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    Is Trump Steaming Toward a Candidacy-Sinking Iceberg? Three Writers Look at Iowa and Beyond.

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    Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Mike Murphy, a co-director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, a former Republican strategist for John McCain and others and a host of the podcast “Hacks on Tap” and Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and a moderator of the Times Opinion focus group series, to discuss their expectations for the Iowa caucus. They also banter about the road ahead for the G.O.P. primary and what the general election might look like after the primary.Frank Bruni: Mike, Kristen, happy Iowa caucuses. I’m sitting here at my kitchen table in a parka and earmuffs, in honor of the freezing temperatures that caucusgoers are expected to brave. And I thank you for joining me.Have any of the developments of recent days (Donald Trump’s appearance in two different courtrooms, Chris Christie’s exit from the race, the Nikki Haley-Ron DeSantis debate, some other twist) potentially altered the trajectory of the race or set up caucus results that might surprise us?Kristen Soltis Anderson: I doubt that the events of the last few days have done much. This is still Trump’s caucus to lose.Bruni: But will he win as big as some people believe? And if he does stage a blowout, is there only one, or more than one, ticket out of Iowa?Soltis Anderson: I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump get a majority of votes. And I think there’s only one ticket out of Iowa. DeSantis would need to dominate handily, winning or coming near Trump’s share, to have a prayer of gaining the momentum he’d need to thrive in New Hampshire or South Carolina. Without that, DeSantis has nowhere to go besides looking ahead to 2028.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Testimony Suggests Trump Was at Meeting About Accessing Voting Software in 2020

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      In a letter to federal officials, a liberal-leaning group highlighted testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee that described then-President Trump attending a meeting about the plan in December 2020.ATLANTA — Former President Donald J. Trump took part in a discussion about plans to access voting system software in Michigan and Georgia as part of the effort to challenge his 2020 election loss, according to testimony from former Trump advisers. The testimony, delivered to the House Jan. 6 committee, was highlighted on Friday in a letter to federal officials from a liberal-leaning legal advocacy group.Allies of Mr. Trump ultimately succeeded in copying the elections software in those two states, and the breach of voting data in Georgia is being examined by prosecutors as part of a broader criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump and his allies interfered in the presidential election there. The former president’s participation in the discussion of the Georgia plan could increase his risk of possible legal exposure there.A number of Trump aides and allies have recounted a lengthy and acrimonious meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, which one member of the House Jan. 6 committee would later call “the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.” During the meeting, then-President Trump presided as his advisers argued about whether they should seek to have federal agents seize voting machines to analyze them for fraud.Testimony to the Jan. 6 committee from one aide who attended the meeting, Derek Lyons, a former White House staff secretary and counselor, was highlighted on Friday in a letter to the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation from Free Speech for People, a liberal nonprofit legal advocacy group. Mr. Lyons recounted that during the meeting, Rudolph W. Giuliani, then Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, opposed seizing voting machines and spoke of how the Trump campaign was instead “going to be able to secure access to voting machines in Georgia through means other than seizure,” and that the access would be “voluntary.”Other attendees offered similar testimony to the committee, which released its final report on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in late December. Among those involved in the Oval Office discussion were two prominent pro-Trump conspiracy theorists: Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who spread numerous falsehoods after the 2020 election and who also discussed Mr. Giuliani’s comments in her testimony.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is trying to clarify Mr. Trump’s role in a number of efforts to overturn his November 2020 election loss in Georgia — including the plan to gain access to voting machine data and software — and determine whether to recommend indictments for Mr. Trump or any of his allies for violating state laws.A spokesman for Ms. Willis’s office declined to comment Friday on Mr. Lyons’s testimony. Marissa Goldberg, an Atlanta-area lawyer representing Mr. Trump in Georgia, did not respond to a request for comment.In its letter, Free Speech for People argued that the testimony and other details that have been made public prove that Mr. Trump “was, at a minimum, aware” of an “unlawful, multistate plot” to access and copy voting system software. The group urged the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to conduct “a vigorous and swift investigation.”On Jan. 7, 2021, a small group working on behalf of Mr. Trump traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga., some 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, and gained access to sensitive election data; subsequent visits by pro-Trump figures were captured on video surveillance cameras.The group’s first visit to Coffee County occurred on the same day that Congress certified President Biden’s victory; the certification had been delayed by the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. The visitors to Coffee County apparently saw it as an ideal place to gather intelligence on what they viewed as voting irregularities: At one point, video footage shows the then-chair of the Coffee County Republican Party, Cathy Latham, appearing to welcome into the building the members of a forensics company hired by Ms. Powell.Ms. Latham was also one of the 16 pro-Trump fake electors whom Georgia Republicans had assembled in an effort to reverse the election results there.Text messages from that period indicate that some Trump allies seeking evidence of election fraud had considered other uses for the Coffee County election data and their analyses of it. One cybersecurity consultant aiding in the effort even raised the possibility, in a text message to other Trump allies in mid-January 2021, of using a report on Coffee County election data “to try to decertify” a highly consequential United States Senate runoff election that Democrats had just won in Georgia. CNN reported on the existence of that text message on Friday.The Trump allies who traveled to Coffee County copied elections software used across the state and uploaded it on the internet, creating the potential for future election manipulation, according to David Cross, a lawyer involved in civil litigation over election security in Georgia filed by the Coalition for Good Governance. The Coffee County data was also used earlier this year in a presentation to conservative activists that included unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, The Los Angeles Times has reported.Some of those involved with the Coffee County effort came to regret it. A law firm hired by SullivanStrickler, the consulting firm hired by Ms. Powell to help gain access to the county’s voting machines, would later release a statement saying that, “With the benefit of hindsight, and knowing everything they know now, they would not take on any further work of this kind.” More

