle Beske, an associate law professor at American University in Washington, D.C.Several scholars and lawyers noted that the Constitution says that trials “shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed.” The federal rules of criminal procedure further specify that the proceedings be held in the district of the alleged offense.Defendants can already seek a change of venue for their cases under the current law, the experts pointed out, but the bar is high: They must demonstrate to the court that they cannot otherwise obtain a fair and impartial trial.Mr. DeSantis, in echoing Mr. Trump’s “swamp” pejorative for Washington, seemed to suggest that his rival could not get a fair trial in the nation’s capital. Bryan Griffin, a campaign spokesman for Mr. DeSantis who went to Harvard Law School and previously practiced law, said in an email that the governor’s idea for moving cases had merit.“Congress can certainly change the rules of criminal procedure to allow defendants to change venues out of D.C. for politically charged cases,” he said.But that premise was challenged by David B. Rivkin Jr., who served in the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and practices appellate and constitutional law in Washington.“I think it’s extremely unfortunate to characterize the D.C. jury pool in this fashion,” he said. “Whatever you think about the U.S. government, the notion that means that people who live in the district can be accused of being part of the swamp, to me, is neither fair nor appropriate.”Arthur Hellman, a law professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, suggested that Mr. DeSantis had “not thought that through completely.”“Criminal venue was so important to the framers,” of the Constitution, he said. More

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      Pence Says Trump Pushed Him ‘Essentially to Overturn the Election’

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      The remarks are some of the former vice president’s most pointed about what happened in the lead up to Jan. 6, 2021.Former Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday said that former President Donald J. Trump and his advisers had tried to get him “essentially to overturn the election” and that the American people needed to know it.The remarks, made in an interview with Fox News, are some of Mr. Pence’s most pointed to date about what he experienced in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, when he presided over the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.And they came as Mr. Pence, who is trailing his former boss, the G.O.P. front-runner, in the Republican primary, has faced a slog in his attempt to get enough small-donor donations to qualify for the first Republican debate on Aug. 23. An adviser to Mr. Pence said he got more than 7,000 donations on Wednesday, the day after Mr. Trump’s indictment on charges of conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election.The new remarks are less of a pivot than a subtle shift in Mr. Pence’s language on a topic over which he has long walked a delicate tightrope — condemning Mr. Trump’s behavior while saying he hoped an indictment would not be in the offing, describing it as divisive for the country.But in the hours after the indictment, Mr. Pence became somewhat more explicit publicly about some of the pressure campaign tactics that Mr. Trump and his allies engaged in while attempting to persuade Mr. Pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing the certification of Electoral College votes to toss out the results.In a campaign speech earlier Wednesday at the Indiana State Fair, Mr. Pence reiterated his stance that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” Mr. Trump, in a post on his social media site, Truth Social, said he feels “badly” for Mr. Pence as he struggles to gain traction in his presidential bid.The effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to push Mr. Pence to reject the 2020 election results is laid out in detail in the indictment that the special counsel Jack Smith brought on Tuesday. The indictment focuses extensively on Mr. Trump’s attempts to twist Mr. Pence’s arm, with details provided by Mr. Pence in an interview with investigators and in contemporaneous notes that he provided under subpoena.The indictment references an episode where Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, alerted the lead Secret Service agent on Mr. Pence’s detail that he was “concerned for the Vice President’s safety” after Mr. Trump told Mr. Pence he would have to “publicly criticize” him for refusing to go along with Mr. Trump’s request after a meeting on January 5.Mr. Pence told Fox News: “I never considered it. ““I was clear with President Trump throughout all the way up to the morning” of Jan. 6, 2021, he told Fox News. “It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause. The president specifically asked me and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes.”He said that people can read the indictment, which he had hoped wouldn’t have to happen.“I don’t know if the government can meet the standard, the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt for criminal charges,” he said. “But the American people deserve to know that President Trump and his advisers didn’t just ask me to pause. They asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election.” More

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      Trump Expected to Appear in Court on Election Charges

