Federal Criminal Case Against Trump (Documents Case)

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      Pence Undercuts Trump’s Defense in Classified Documents Case

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      The former vice president said he knew of no broad order by Donald Trump that would have declassified documents the former president took with him when he left the White House.Former Vice President Mike Pence said on Sunday that he knew of no widespread declassification of documents by President Donald J. Trump when they were in the White House together, refuting one of the former president’s main defenses against charges of endangering national security.Mr. Trump, who has been indicted on 40 felony counts and accused of taking war plans and other secret documents with him when he left office and refusing to return many of them, has long insisted that he had issued a “standing order” to declassify papers and that any he brought home were automatically declassified.But his vice president became the latest former Trump administration official to say that he had heard of no such edict. “I was never made aware of any broad-based effort to declassify documents,” Mr. Pence said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.“There is a process that the White House goes through to declassify materials,” Mr. Pence added. “I’m aware of that occurring on several cases over the course of our four years. But I don’t have any knowledge of any broad-based directive from the president. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t occur; it’s just not something that I ever heard about.”Mr. Pence’s recollections square with those of other former White House officials. Mark Meadows, who was Mr. Trump’s last White House chief of staff, told investigators working for the special counsel Jack Smith that he did not recall the former president issuing such an order or even discussing it, ABC News reported on Sunday, citing unnamed sources.Eighteen former administration officials, including at least two of Mr. Meadows’s predecessors as chief of staff, John F. Kelly and Mick Mulvaney, previously told CNN that they knew of no such order either. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have not included the claim of such a declassification order in court papers, where they would be liable for making false assertions.Instead, Mr. Trump has made the claim only in public appearances, where there is no legal penalty for not telling the truth. Shortly after an F.B.I. search of his home at Mar-a-Lago in Florida last August turned up a trove of classified documents that he had taken and failed to return after being subpoenaed, Mr. Trump posted on social media that “it was all declassified.”That evening, he issued a statement read on Fox News saying that he “had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified.”During a subsequent interview with Sean Hannity on Fox, Mr. Trump said he did not need to follow any process to declassify documents. “You’re the president of the United States — you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it,” he said then.Referring to the documents found at Mar-a-Lago, he said, “In other words, when I left the White House, they were declassified.”Mr. Trump has maintained that assertion for months. During a CNN town hall in May, he said, “They become automatically declassified when I took them.”But the indictment filed by Mr. Smith in Federal District Court in Florida includes evidence that Mr. Trump was aware that the documents were not declassified. During a recorded July 2021 meeting with two people interviewing him on behalf of Mr. Meadows for the former aide’s memoir, Mr. Trump referred to attack plans against Iran and on the tape sounded as if he were holding it up to show them.“See, as president, I could have declassified it,” he told them. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”ABC News reported that it had reviewed an early draft of Mr. Meadows’s resulting memoir that described Mr. Trump having a classified war plan “on the couch” at his office in Bedminster, N.J., but that the reference was deleted by Mr. Meadows because it would be “problematic.”George Terwilliger, Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, declined to comment on ABC’s account.Mr. Pence, who is trailing in his campaign against Mr. Trump for the Republican presidential nomination next year, has been cautious about criticizing his former running mate, who has been indicted in four separate state and federal cases.But with the first Republican debate looming this week, Mr. Pence has been more willing lately to deride Mr. Trump’s reliance on “crackpot lawyers” in trying to overturn the 2020 election and for asking his vice president “to put him over the Constitution” by invalidating Electoral College votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.Asked on ABC on Sunday whether the president’s chief of staff would have known about any broad declassification order had it existed, Mr. Pence said, “I would expect so.”But he added: “But, look, President Trump is entitled to a presumption of innocence. He’s entitled to his day in court. And I’m just not going to comment on the latest leak or the latest reporting coming out of that process.”Jonathan Swan More

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      How Many of Trump’s Trials Will Happen Before the Election?