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      Fox Leaders Wanted to Break From Trump but Struggled to Make It Happen

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      Executives and top hosts found themselves in a bind after Donald Trump began pushing unfounded claims about election fraud, court filings show.Five days after a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol, a board member of the Fox Corporation, Anne Dias, reached out to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch with an urgent plea.“Considering how important Fox News has been as a megaphone for Donald Trump,” she said, it was time “to take a stance.” Ms. Dias, who sounded shaken by the riot, said she thought Fox News and the nation faced “an existential moment.”As quickly as the two Murdochs began discussing how to respond, their bind became evident.“Just tell her we have been talking internally and intensely,” Rupert Murdoch, whose family controls the company, wrote in an email. Fox News, he told his son, “is pivoting as fast as possible.” But he sounded a note of caution: “We have to lead our viewers, which is not as easy as it might seem.”Ever since Donald J. Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015, Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News Channel have struggled with how to handle the man and the movement they helped create.“Navigating” the delicate balance between truth and “crazy” was how Mr. Murdoch described his challenge in emails made public this week as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, which is expected to go to trial in April.For the most part, Mr. Murdoch has been wildly successful at striking the balance. Fox converted Mr. Trump’s mass following into loyal viewers who deliver Mr. Murdoch and his shareholders huge profits.A 2018 headline about President Donald J. Trump that was displayed outside Fox News studios in New York.Mark Lennihan/Associated PressBut the emails among the Murdochs and the senior leadership of their companies, along with depositions of both men as part of the case, revealed just how Fox and its leaders strained to push back against Mr. Trump when he began spreading unfounded claims about widespread election fraud.The leadership of Fox and its star hosts are often viewed from the outside as power brokers in Republican politics — with much justification. But in the wake of the election, they appeared fearful of alienating Mr. Trump’s supporters, almost to the point of powerlessness, court filings containing internal communications and depositions show.Privately, the executives and hosts expressed despair and disgust at the Trump associates who were using Fox News’s platforms to spread bogus allegations of voter fraud. Yet the wishes of the audience — or how the network’s executives interpreted them — dictated which guests were booked, what kind of new programming was created, what correspondents could say on the air and even which people lost their jobs, according to the details in a 212-page brief that Dominion filed in a Delaware state court this week.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Fox News has expressed confidence that Dominion’s claims will fall apart once their full context becomes apparent at the trial. “Dominion blatantly misconstrued the facts by cherry-picking sound bites, omitting key context and mischaracterizing the record,” a Fox News spokeswoman said.As it became evident that some of Fox’s audience was turning against it after it projected President Biden’s victory, and viewers started switching to hard-right alternatives like Newsmax, people inside the network scrambled to stanch the bleeding.Even as executives raised concerns about Mr. Trump to one another, they came down hard on those seen as too tough on him.Eleven days after the election, for instance, Lachlan Murdoch became irritated watching the Fox News correspondent Leland Vittert’s reporting on a pro-Trump rally in Washington, considering it too critical. Mr. Murdoch called Mr. Vittert’s coverage “smug and obnoxious” in a message to Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media. Ms. Scott responded that she was “calling now,” to direct someone to relay the message to the correspondent and his producer.As word of Mr. Murdoch’s complaint made its way down the food chain, the executive in charge of Fox’s weekend programming, David Clark, also weighed in, telling a colleague in an email that he had texted Mr. Vittert “and told him to cut it out.”To Lachlan Murdoch, there seemed to be no detail too small to complain about if he believed it was hurting the bond that Fox News had forged with its audience over the years. He also complained to Ms. Scott at one point about what he saw as the negative tone toward Mr. Trump in the chyron — the block of text that appears at the bottom of the screen. It was too wordy, he said, and too negative about the president.Lachlan Murdoch complained that a Fox News reporter’s coverage of a pro-Trump rally was “smug and obnoxious.”Mike Cohen for The New York TimesRupert Murdoch offered Ms. Scott suggestions on booking guests who were known to Trump supporters as loyal defenders. One person he proposed in late November 2020 was the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who had pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with a Russian ambassador. A week after Mr. Murdoch sent his note, Dominion’s filing says, Mr. Flynn appeared on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business program.The elder Mr. Murdoch also told Ms. Scott to get rid of a senior Fox News manager, Bill Sammon, telling her that it would go a long way with the former president’s core supporters. “Maybe best to let Bill go right away,” he told Ms. Scott on Nov. 20. Mr. Sammon ran the network’s Washington bureau and oversaw the unit that was responsible for Fox’s early — and correct — decision to project that Mr. Biden would win Arizona. That call had infuriated Mr. Trump and his supporters.Mr. Murdoch explained to Ms. Scott that the firing would “be a big message with Trump people.” According to the Dominion brief, Mr. Sammon was told that he was being let go that same day.As Fox executives stamped out skepticism of Mr. Trump in the network’s coverage, they also grew disillusioned with the increasing amount of “crazy” on their airwaves, as Rupert Murdoch described the Trump legal adviser Sidney Powell in an email to a friend, according to the legal filings. By early December 2020, as Mr. Trump’s claims of being cheated grew more far-fetched, Mr. Murdoch acknowledged how difficult it had become to continue delivering coverage that didn’t insult loyal, pro-Trump viewers without stating the obvious: The president was lying to them about his loss.In one message to Ms. Scott, Mr. Murdoch lamented Mr. Trump’s performance at a rally in Georgia where he called for Gov. Brian Kemp to help overturn the election, as well as other recent comments from the president. “All making it harder to straddle the issue! We should talk through this,” he wrote.After Jan. 6, 2021, as hopes among many conservatives skeptical of Mr. Trump swelled that the Republican Party might finally be done with him, some of his biggest stalwarts inside Fox News seemed to be backing away from him — even the host Sean Hannity, one of Mr. Trump’s most dedicated on-air supporters, according to Mr. Murdoch’s emails.“Wake-up call for Hannity,” Mr. Murdoch wrote in an email on Jan. 12, 2021, to Paul D. Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House and a Fox Corporation board member. Mr. Murdoch explained that the host had been “privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.”For a time, at least. It did not take long for Mr. Hannity and other prime-time hosts, including Tucker Carlson, to begin talking about the attack and its aftermath as Mr. Trump and his supporters preferred.In the opening monologue of one of his shows in June 2022, with a congressional investigation into the assault in full swing, Mr. Hannity told his audience, “January 6 is just another excuse to smear Donald Trump and anyone who supports them.” More

