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      n South Florida, Voters Ponder Trump

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      The complicated feelings among some residents about Mr. Trump and the case against him reflect the complicated politics of the state. As a registered voter in Palm Beach County, Fla., Bette Anne Starkey knows there is a possibility she could be chosen to serve on a jury in the federal criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump. But even though she is a two-time Trump voter, she cannot really say how she would lean as a juror weighing the case.Echoing Mr. Trump himself, Ms. Starkey, an 81-year-old bookkeeper, used the phrase “witch hunt” in an interview to describe the federal indictment against the former president, which accuses him of knowingly removing classified documents from the White House. But she also struggles to understand why Mr. Trump did not simply return the documents when asked for them, part of her simmering irritation with the 45th president.“I’m sick of hearing about all of his shenanigans,” she said.Her comments reflect the complicated feelings that Mr. Trump can elicit these days even among Republicans who voted for him. But Ms. Starkey is also a reflection of the equally complicated, volatile politics of South Florida, Mr. Trump’s home turf, and the jury pool it offers.It is in diverse, densely populated South Florida that a jury of Mr. Trump’s peers will be called upon to judge his innocence or guilt if the case ever goes to trial, although the exact trial location and jury pool have not been determined.Supporters of the former president gathered near Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesThe case was filed in the West Palm Beach court division of the Southern District of Florida, meaning the jury may be selected from registered voters in Palm Beach County, home to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where he has lived since leaving the White House. Mr. Trump lost Palm Beach County to President Biden by nearly 13 percentage points in 2020.But a jury pool made up of Miami-Dade County voters, to the south of Palm Beach, is also a possibility, particularly if it is determined that the federal courthouse in Miami, where Mr. Trump is expected to make an initial appearance on Tuesday, is best equipped to accommodate what will likely be one of the highest-profile criminal trials in American history.Mr. Trump lost Miami-Dade by only about seven points in the last election, getting strong support from Hispanic voters in particular; more than two-thirds of the county’s residents identify as Hispanic, according to census data.Both counties, however, have grown more Republican in recent years, and Republican candidates have had significant success in statewide races. Mr. Trump won Florida in both 2016 and 2020, and the state has twice elected Gov. Ron DeSantis, currently Mr. Trump’s main rival for the Republican presidential nomination.All of this should offer some comfort to members of Mr. Trump’s defense team, who know it takes only one vote to result in a hung jury. And many South Floridians, like Americans elsewhere in the country, believe that Mr. Trump is a victim of unfair treatment by powerful forces on the political left.George Cadman, 54, is a real estate agent and father of two who said he has not been following the news closely over the last few months. He said he had not heard about the federal charges against Mr. Trump — making him, in some sense, a good candidate for jury service.The case was filed in the West Palm Beach division of the Southern District of Florida, meaning the jury may be selected from registered voters in Palm Beach County, home to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesBut Mr. Cadman, who lives in southern Miami-Dade County, also said he supports Trump “100 percent” and that he believes previous investigations of Mr. Trump were politically motivated. Adding that he believes Russia’s 2016 election interference and the scandal about Mr. Trump and Ukraine were hoaxes, he said, “I would be very leery on making a decision on what I think about it,” he said, referring to the new case against Mr. Trump.(In a subsequent phone call, Mr. Cadman said that as much as he loved Mr. Trump, he planned to vote for President Biden in 2024, because rising property values had been good for his job as a real estate agent.)Many of South Florida’s Cuban Americans learned the hard way, during and after the Cuban Revolution, about the impact of politics on even apolitical lives. And for some of the conservatives among them, like Modesto Estrada, a retired businessman who arrived in Miami 18 years ago, Mr. Trump is worth supporting as a powerful brake on Democrats and liberal policies that Mr. Estrada said were “ruining the country” by discouraging people from working.Mr. Estrada, 71, noted that Mr. Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence had also been found to have sensitive government documents in their possession. Like many people interviewed, he said he would have a hard time being an impartial juror in the case.“From my personal perspective, up till now, they don’t have anything on him,” he said of Mr. Trump. “And nothing’s going to happen to him. He’s not going to jail. The case is going to fall apart and that’s what I’m hoping.”Just as Mr. Estrada said his experience with a left-wing dictatorship has colored his hope that Mr. Trump is found not guilty, Viviana Dominguez, 63, referred to her own experience in her native Argentina, which was ruled by a right-wing military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, as she expressed her dislike of Mr. Trump.Modesto Estrada supports Mr. Trump. “The case is going to fall apart and that’s what I’m hoping,” he said about the charges.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesMs. Dominguez, an art conservator who has lived in Miami for 13 years, called Mr. Trump an “embarrassment,” adding, “I think he’s going to go to jail, but I don’t know if that’s wishful thinking.”She described the documents case, and Mr. Trump’s still-considerable base of support, in terms of an unsettling loosening of civic standards. “We saw all that in my own country, when the lies kept getting bigger and bigger,” she said. “The margin of tolerance kept getting wider and wider, so that you never saw the limit. They would talk of morality and of the family, but they would be the most corrupt, the most obscene people anywhere. It’s like a state of madness.”Roderick Clelland, a 78-year-old Vietnam veteran from West Palm Beach, the most populous city in Palm Beach County, said he was worried about the international implications of what he saw as Mr. Trump’s lax attitude toward sensitive national secrets.