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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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      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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      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

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      Grand Jury to Hear Trump Election Interference Case Early Next Week

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      The NewsAtlanta-area prosecutors have indicated that they will go before a grand jury early next week to present the results of their investigation into election interference by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies, raising the possibility that within days Mr. Trump could face a fourth criminal indictment.On Saturday, two witnesses who have received subpoenas to testify before the grand jury — Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, and George Chidi, an independent journalist — revealed that they had received notices to appear before the grand jury on Tuesday. A spokesperson for the Fulton County district attorney’s office, which conducted the investigation, could not be reached for comment on Saturday.Former President Donald Trump at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesWhy It MattersA state-level indictment of Mr. Trump in Georgia would follow closely on the heels of a federal indictment, unveiled this month, that is also related to the former president’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. But unlike with federal convictions, Mr. Trump, if re-elected president, could not attempt to pardon himself if convicted of state crimes in Georgia.Moreover, while the federal case brought by the special counsel Jack Smith names only Mr. Trump, details have surfaced suggesting that a Georgia indictment could name numerous people, some of them well known and powerful, who played roles in the multipronged effort to help Mr. Trump overturn his narrow 2020 election loss in the state.Mr. Chidi informed The New York Times on Saturday that he had received the notice to appear. Mr. Duncan on Saturday told CNN, where he is an on-air contributor, that he had received the notice to appear.BackgroundFani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, has spent two and a half years investigating whether Mr. Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in the state. Other investigations of the former president have resulted in indictments in New York, Florida and Washington, D.C.In New York, Mr. Trump was indicted in April on state charges stemming from his alleged role in paying hush money to a porn star. In June, he was indicted in Miami in a federal case related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents; the federal indictment regarding election interference came on Aug. 1.Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty in those cases.The Georgia investigation may be the most expansive legal challenge yet to the efforts that Mr. Trump and his advisers undertook to keep him in power. Nearly 20 people are known to have been told that they could face charges as a result of the investigation.Mr. Trump’s lawyers have described an indictment in Georgia as a foregone conclusion in recent legal filings, and the forewoman of a special grand jury that heard evidence for several months last year strongly hinted afterward that the group, which served in an advisory capacity, had recommended Mr. Trump for indictment.What’s NextIf Mr. Trump is indicted in Georgia, he will have to travel to Atlanta in the days or weeks afterward to be booked and arraigned. Numerous security measures are in place at the courthouse, including orange barriers that now ring the downtown court complex. More

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      How to Beat Donald Trump

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      Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicDonald Trump was impeached twice. He has been indicted three times. He lost the 2020 election. And yet he’s the clear Republican front-runner for 2024.Today on “Matter of Opinion,” Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat and Carlos Lozada explore how Trump has created a winning political strategy and what his potential nomination could mean for Joe Biden, the Republican Party and the future of the country.Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Scott Eisen/Getty ImagesMentioned in this episode:“The Normal Paths to Beating Trump Are Closing,” by Ross Douthat for The New York Times“The Right Way to Resist Trump,” by Luigi Zingales in The New York Times“Rules for Resistance: Advice From Around the Globe for the Age of Trump,” by David Cole and Melanie Wachtell Stinnett“Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025,” by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman for The New York Times“So Help Me God,” by Mike Pence“The Imperial Presidency,” by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.Thoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.Follow our hosts on X: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) and Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. Edited by Stephanie Joyce. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More

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      Trump Tells Supporters His Indictments Are ‘For You’ on 2024 Campaign Trail