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      Donald J. Trump is the target of four separate criminal indictments, but the prosecutions could drag on for months or even years.Three different prosecutors want to put Donald J. Trump on trial in four different cities next year, all before Memorial Day and in the midst of his presidential campaign.It will be nearly impossible to pull off.A morass of delays, court backlogs and legal skirmishes awaits, interviews with nearly two dozen current and former prosecutors, judges, legal experts and people involved in the Trump cases show. Some experts predicted that only one or two trials will take place next year; one speculated that none of the four Trump cases will start before the election.It would be virtually unheard of for any defendant to play a game of courthouse Twister like this, let alone one who is also the leading contender for the Republican nomination for the presidency. And between the extensive legal arguments that must take place before a trial can begin — not to mention that the trials themselves could last weeks or months — there are simply not enough boxes on the calendar to squeeze in all the former president’s trials.“This is something that is not normal,” said Jeffrey Bellin, a former federal prosecutor in Washington who now teaches criminal procedure at William & Mary Law School and believes that Mr. Trump might only be on trial once next year. “While each of the cases seems at this point to be strong, there’s only so much you can ask a defendant to do at one time.”Any delay would represent a victory for Mr. Trump, who denies all wrongdoing and who could exploit the timeline to undermine the cases against him. Less time sitting in a courtroom equals more time hitting the campaign trail, and his advisers have not tried to hide that Mr. Trump hopes to overcome his legal troubles by winning the presidency.If his lawyers manage to drag out the trials into 2025 or beyond — potentially during a second Trump administration — Mr. Trump could seek to pardon himself or order his Justice Department to shut down the federal cases. And although he could not control the state prosecutions in Georgia or Manhattan, the Justice Department has long held that a sitting president cannot be criminally prosecuted, which very likely applies to state cases as well.Ultimately, the judges overseeing the four cases might have to coordinate so that Mr. Trump’s lawyers can adequately prepare his defense without needlessly delaying the trials. Judges are permitted under ethics rules to confer with one another to efficiently administer the business of their courts, experts said, and they periodically do so.“The four indictments can appear to resemble four cars converging on an intersection that has no lights or stop signs — but that won’t happen,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law. “Well before the intersection, the judges will figure it out.”For now, Mr. Trump’s court schedule looks to be nearly as crowded as his campaign calendar, with potential trials overlapping with key dates in the Republican primary season. Claiming he is a victim of a weaponized justice system that is seeking to bar him from office, Mr. Trump may end up bringing his campaign to the courthouse steps.A federal special counsel, Jack Smith, has proposed Jan. 2 of next year (two weeks before the Iowa caucuses) as a date for Mr. Trump to stand trial in Washington on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. In a Thursday night court filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers countered with a proposed date of April 2026.Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney who this week announced racketeering charges against Mr. Trump, accusing him of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” to reverse Georgia’s election results, wants that trial to begin on March 4 (the day before Super Tuesday).It is possible that the election interference case brought against Mr. Trump by special counsel Jack Smith may be given scheduling priority, the experts said.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Smith’s recent case in Washington, and Ms. Willis’s in Georgia, were filed after Mr. Trump was already scheduled for two additional criminal trials next spring: in New York, on March 25, on state charges related to a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels; and in Florida, on May 20, on federal charges brought by Mr. Smith accusing Mr. Trump of mishandling classified material after leaving office.Although the New York and Florida indictments were unveiled earlier, affording them first crack at the calendar, some experts now argue that they should take a back seat to the election-related cases, in Georgia and Washington, in which the charges strike at the core of American democracy. Trial scheduling is not always a first-come, first-served operation, and deference could be given to the most serious charges.In a radio interview last month, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said that having been the first to indict did not necessarily mean he would insist on being the first to put the former president on trial. However, he said, the judge in the case, Juan M. Merchan, ultimately controls the calendar.“We will follow the court’s lead,” Mr. Bragg said.There has not yet been any direct communication among judges or prosecutors about moving the Manhattan case, according to people with knowledge of the matter.Still, Mr. Bragg’s comments suggest that he would not oppose moving the Manhattan case, which carries a lesser potential punishment than the three others, backward in line.“My own belief is Alvin Bragg will be true to his word and remain flexible in the interests of justice,” said Norman Eisen, who worked for the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and believes that prosecutors might be able to squeeze in three Trump trials next year.And Mr. Eisen, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argued that voters deserve to know whether Mr. Trump was convicted of subverting the will of the people in the previous election before they vote in the next one.