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      What the Trump Documents Might Tell the Jan. 6 Committee

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      Following last week’s Supreme Court ruling, the House panel has received material that it hopes could flesh out how the attack on the Capitol came about.The National Archives has turned over to the House select committee investigating the assault on the Capitol last Jan. 6 a large batch of documents that former President Donald J. Trump had sought to keep out of the panel’s hands, citing executive privilege.The committee has yet to make the documents public or disclose how far along it is in scrutinizing them for any new information about the roles played by Mr. Trump and his inner circle in the effort to delay certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.But in court filings, Mr. Trump, his legal team and the archives identified the documents that he was seeking to shield through claims of executive privilege, an argument that the Supreme Court rejected last week.It remains unclear how valuable the documents — at least 770 pages — will be to the investigation. But here is a list of them as identified in the court filings, what is known about them and how they might fit into the larger narrative being assembled by the committee:Proposed talking points for Mr. Trump’s press secretary and documents related to allegations of voter fraud (629 pages)Even before Election Day, Republicans and the Trump White House were pushing the notion — not backed by any evidence — that there could be widespread election fraud because of changes states enacted in response to the pandemic that made it easier for people to vote.Mr. Trump refused to concede on election night, saying publicly: “This is a fraud on the American public.” In the weeks that followed, the White House — through Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary at the time — amplified Mr. Trump’s messaging from the briefing room and on television and social media.The materials could help the committee document the extent and intensity of the effort inside the White House to promote the baseless claims, along with more details about which members of the administration were most involved in the false claims.Presidential activity calendars and a handwritten note concerning Jan. 6 (11 pages)In a typical White House, a president’s calendar can provide an intimate picture of who the president meets with and the topics he may be discussing. Though Mr. Trump had a far less regimented schedule, there were still some meetings and events on his calendar, and aides kept track of where he was and what he was planning to do. The committee has indicated that it is especially interested in any communications that Mr. Trump had around Jan. 6 with top aides like Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, or with Vice President Mike Pence. A detailed calendar or notes could also help shed light on Mr. Trump’s activities as the riot unfolded on Capitol Hill.Mr. Trump’s supporters before his rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesA draft of Mr. Trump’s speech for the “Save America” rally that preceded the mob attack (10 pages)On Jan. 6, Mr. Trump and his allies spoke at a rally on the Ellipse before his supporters marched more than a mile to the Capitol. The draft speech — which Mr. Trump’s longtime aide, Stephen Miller, helped write — would show whether Mr. Trump’s incendiary language that encouraged the protesters was ad-libbed by him or whether it was included by his speechwriters, who may have been coordinating the president’s messaging with others. In his book, Mr. Meadows claimed Mr. Trump had ad-libbed his remarks telling the crowd to march on the Capitol.A note from Mr. Meadows about briefings and calls about the certification of the election and related issues (2 pages)In the days leading up to Jan. 6, there was a flurry of meetings in the Oval Office. Among the most dramatic was one on Jan. 4, when Mr. Trump had a lawyer named John Eastman — who had written a memo essentially saying that the vice president had immense powers to decide who won the election — make the argument directly to Mr. Pence that he could delay the certification of the election on Jan. 6. (Mr. Pence later rejected the advice.) On Jan. 2, three of Mr. Trump’s advisers — Rudolph W. Giuliani, Peter Navarro and Mr. Eastman — held a conference call with about 300 state lawmakers about election fraud. On Jan. 4, Phil Waldron, a former U.S. Army colonel who rose to prominence in Mr. Trump’s inner circle after the election, said members of his team briefed some senators on foreign interference in the election. Mr. Waldron said he personally gave the same briefing the next day to members of the House.Details of meetings like those, and the planning for them, could help the committee assess whether Mr. Trump’s efforts justify a criminal referral to the Justice Department on a charge like obstructing an official proceeding in Congress.A draft executive order on the topic of election integrity (4 pages)A range of outside advisers were pushing for Mr. Trump to sign executive orders to help him block or slow certification of the election. Among the most audacious was one that said Mr. Trump could use the Defense Department to seize voting machines based on false claims that there had been foreign interference in the election. Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, and a lawyer advising him, Sidney Powell, were urging Mr. Trump to take this action. A copy of a draft executive order about seizing election machines was posted on Politico’s website on Friday.But that memo is three pages, and the National Archives described a memo that is four pages. There is another memo, mentioned in a recent disclosure to the committee by the Trump ally Bernard Kerik, that could also fit this description. It was withheld by Mr. Kerik under the theory of executive privilege but was described in a log of documents that Mr. Kerik refused to turn over as, “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS.”Handwritten notes from the files of Mr. Meadows (3 pages)As chief of staff, Mr. Meadows served both as a top aide and as a conduit for outside advisers, including members of Congress, to contact Mr. Trump and visit him at the White House. Mr. Meadows has provided investigators with hundreds of pages of documents that he had on his personal phone but has refused to sit for questioning, leading the committee to ask the Justice Department to prosecute him. His notes could potentially shed light on what Mr. Trump was hearing and saying at key moments.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 17The House investigation. More