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      The former president, who has made his 2024 campaign principally about his own personal grievances, is attempting to convince supporters to see themselves in him.As lawyers for Donald J. Trump float various legal arguments to defend him in court against an onslaught of criminal charges, the former president has settled on a political defense: “I’m being indicted for you.”In speeches, social media posts and ads, Mr. Trump has repeatedly declared the prosecutions a political witch hunt, and he has cast himself as a martyr who is taking hits from Democrats and the government on their behalf.“They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom,” Mr. Trump told the crowd at a campaign event in New Hampshire on Tuesday. “They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.”In two previous campaigns, 2016 and 2020, Mr. Trump presented himself to voters as an insurgent candidate who understood their grievances and promised to fight for them. Now, however, Mr. Trump has made his 2024 race principally about his own personal grievances — attempting to convince supporters to see themselves in him. He continues to argue, falsely, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and to present it as a theft also against his voters. The legal jeopardy he now faces from multiple indictments, he tells followers, is the sort of persecution that they, too, could suffer.There is evidence that the message is resonating.Lorraine Rudd, who attended Mr. Trump’s appearance in New Hampshire, said that after his third indictment last week, in a point-by-point 45-page account of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, she felt that she, too, could be wrongly prosecuted.“If they can do it to him and take him down, they can come for me,” Ms. Rudd, a 64-year old Massachusetts resident, said.She said she firmly agreed with Mr. Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election. “What, am I next?” she said.In March, when Mr. Trump announced his candidacy before any indictments, he told supporters, “I am your retribution.” The shift to the recent plaint of “I am being indicted for you” suggests a further tailoring of his campaign pitch, as he paints the criminal cases against him as an effort to prevent him from returning to the White House.In June, after being charged with retaining government secrets, Mr. Trump told a Republican gathering in Michigan: “Essentially, I’m being indicted for you.”On Aug. 3, the day of his third indictment, for seeking to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. Trump posted on his social media site that facing fraud and obstruction charges in Washington was an “honor” because, as he wrote in all caps, “I am being arrested for you.”Portraying himself as a victim of the criminal justice system — and echoing themes from when he faced an investigation over Russian influence in the 2016 campaign and his first impeachment — has served to consolidate Republican support around Mr. Trump.Since his very first indictment in March, in New York on charges related to payments to a porn star, Republican voters have buoyed Mr. Trump in polls. Congressional Republicans, mindful that the party base has largely embraced Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, have leaned into investigations of what they call the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement. And many of Mr. Trump’s 2024 Republican rivals have repeated his pledge to fire the F.B.I. director and end the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House.In a New York Times/Siena College poll released last week, before Mr. Trump’s latest indictment, 71 percent of Republican voters said he had not committed serious federal crimes and that Republicans needed to stand behind him.When a long-shot challenger of Mr. Trump, former Representative Will Hurd of Texas, told a Republican gathering in Iowa recently that the former president was running not to represent people who supported him in 2016 or 2020 but “to stay out of prison,’’ Mr. Hurd was booed.In public comments, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have indicated they will mount a free-speech