“There could not be a more important question confronting the country than whether a candidate for the office of the presidency is innocent or guilty of previously abusing that office in an attempted coup,” he said.The most likely candidate to take over Mr. Bragg’s March trial date would be Mr. Smith and his election interference case. Recently, nearly a dozen Republican-appointed former judges and high-ranking federal officials submitted a brief to the judge overseeing that case, arguing that the trial should take place in January as Mr. Smith has proposed and citing a “national necessity” for a “fair and expeditious trial.”But this is the case in which Mr. Trump’s lawyers have asked for a 2026 trial date, citing the voluminous amount of material turned over by the government — 11.5 million pages of documents, for example — that the defense must now review. Mr. Trump’s lawyers estimated that to finish by the prosecution’s proposed January trial date would mean reading the equivalent of “Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace,’ cover to cover, 78 times a day, every day, from now until jury selection.”In that case, Mr. Smith brought a narrow set of charges against Mr. Trump in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election, totaling four felony counts, and with no co-defendants.In contrast, Ms. Willis’s election case is a sweeping 98-page indictment of not only Mr. Trump, who faces 13 criminal counts, but also 18 co-defendants, including Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City. Already, Mr. Meadows has petitioned for his case to be moved from state to federal court, and other defendants are likely to follow suit. That process could take months and could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, probably making Ms. Willis’s proposed trial date of March 4 something of a long shot.In contrast to the relatively narrow election interference case brought by Mr. Smith in federal court, Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney, has charged Mr. Trump and his associates with a multitude of felonies related to the 2020 presidential election.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe sheer size of Mr. Trump’s Georgia case, and the fact it was the last of the four cases to be brought, suggests any Georgia trial of Mr. Trump could be delayed even beyond next year.It is exceedingly rare for a criminal defendant to face so many trials in such a concentrated period of time. The once high-flying lawyer Michael Avenatti seemed to be heading for three federal trials after he was charged in Manhattan in 2019 in a scheme to extort the apparel giant Nike; and, separately, with stealing money from Ms. Daniels, a former client; and in California, with embezzling money from other clients. (He was eventually convicted in the New York trials and pleaded guilty in the California case.)E. Danya Perry, a lawyer who represented Mr. Avenatti in the Nike case, the first to go to trial, said the challenge was “sequencing the cases in a way that would be most advantageous” to her client. And because there was some overlap in the evidence, she said, the defense had to be careful not to open the door for prosecutors to introduce evidence against Mr. Avenatti from another of the cases.“You’re not just trying the case in front of that particular judge,” Ms. Perry said. “Evidence from one case could bleed into other cases.”Before any trial, Mr. Trump’s cases are also likely to become bogged down as his lawyers review and potentially argue over large amounts of documents and other case material turned over by the government. Certain judicial rulings could also lead to drawn-out pretrial appeals.In the Florida documents case, disputes over the use of classified information could delay the proceeding as well. And in the federal court in Washington, which is already contending with lengthy backlogs amid prosecutions of hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have suggested they plan to litigate complex constitutional issues, including whether some of Mr. Trump’s false claims about the election were protected by the First Amendment.Even the jury selection process could drag on for weeks or months, as courts summon huge pools of prospective jurors for questioning over whether they harbor bias in favor of or against the polarizing former president.Michael B. Mukasey, a former U.S. attorney general and longtime Manhattan federal judge, said because of the complex issues raised in all four of Mr. Trump’s cases, “I think the odds are slim to none that any of them gets to trial before the election.”And Mr. Trump’s criminal cases are not the only courtroom battles he’s waging.In October, he faces trial in a civil suit filed by Attorney General Letitia James of New York, accusing him, his company and three of his children of a “staggering” fraud in overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars. In January, Mr. Trump faces two civil trials arising from private lawsuits: one a defamation claim by the writer E. Jean Carroll and the other accusing him of enticing people into a sham business opportunity.“We fully expect both cases to go to trial in January 2024,” said Roberta A. Kaplan, the plaintiffs’ lawyer in the two private suits.Although Mr. Trump need not be in court for the civil cases, he almost certainly will have to attend the criminal trials, said Daniel C. Richman, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor and now a professor at Columbia Law School.“If you asked all the prosecutors in each case, they’d firmly and sincerely say that they want these trials to happen in the first half of 2024,” Mr. Richman said. “But wishing does not make it so.”Maggie Haberman More