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      Flynn Sues Jan. 6 Committee as House Republican Rebuffs Investigators

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      The panel investigating the Capitol attack faced stonewalling from allies of former President Donald J. Trump on two new fronts.WASHINGTON — Two allies of former President Donald J. Trump took steps on Tuesday to try to stonewall the House committee investigating the Capitol attack as Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, filed a lawsuit against the panel, and a House Republican who played a key role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election refused to meet with investigators.Mr. Flynn, who spent 33 years as an Army officer and has emerged as one of the most extreme voices in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election, filed suit against the committee in Florida, trying to block its subpoenas.“Like many Americans in late 2020, and to this day, General Flynn has sincerely held concerns about the integrity of the 2020 elections,” his lawsuit states. “It is not a crime to hold such beliefs, regardless of whether they are correct or mistaken.”The House committee has said it wants information from Mr. Flynn because he attended a meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 18 in which participants discussed seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency, invoking certain national security emergency powers and continuing to spread the false idea that the election was tainted by widespread fraud. That meeting came after Mr. Flynn gave an interview to the right-wing media site Newsmax in which he talked about the purported precedent for deploying military troops and declaring martial law to “rerun” the election.Read Michael Flynn’s Lawsuit Against the Jan. 6 CommitteeMichael T. Flynn, former President Donald J. Trump’s first national security adviser, sued the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, seeking to block the panel’s subpoenas.Read Document 42 pagesMr. Flynn’s suit comes as Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican closely involved in Mr. Trump’s push to undermine the election, said on Tuesday that he was refusing to meet with the Jan. 6 committee.Mr. Perry, the incoming chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, called the committee “illegitimate.”Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?“I decline this entity’s request and will continue to fight the failures of the radical Left who desperately seek distraction from their abject failures of crushing inflation, a humiliating surrender in Afghanistan, and the horrendous crisis they created at our border,” Mr. Perry wrote on Twitter.The committee on Monday sent a letter seeking testimony and documents from Mr. Perry, the first public step it has taken to try to obtain information from any of the Republican members of Congress who were deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s effort to stay in power.The committee asked Mr. Perry to meet with its investigators and voluntarily turn over all “relevant electronic or other communications” related to the buildup to the Capitol riot, including his communications with the president and his legal team as well as others involved in planning rallies on Jan. 6 and the objections in Congress to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.To date, the panel has been reluctant to issue subpoenas for sitting members of Congress, citing the deference and respect lawmakers in the chamber are supposed to show one another. But Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the panel, has pledged to take such a step if needed.“Representative Perry has information directly relevant to our investigation,” said Tim Mulvey, a committee spokesman. “The select committee prefers to gather relevant evidence from members cooperatively, but if members with directly relevant information decline to cooperate and instead endeavor to cover up, the select committee will consider seeking such information using other tools.”Representative Scott Perry speaking at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Pennsylvania last year.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMr. Flynn and Mr. Perry are among a small number of witnesses who have not cooperated with the panel. More than 300 witnesses have met with investigators, most voluntarily without receiving a subpoena.There have been consequences for those who refuse.The House has voted twice to hold allies of Mr. Trump in criminal contempt of Congress, referring those cases to federal prosecutors. A grand jury indicted Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser, who faces charges that carry up to two years in jail and thousands in fines. Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, awaits a decision from federal prosecutors.Mr. Meadows and Mr. Trump have sued to block the release of thousands of records, after the former president asserted executive privilege over a vast array of documents.Some key witnesses have settled on the tactic of invoking their right against self-incrimination to avoid answering questions. Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who participated in Mr. Trump’s plans to overturn the election, has said he would invoke the Fifth Amendment in response to questions.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 9The House investigation. More

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      Read Michael Flynn’s Lawsuit Against the Jan. 6 Committee

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      Case 8:21-cv-02956-KKM-SPF Document 1 Filed 12/21/21 Page 23 of 42 PageID 23

      o. “All documents and communications relating to protests, marches, public

      p. “Documents or other materials referring or relating to the financing or

      q. “All recordings, transcripts, notes (including electronic and hand-written

      r. “All documents and communications relating to the January 6, 2021, attack

      s. “All documents and communications related to your January 2021 meetings

      assemblies, rallies, and speeches in Washington, DC, on November 14,

      2020, December 12, 2020, January 5, 2021, and January 6, 2021

      (collectively, ‘Washington Rallies’).”

      fundraising associated with the Washington Rallies and any individual or

      organization’s travel to or accommodation in Washington, D.C., to attend or

      participate in the Washington Rallies.”

      notes), summaries, memoranda of conversation, readouts, or other

      documents memorializing communications between you and President

      Trump, any members of the White House staff, and/or Members of Congress

      on January 5 or January 6, 2021, relating or referring in any way to the fall

      2020 election or the attack on the Capitol.”

      on the U.S. Capitol.”

      with individuals associated with President Trump and his re-election

      campaign, including, but not limited to, meetings held at the Willard Hotel.”