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      The former president’s appearance before Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya on election subversion charges comes about six weeks after his arraignment over sensitive documents.Former President Donald J. Trump is expected to appear at 4 p.m. on Thursday in the U.S. federal courthouse at the foot of Capitol Hill, the site of a yearslong government effort to hold accountable those who tried to subvert democracy.Mr. Trump’s appearance before Moxila A. Upadhyaya, a federal magistrate judge, comes about six weeks after his arraignment in Miami on charges of mishandling government documents after he left the White House and seeking to block investigators.His second federal indictment is likely to follow a cadence similar to his first.The former president will fly down on his private jet from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. He is expected to arrive between 3 and 4 p.m., at the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse, the venue for dozens of trials stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The U.S. Marshals Service, which is responsible for security inside federal courthouses, will escort him to an area where he will be booked for a third time this year. (He was arraigned in New York in the spring in connection with a hush-money payment to a pornographic actress before the 2016 election.)The sheriff in Fulton County, Ga., where another potential indictment connected to Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election looms, has suggested that if Mr. Trump is charged, he will be processed like anybody else, mug shot and all. That will not happen on Thursday: The marshals did not photograph Mr. Trump in Miami, and they will not take his picture in Washington, according to a law enforcement official involved in the planning.But federal rules dictate that an accused person be reprocessed in each jurisdiction in which he or she faces charges, so Mr. Trump will have to be fingerprinted for a second time using an electronic scanning device. He is also expected to answer a series of intake questions that include personal details, such as his age.As of late Wednesday, there have been no credible threats of organized efforts to disrupt the proceedings, a senior federal law enforcement official said, although officials expect pro-Trump demonstrations and are on the lookout for individuals or small groups that may act violently.The level of security, both outside the building and inside, is likely to be among the most intense ever deployed at a federal courthouse, officials said.Federal law enforcement agencies are coordinating with the city’s Metropolitan Police Department to guard the building and to block off some of the surrounding streets.And the courtroom itself will be packed with security. Mr. Trump, as always, will be accompanied by his Secret Service detail. The marshals will be present to protect the judge and the special counsel Jack Smith should he attend the hearing, as he did in Miami.The hearing should be relatively straightforward.Mr. Trump will be asked to enter a plea — what many anticipate will be not guilty — in response to the four-count indictment unsealed on Tuesday.Then the government will be asked to present conditions for his release.In the Florida case, government officials requested no bail and no restrictions on his travel, acknowledging his status as a leading candidate for the 2024 presidential Republican nomination.There are no indications that they plan to change their request this time.But there might be a wrinkle or two. In Miami, the magistrate judge, Jonathan Goodman, amended the bond deal reached between the two sides because it did not include restrictions on Mr. Trump’s contact with potential witnesses and his co-defendant Walt Nauta, who continues to work for him in some capacity.It is possible that Judge Upadhyaya might have a similar issue with some element of Mr. Trump’s new bond agreement, or she might simply hand off the case to the assigned trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, a President Obama appointee.The Trump side of the courtroom could be more of a wild card.The former president and his allies have accused Mr. Biden, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Mr. Smith, without evidence, of conspiring to destroy his chances of re-election by weaponizing federal law enforcement against him. And his team has made it clear that it does not think it can get a fair trial in Washington, an overwhelmingly Democratic city.One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, John Lauro, suggested on Wednesday that the trial be moved to a nearby state, with a friendlier and more conservative electorate.“Well, there’s other options — West Virginia is close by,” he told CBS.The most consequential decisions, however, will be made in the coming weeks, after Judge Chutkan takes over. District court judges in Washington have been inundated by so many Jan. 6 cases (more than 1,000 people have been charged) that their calendars are often booked for months and, in some cases, more than a year in advance.Mr. Smith has called for a “speedy trial,” presumably before the election. It remains to be seen if the judge will accommodate that timetable.Mr. Lauro, speaking to another interviewer on Wednesday, suggested it would be more fair to give Mr. Trump “years” to prepare his defense.“Why don’t we make it equal?” he told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. “The bottom line is that they have 60 federal agents working on this, 60 lawyers, all kinds of government personnel. And we get this indictment, and they want to go to trial in 90 days? Does that sound like justice to you?” More

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      Trump’s 2024 Campaign Seeks to Make Voters the Ultimate Jury