defense in the latest case related to the 2020 election. They have argued that anything Mr. Trump said leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot were merely “aspirational” requests. Those include lying about widespread fraud to voters, pressuring Mr. Pence to ignore the Constitution and asking Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough additional votes to help him win the state.The former president and his allies in the conservative media and in Congress are simultaneously waging a battle for public opinion by accusing Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, of misconduct in business dealings and trying to tie allegations of shady practices to Mr. Biden himself when he was vice president. Investigations led by House Republicans have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, but the effort has convinced many Republicans that Mr. Trump’s indictments are part of a conspiracy to divert scrutiny from Mr. Biden and his family.On Tuesday, Mr. Trump promised to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bidens, his likely political rival should he win the G.O.P. nomination. He also continued his personal attacks on Jack Smith, the special counsel in the federal cases against Mr. Trump, calling him “deranged.”And without referring to her by name, he criticized Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., who is Black, as a “racist.” She is overseeing a separate investigation into alleged efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to interfere with the election in the state, where he lost to President Biden.With Mr. Trump dominating every Republican primary poll, a few 2024 rivals have lately been more direct in challenging him on the subject of the 2020 election.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said this week that “of course” Mr. Trump lost re-election in his most blunt acknowledgment yet of a reality he has tiptoed around for three years. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who could be a star witness in a trial focused on Jan. 6, said that Mr. Trump pushed him to “essentially overturn the election.”Roughly an hour northwest of Mr. Trump’s rally on Tuesday night, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, one of Mr. Trump’s toughest critics in the race, mocked the former president’s proclamations.“As I’m walking around Ukraine, he’s waltzing into a courtroom in Washington, D.C., to tell us that he’s being indicted for us. For us! How lucky are we! That we have such a selfless, magnanimous leader,” Mr. Christie said, prompting laughter and a sprinkling of applause. “Because you know that the government was coming to get you and on their way to get you, lo and behold, they came across Donald Trump and they said, ‘Okay, we won’t get you, we’ll get him, for you.’”The narrative of unfair persecution by the criminal justice system, which Republicans as the party of law and order once staunchly defended, has taken strong root among Mr. Trump’s supporters.Steve Vicere, who drove all the way from his home in Florida to see Mr. Trump in New Hampshire, said the indictments were a “diversion” and represented attempts by Democrats to stop Mr. Trump from regaining power.“Everyday freedoms are being systematically taken away, and nobody ever gets held accountable,” Mr. Vicere, 54, said.Dean Brady, a limo driver from Newmarket, N.H., embraced Mr. Trump’s message that he was taking a hit on behalf of his supporters.“He’s representing us,” Mr. Brady, 60, said. “He’s not in it for himself, he could quit this and just go on with life. He’s up there because he loves America and he cares about us.”But not all Republican voters embrace Mr. Trump’s sense of victimhood. Jean Davis, who attended a barbecue in Iowa on Sunday to hear seven of Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. rivals, said that his latest indictment ought to disqualify him as a candidate.Her husband, Russ Davis, who supports Mr. DeSantis, said that if Mr. Trump were to become the nominee, his chances of defeating Mr. Biden would be “next to nothing.”“There are so many people on the Republican side who just can’t get past his loud mouth,’’ he said. More