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      A Common Answer to Jan. 6 Panel Questions: The Fifth

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      Transcripts released by the House Jan. 6 committee showed nearly two dozen witnesses invoking their right against self-incrimination, underscoring the hurdles to the investigation.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol released a batch of 34 transcripts on Wednesday that showed witnesses repeatedly stymying parts of the panel’s inquiry by invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.The conservative lawyer John Eastman, who advised former President Donald J. Trump on how to try to overturn the 2020 election, cited his Fifth Amendment right 155 times.The political operative Roger J. Stone Jr. did so in response to more than 70 questions, including ones regarding his communications with Mr. Trump and his role in the events of Jan. 6. The activist Charlie Kirk took a similar stance, citing the potential for self-incrimination in response to most of the committee’s questions, even about his age and education (he was willing to divulge the city in which he resides).Time and again, the panel ran into roadblocks as it tried to investigate the effort to overturn the election, the transcripts show.“Trump lawyers and supporters Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Phil Waldron and Michael Flynn all invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when asked by the select committee what supposed proof they uncovered that the election was stolen,” the committee wrote in an executive summary of its final report. “Not a single witness — nor any combination of witnesses — provided the select committee with evidence demonstrating that fraud occurred on a scale even remotely close to changing the outcome in any state.”The transcripts released on Wednesday do shine some light on previously unknown aspects of the committee’s investigation. As part of their questioning, the committee’s lawyers referred to emails or text messages they had obtained through subpoenas, quoting aloud in hopes of eliciting more information from the recalcitrant witnesses.During the questioning of Mike Roman, director of Election Day operations for Mr. Trump’s campaign, a committee lawyer revealed communications that investigators said showed that Mr. Roman sent Gary Michael Brown, who served as the deputy director, to deliver documents to the Capitol related to a plan to put forward false slates of pro-Trump electors.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.After doing so, Mr. Brown sent a photo of himself wearing a suit and a mask with the U.S. Capitol over his shoulder. “Mission accomplished,” he wrote.Investigators also asked Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, who sued to try to block the committee’s subpoena, about a text she sent to a member of the Maricopa County board of supervisors that said: “We need you to stop the counting.”And investigators revealed how disputes broke out among organizers over the financing of the rally that preceded the violence on Jan. 6, including a payment of $60,000 to Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., for her brief speech.“You’re done for life with me because I won’t pay you a $60,000 speaking fee for an event you aren’t speaking at?” Caroline Wren, a Trump fund-raiser, wrote, as she implored Ms. Guilfoyle to call and thank Julie Jenkins Fancelli, an heir to the Publix supermarket fortune who had donated millions to put on the rally. “This poor woman has donated $1 million to Don’s Senate PAC and $3 million to this rally and you’ll can’t take five minutes out of your day to thank her. It’s so humiliating. And then you have the audacity to ask me why I won’t have her pay you $60,000?”The transcripts also show the combative stance some witnesses and their lawyers took during questioning. For instance, a lawyer for the white nationalist Nick Fuentes repeatedly challenged the committee’s investigators and accused them of grandstanding.“I will note the irony of an accusation of grandstanding in a deposition of Mr. Fuentes,” a lawyer for the committee shot back.Another time, Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, asked Mr. Stone if he believed “coups are allowed in our constitutional system.”Mr. Stone replied: “I most definitely decline to respond to your question.”The release of the transcripts came a day ahead of the committee’s planned release of its more than 800-page final report, likely the final act of an 18-month investigation during which the lawmakers interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses.Hundreds more transcripts are expected to be released before the end of the year, including those in which witnesses provided extensive testimony used by the committee in reaching its decision to make criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Mr. Trump, Mr. Eastman and others involved in the effort to keep Mr. Trump in power after his 2020 election loss.In an attempt to rebut the committee’s final report, five House Republicans led by Representative Jim Banks of Indiana released their own report into the attack on the Capitol. That 141-page document criticizes law enforcement failures, accuses Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her senior team of bungling Capitol security and tries to recast Mr. Trump’s role in the events of Jan. 6 as a voice for peace and calm.“Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on Jan. 6, 2021,” the Republican report stated. “The Democrat-led investigation in the House of Representatives, however, has disregarded those institutional failings that exposed the Capitol to violence that day.”A bipartisan Senate report last year also detailed Capitol security failures but did not find any blame in the actions of Ms. Pelosi or her staff, who fled from a mob of Trump supporters chanting her name as the speaker tried to get the National Guard to respond to the violence.The Senate report found top federal intelligence agencies failed to adequately warn law enforcement officials before the Jan. 6 riot that pro-Trump extremists were threatening violence, including plans to “storm the Capitol,” infiltrate its tunnel system and “bring guns.”An F.B.I. memo on Jan. 5 warning of people traveling to Washington for “war” at the Capitol never made its way to top law enforcement officials.The Capitol Police failed to widely circulate information its own intelligence unit had collected as early as mid-December about the threat of violence on Jan. 6, including a report that said right-wing extremist groups and supporters of Mr. Trump had been posting online and in far-right chat groups about gathering at the Capitol, armed with weapons, to pressure lawmakers to overturn his election loss.A spokesman for the House Jan. 6 committee declined to comment.Catie Edmondson More