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      How Trump Uses Supporters’ Donations to Pay His Legal Bills

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      Facing a wide array of criminal charges, the former president is using money from small donors to defend himself legally — a practice that raises ethical questions.Former President Donald J. Trump faces a mountain of legal bills as he defends himself against a wide array of federal and state charges, with the latest coming this week in Georgia.To pay lawyers, he has often turned to money from supporters: Over the past two years, he has drawn tens of millions of dollars from a political action committee he controls called Save America PAC. Originally set up in 2020 as he galvanized supporters around his baseless claims of election fraud, the group — technically known as a leadership PAC — has been sustained in large part by contributions from small donors.Experts say the practice is most likely legal but that it raises ethical questions about how Mr. Trump treats his donors.Why is he doing this?Because Mr. Trump, who is famously tightfisted with his personal fortune, has mounting legal bills, a ready source of cash to cover them and not much standing in his way.Even before he entered the 2024 race, Save America was paying his legal bills as he faced federal and state investigations into his business practices, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.As charges have arrived, the legal bills have ballooned. Mr. Trump will have to pay lawyers in Florida, Georgia, New York, and Washington, D.C., as well as costs for things like databases for managing discovery.According to its public filings, Save America has also paid lawyers who are representing witnesses in the Trump investigations, including the congressional inquiry into the Capitol riot, raising questions about possible efforts to influence testimony.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, has said that the PAC is paying legal bills for witnesses to protect them from “financial ruin.” Mr. Cheung did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.In 2021 and 2022, Save America spent $16 million on legal bills, The New York Times has reported. In the first six months of this year, almost a third of the money raised by his committees and the super PAC backing him has gone toward legal costs — more than $27 million, according to a Times analysis of federal records.The legal payments could have tax implications, some experts said, if the underlying legal matter were deemed by the Internal Revenue Service to be related to Mr. Trump personally, rather than to his official role. The payments could, in theory, count as taxable income for Mr. Trump.But other experts said that the broad discretion of campaign finance laws would most likely shield him from any tax liability.Is it legal?Most likely, yes, although the rules governing what PACs and campaign committees can pay for are byzantine and not firmly settled.A campaign committee cannot pay for things that benefit a candidate personally, including legal bills that are unrelated to government matters.There is no such restriction on leadership PACs. While these organizations, which are controlled by the candidate, cannot spend money directly on the campaign, they can pay for legal fees.“Under prevailing F.E.C. interpretation, this whole discussion is moot,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former lawyer at the Federal Election Commission who is now the director of federal campaign finance reform for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit group. “He can pay all the lawyers, for all the matters, and according to the F.E.C., these rules don’t even matter.”The more important question, Mr. Ghosh said, is: “Is that an abuse of donors?” Mr. Trump is raising money for one stated reason — his run for office — and apparently using some of it for another, his legal troubles, Mr. Ghosh said. “I think it sets a very bad precedent.”Save America’s fund-raising efforts have been a focus of one of the investigations by the special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought indictments against Mr. Trump in Washington and Florida. Mr. Smith’s team has asked why Save America is paying some witnesses’ lawyers.Mr. Trump’s team is also setting up a legal-defense fund to help cover some of his allies’ legal fees, The Times reported last month. The fund is not expected to cover Mr. Trump’s own bills, but it could alleviate pressure on Save America.Do Trump’s donors and supporters care?Neither the indictments nor the reports about how he is paying for his legal expenses have dented his popularity in polls. Mr. Trump’s die-hard followers seem to have embraced his legal cause as their own, and he has used each indictment as an opportunity to solicit financial contributions.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a onetime Trump ally turned fierce critic who is now running for the Republican presidential nomination, has called attention to Mr. Trump’s use of donor money to cover his legal bills.Speaking this month on CNBC, Mr. Christie said: “And the fact is, when you look at just his campaign filings yesterday, almost most of the money that middle-class Americans have given to him, he spent on his own legal fees.”Mr. Christie continued, “I mean, this guy’s a billionaire.” How, exactly, does it work?Since Mr. Trump set up Save America after the 2020 election, it has been a war chest to sustain his political operation. It has brought in more than $100 million, but has also spent quickly, including on legal bills.In February 2022, the PAC said it had $122 million in cash on hand. By the beginning of this year, that number was down to $18 million, filings show. More than $16 million of the money spent went to legal bills — some for witnesses in the investigations, but mostly to firms representing Mr. Trump.A further $60 million was transferred in late 2022 to MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump.This year, Save America asked the super PAC for the money back, a sign of the committee’s growing need for cash.Most of the money that has gone to legal fees came from cash that Save America stockpiled between 2020 and 2022. But Save America is also receiving 10 percent of every dollar currently being donated to Mr. Trump.Here’s how it works: Mr. Trump now raises money primarily through the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, a type of group that allows candidates to divide contributions between their campaign and another committee.In November, when Mr. Trump began his campaign, 99 cents of every dollar raised into the committee went to his campaign committee, and 1 cent went to Save America. But as The Times reported in June, sometime this year the split changed: 90 percent of the money went to the campaign, while 10 percent went to Save America — 10 cents on every dollar raised went to the PAC that Mr. Trump has used to pay his legal bills. More