“The whole world is watching us.” Mr. Clelland said. “And some of those documents about other countries — are they going to trust us? People have been locked up for less than that. So you can’t just violate the law and get away with it. So I hope there is a penalty.”Mr. Clelland was careful to note that he did not hate Mr. Trump. “But I don’t like his behavior and his attitude,” he said.Despite voting for Mr. Trump twice, Ms. Starkey, the bookkeeper, said she has never been a big fan. But in both 2016 and 2020, she could not bring herself to support the more liberal candidate. These days, she is thinking about voting for Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and Republican governor of South Carolina.Still, Ms. Starkey said the indictment of Mr. Trump seemed like a partisan move at a time when American politics is lacking much of the comity between the two parties that she remembers fondly from the past. It was one reason, she said, that she would have a hard time if she were picked for an eventual jury in the case: “Do you trust that you’re getting all the facts for and against?” she wondered.She said she was exasperated with the drama surrounding the indictment — and knew there were many others like her.“I just want it to go away,” she said.@Verónica Soledad Zaragovia contributed reporting from Palm Beach County, Fla. More

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      Ron DeSantis Finds a New Set of Laws to Ignore

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      There once was a Florida fund-raising committee called Friends of Ron DeSantis, which was overflowing with the $142 million it had raised. Mr. DeSantis used it personally for his campaign to be re-elected governor of Florida in 2022, but that was far more than he needed for that race, and when he was done he still had $86 million left over.But one day that committee disappeared. In fact, it was on May 15, just nine days before Mr. DeSantis announced that he was running for president. In paperwork filed that day, the committee changed its name to Empower Parents PAC and the governor’s name appears nowhere on the website’s home page. And just as that filing was made, the super PAC that is supporting Mr. DeSantis’s presidential ambitions said that it would be getting more than $80 million in leftover money transferred from Empower Parents.That transfer represents a new frontier in the long-running battle to undermine presidential campaign finance laws. And it is only one example of the many ways in which Mr. DeSantis, in particular, has tried make a mockery of those laws. If you want a preview of how Mr. DeSantis views the government’s limits on power and plutocracy — as feeble as they are already — there’s no better place to look than his campaign.There’s a reason that state political committees can’t just transfer their money into presidential super PACs. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which led to the creation of super PACs, said plainly that those committees had to be independent of a candidate’s campaign in order to receive unlimited contributions.But Friends of Ron DeSantis, as a state committee, was never independent of its namesake. He signed the paperwork to set it up in 2018, and listed himself as the person to solicit and accept all of its contributions. That was true until May 5 of this year, when he filed another official letter with the state saying that he was no longer soliciting or accepting contributions.The state committee had already become something of a slush fund for donors who wanted to help Mr. DeSantis’s long-term ambitions, which were never well disguised. Consider this: Mr. DeSantis was re-elected on Nov. 8, and is prevented by law from running for a third consecutive term. But the committee took in more than $15 million after the election. Why, for example, would Gregory P. Cook, whose essential-oils company, doTERRA, received a warning letter in 2020 and a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission for making false claims about preventing Covid, donate $1.3 million to Friends of Ron DeSantis on Feb. 22 of this year? Is it possible that he might want better treatment from a DeSantis presidency?The State of Florida certainly knew it was wrong to transfer money from a state campaign fund to a federal one. Since at least 2016, the biennial handbook issued by the Florida Division of Elections had expressly prohibited that move. “A Florida political committee must use its funds solely for Florida political activities,” the handbook said. But as NBC News reported, the DeSantis administration quietly deleted that wording, and this year’s version of the handbook conveniently says for the first time that such transfers are allowed. The new handbook bases its reasoning on the Citizens United decision — which of course had been in effect for 13 years, including when the handbook prohibited the move.The Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit group that closely monitors these kinds of transactions, has filed a complaint against the DeSantis campaign with the Federal Election Commission, saying the transfer is illegal. But as Team DeSantis knows, the commission has deadlocked so often — with three Republicans countering three Democrats — that it has become toothless. In a similar but smaller case last year when a Republican member of the House tried to transfer state campaign funds, the commission refused to take action after the usual 3-to-3 vote.The transfer is only one of the ways Mr. DeSantis is pushing the limits of the campaign finance system. The super PAC supporting his presidential run, bearing the schoolboy name of “Never Back Down,” has made it clear that it has a dangerously broad view of what its role should be.Up to now, the main role of super PACs in elections has been to run TV ads in favor of a candidate or against an opponent, with an unconvincing disclaimer in small print at the end that the ad sponsor is not associated with any campaign or candidate. Super PACs can take in contributions of unlimited size, so they’ve been a great vehicle for wealthy donors, unions and corporations to demonstrate loyalty to a candidate without bumping up against the $3,300 individual donation limit per election for giving directly to a campaign.Those ads are bad enough, but Never Back Down is going much further by essentially taking over many of the main functions of the DeSantis campaign itself. As The Washington Post recently reported, the super PAC is opening office space in each of the early primary states, organizing a corps of door-knockers and volunteers, and launching a “Students for DeSantis” effort on university campuses, among other grass-roots organizing work. “This is going to be expansive and a completely different kind of super PAC,” Kristin Davison, the chief operating officer of Never Back Down, told The Post.The Times reported that Never Back Down is preparing to spend more than $100 million on the DeSantis field operation, hiring 2,600 workers by Labor Day to “knock on the door of every possible DeSantis voter at least four times in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — and five times in the kickoff Iowa caucuses.” The report quoted another leader of the super PAC as saying that no one had ever tried an effort like this before.One reason for that may be its dubious legality. No definition of a super PAC — technically defined as an “independent expenditure committee” (emphasis added) — can conceivably include that much detailed organizing work on behalf of a candidate, and it is impossible to imagine it can be done without silently coordinating with the “real” DeSantis campaign. By having wealthy donors, some of whom make multimillion-dollar contributions, pay for such fieldwork, the campaign can spend more money on things that only it can do, such as transporting the candidate and getting on 50 state ballots. That’s why donations given directly to a campaign, known as “hard money,” are much more valuable to a candidate, as well as being harder to raise because of the contribution limits.But as Mr. DeSantis has demonstrated repeatedly in Florida, he’ll just blow past the guardrails of the law if it suits his purposes. In his latest attempt to shatter the concept of independence, his super PAC has been put to work raising money directly for Mr. DeSantis’s campaign.Before the governor’s official announcement last month, Never Back Down raised $500,000 in hard money for a “draft committee,” all of which was to be transferred directly to the campaign once it became official, CBS News reported. For the draft committee, the super PAC limited contributions to the $3,300 limit, but by doing the work of fund-raising, and using its list of donors, the super PAC was in essence making a huge but unreported contribution to the campaign. One campaign finance expert described this effort by the super PAC as “unprecedented.”And the closeness between Never Back Down and the campaign continues to this moment. If you go to Never Back Down’s website, and click on the big red “donate” button at the top, it takes you to a page that collects donations for the campaign, not the super PAC.“This is effectively a huge in-kind gift to DeSantis’s campaign and will subsidize his fund-raising costs considerably, which is exactly the sort of role a super PAC should not be allowed to play,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center.On top of all that, the governor’s chief of staff, James Uthmeier, was used as one of the presidential campaign’s biggest fund-raisers, as NBC News reported Thursday. Breaching any ethical barrier between public service and politics, Mr. Uthmeier had administration officials around Florida pressure lobbyists to contribute to Mr. DeSantis’s campaign.Mr. DeSantis is hardly the only politician in the race who has demonstrated contempt for basic ethics and campaign finance laws. Donald Trump has funneled money from his leadership PAC to his super PAC, a different kind of abuse that has also drawn a complaint before the F.E.C. But Mr. DeSantis’s actions are pathbreaking in an unusually wanton and disdainful way. If that path should lead to the White House, it’s clear that big money will have a welcome place in American politics under his administration.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump expected to surrender to Miami authorities on Tuesday after indictment

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      Donald Trump is preparing for his second arraignment in two months after learning he would face seven federal charges in connection to his mishandling of classified documents.The former US president and current 2024 candidate is expected to surrender himself to authorities in Miami on Tuesday at 3pm ET, although the exact charges he will face are still unclear, as the seven-count indictment remains under seal. On Fox News Digital on Thursday night, he said he would plead not guilty.It also emerged that Trump’s valet and aide Walt Nauta was indicted alongside him. Nauta is a former military valet who worked for Trump at the White House before accompanying him to a job at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office.In a typically punchy social media post Trump said: “They are trying to destroy his life, like the lives of so many others, hoping that he will say bad things about Trump.”After news of the indictment broke, Trump’s allies rallied to his defense as the US braced for the unprecedented spectacle of a former president forced to defend himself against federal criminal charges.The development comes just two months after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in an unrelated case over hush-money payments during the 2016 election.The charges filed by the office of special counsel Jack Smith in federal district court in Miami include the willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, false statements and concealment under title 18 of the US criminal code, according to a person familiar with the matter.Smith, appointed by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, has been investigating for more than a year whether Trump knowingly retained classified information at his Mar-a-Lago resort and attempted to conceal those documents from the justice department after authorities issued a subpoena for their return.Trump himself confirmed the indictment in a Thursday evening post on his social media platform Truth Social, writing: “This is indeed a DARK DAY for the United States of America.”In a video posted to the platform shortly afterwards, Trump denied any culpability and lashed out against his political rivals. “I am an innocent man,” Trump said in the video. “I did nothing wrong.”Meanwhile, two lawyers representing Trump, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, said they had quit working for him. In a joint statement the pair said they had “tendered our resignations as counsel to President Trump, and we will no longer represent him on either the indicted case or the January 6 investigation”.They added: “It has been an honor to have spent the last year defending him, and we know he will be vindicated in his battle against the Biden administration’s partisan weaponization of the American justice system.”Though the exact nature of the charges remained unclear, Trump’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill quickly rallied to his defense, attacking the investigation as a case of political persecution. Many Republicans raced to note that Joe Biden is also under investigation by a special counsel over the alleged mishandling of classified papers, but they neglected to mention that Trump, unlike Biden, received a subpoena for classified documents amid concerns that he had willfully withheld some materials from federal authorities.