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      Lo que sabemos sobre la reunión para que Trump siguiera en el poder

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      Incluso para los estándares de la Casa Blanca de Trump, la reunión celebrada el 18 de diciembre de 2020, que fue analizada en detalle esta semana por el comité que investiga los hechos del 6 de enero, fue extrema.In taped interviews, witnesses described a meeting in which President Donald J. Trump’s outside advisers proposed an executive order to have the military seize voting machines in crucial states Mr. Trump had lost.Doug Mills/The New York TimesLa reunión duró más de seis horas, pasada la medianoche, y terminó en gritos que se escuchaban afuera de la sala. Los participantes lanzaban insultos y casi llegaron a los golpes. Algunas personas se fueron llorando.Incluso para los estándares de la Casa Blanca de Trump, donde las personas solían gritarse y el presidente Donald Trump también les gritaba, la reunión del 18 de diciembre de 2020 es considerada como un evento “desquiciado” y un punto de inflexión en los esfuerzos desesperados de Trump por permanecer en el poder después de haber perdido las elecciones.Los detalles de la reunión han sido reportados previamente, incluso por The New York Times y Axios, pero en una audiencia pública del comité del 6 de enero que se celebró el martes, los participantes en el caos ofrecieron una serie de nuevos detalles impactantes de la reunión entre Trump y las facciones rivales de asesores.“Llegó un punto en el que los gritos se escuchaban afuera”, le dijo Eric Herschmann, un abogado de la Casa Blanca, al comité en un testimonio grabado en video. “Había gente entrando, era tarde en la noche, y fue un día largo. Y pensé que lo que estaban proponiendo era una locura”.La propuesta era que el presidente le ordenara al secretario de Defensa que incautara las máquinas de votación para examinarlas en busca de fraude y que también designara a un abogado especial para acusar potencialmente a las personas de delitos y fue urdida por tres asesores externos: Sidney Powell, una abogada que trabajó en la campaña de Trump y promovió teorías de conspiración sobre un supuesto complot venezolano para manipular las máquinas de votación; Michael T. Flynn, el asesor de seguridad nacional que Trump despidió durante sus primeras semanas en el cargo; y Patrick Byrne, ex director ejecutivo de Overstock.com.Del otro lado estaban Pat A. Cipollone, el abogado de la Casa Blanca; Herschmann; y Derek Lyons, el secretario de personal de la Casa Blanca.La discusión comenzó poco después de que Powell y sus dos acompañantes fueran admitidos en la Casa Blanca por un asistente subalterno y se dirigieron a la Oficina Oval sin tener cita.Estuvieron a solas con Trump, durante unos 15 minutos, antes de que otros funcionarios fueron alertados de su presencia. Cipollone contó que recibió una llamada urgente de un miembro del personal para que fuese a la Oficina Oval.“Abrí la puerta y entré. Vi al general Flynn”, dijo en una entrevista grabada en video que el comité divulgó en la audiencia del martes. “Vi a Sidney Powell sentada ahí. No estaba feliz de ver a las personas que estaban en la Oficina Oval”.Cuando se le pidió que explicara por qué, Cipollone dijo: “En primer lugar, la persona de Overstock, nunca la conocí, nunca supe quién era ese tipo”. Lo primero que hizo, dijo Cipollone, fue decirle a Byrne: “¿Quién es usted?”. “Y me contestó”, dijo Cipollone. “No creo que ninguna de esas personas le estuvieran dando buenos consejos al presidente”.Lyons y Herschmann se unieron al grupo. “No fue una reunión casual”, dijo Lyons al comité en un testimonio grabado en video. “A veces, había gente gritándose, insultándose unos a otros. No eran personas que estaban sentadas en un sofá charlando”.El testimonio en video de Sidney Powell, en el que dijo que los asesores de la Casa Blanca sentían “desprecio y desdén por el presidente”, fue presentado durante la audiencia del martes.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPowell, en su entrevista grabada en video, describió a Trump como “muy interesado en escuchar” lo que ella y sus dos compañeros tenían que decir, cosas que “aparentemente nadie más se había molestado en informarle”.Herschmann dijo que estaba estupefacto por lo que estaba escuchando.“Y yo le preguntaba, ¿estás afirmando que los demócratas están trabajando con Hugo Chávez, los venezolanos y otras personas? Y, en un momento, el general Flynn sacó un diagrama que supuestamente mostraba las direcciones IP de todo el mundo y las comunicaciones a través de las máquinas. Y algunos comentarios sobre, por ejemplo, que los termostatos Nest están conectados a internet”.Cuando los funcionarios de la Casa Blanca le dijeron a Powell que había perdido decenas de juicios que cuestionaban los resultados de las elecciones de 2020, ella respondió: “Bueno, los jueces son corruptos”.“Y le pregunté: ¿Todos?”, dijo Herschmann. “¿Cada uno de los casos que ha perdido en este país? ¿Cada uno de esos jueces es corrupto? ¿Incluso los que nombramos?”.Powell testificó que los asesores de la Casa Blanca de Trump “no mostraron más que desprecio y desdén por el presidente”.El plan, según supieron los asesores de la Casa Blanca, era que Powell se convirtiera en la fiscala especial. Eso no salió bien.“No creo que Sidney Powell diría que pensé que era una buena idea nombrarla como abogada especial”, testificó Cipollone. “No pensé que ella debería ser nombrada en ningún cargo”.Cipollone también testificó que estaba alarmado por la insistencia de Powell y los demás de que hubo fraude electoral sin tener ninguna prueba que lo demostrara. “Cuando otras personas seguían sugiriendo que sí, la respuesta es, ¿a qué se refieren? En algún momento, tienes que demostrar lo que dices o callarte. Esa es mi opinión”.Herschmann describió un momento particularmente intenso. “Flynn me gritó que yo era un desertor y todo, caminaba mientras me gritaba. En cierto momento, también le grité: ‘O te calmas o te sientas’”.Cassidy Hutchinson, una de las principales asistentes de Mark Meadows, el jefe de gabinete de la Casa Blanca, podía escuchar los gritos desde afuera de la Oficina Oval. Le envió un mensaje de texto a un subjefe de personal, Anthony M. Ornato, diciendo que el ala oeste estaba “TRASTORNADA”.Después de que comenzó la reunión, los asesores de la Casa Blanca llamaron a Rudolph Giuliani, el abogado personal de Trump, para argumentar en contra de Powell. Eventualmente, la reunión migró a la Sala Roosevelt y la Sala del Gabinete, donde Giuliani estuvo solo por unos momentos, lo que, según lo que le dijo al comité, le pareció “algo genial”.Finalmente, el grupo recaló en la residencia de la Casa Blanca.Powell creía que había sido nombrada fiscala especial, algo que Trump declaró que quería hacer, por lo que debería tener una autorización de seguridad. Pero el resto de los asistentes se opusieron. Ella testificó que otros dijeron que incluso si eso sucedía, la ignorarían. Ella dijo que los habría “despedido” en el acto por esa insubordinación.Powell aseguró que Trump le dijo algo como: “¿Ves con lo que tengo que lidiar? Tengo que lidiar con esto todo el tiempo”.Eventualmente, Trump se retractó y rechazó la propuesta de los asesores externos. Pero a la mañana siguiente, el 19 de diciembre, escribió en Twitter instando a sus partidarios para que fuesen al Capitolio el 6 de enero, el día en que se fijó la sesión conjunta del Congreso para certificar los resultados del Colegio Electoral.“¡Estar allí, será salvaje!”, escribió.Maggie Haberman es corresponsal de la Casa Blanca. Se unió al Times en 2015 como corresponsal de campaña y formó parte de un equipo que ganó un Pulitzer en 2018 por informar sobre los asesores de Trump y sus conexiones con Rusia. @maggieNYT More