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      All of Trump’s Lawyers and How Much They’re Paid in Legal Fees

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      Donald Trump’s PACs have spent millions of dollars on a small army of lawyers to defend him in four separate federal and state criminal cases.Former President Donald J. Trump has become entangled in a web of federal and state prosecution, and now faces 91 criminal charges in four separate state and federal cases.Political action committees supporting him have spent more than $27 million on legal costs in the first six months of 2023, and he has recruited a small army of lawyers to defend him. Here are a dozen of the prominent figures and their bills paid by Mr. Trump’s Save America PAC.Lawyers Involved in Multiple CasesTodd Blanche, 49, founder of Blanche Law in New York CityFees: $353,000 paid to his firm from April to June 2023Todd Blanche was hired as one of former President Donald Trump’s many lawyers in April.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTodd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor with wide experience in white-collar cases, has a reputation as an aggressive but measured advocate. He represented Paul J. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former 2016 campaign chairman, in a Manhattan case involving charges of mortgage fraud and other state felonies, as well as Igor Fruman, a Soviet-born former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani who pleaded guilty to soliciting foreign campaign contributions in 2021.Mr. Trump hired Mr. Blanche in April. His firm has been paid $353,000 for legal work by Save America, according to federal filings. Mr. Blanche is representing Mr. Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, the federal classified documents case and the federal election interference case.Boris Epshteyn, 41Fees: $195,000 paid in 2022Boris Epshteyn is thought to be one of six unnamed co-conspirators in the federal election interference case and has been enmeshed in other Trump investigations.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressBoris Epshteyn, a top adviser and longtime ally of Mr. Trump, serves as something of an in-house counsel, helping to coordinate the former president’s many lawyers. He was paid $195,000 by Mr. Trump’s PAC in 2022, though not specifically for legal consulting, and at least $30,000 by his 2024 campaign. He is thought to be one of six unnamed co-conspirators in the federal election interference case and has been enmeshed in other Trump investigations as a witness. He has been represented by Mr. Blanche, and had recommended adding Mr. Blanche to Mr. Trump’s legal team.Christopher M. Kise, 58, founder of Chris Kise & Associates in Tallahassee, Fla.Fees: $5.8 million in 2022 and the first six months of 2023Christopher M. Kise was hired to represent Mr. Trump in the federal documents case in the aftermath of the F.B.I. search at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort last year.Marco Bello/ReutersChristopher M. Kise is a former Florida solicitor general who has won four cases before the United States Supreme Court and who worked as a transition adviser for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. He was hired to represent Mr. Trump in the federal documents case in the aftermath of the F.B.I. search at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and he was paid an upfront retainer fee of $3 million, a figure that CNN reported had was much noticed by Mr. Trump’s other lawyers, as the former president has a long history of not paying his legal fees.Mr. Trump’s PAC paid Mr. Kise’s firm an additional $2.8 million since he was hired last year, and paid nearly $2.9 million in 2022 and 2023 to Continental, a law firm at which Mr. Kise is of counsel, according to federal filings. M. Evan Corcoran, 59, partner at Silverman Thompson in BaltimoreFees: $3.4 million in 2022 and the first half of 2023M. Evan Corcoran has become a key figure in the documents case. Jose Luis Magana/Associated PressM. Evan Corcoran quickly became a central figure in the documents case after he began representing Mr. Trump. A federal appeals court ordered Mr. Corcoran to hand over documents related to his legal work, records that eventually became crucial evidence for prosecutors in the case. Mr. Corcoran accompanied Mr. Trump for his arraignment this month in the election interference case. Mr. Corcoran’s firm has been paid a total of $3.4 million by Mr. Trump’s PAC in 2022 and the first six months of 2023.Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case in New YorkJoe Tacopina, 57, founder of Tacopina Seigel & DeOreo in New York CityFees: $1.7 million in the first half of 2023Joe Tacopina was a central figure in the civil case against Mr. Trump by E. Jean Carroll.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesOnce described as “to the defense bar what Donald Trump is to real estate,” Joe Tacopina’s custom of defending his clients vociferously and in public has helped him earn and maintain a seat of prominence on Mr. Trump’s legal team. He was a central figure in the civil case against Mr. Trump by E. Jean Carroll and aggressively questioned Ms. Carroll in an attempt to cast doubt on her allegations of sexual assault. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid Mr. Tacopina’s firm $1.7 million in the first half of 2023.Susan Necheles, 64, partner at NechelesLaw in New York CityFees: $465,000 in the first half of 2023Susan Necheles has been defending Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in a variety of investigations since 2021.Amr Alfiky/ReutersSusan R. Necheles was counsel to Venero Mangano, the late Genovese crime family underboss known as “Benny Eggs,” and recently represented Jeremy Reichberg, a former fundraiser for Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, in a federal bribery case. She has been defending Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in a variety of investigations since 2021. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid her firm $465,000 in the first six months of 2023.Federal Classified Documents CaseStephen Weiss, 35, counsel at Blanche Law in New York CityStephen Weiss worked as an associate at the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft for six years before joining Mr. Blanche in June at his firm. Mr. Weiss was present at a pretrial hearing for Mr. Trump in the documents case last month.Lindsey Halligan, 34Fees: $212,000 in 2022 and the first half of 2023Lindsey Halligan was part of an effort by Mr. Trump’s legal team to have a special master appointed to review documents.Marco Bello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLindsey Halligan was part of an aggressive effort by Mr. Trump’s legal team last year to have a special master appointed to review documents the F.B.I. had seized in the raid on Mar-a-Lago. She was also part of a team of lawyers who met with Justice Department officials in June in a final effort to stave off charges in the documents case. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid her $212,000 from June 2022 to June 2023.Federal Election Interference CaseJohn Lauro, 65, principal of Lauro & Singer in New York City and Tampa, Fla.Fees: $288,000 in 2022 and the first half of 2023John Lauro formally joined Mr. Trump’s legal team in the election interference case earlier this month, although he had earlier advised the former president on legal matters. He was paid $288,000 for his legal work in 2022 and the first six months of 2023 by Mr. Trump’s PAC. He accompanied the former president to his arraignment in the federal election interference case earlier this month.Mr. Lauro gained notoriety for representing Tim Donaghy, a former N.B.A. referee who pleaded guilty to betting on games and taking payoffs from gamblers. He also previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.Election Interference Case in GeorgiaDrew Findling, 63, founder of Findling Law Firm in AtlantaFees: $816,000 in 2022 and the first half of 2023Drew Findling has represented an array of famous rap stars, including Cardi B, Gucci Mane and Migos.Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressDrew Findling, a prolific figure in the world of Atlanta rap known as the #BillionDollarLawyer, joined Mr. Trump’s legal team a year ago. Mr. Findling has represented an array of famous rap stars — including Cardi B, Gucci Mane and Migos — and is well regarded for his defense work, with decades of trial experience ranging from high-profile murder cases to local political corruption scandals in Georgia. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid his firm $816,000 from July 2022 to May 2023.Marissa Goldberg, 40, partner at Findling Law Firm in AtlantaMarissa Goldberg, a partner at Mr. Findling’s law firm, has worked alongside Mr. Findling and Ms. Little in an effort to quash the entire Georgia election case and to disqualify Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney leading the case.Jennifer Little, 44, founder of Jennifer Little Law in AtlantaFees: $100,000Jennifer Little began her career as a prosecutor in DeKalb County, Ga., before becoming a partner at the firm Fried Bonder White. She later started her own firm, Jennifer Little Law. Like Mr. Corcoran, Ms. Little was compelled to testify about her legal work representing Mr. Trump in the federal documents case. She was paid $100,000 by Mr. Trump’s PAC in April 2022.Kitty Bennett More

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      Here Are the Possible Dates for Trump’s Trials