“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America,” Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, said on Twitter on Thursday evening. “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”Trump’s most competitive rival for the Republican ticket, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, also denounced the justice department’s actions.“The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” he said on Twitter. “We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation. Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?”But Democrats viewed the news as confirmation that authorities were again seeking to hold Trump accountable for his illegal conduct.“Trump’s apparent indictment on multiple charges arising from his retention of classified materials is another affirmation of the rule of law,” Congressman Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, said on Twitter. “For four years, he acted like he was above the law. But he should be treated like any other lawbreaker. And today, he has been.”Later on Friday morning, it emerged that a federal judge appointed by Trump, who last year drew scrutiny for a ruling that was seen as deferential to the former president, may oversee proceedings in the case over his possession of classified documents, a source familiar with the summons told the Guardian.The US district judge Aileen Cannon has been listed on the summons sent to Trump’s lawyers, the source said. The Florida-based jurist last year granted a request from Trump’s attorneys to appoint a special master to review the records federal agents seized from Mar-a-Lago that August, sparking uproar and disapproval among some legal experts.The special master review delayed the justice department’s investigation into the materials and how they ended up at Trump’s south Florida property, but in December, Cannon’s decision was overturned by the unanimous decision of a federal appeals court.Meanwhile, on Friday morning CNN revealed a transcript it had obtained of an audio tape in which Trump admits he had not declassified a military document about Iran he had retained. The existence of the tape in which he boasts about retaining the document emerged last month.“As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” Trump says, according to the transcript reported by CNN. The transcript offers further detail about the tape recording the former president talking at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club in July 2021 about his retention of national security papers. Federal prosecutors have the tape.The latest indictment means Trump will face charges in at least two jurisdictions as he seeks to return to the White House next year. Trump continues to lead in polls of the Republican primary field, even after he was indicted in the hush-money case earlier this year.As of now, there is no sign that Republican primary voters are prepared to abandon Trump en masse, despite his many legal liabilities. The country will soon find out if the threat of a federal conviction is enough to rob Trump of his status as the frontrunner in the Republican primary. More

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      How Jack Smith Can Succeed in His Case Against Trump

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      It has been expected for months, but the reality of it is no less staggering: The special counsel Jack Smith has brought seven federal charges against Donald Trump. It is the first time in our nation’s history that a former president has been indicted on federal charges, and among Mr. Trump’s many legal problems, it has the greatest likelihood of a pre-election conviction.The prosecution follows a long investigation into Mr. Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents and other presidential records at his private club in Florida and elsewhere after he left office. It poses unique challenges, and not only because the defendant is a former president who is running for re-election in an already tense political environment.Prosecutors will have to reckon with the challenge of publicly trying a case that involves some of our nation’s most highly classified secrets.Furthermore, this case will inevitably have to be coordinated for scheduling purposes with the case against Mr. Trump by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, as well as potential future charges in Fulton County, Ga., and perhaps by Mr. Smith related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Still, from what we know of the charges and publicly available evidence, Mr. Smith appears to have the upper hand with a compelling case. But the potential for conviction and actually winning a jury verdict are two very different things — particularly against the notoriously combative and slippery former president. To secure a conviction, Mr. Smith will have to overcome four significant hurdles.Keep things simpleOver two years (and counting), the case unfolded in twists and turns that have dipped into and out of a dizzying whirl of topics: the administration of presidential documents, delicate aspects of national security, classification and declassification of documents, special counsel regulations, the spectacle of a search warrant being executed by F.B.I. agents on the luxury resort of a former president and the legally dubious appointment of a special master by a rogue Florida district court judge.But for all that chaos and confusion, Mr. Smith’s job is straightforward. He must cut through it all and make clear to the jury that this case is about two simple things: First, a former president took documents containing some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets, which he was no more entitled to remove than the portraits of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin hanging on the walls of the Oval Office. Second, when he was caught, he persistently made up excuses, lied and tried to cover up his behavior, which he continues to do.Mr. Trump took about 13,000 government documents, among them over 300 documents with classified markings, with some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets, reportedly containing secrets about Iran’s missile program, foreign nuclear