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      Jan. 6 and the Search for Direct Trump Links

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      The House panel investigating the Capitol riot has yet to find a proverbial smoking gun directly connecting the former president to the extremist groups that led the storming of the building. Is there one?The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol held another blockbuster hearing on Tuesday, which featured previously unseen texts and draft social media posts suggesting that Donald Trump and his aides tried to make the march on the Capitol appear spontaneous even though they knew they were guiding a mob that was likely to turn violent.To better understand the state of the House inquiry and the related Justice Department investigations, I spoke with Alan Feuer, who has been leading The New York Times’s coverage of the prosecutions of the Jan. 6 rioters and has reported extensively on extremist groups and movements. Few journalists know this world better, or have spent more time delving into obscure figures and rank-and-file members of organizations like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.Alan wrote most recently about Ray Epps, a lifelong Arizonan who recently left the state, and whose participation in the protest outside the Capitol helped spark a conspiracy theory arguing that the entire day’s events were a black operation by the F.B.I.Our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:Have we learned anything significant or new about extremist groups tied to the Capitol riot in these hearings?The short answer is: Not really.In the run-up to Tuesday’s hearing, the committee teased the fact that it was going to show links between extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and people in Donald Trump’s orbit.But what actually emerged at the hearings was something a little different.The committee didn’t break new ground but instead used public court filings and news articles to trace connections between far-right groups and Trump-adjacent figures like Roger Stone, the political adviser, and Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser. The fact that Stone and Flynn have maintained those connections is fairly well known.Moreover, there is no direct evidence — at least not yet — that their ties to extremist groups were put to use in any planning for the violence on Jan. 6.And what are we learning about ties between extremists and Trump or his aides?Well, see above for the committee’s answer to that question — with a single caveat.At a previous committee hearing, there was a brief reference made by Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows. According to her, on the night before the Capitol attack, Trump asked Meadows to reach out to Stone and Flynn.We don’t know if that outreach ever occurred or, if it did, what was communicated. But it remains a tantalizing question: Why, apparently, did the president seek to open a channel to two people with ties to far-right groups on the eve of the Capitol attack?Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony drew the attention of the Justice Department.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesHutchinson’s testimony seems to have been a turning point in the investigation, and our colleagues have reported that it got the attention of Justice Department prosecutors. Can you help us understand why they might have been taken by surprise? I think most readers would assume that the Justice Department has more resources and a greater ability to compel cooperation than this committee does.While the House committee’s investigation into the events surrounding Jan. 6 and the Justice Department’s inquiry are covering much of the same ground, they operate by different rules.The committee has the power to issue subpoenas to pretty much anyone it wants. Federal prosecutors, however, are bound by rules of evidence that require pointing to some signs that a crime may have been committed before they use invasive techniques to gather evidence.Prosecutors may not have known that Hutchinson had valuable information before she testified in front of the committee because they did not necessarily have a way to compel those around her to give them a sense of what she knew. After her testimony, however, things look significantly different.Based on what we know now, how much can we say that the riot at the Capitol was planned, versus spontaneous?I’ll quibble slightly with the idea of planned vs. spontaneous and substitute a different pair of words: organized vs. spontaneous.What I mean is this: We know through the grueling work of open-source intelligence researchers and members of The New York Times’s stellar visual investigations team — who have pored over thousands and thousands of hours of video from Jan. 6 — that the Proud Boys, for example, were clearly moving in an organized and tactical manner on the ground that day.It’s clear that leaders and members of the group were instrumental in several advances on, and breaches of, the Capitol that were seemingly conducted in a way to make it appear as if other, more ordinary rioters took the lead.That said, we don’t know much about the planning surrounding the use of these tactics yet — or if anyone other than the Proud Boys helped contribute to any plans.We know that the group’s members arranged in advance to avoid wearing their typical uniforms in order to blend into the crowd, and we know that as late as Dec. 30, 2020, dozens of members took part in a virtual meeting where leaders ordered them to avoid antagonizing the police.But at least so far, there is no smoking gun laying out a detailed plot to storm the Capitol.The Justice Department has focused its prosecutions on those who committed violence or vandalism as they breached the Capitol. The narrative of critics of the investigations, including the Republican National Committee, is that the administration is pursuing a “witch hunt” of ordinary citizens who were just swept up in the moment. Is there anything to that critique?While it’s certainly true that the Justice Department’s most prominent cases concern those who had some role in violence or vandalism, many, many, many of the 850 or so people charged so far have been accused solely of petty offenses like trespassing and disorderly conduct.Those, of course, are federal crimes, and the evidence against even these low-level offenders is quite strong, given the incredible amount of video that was taken that day.So is it a “witch hunt” to charge people with clearly definable crimes for which there is abundant evidence?I’ll say this: The large majority of cases in which people merely walked into the Capitol, took a selfie and walked