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      The unprecedented — a former U.S. president indicted, and while running for the office again — has now happened four times. Next up will be a presidential candidate going on trial. Possibly four times.We don’t yet know the timelines for all the trials, and the preliminary dates we have for some of them may still change. But it is already clear that across the board, prosecutors are seeking to move quickly.Extraordinary though the prospect is, it is entirely within the realm of possibility that Donald J. Trump could stand trial four times before the presidential election on Nov. 5, 2024 — and have to leave the campaign trail each time.Justice Juan M. Merchan, who is presiding over the state case in New York concerning hush-money payments to a pornography actress, has scheduled a trial to begin March 25, 2024. If that date holds, it would be just under a year after the indictment in that case.Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is presiding over the federal case concerning Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents, has scheduled a trial to begin May 20, 2024 — again, just under a year after indictment. Judge Cannon rejected the government’s request to hold the trial sooner, in December, but also rejected the Trump team’s push to delay the proceedings until after the 2024 election.The dates for the other two trials — in the federal case concerning Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, for which he was indicted on Aug. 1, and now in the Georgia case — are still to be determined.Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing that federal case, has proposed Jan. 2, 2024, for the opening of the trial. That would be just two weeks before the Iowa presidential caucuses.Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor in the Georgia case, indicated on Monday that she would seek a trial within six months of the indictment, which would mean no later than mid-February 2024 — smack in the middle of the early primaries.There’s no guarantee that the judges in those cases will agree to those requests. More

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      Trump se beneficia del llamado ‘efecto de la acusación formal’

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      La mañana del 18 de marzo, el expresidente Donald Trump pulsó el botón de ‘enviar’ y publicó un mensaje en las redes sociales que afirmaba que sería “arrestado el martes de la semana que viene”.“Protesten”, escribió en su sitio web Truth Social. “¡Recuperemos nuestra nación!”.Según sus abogados, la predicción de Trump se basó en informes de los medios de comunicación, pero el expresidente se equivocó por dos semanas.Sin embargo, la declaración desencadenó acontecimientos que alteraron de manera profunda el curso de la contienda por la candidatura republicana. Los donantes enviaron cheques. Fox News cambió de tono. El aparato del partido se apresuró a defender a Trump. Y sus números en las encuestas subieron y subieron.Esta serie de acontecimientos en cadena —llamémosle el efecto de la acusación formal— puede medirse en maneras que revelan mucho sobre el estado del Partido Republicano. Para examinar el fenómeno, The New York Times analizó encuestas nacionales y estatales preliminares, entrevistó a votantes de las elecciones primarias republicanas, examinó registros financieros de las campañas federales, revisó cientos de correos electrónicos del partido, escudriñó los cambios en la cobertura mediática conservadora y habló con operadores dentro de las campañas de los rivales de Trump.El análisis destaca el dominio que tiene Trump sobre el partido, y revela los años de condicionamiento de millones de votantes republicanos que ven los problemas legales del expresidente como un ataque indirecto contra ellos. Además, muestra un mundo invertido donde los cargos penales funcionan como activos políticos, al menos para efectos de ganar la candidatura republicana.“El apoyo nacionalista no es un fenómeno nuevo en la política estadounidense, pero, sin duda, Donald Trump lo ha llevado a otro nivel”, comentó Tony Fabrizio, un encuestador republicano que trabaja para el supercomité de acción política de Trump. “Con Trump, el apoyo nacionalista recae directamente sobre su persona”.‘Un acontecimiento que lo eclipsa todo’Durante casi dos años, Fox News y el vasto imperio de Rupert Murdoch habían comenzado a deslindarse de Trump y se centraron en encumbrar al gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis. Como decía un titular del New York Post que celebraba su victoria de 20 puntos en la reelección, DeSantis era el “futuro” del Partido Republicano.La oficina de DeSantis se coordinaba de cerca con los productores de Fox para crear segmentos que lo hicieran ver bien, según correos electrónicos obtenidos por The Tampa Bay Times. Sus logros en Florida —en particular, su manejo de la pandemia de COVID-19— se anunciaron como actos heroicos gubernamentales frente a la oposición de izquierda. La programación de Fox se centró en temas y villanos contra los que DeSantis había construido su marca: atletas transgénero, Anthony Fauci y todo lo relacionado con la cultura “woke”.Pero, después de la primera acusación formal contra Trump, las prioridades del movimiento conservador y su ecosistema de medios cambiaron.Influyentes locutores de radio conservadores se alinearon con Trump. Incluso comentaristas a los que les gustaba DeSantis, como Mark Levin, asumieron las acusaciones formales como una misión personal que parecía anular otras prioridades. Otro personaje de derecha, Glenn Beck, quien solía advertir sobre los peligros de Trump, acudió al ahora cancelado programa de Tucker Carlson en Fox, se puso una gorra roja MAGA (sigla en inglés de “Hagamos a Estados Unidos grandioso de nuevo”) y declaró: “Los Estados Unidos que conocíamos, la transformación fundamental que empezó en 2008, está acabada”.En todos los medios conservadores, la programación se centró en la idea de que Trump era víctima de un sistema de justicia secuestrado por los demócratas. La lucha de DeSantis contra la conciencia social exacerbada (conocida como “wokeness” en inglés), se volvió cosa del pasado, una cuestión de poca importancia comparada con la posibilidad de que Trump fuera encarcelado.Las acusaciones formales contra Trump no solo ocuparon un ciclo de noticias de 24 horas; los casos consumieron semanas enteras tanto en los medios masivos como en los conservadores, cada uno siguiendo un patrón. Hubo una semana de rumores antes de las acusaciones, seguida del día de la acusación, el día de la comparecencia y el análisis posterior a la comparecencia.Menciones semanales de Trump en Fox NewsNúmero de segmentos de Fox News de 15 segundos semanales que mencionaron “Trump” al menos una vez More