issues, China and the leadership of France.By doing so, Mr. Trump put our national security at risk. When we consider these documents, we see not only paper but also the U.S. and allied human assets who gather our secrets and do so to keep America and the world safe. By putting this sensitive information in highly insecure circumstances, Mr. Trump put our nation, our allies and all of us as individuals in jeopardy.The indictment reportedly includes seven charges, related to willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice.The evidence a jury hears at trial must be organized around a simple theory of the case and streamlined into the form of readily understandable and convincing proof. Fortunately for Mr. Smith, everything we know about the case provides ample support for an easily digestible one-two narrative punch of Mr. Trump taking documents that didn’t belong to him and then lying about it to cover up his misdeeds.The Trump defenseOne usual challenge that may not be much of a hurdle is Mr. Trump’s defenses. His claim that he can declassify documents “even by thinking about it” is inimical to applicable law. And his claim that the Presidential Records Act gives him a right to attempt to keep these documents flies in the face of the statute.The justifications Mr. Trump has so far advanced are so thin and so inconsistent that we expect Mr. Smith will get an order from the judge that they are frivolous and may not be argued to the jury unless Mr. Trump introduces competent evidence to support them. (He most likely can’t.)These cases are so hard to defend that the usual approach is to plead guilty. That’s what other prominent defendants, such as the former Central Intelligence Agency directors John Deutch and David Petraeus, agreed to when caught with mishandling classified documents. (Mr. Deutch was pardoned before the charges were filed.) But Mr. Trump’s case is unique because of his characteristic refusal to ever admit wrongdoing. It’s nearly impossible to imagine him standing up in a courtroom in a plea deal and saying that he is guilty.By charging the case in the Southern District of Florida, the special counsel has wisely pre-empted one other potential defense: improper venue. The rule is that a case must be brought where the “essential conduct” took place, and here there was an argument for Washington, D.C., as an alternative, one with possibly friendlier juries for Mr. Smith. But there is potentially much at stake on the proper selection of venue: This term, the Supreme Court is deciding a case that looks at whether the price of selecting the wrong venue could be dismissal of the charges and prevention of prosecuting the offense again.The clock is tickingMr. Smith’s third hurdle is time. He will have to battle the clock. On the one hand, he has to ensure that Mr. Trump, like any defendant, has sufficient time to file motions challenging the charges and evidence and time to prepare for trial. The robust materials the government is required to provide to a defendant in discovery must be turned over promptly so the government does not extend the clock.Special attention is required by Mr. Smith here because the case involves classified evidence. That means the court will probably have to deal with motions under the Classified Information Procedures Act. These rules create avenues for the government to prosecute the case and protect classified information without having a defendant graymail the government with the risk of public disclosure.But because this case is in Florida, where the act is rarely used, rather than in the District of Columbia, where it is invoked more commonly, prosecutors will have to contend with a judge who may not have experience with these intricate issues. There is also the strong likelihood the government will be forced to seek other protective orders as well, as we saw New York Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan impose in the Manhattan case, to prevent Mr. Trump from using material obtained in discovery to intimidate or retaliate against witnesses or otherwise misuse discovery materials.American voters are entitled to a determination of Mr. Trump’s guilt at a trial. Ideally, that will happen before the presidential nominating process, but at a minimum, it must take place before the general election. That can be done while ensuring that the defendant has his day in court, with full due process rights to seek to be cleared of charges against him — or not, given the strength of the evidence against him.Persuade the American publicMr. Smith can educate the public in court filings that the charges are merited. He should follow the lead of the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who held a news conference to explain his case directly to the American public during Watergate. In October 1973, as tensions were coming to a boil, with Mr. Cox having issued a grand jury subpoena for the incriminating Oval Office tapes of President Richard Nixon, the special prosecutor rejected a compromise offer from the White House to have a senator listen to the tapes and verify White House-drafted summaries. Mr. Cox chose to make a detailed presentation to the press and explain to the American people why he was seeking a ruling from the Supreme Court that he was entitled to the White House tapes and would not settle for a cherry-picked summary.Mr. Smith can make a public statement explaining, without straying from the four corners of the indictment, why the charges against Mr. Trump are consistent with — indeed, required by — previous Justice Department cases in which many defendants were charged in similar or even less egregious factual scenarios.It is impossible to overstate how essential it will be for Mr. Smith to overcome these hurdles and persuade the trial jury and the American people that whether they like the former president or not, whether they voted for him in the past or intend to vote for him again, he committed serious criminal acts. The consequence of doing that would be nothing short of affirmation of the rule of law in this country. The alternative is too grim to contemplate.Norman Eisen was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Andrew Weissmann, a senior prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, is a professor at N.Y.U. School of Law. Joyce Vance, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and the author of the newsletter Civil Discourse, was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump’s Indictment Puts Us Into Uncharted Waters