out — and did not brag about their conduct on social media or lie to investigators when they were being interviewed — have not resulted in any jail time whatsoever.What to readFifty-eight percent of American voters — cutting across nearly all demographics and ideologies — believe their system of government needs major reforms or a complete overhaul, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll. Reid Epstein explores the findings.David Sanger and Peter Baker preview President Biden’s trip to the Middle East, a journey freighted with both policy import and political peril for the White House. Follow our live coverage here.Prices rose 9.1 percent in June compared with a year earlier, according to the latest Consumer Price Index. Jeanna Smialek breaks down what it means.For Opinion, Jesse Wegman, a writer, and Damon Winter, a photographer, teamed up to produce “Gerrymander U.S.A.,” a stunning look at how partisan redistricting has shaped and, they would argue, distorted Texas politics. They visited the 13th Congressional District, which is represented by Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician who has campaigned and governed as a hard-line Republican.In case you missed it: Read Jason Zengerle’s New York Times Magazine article on “The Vanishing Moderate Democrat.”— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Explores Links Between Trump Allies and Extremist Groups

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      Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide, testified that the former president directed his chief of staff to reach out to Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, who had ties to the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.In their relationships with President Donald J. Trump in recent years, Roger J. Stone Jr., his longtime political adviser, and Michael T. Flynn, who was briefly his national security adviser, have followed a similar trajectory.Both were either convicted of or pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. Both were pardoned by Mr. Trump after the 2020 presidential election. And both supported Mr. Trump in his relentless, multilayered efforts to reverse its outcome and remain in power.The two were, in a sense, together again on Tuesday, when both were mentioned within an instant of one another at the House select committee hearing by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff. Ms. Hutchinson told the panel that on Jan. 5, 2021, a day before the Capitol was stormed, Mr. Trump had directed Mr. Meadows to reach out to Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn.Ms. Hutchinson acknowledged that she did not know what her boss may have said to the men. But her testimony was the first time it was revealed that Mr. Trump, on the eve of the Capitol attack, had opened a channel of communication with a pair of allies who had not only worked on his behalf for weeks challenging the results of the election, but who also had extensive ties to extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were soon to be at the forefront of the violence.The question of whether there was communication or coordination between the far-right groups that helped storm the Capitol and Mr. Trump and his aides and allies is among the most important facing the Jan. 6 investigators.Barring a criminal prosecution — or something else that could force the details of the calls into the public sphere — it could be tough to be figure out exactly what Mr. Meadows discussed with Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn.Since late last year, Mr. Meadows has refused to comply with a committee subpoena that seeks his testimony about the weeks leading up to Jan. 6 — a move that risked his indictment on contempt of Congress charges. As for Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn, both repeatedly exercised their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination during their own interviews with the committee.Mr. Flynn’s interview was especially remarkable, according to a recording of it played at the hearing on Tuesday. A former three-star general who still collects a military pension, Mr. Flynn pleaded the Fifth Amendment even when he was asked if he believed the violence at the Capitol was wrong, and whether he supported the lawful transfer of presidential power.Ms. Hutchinson also told the panel that she recalled hearing about the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers while the planning was taking place for Mr. Trump’s public event near the White House on Jan. 6 — a time, she explained, when the former president’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, had been around.It is possible that Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn will receive more attention when the panel reconvenes for its next public hearing in July. That is when Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, has said he intends to lead a presentation that will focus on the roles far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the 1st Amendment Praetorian played in the Capitol attack. Mr. Raskin has also promised to explore the connections between those groups and the people in Mr. Trump’s orbit.Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to President Donald J. Trump, has repeatedly denied that he had any role in the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan.6.Al Drago for The New York TimesBoth Mr. Stone and Mr. Flynn fit that description, having maintained extensive ties to far-right groups in the postelection period. Much of the contact came at pro-Trump rallies in Washington when the men were guarded by members of the groups, who served as their bodyguards.For over a year, Mr. Stone has repeatedly denied that he had any role in the violence that erupted at the Capitol. Shortly after Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, he denied in a post on social media that Mr. Meadows had called him on the day before the attack.Mr. Flynn’s lawyer has failed to respond to numerous requests for comments about the role his client played in the events of Jan. 6 and the weeks leading up to it.As early as Dec. 12, 2020, the 1st Amendment Praetorian protected Mr. Flynn when he appeared as a speaker at a pro-Trump march in Washington. Joining the group as security at the event were members of the Oath Keepers, including the organization’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, who has since been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol attack.The 1st Amendment Praetorian also helped Mr. Flynn’s onetime lawyer, Sidney Powell, gather open source intelligence about allegations of election fraud that was ultimately funneled into a series of conspiracy-laden lawsuits she filed challenging the voting results, according to the group’s leader, Robert Patrick Lewis.Mr. Lewis, by his own account, played a minor role in another, even more brazen, attempt to overturn the election. He has claimed that, on Dec. 18, 2020, he drove Mr. Flynn and Ms. Powell to the White House for an Oval Office meeting at which they sought to persuade Mr. Trump to use his national security apparatus to seize voting machines around the country in his bid to stay in power.On Jan. 6 itself, according to audio recordings obtained by The New York Times, a few members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian protected Mr. Flynn again. Around the same time, according to court papers filed in a recent defamation case, a member of the group, Philip Luelsdorff, was briefly present in the so-called war room at the Willard Hotel where pro-Trump lawyers, including Mr. Giuliani and John Eastman, had set up shop to plan the objections to the certification of the Electoral College vote count.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      A Crusade to Challenge the 2020 Election, Blessed by Church Leaders