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      in Elections

      Hillary Clinton Calls Trump Indictments a ‘Terrible Moment for Our Country’

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      Less than an hour after a grand jury in Atlanta returned indictments in the 2020 election interference case in Georgia, Hillary Clinton on Monday called the developments “a terrible moment for our country.”The indictment, released late on Monday evening, charges former President Donald J. Trump in a sprawling case. Before the charges were made public, Mrs. Clinton gave a previously scheduled late-night interview on MSNBC. She said that she felt “great profound sadness” that the former president had already been indicted on so many other charges that “went right to the heart of whether or not our democracy would survive.”“Do you feel satisfaction in that you warned the country, essentially, that he was going to try to end democracy?” the anchor, Rachel Maddow, asked Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state and former first lady.“I don’t feel any satisfaction,” Mrs. Clinton responded, adding that she did not know whether “anybody should be satisfied.” “The only satisfaction may be that the system is working, that all of the efforts by Donald Trump, his allies and his enablers to try to silence the truth, to try to undermine democracy have been brought into the light.”In addition to the Georgia case, Mr. Trump has been charged in federal court with carrying out a concerted effort in six states, including Georgia, to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory. He has been charged in a federal court in Florida with mishandling classified documents, and in state court in New York in relation to hush-money paid to a porn star during the 2016 campaign.Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump’s Democratic presidential rival in 2016, has been a target of Mr. Trump and his Republican allies as he has come under investigation.Since Mr. Trump became the first former U.S. president to face federal charges, Republicans have repeatedly referred to the Justice Department’s decision in 2016 not to bring charges against Mrs. Clinton for her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. But several official investigations have found that Mrs. Clinton did not systematically or deliberately mishandle classified material. In 2018, a report by the inspector general supported the F.B.I.’s decision not to charge Mrs. Clinton.On Monday night, she praised Mr. Biden’s leadership and fired back at a Republican Party that she suggested had lost its backbone and conscience, saying Americans needed to use the rule of law and elections “to defeat those who want to weaponize divisiveness, who want to undermine democratic values and institutions.” Mrs. Clinton described the attack on the nation’s election system as the most critical in a long line of efforts to undermine the public’s trust in voting and democracy. “What happened on Jan. 6 — ‘Don’t believe what you saw, believe what I tell you’ — those are all the hallmarks of authoritarian, dictatorial kinds of leaders,” she said, calling 2024 a crucial moment in defeating anti-American political ideas and values. More