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      Former President Donald Trump finds himself once again facing indictment, this time in federal court, after an investigation into his handling of classified documents after departing the White House. The prospect of putting Mr. Trump on trial for serious crimes and sending him to prison has many Americans feeling giddy: Finally, justice might be done.Such reactions are understandable, but news of Mr. Trump’s legal jeopardy shouldn’t blind us to the political jeopardy that now confronts the nation.Other countries have tried, convicted and imprisoned former presidents, but the United States never has. We’ve been fortunate in this regard. Legal processes establish and maintain legitimacy by the appearance of impartiality. But when a public figure associated with one political party is prosecuted by officials associated with another, such appearances can become impossible to uphold. This is especially so when the public figure is a populist adept at exposing (and accusing opponents of concealing) base and self-interested motives behind righteous rhetoric about the rule of law.This corrosive dynamic is even more pronounced when the public figure is not only a former official but also a potential future one. Mr. Trump is running for president against President Biden, whose attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed the special counsel Jack Smith. That’s a scenario seemingly tailor-made to confirm and vindicate Mr. Trump’s longstanding claim that he’s the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt.We don’t have to speculate about the immediate political consequences. Public-spirited and law-abiding Americans believe the appropriate response of voters to news that their favored candidate faces indictment is to turn on him and run the other way. But the populist politics that are Mr. Trump’s specialty operate according to an inverse logic. Before the end of March, polls of the Republican primary electorate showed him hovering in the mid-40s and leading his nearest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by about 15 points. By the end of May, Mr. Trump was in the mid-50s and leading Mr. DeSantis by roughly 30 points.What happened at the end of March to elevate Mr. Trump’s standing? He was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.Hard as it may be for some of us to believe, Mr. Trump’s indictment by the special counsel on federal charges could well boost him further, placing him in a position of even greater advantage against his rivals for the Republican nomination.That possibility typically prompts one of two responses from Democrats: one narrowly political (not to say cynical), the other more high-minded and focused on the law and public morals.The political response sees Mr. Trump benefiting in the G.O.P. primaries from indictment as a good thing, because the former president appears to be the most beatable alternative for Mr. Biden to face in the fall of 2024, and that will be even truer when Mr. Trump is embroiled in a federal trial on major charges and facing possible prison time. What’s good for Mr. Trump in the primaries, in other words, will be terrible for him in the general election.This may well be true, but not necessarily. Anyone who becomes one of two major party nominees has a shot at winning the White House. That’s especially true in our era of stark partisan polarization and intense negative partisanship. That Mr. Trump would be running against an opponent with persistently low approval ratings who will be 81 years old on Election Day 2024 only makes a Biden-Trump matchup more uncertain.The other response dismisses such concerns entirely. Let justice be done, we are told, though the heavens fall. To weigh political considerations in determining whether someone, even a former and possibly future president, should be prosecuted is to supposedly commit a grievous offense against the rule of law, because no one is above the law and the consequences of holding him or her to account shouldn’t matter.This is a powerful argument and one seemingly vindicated in the case of Mr. Trump, who has now managed to get himself ensnared in legal trouble in multiple jurisdictions dealing with a wide range of possible crimes. At a certain point, the logic of the law applying to everyone equally demands that the process be seen through.But that doesn’t mean we should deny the gravity of the potential consequences. Mr. Trump is not a standard-issue politician who happened to run afoul of corruption statutes. He’s a man who rose once to the presidency and seeks to return to it by mobilizing and enhancing mass suspicion of public institutions and officials. That’s why one of the first things he said after announcing the indictment on Thursday night was to proclaim it was “a DARK DAY for the United States of America.” It’s why die-hard supporters like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio tweeted: “Sad day for America. God Bless President Trump.” It’s likely that tens of millions of our fellow citizens agree with the sentiment.To most Americans, such a reaction to news of Mr. Trump’s indictment seems unimaginable. But it’s clearly something sincerely felt by many. Our country has a history of lionizing outlaws — folk heroes who defy authority, especially when they claim to speak for, channel and champion the grievances and resentments of ordinary people against those in positions of power and influence. From the beginning of his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump has portrayed himself as just such a man of defiance, eager to serve as a tribune for those who feel left behind, denigrated and humiliated by members of the establishment.That’s why the more concerted opposition Mr. Trump has faced from law enforcement, the mainstream media, Congress and other prominent people in our country and culture, the more popular he has become within his party. Efforts to rein him in — to defeat him politically and legally — have often backfired, vindicating him and his struggle in the eyes of his supporters.There’s no reason at all to suppose the prospect of Mr. Trump’s ending up a convicted criminal would disrupt this dynamic. On the contrary, it’s far more likely to transform him into something resembling a martyr to millions of Americans — and in the process to wrest those devoted supporters free from attachment to the rule of law altogether.How politically radical could the base of the Republican Party become over the 17 months between now and the 2024 presidential election? There’s really no way to know. We are heading into uncharted and turbulent waters.Damon Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter Notes From the Middleground and is a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      What is the Trump Mar-a-Lago case about and why is it significant?