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      The Prosecution of Donald Trump May Have Terrible Consequences

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      It may be satisfying now to see Special Counsel Jack Smith indict former President Donald Trump for his reprehensible and possibly criminal actions in connection with the 2020 presidential election. But the prosecution, which might be justified, reflects a tragic choice that will compound the harms to the nation from Mr. Trump’s many transgressions.Mr. Smith’s indictment outlines a factually compelling but far from legally airtight case against Mr. Trump. The case involves novel applications of three criminal laws and raises tricky issues of Mr. Trump’s intent, of his freedom of speech and of the contours of presidential power. If the prosecution fails (especially if the trial concludes after a general election that Mr. Trump loses), it will be a historic disaster.But even if the prosecution succeeds in convicting Mr. Trump, before or after the election, the costs to the legal and political systems will be large.There is no getting around the fact that the indictment comes from the Biden administration when Mr. Trump holds a formidable lead in the polls to secure the Republican Party nomination and is running neck and neck with Mr. Biden, the Democratic Party’s probable nominee.This deeply unfortunate timing looks political and has potent political implications even if it is not driven by partisan motivations. And it is the Biden administration’s responsibility, as its Justice Department reportedly delayed the investigation of Mr. Trump for a year and then rushed to indict him well into G.O.P. primary season. The unseemliness of the prosecution will likely grow if the Biden campaign or its proxies uses it as a weapon against Mr. Trump if he is nominated.This is all happening against the backdrop of perceived unfairness in the Justice Department’s earlier investigation, originating in the Obama administration, of Mr. Trump’s connections to Russia in the 2016 general election. Anti-Trump texts by the lead F.B.I. investigator, a former F.B.I. director who put Mr. Trump in a bad light through improper disclosure of F.B.I. documents and information, transgressions by F.B.I. and Justice Department officials in securing permission to surveil a Trump associate and more were condemned by the Justice Department’s inspector general even as he found no direct evidence of political bias in the investigation. The discredited Steele Dossier, which played a consequential role in the Russia investigation and especially its public narrative, grew out of opposition research by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.And then there is the perceived unfairness in the department’s treatment of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, where the department has once again violated the cardinal principle of avoiding any appearance of untoward behavior in a politically sensitive investigation. Credible whistle-blowers have alleged wrongdoing and bias in the investigation, though the Trump-appointed prosecutor denies it. And the department’s plea arrangement with Hunter came apart, in ways that fanned suspicions of a sweetheart deal, in response to a few simple questions by a federal judge.These are not whataboutism points. They are the context in which a very large part of the country will fairly judge the legitimacy of the Justice Department’s election fraud prosecution of Mr. Trump. They are the circumstances that for very many will inform whether the prosecution of Mr. Trump is seen as politically biased. This is all before the Trump forces exaggerate and inflame the context and circumstances, and thus amplify their impact.These are some of the reasons the Justice Department, however pure its motivations, will likely emerge from this prosecution viewed as an irretrievably politicized institution by a large chunk of the country. The department has been on a downward spiral because of its serial mistakes in high-profile contexts, accompanied by sharp political attacks from Mr. Trump and others on the right. Its predicament will now likely grow much worse because the consequences of its election-fraud prosecution are so large, the taint of its past actions so great and the potential outcome for Mr. Biden too favorable.The prosecution may well have terrible consequences beyond the department for our politics and the rule of law. It will likely inspire ever-more-aggressive tit-for-tat investigations of presidential actions in office by future Congresses and by administrations of the opposite party, to the detriment of sound government.It may also exacerbate the criminalization of politics. The indictment alleges that Mr. Trump lied and manipulated people and institutions in trying to shape law and politics in his favor. Exaggeration and truth-shading in the facilitation of self-serving legal arguments or attacks on political opponents have always been commonplace in Washington. Going forward, these practices will likely be disputed in the language of, and amid demands for, special counsels, indictments and grand juries.Many of these consequences of the prosecution may have occurred in any event because of our divided politics, Mr. Trump’s provocations, the dubious prosecution of him in New York State and Mr. Smith’s earlier indictment in the classified documents case. Yet the greatest danger comes from actions by the federal government headed by Mr. Trump’s political opponent.The documents case is far less controversial and far less related to high politics. In contrast to the election fraud case, it concerns actions by Mr. Trump after he left office, it presents no First Amendment issue and it involves statutes often applied to the mishandling of sensitive government documents.Mr. Smith had the option to delay indictment until after the election. In going forward now, he likely believed that the importance of protecting democratic institutions and vindicating the rule of law in the face of Mr. Trump’s brazen attacks on both outweighed any downsides. Or perhaps he believed the downsides were irrelevant — “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.”These are entirely legitimate considerations. But whatever Mr. Smith’s calculation, his decision will be seen as a mistake if, as is quite possible, American democracy and the rule of law are on balance degraded as a result.Watergate deluded us into thinking that independent counsels of various stripes could vindicate the rule of law and bring national closure in response to abuses by senior officials in office. Every relevant experience since then — from the discredited independent counsel era (1978-99) through the controversial and unsatisfactory Mueller investigation — proves otherwise. And national dissensus is more corrosive today than in the 1990s, and worse even than when Mr. Mueller was at work.Regrettably, in February 2021, the Senate passed up a chance to convict Mr. Trump and bar him from future office, after the House of Representatives rightly impeached him for his election shenanigans. Had that occurred, Attorney General Merrick Garland may well have decided not to appoint a special counsel for this difficult case.But here we are. None of these considerations absolve Mr. Trump, who is ultimately responsible for this mammoth mess. The difficult question is whether redressing his shameful acts through criminal law is worth the enormous costs to the country. The bitter pill is that the nation must absorb these costs to figure out the answer to that question.Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a co-author of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.”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