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      Some evangelical pastors are hosting events dedicated to Trump’s election falsehoods and promoting the cause to their congregations.COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The 11 a.m. service at Church for All Nations, a large nondenominational evangelical church in Colorado’s second-largest city, began as such services usually do. The congregation of young families and older couples swayed and sang along to live music. Mark Cowart, the church’s senior pastor, delivered an update on a church mission project.Then Mr. Cowart turned the pulpit over to a guest speaker, William J. Federer.An evangelical commentator and one-time Republican congressional candidate, Mr. Federer led the congregation through an hourlong PowerPoint presentation based on his 2020 book, “Socialism — The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control.” Many congregants scribbled in the notebooks they had brought from home.“I believe God is pushing the world to a decision-making moment,” Mr. Federer said, building toward his conclusion. “We used to have national politicians that held back the floodgates of hell. The umbrella’s been ripped after Jan. 6, and now it’s raining down upon every one of us. We had politicians that were supposed to certify that — and instead they just accepted it. And, lo and behold, an anti-Christian spirit’s been released across the country and the world.”Evangelical churches have long been powerful vehicles for grass-roots activism and influence on the American right, mobilized around issues like abortion and gay marriage. Now, some of those churches have embraced a new cause: promoting Donald J. Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.In the 17 months since the presidential election, pastors at these churches have preached about fraudulent votes and vague claims of election meddling. They have opened their church doors to speakers promoting discredited theories about overturning President Joe Biden’s victory and lent a veneer of spiritual authority to activists who often wrap themselves in the language of Christian righteousness.For these church leaders, Trump’s narrative of the 2020 election has become a prominent strain in an apocalyptic vision of the left running amok.“What’s going on in our country right now with this recent election and the fraudulent nature of that?” Mr. Cowart, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, asked in a sermon last year. “What is going on?”It’s difficult to measure the extent of churches’ engagement in the issue. Research suggests that a small minority of evangelical pastors bring politics to the pulpit. “I think the vast majority of pastors realize there is not a lot of utility to being very political,” said Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor.The Church for All Nations in Colorado Springs. Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesStill, surveys show that the belief in a fraudulent election retains a firm hold on white evangelical churchgoers overall, Mr. Trump’s most loyal constituency in 2020. A poll released in November by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 60 percent of white evangelical respondents continued to believe that the election was stolen — a far higher share than other Christian groups of any race. That figure was roughly 40 percent for white Catholics, 19 percent for Hispanic Catholics and 18 percent for Black Protestants.Among evangelicals, “a high percentage seem to walk in lock step with Trump, the election conspiracies and the vigilante ‘taking back of America,’” said Rob Brendle, the lead pastor at Denver United Church, who recalled that when he criticized some Christians’ embrace of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in a sermon the Sunday after the riot, he lost about a hundred members of his congregation, which numbered around 1,500 before the pandemic.Rob Brendle, the lead pastor of Denver United Church, said that when he criticized the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol the Sunday after the riot, he lost about a hundred congregants.Kevin Moloney for the New York TimesHe thinks many fellow clergy may share that view. “I think the jury’s still out, but it’s not a fringe,” he said.Some of the national evangelical figures who supported Mr. Trump during his presidency and his 2020 campaign, like Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, separated themselves from his insistence that the election was stolen. Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham and the president of Samaritan’s Purse, equivocated. Writing on Facebook the month after the election, Mr. Graham acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory but said that when Mr. Trump claimed the election was rigged against him, “I tend to believe him.”Others embraced Mr. Trump’s claims or argued for the preservation of his rule in spite of his loss. Shortly after the election was called for Mr. Biden, Paula White, a Florida televangelist who served as the White House faith adviser during Mr. Trump’s presidency, led a prayer service in which she and others called upon God to overturn the election.Pastor Greg Locke of Global Vision Bible Church holding a service in his church’s parking lot in 2020.Brett Carlsen/Getty ImagesGreg Locke, a preacher who leads the Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, Tenn., spoke alongside Alex Jones of Infowars at a “Rally for Revival” demonstration in Washington the night before the Jan. 6 attack. Mr. Locke offered a prayer for the Proud Boys, the violent far-right group, and for Enrique Tarrio, the organization’s leader who has since been indicted on charges of conspiracy for his role in the Capitol insurrection.Mr. Locke — whose congregation is relatively small, but who claims a social media audience in the millions — is one of more than a dozen pastors who have appeared onstage at the ReAwaken America Tour: a traveling roadshow that has featured far-right Republican politicians, anti-vaccine activists, election conspiracists and Trumpworld personalities, including Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a central figure in the effort to overturn the election in late 2020.Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn spoke at a ReAwaken America Tour event in Phoenix in January.Mark Peterson/ReduxThe event has drawn crowds of thousands of Trump supporters in nine states in the past year. All but one of the tour’s stops have been hosted by megachurches, and the tour is sponsored by a charismatic Christian media company.The performances wrap the narrative of election fraud in a megachurch atmosphere, complete with worship music and prayer, and have drawn criticism from some Christian clergy. When the tour came to a church in San Marcos, Calif., this month, a local Methodist minister denounced it as an “irreligious abomination” in an opinion essay.Smaller churches, meanwhile, have proven an important support network for the individual activists who now travel the country promoting the narrative of a stolen election.