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      in Elections

      Before He Faces a Jury, Trump Must Answer to Republican Voters

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      After three other criminal indictments were filed against him, Donald Trump was accused on Monday of racketeering. In a new indictment, Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., charged him with leading what was effectively a criminal gang to overturn the 2020 presidential election in that state.The grand jury indictment says Mr. Trump and 18 others violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO law, established by the federal government and more than 30 states and used to crack down on Mafia protection rackets, biker gangs and insider trading schemes. The Georgia indictment alleges that Mr. Trump often behaved like a mob boss, pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to decertify the Georgia election and holding a White House meeting to discuss seizing voting equipment.Mr. Trump, along with a group of associates that included his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and one of his lawyers at the time, the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, were also accused of a series of crimes that go beyond even the sweeping federal indictment filed this month by the special counsel Jack Smith. The former president, for example, was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree forgery, for arranging to have a false set of Georgia electors sent to Washington to replace the legitimate ones for Joe Biden. That same act also resulted in a charge against Mr. Trump of conspiracy to impersonate a public officer and a series of charges relating to filing false statements and trying to get state officials to violate their oath of office.Taken together, these four indictments — which include more than 90 federal and state criminal charges implicating his official conduct during his term and acts afterward, as well as in his personal and business life — offer a road map of the trauma and drama Mr. Trump has put this nation through. They raise questions about his fitness for office that go beyond ideology or temperament, focusing instead on his disdain for American democracy.And yet these questions will ultimately be resolved not by the courts but by the electorate. Republican primary voters, in particular, are being presented with an opportunity to pause and consider the costs of his leadership thus far, to the health of the nation and of their party, and the further damage he could do if rewarded with another four years in power.Put aside, for the moment, everything that has happened in the eight years since Mr. Trump first announced his candidacy for president. Consider only what is now on reams of legal paper before the American people: evidence of extraordinarily serious crimes, so overwhelming that many other defendants would have already negotiated a plea bargain rather than go to trial. This is what he faces as he asks, once again, for the votes of millions of Americans.“I’m being indicted for you,” the former president has been telling his supporters. “They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.” But time and again, Mr. Trump has put his ego and ambition over the interests of the public and of his own supporters. He has aggressively worked to undermine public faith in the democratic process and to warp the foundations of the electoral system. He repeatedly betrayed his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the nation’s laws. His supporters may be just as angered and disappointed by his loss as he is. But his actions, as detailed in these indictments, show that he is concerned with no one’s interests but his own. Among the accusations against him:He took dozens of highly classified documents, some involving nuclear secrets and attack plans, out of the White House and stored them at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, where guests of all kinds visit each year. Then, despite being asked multiple times, he refused to return many of these documents, instead working with his aides and confidants to move and hide the boxes containing them and to destroy video surveillance records of those acts, even after a subpoena from the Justice Department.He attempted to overturn the 2020 election by using what he knew to be false claims of voter fraud to pressure numerous state and federal officials, including his own vice president and top officials of the Justice Department, to reverse voting results and declare him the winner.He sought to disenfranchise millions of American voters by trying to nullify their legally cast ballots in order to keep himself in office. In doing so, he colluded with dozens of campaign staff members and other associates to pressure state officials to throw out certified vote counts and to organize slates of fake electors to cast ballots for him.In one example of the personal damage he caused, Mr. Trump led a scheme to harass and intimidate a Fulton County election worker, Ruby Freeman, falsely accusing her of committing election crimes. The Georgia indictment — accusing him of the crime of false statements and writings in official matters — says he falsely called her a “professional vote scammer” who stuffed a ballot box with fraudulent votes for Mr. Biden.After having extramarital sex with an adult film actress, he falsified business records to hide $130,000 in hush-money payments to her before the 2016 election.That list does not include the verdict, by a New York State court in May, that Mr. Trump was civilly liable for sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll. Nor does it include the ongoing asset and tax fraud prosecution of the Trump Organization by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.Time and again, Mr. Trump has demanded that Republicans choose him over the party, and he has exposed and exploited some genuine rifts in the G.O.P., refashioning the party to suit his own agenda. The party will have to deal with those fault lines and may have to reconfigure itself and its platform. But if Republicans surrender to his demands, they may find themselves led by a candidate whose second term in office would be even more damaging to America and to the party than his first.A president facing multiple criminal trials, some prosecuted by his own Justice Department, could not hope to be effective in enforcing the nation’s laws — one of the primary duties of a chief executive. (If re-elected, Mr. Trump could order the federal prosecutions to be dropped, though that would hardly enhance his credibility.) A man accused of compromising national security would have little credibility in his negotiations with foreign allies or adversaries. No document could be assumed to remain secret, no communication secure. The nation’s image as a beacon of democracy, already badly tarnished by the Jan. 6 attack, may not survive the election of someone formally accused of systematically dismantling his own country’s democratic process through deceit.The charges in the Georgia case are part of the larger plot described in the federal indictment of Mr. Trump this month. But Ms. Willis used tools that weren’t available to Mr. Smith. Georgia’s RICO statute allows for many more predicate crimes than the federal version does, including false statements, which she used to bring the charge against several of the defendants in the fake-elector part of the scheme.Altogether, the Fulton grand jury cited 161 separate acts in the larger conspiracy, from small statements like false tweets to major violations like trying to get the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to decertify the state’s election by “unlawfully altering” the official vote count, which was in Mr. Biden’s favor. Though some of the individual acts might not be crimes themselves, they added up to what Ms. Willis called a scheme by “a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities,” all for the benefit of the former president of the United States.Those legal tools are part of a broad American justice ecosystem that is, at its core, a mechanism for seeking the truth. It is not designed to care about politics or partisanship; it is supposed to establish facts. To do so, it tests every claim rigorously, with a set of processes and rules that ensure both sides can be heard on every issue, and then it puts the final decision to convict in the hands of a jury of the defendant’s peers, who will make the weighty decision of guilt or innocence.And that is what makes this moment different from all the chaos of the past eight years. Mr. Trump is now a criminal defendant four times over. While he is innocent until proven guilty, he will have to answer for his actions.But almost certainly before then, he will have to answer to Republican voters. His grip on the party has proved enduring but not universal; while he is far ahead of the other candidates, a recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed that he is the choice of only 54 percent of likely primary voters. And about half of Republican voters told pollsters for Reuters/Ipsos that they would not vote for him if he was convicted of a felony.The indictments — two brought by elected prosecutors who are Democrats, all of them arriving before the start of Republican presidential primaries — have been read by many as political, and Republicans have said without evidence they are all organized for the benefit of Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump has amplified that message and used it to drive fund-raising for his campaign. Although the outcome of these indictments may have a political impact, that alone does not make them political. To assume that any prosecution of a political figure is political would, in effect, “immunize all high-ranking powerful political people from ever being held accountable for the wrongful things they do,” said Kristy Parker, a lawyer with the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “And if you do that, you subvert the idea that this is a rule-of-law society where everybody is subject to equal justice.”Mr. Trump has repeatedly offered Republicans a false choice: Stick by me, or the enemy wins. But a healthy political party does not belong to or depend on one man, particularly one who has repeatedly put himself over his party and his country. A healthy democracy needs at least two functioning parties to challenge each other’s honesty and direction. Republican voters are key to restoring that health and balance.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