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      Donald Trump has been criminally charged over his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, one of the most significant legal developments for the former president since leaving the White House.The case marks the first time the justice department has charged Trump and adds to the mounting legal troubles Trump faces as he seeks to return to the presidency. Here’s a breakdown of where things stand:What is this case about?When Donald Trump left the White House, he took documents related to his presidency with him to Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Florida. Federal law requires presidential documents to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (Nara). In May of 2021, Nara discovered it was missing records from Trump’s presidency and began requesting that the former president return them. Trump’s attorneys later turned over 15 boxes of records that included 184 documents that were classified in some way. Nara referred the matter to the justice department, and the FBI began investigating in February of 2022.Over the next few months, the FBI and justice department went about trying to retrieve additional classified documents from Mar-a-Lago. In June of 2022, Trump’s lawyers turned over 38 additional documents with classified markings. In August of 2022, the FBI conducted a raid on Mar-a-Lago and found more than 100 documents with classified markings.The justice department has been investigating whether classified material was mishandled and whether there was obstruction of its investigation in the matter.What is Trump charged with?Trump is charged with wilful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation, engaging in a scheme to conceal and false statements, people familiar with the matter told the Guardian.Why are these charges significant?This is the first time that Trump has faced federal criminal charges. The other criminal matters pending against Trump are in state courts.The justice department is generally extremely careful when it chooses to bring cases and so the fact that prosecutors felt confident enough to indict Trump, knowing the political maelstrom that would result, is a signal of the strength of the case against him.Where do the other criminal cases and investigations against Trump stand?Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in March and also faces criminal charges in New York over hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.The district attorney in Fulton county, Georgia, is also investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election there and has signaled charges could come this summer.What’s some of the strongest evidence in the classified documents case?Prosecutors obtained a 2021 recording of Trump in which he discusses a classified document in his possession dealing with a military confrontation with Iran, CNN reported earlier this month. On the recording, Trump reportedly acknowledges that the document is classified. That admission is significant because it could undercut a key defense from Trump’s team – the idea that he declassified the documents while he was president.Prosecutors have also obtained roughly 50 pages of dictated notes from Evan Corcoran, one of Trump’s attorneys, that shed light on Trump’s response to a justice department subpoena demanding the return of any classified documents. In one instance, Corcoran recounted warning Trump that he was obligated to return every classified document in his possession.The notes also detail Corcoran’s attempt to locate the documents at Mar-a-Lago. As he recounted, Trump employees suggested that he search the storage room at the property. When Corcoran asked if he should look anywhere else, the Guardian has reported, he was told that should be sufficient – advice that turned out to be flawed when the FBI later found classified material also in Trump’s office.How has Trump responded?Trump has decried the investigation as politically motivated and downplayed the significance of handling the documents. He has said he had the right to take some documents from office and did nothing different than Joe Biden and Mike Pence, both of whom had classified documents in their possession after leaving office. A separate special prosecutor is looking into Biden’s handling of classified material and justice department officials have said they will not charge Pence.Who is leading the investigation?The attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to take over the investigation in November. Smith is a former chief prosecutor of the Hague. He is also the former head of the justice department’s public integrity section and a former federal prosecutor with experience in public corruption cases.Is this related to January 6?No. Smith is separately overseeing an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Does a federal indictment prevent Trump from running for president?No. Neither the indictment itself nor a conviction would prevent Trump from running for or winning the presidency in 2024.And as the New York case showed, criminal charges have historically been a boon to his fundraising. The campaign announced that it had raised over $4m in the 24 hours after that indictment became public, far smashing its previous record after the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Ron DeSantis Defends Migrant Flights While Taking Shot at Gavin Newsom

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida criticized immigration policies in his first visit to the border since beginning his presidential bid.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Wednesday defended his state’s sending three dozen Latin American migrants to Sacramento on recent charter flights from the border, saying California had “incentivized” illegal immigration and ought to pay the costs.“These sanctuary jurisdictions are part of the reason we have this problem, because they have endorsed and agitated for these types of open-border policies,” Mr. DeSantis said during his first visit to the southern border since starting his presidential campaign. “They have bragged that they are sanctuary jurisdictions. They attacked the previous administration’s efforts to try to have border security.”Democratic officials in California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have said Florida’s taxpayer-funded operation to move migrants to Sacramento could merit criminal or civil charges. They said the migrants, who arrived on Monday and last Friday, were misled into boarding the planes with false promises of jobs before being left outside a church building. In criticizing the flights, Mr. Newsom resorted to unusually personal terms, calling Mr. DeSantis a “small, pathetic man.”On Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis took a shot back at Mr. Newsom, comparing California’s budget deficit to his own state’s fiscal surplus. “We have a good managed state,” he said at a round-table discussion in Sierra Vista, Ariz., that included law enforcement officials from Florida, Arizona and Texas. Mr. DeSantis was appearing in his official capacity as governor.Mr. DeSantis has staked out a hard-line position on immigration in the Republican primary, criticizing the policies of both President Biden and, to a lesser extent, former president Donald J. Trump, his main rival for the nomination.