“Churches and bars, baby. That’s where it was happening in 1776,” wrote Douglas Frank, a high school math and science teacher in Ohio whose widely debunked analyses of the 2020 results have been influential with election conspiracists, in a Telegram post last month. So far this year, more than a third of the speeches he has promoted on his social media accounts have been hosted by churches or religious groups.Douglas Frank, a high school math teacher from Ohio with ties to former President Trump, presented his theories of election fraud to about 100 people in the Missouri State Capitol in January.David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated PressSeth Keshel, a former Army captain and military intelligence analyst who worked alongside Mr. Flynn in the weeks immediately after the election, is a popular draw with the same crowds. He attributed the prevalence of churches on the circuit to the instincts of local organizers.“Most conservatives are evangelicals and naturally think ‘church’ as a venue,” he wrote in an email. “There are some pastors more fired up about elections and liberty but not all.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More

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      Alex Jones Reaches Out to Justice Dept. About Jan. 6 Interview

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      The effort by the Trump ally to get an immunity deal is the latest sign of progress in the investigation, which recently brought on a well-regarded prosecutor.The federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election appears to be gaining traction, with the Justice Department having brought in a well-regarded new prosecutor to help run the inquiry and a high-profile witness seeking a deal to provide information.Alex Jones, the host of the conspiracy-driven media outlet Infowars and a key player in the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement, is in discussions with the Justice Department about an agreement to detail his role in the rally near the White House last Jan. 6 that preceded the attack on the Capitol.Through his lawyer, Mr. Jones said he has given the government a formal letter conveying “his desire to speak to federal prosecutors about Jan. 6.”The lawyer, Norm Pattis, maintained that Mr. Jones had not engaged in any “criminal wrongdoing” that day when — chanting slogans about 1776 — he helped lead a crowd of Trump supporters in a march to the Capitol as violence was erupting.As a condition of being interviewed by federal investigators, Mr. Jones, who is known for his rants about the “Deep State” and its supposed control over national affairs, has requested immunity from prosecution.“He distrusts the government,” Mr. Pattis said.While convincing federal prosecutors to grant him immunity could be an uphill climb for Mr. Jones, his discussions with the Justice Department suggest that the investigation into the postelection period could be gathering momentum.Two weeks ago, another prominent Stop the Steal organizer, Ali Alexander, a close associate of Mr. Jones, revealed that he had received a subpoena from a federal grand jury that is seeking information on a broad swath of people — rally planners, members of Congress and others close to former President Donald J. Trump — connected to political events that took place in the run-up to Jan. 6. Mr. Alexander, who marched with Mr. Jones to the Capitol that day, has said that he intends to comply with the subpoena.Supporters of Mr. Trump outside the Capitol during the mob attack.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesSeveral months ago, the department quietly took another significant step, adding Thomas Windom, a career federal prosecutor from Maryland, to help in the expanded Jan. 6 investigation, according to three people familiar with the matter.Mr. Windom has been working with officials from the national security and criminal divisions at the Justice Department to determine whether and how to investigate potential criminal activity related to the Jan. 6 attack, other than what took place during the assault.His work complements two teams led by prosecutors in the Washington U.S. attorney’s office: one focused on charging people for participating in the riot and one focused on more complicated conspiracy cases stemming from it, such as the seditious conspiracy case that was brought against Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers.Mr. Windom is looking into the more politically fraught question of whether a case can be made related to other efforts to overturn the election, a task that could move the investigation closer to Mr. Trump and his inner circle. Mr. Alexander’s lawyers have been dealing with Mr. Windom, for example, in responding to the broad subpoena seeking information about the pro-Trump rallies and other efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office.Those efforts could extend to issues such as the plan by Trump allies to have seven swing states falsely certify that Mr. Trump won, and then mail those false documents to the National Archives and Congress. However, Mr. Windom does not yet have a robust team of prosecutors, leaving unclear how extensive the investigation might become.Mr. Windom was described by former colleagues as a diligent, aggressive lawyer capable of handling complex investigations. In his former job, Mr. Windom prosecuted some high-profile cases in Maryland — among them those involving domestic and international terrorism, public corruption and national security.Mr. Windom, for example, helped to secure convictions against a trio of violent members of a white supremacist group called “The Base,” which had hoped to trigger a race war in the United States. Two of the defendants received lengthy prison sentences.In another case, Mr. Windom prosecuted Christopher Hasson, a white nationalist and lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard, who had plotted to kill journalists, Democratic politicians, professors, Supreme Court justices and those he described as “leftists in general.”Mr. Windom also charged Tawanna P. Gaines, a Maryland lawmaker, with stealing about $22,000 in campaign funds. She pleaded guilty in 2019 and was later sentenced to six months in prison.“Thomas is a thorough and creative investigator and an experienced trial attorney,” said Robert K. Hur, a former U.S. attorney in Maryland. “He’s calm under pressure and accustomed to building and trying complex, high-stakes cases. Having tried two cases with him, I know his considerable skill before judges and juries.”Thomas Windom, a highly regarded federal prosecutor who won high-profile cases in Maryland, was brought on to bolster the politically fraught investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Julio Cortez/Associated PressIf prosecutors ultimately speak with Mr. Jones, they will encounter a polarizing figure with a broad range of ties to people in pro-Trump circles, including some of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers. Mr. Jones was closely involved in pro-Trump rallies in Washington on Nov. 14 and Dec. 12 in 2020, working with rally organizers, prominent speakers and far-right militant groups like the Oath Keepers, whose members provided security at the gatherings.One of Mr. Jones’s top lieutenants at Infowars, Owen Shroyer, also was at the forefront of the mob that stormed the Capitol. Mr. Shroyer was arrested in August and is facing federal misdemeanor charges in connection with the riot.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More