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      Donald J. Trump has long understood the stakes in the election: The courts may decide his cases, but only voters can decide whether to return him to power.The indictment of former President Donald J. Trump on charges of conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election ensures that a federal jury will determine whether he is held accountable for his elaborate, drawn-out and unprecedented attempt to negate a vote of the American people and cling to power.But it is tens of millions of voters who may deliver the ultimate verdict.For months now, as prosecutors pursued criminal charges against him in multiple jurisdictions, Mr. Trump has intertwined his legal defenses with his electoral arguments. He has called on Republicans to rally behind him to send a message to prosecutors. He has made clear that if he recaptures the White House, he will use his powers to ensure his personal freedom by shutting down prosecutions still underway.In effect, he is both running for president and trying to outrun the law enforcement officials seeking to convict him.That dynamic has transformed the stakes of this election in ways that may not always be clear. Behind the debates over inflation, “wokeness” and the border, the 2024 election is at its core about the fundamental tenets of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power, the independence of the nation’s justice system, the meaning of political free speech and the principle that no one is above the law.Now, the voters become the jury.Mr. Trump has always understood this. When he ran for president the first time, he channeled the economic, racial and social resentments of his voters. But as his legal peril has grown, he has focused on his own grievances and projected them onto his supporters.“If these illegal persecutions succeed, if they’re allowed to set fire to the law, then it will not stop with me. Their grip will close even tighter around YOU,” Mr. Trump wrote to supporters on Tuesday night. “It’s not just my freedom on the line, but yours as well — and I will NEVER let them take it from you.”Mr. Trump’s arguments have so far been effective in his pursuit of his party’s nomination. After two previous indictments — over hush-money payments to a porn star and purloined classified documents — Republican voters rallied behind the former president with an outpouring of support and cash.A New York Times/Siena College poll released this week found that Mr. Trump has a commanding lead over all his Republican rivals combined, leading Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida by a two-to-one margin in a theoretical head-to-head matchup. Mr. Trump, even as America’s best-known criminal defendant, is in a dead heat with Mr. Biden among general election voters, the poll found.About 17 percent of voters who said they preferred him over Mr. Biden supported Mr. Trump despite believing that he had committed serious federal crimes or that he had threatened democracy after the 2020 election.The prevailing Republican view is that the charges against Mr. Trump are a political vendetta.Republicans have spent two years rewriting the narrative of the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, reimagining the violent attempt to disrupt the Electoral College vote count as a freedom fight against a Washington “deep state.” The result is that in many quarters of the Republican Party, Mr. Trump is more trusted than the prosecutors, special counsels and judges handling the cases against him.“Even those who were fence sitting or window shopping, many of them are of the belief that the justice system under President Biden is simply out to get the former president,” said Jimmy Centers, a former aide to former Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, a Republican who later served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to China. “It has only strengthened his support in Iowa, to the point at which his floor is much more solid than what it was earlier this spring.”Whether Republicans continue to stand by Mr. Trump, as they have for months, remains to be seen in the wake of Tuesday’s indictment.“At a certain point, are you really going to hitch your whole party to a guy who is just trying to stay out of jail?” asked former Representative Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican who lost her seat when suburban voters turned against Mr. Trump in 2018. “There may be another strategy that Republicans could come up with. And if they can’t, I think they lose.”Strategists supporting rivals of Mr. Trump say that over time, the continued charges could hurt his standing with Republican voters, distract Mr. Trump from focusing on presenting his plans for the future and raise questions about his electability in the general election.“Even though people will rally around him in the moment, it starts to erode favorablity and his market share,” said Kristin Davison, chief operating officer of Never Back Down, the super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis. “More people will start to look forward.”Or they may not.Republicans’ responses to the third indictment have been similar to their complaints about the previous two — if slightly more muted. Loyal allies in Congress have rallied around Mr. Trump, blasting the Justice Department while most of his rivals for the party’s nomination declined to directly attack him over the charges.Richard Czuba, a veteran pollster who conducts surveys for Detroit’s media outlets, said opinions about Mr. Trump on both sides of the aisle had long been cased in cement. Like the past three cycles, this election will probably be another referendum on Mr. Trump, he said, and the outcome is likely to depend on which side can best drive its voters to the polls — regardless of whether Mr. Trump faces three indictments or 300.“We have to be brutally honest: Donald Trump sucks all the oxygen out of the room,” Mr. Czuba said. “If you were with him, you’re with him. If you were against him, you’re against him.”Still, Democrats are hopeful that in a general election, the indictments might sway some small slice of independents or swing voters. There is little doubt that a steady drumbeat of news out of the various court proceedings will ensure that Mr. Trump’s legal troubles continue to dominate the news in 2024. Court appearances and legal filings will compete for attention with debates and policy rollouts.Biden campaign officials and allies believe they can focus on topics with a more direct impact on the lives of voters — economic issues, abortion access and extreme weather — without explicitly addressing Mr. Trump’s issues.About an hour after news of Mr. Trump’s indictment broke, Mr. Biden and his wife finished dinner at a seafood restaurant in Delaware, then went to the movies. The president did not address the indictment, just as he had stayed silent after reports broke of the first two.Still, Democrats believe there will be an impact. Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board, said prosecuting Mr. Trump for his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack has the potential to galvanize the country in a way that the other legal cases against Mr. Trump do not.Tens of millions of people tuned in last summer for the hearings of the House Select Committee’s investigation of the Capitol riot, he noted, and Mr. Trump’s approval ratings among persuadable voters dropped afterward.Although a federal trial would not be televised, a steady stream of news may be enough to remind voters of the stakes in electing a candidate who is also a defendant, he said.“When you see witness after witness, day after day,” Mr. Boyle said, “I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that that could end up changing things.” More