“The border just needs to be shut down,” said Mr. DeSantis, who is making a fund-raising trip to Texas this week. He also reiterated his support for a border wall, adding: “Mass migration just doesn’t work.”Last month, Mr. DeSantis authorized sending more than 1,100 Florida National Guard members and law enforcement personnel to Texas to serve at the southern border. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, had requested the assistance. Mr. DeSantis led a similar effort in 2021, when he also made a public appearance at the border.While border apprehensions have hit record highs in recent years, illegal crossings between ports of entry along the southern border have decreased more than 70 percent since May 11, when Title 42, the pandemic-era health measure, was lifted, according to statistics from Customs and Border Protection.After Mr. DeSantis’s comments in Arizona, sheriffs took turns describing crimes that they said had been committed by undocumented immigrants.At times, the conversation felt like a campaign event, as the assembled officials, mainly Republicans, praised Mr. DeSantis.“I’ve worked for a lot of governors,” said Grady Judd, sheriff of Polk County in Central Florida. “Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake about it: This is simply the best governor that the state of Florida has had in the last 50 years.”Miriam Jordan More

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      Florida confirms it was behind flights that left asylum seekers in California

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      Florida confirmed on Tuesday that it was behind two private jet flights that brought three dozen people seeking asylum from the US southern border to California amid accusations that the individuals were coerced to travel under false pretenses.The state’s division of emergency management said in a statement that the passengers all went willingly, and refuted allegations from California officials such as the governor, Gavin Newsom, who had threatened Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, with kidnapping charges.Two planes arrived in Sacramento on 2 and 5 June, each carrying people seeking asylum, mostly from Colombia and Venezuela. The individuals had been picked up in El Paso, Texas, taken to New Mexico and then put on charter flights to California’s capital of Sacramento, said Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general. Bonta, who said Florida would be guilty of “state-sanctioned kidnapping” if it was found to be behind the flights, is investigating whether any violations of criminal or civil law occurred.Alecia Collins, a spokesperson for the Florida division of emergency management, said in a statement that “through verbal and written consent, these volunteers indicated they wanted to go to California”. She also shared a video compilation that appeared to show people signing consent forms and thanking officials for treating them well.The clips had no time stamps, and Collins declined to share additional details about when and where they were recorded.It was the DeSantis administration’s first acknowledgment that it coordinated the flights.This isn’t the first time the DeSantis administration has transported migrants from Texas to other states. Last fall, Florida flew 49 Venezuelans to the upscale Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard. This week a Texas sheriff filed acriminal case over the flights to Martha’s Vineyard – the sheriff has previously said the migrants were “lured under false pretenses” into traveling to the wealthy liberal town.Last month, DeSantis, who recently announced a presidential bid, signed into law a bill approving $12m for a program to relocate migrants, even if they never step foot in Florida.Bonta, who met with some of the migrants who arrived on Friday, said they told him they were approached by two women who spoke broken Spanish and promised them jobs in El Paso. The women traveled with them by land from El Paso to Deming, New Mexico, where two men then accompanied them on the flight to Sacramento. The same men were on the flight on Monday, Bonta said.He said the asylum seekers have court dates in New York, Utah and Colorado and carried a document that “purports to be a consent and release form” that is designed to shield Florida from liability.“Of course, what’s important is what is actually said and represented and told to the individuals, and we’ve got good indications of what that was and the fact that it was false, misleading and deceptive,” Bonta said.Darrell Steinberg, Sacramento’s mayor, said faith-based groups are working together to help the newcomers, who are staying at two undisclosed locations in the city and have been given food, clothing and cellphones to contact their families.Gabby Trejo, the executive director of Sacramento ACT, a collaboration of religious congregations in the Sacramento area, said all of the arrivals had already been given pending court dates by US immigration officials before they were approached in Texas by people promising jobs. Trejo said that they had been “lied to and deceived”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNewsom’s office, meanwhile, doubled down on its criticism of DeSantis.“This is exploitative propaganda being peddled by a politician who has shown there are no depths he won’t sink to in his desperate effort to score a political point,” said Anthony York, a spokesperson for Newsom.Newsom indicated in a tweet on Monday that California may consider kidnapping charges against DeSantis. Such charges would likely be extremely difficult to prove, particularly given that the migrants signed waivers.DeSantis’s latest apparent move to send migrants to California’s capital city appears to be a direct shot at Newsom. Though Newsom has not announced any plans to run for president in 2024, he and DeSantis have frequently sparred on immigration policy, abortion access, LGBTQ+ and civil rights, and a host of other cultural issues.It’s not yet clear if the new arrivals in Sacramento plan to stay in California or will eventually seek to go elsewhere, advocates said. Four who arrived on the first flight on Friday have already been picked up by friends or family members, but the rest remain in the care of local advocacy groups.The faith-based coalition is also connecting the migrants with medical and legal services, said Shireen Miles, a longtime Sacramento ACT volunteer. She said several people have court hearings as soon as next week in places such as Chicago, New York and Denver, which immigration attorneys are working to reschedule. More