      23 More

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      Phil Waldron's Unlikely Role in Pushing Baseless Election Claims

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      Phil Waldron, who owns a bar in Texas, is a case study in how pro-Trump fringe players managed to get a hearing for conspiracy theories at the highest level during the presidential transition.A few days after President Biden’s inauguration put to rest one of the most chaotic transitions in U.S. history, a former Army colonel with a background in information warfare appeared on a Christian conservative podcast and offered a detailed account of his monthslong effort to challenge the validity of the 2020 vote count.In a pleasant Texas drawl, the former officer, Phil Waldron, told the hosts a story that was almost inconceivable: how a cabal of bad actors, including Chinese Communist officials, international shell companies and the financier George Soros, had quietly conspired to hack into U.S. voting machines in a “globalist/socialist” plot to steal the election.In normal times, a tale like that — full of wild and baseless claims — might have been dismissed as the overheated rantings of a conspiracy theorist. But the postelection period was not normal, providing all sorts of fringe players an opportunity to find an audience in the White House.Mr. Waldron stands as a case study. Working in conjunction with allies of President Donald J. Trump like Rudolph W. Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, a member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus — and in tandem with others like Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser and a retired lieutenant general — Mr. Waldron managed to get a hearing for elements of his story in the very center of power in Washington.Last week, the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 issued a subpoena to Mr. Waldron, saying that it wanted to know more about his role in circulating an explosive PowerPoint presentation on Capitol Hill and to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s last chief of staff.The presentation, which Mr. Meadows gave to the committee (and which he said he never acted on), counseled Mr. Trump to declare a national emergency and to invalidate all digital votes in a bid to stay in power — the same advice that other election deniers gave him at the time.Committee officials have given Mr. Waldron, who retired from the military in 2016 and now owns a bar in Central Texas, until Jan. 10 to turn over any relevant documents. They have also tentatively set a deposition for the week after.When The New York Times sent a reporter last week to Mr. Waldron’s bar, outside of Austin, he told the reporter to leave his property immediately. He then called the local sheriff and described the reporter’s car, adding that the reporter was slurring his words and seemed impaired.Mr. Waldron, who owns a bar in Texas, above, became part of a network of Trump supporters pushing election fraud claims.ReutersIt remains unclear whether Mr. Waldron will cooperate with the House committee. But the account he gave in January to the podcast, Flyover Conservatives, and in recent news articles, may give investigators plenty to work with.Mr. Waldron opened his story by saying that his “research” into the 2020 election began that summer, when he started to examine what he described as a network of nonprofit groups connected to Mr. Soros, an outspoken supporter of liberal causes who has long been at the center of right-wing, often antisemitic conspiracies.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?Around that time, Mr. Waldron said, he and his associates — whom he has never named — developed a relationship with a Texas cybersecurity company, Allied Security Operations Group, which was co-founded by a man named Russell J. Ramsland Jr.According to Mr. Waldron, Mr. Ramsland and his team had made a startling discovery: that the Chinese Communist Party, through software companies it controlled, had developed a way to flip votes on American tabulation machines, particularly those built by Dominion Voting Systems. (Dominion has adamantly denied its machines have security flaws and has filed defamation suits against some of those who have repeated the claims, including Fox News, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell.)Beginning in August last year, months before Election Day, Mr. Waldron started to “raise an alarm,” as he put it, and tried to get anyone he could interested in his claim that the country’s voting machines were susceptible to hacking.He told the podcast hosts that he and his partners had reached out to officials in the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, all of which were run by Trump appointees at the time. Mr. Waldron said he also sent an email to Mr. Trump’s director of strategic communications, but all of it “fell on deaf ears.”But there was one person who listened, Mr. Waldron said: Mr. Gohmert, the Texas Republican and a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group that was traditionally loyal to Mr. Trump and ultimately played an outsize role in his efforts to overturn the election. By Mr. Waldron’s account, Mr. Gohmert promised to pass along his concerns about voting machines to the president, but apparently failed to do so until after the election. (Mr. Gohmert did not respond to questions seeking comment.)Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, expressed concern this month over the treatment of the Capitol rioters.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesOnce the votes were cast and Mr. Trump was declared the loser, Mr. Waldron embarked on what amounted to a two-pronged assault on the election. First, with Mr. Ramsland’s company, Allied Security, he funneled information about supposedly suspicious spikes in votes and other dirt on Dominion Voting Systems to Ms. Powell, a pro-Trump lawyer who filed four unsuccessful lawsuits accusing Dominion of a conspiracy to hack the election.According to court papers filed by Dominion, Mr. Ramsland was hired that summer by Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com and a Trump supporter, to “reverse engineer” the evidence needed to “mislead people into believing” that the 2020 election had been rigged.When the legal challenges failed, Mr. Waldron took a new tack. He partnered with Mr. Giuliani, who was spearheading Mr. Trump’s attack on the election, and joined him at a series of unofficial election fraud hearings conducted by lawmakers in a handful of swing states. Mr. Giuliani did not respond to questions seeking comment on Mr. Waldron, but he has testified in a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion that he not only knew and admired Mr. Waldron, but also had “substantial dealings” with him.Even as he toured the country with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Waldron appeared to have been working on a third attack on the election results: assembling the 38-slide PowerPoint presentation that ended up in Mr. Meadows’s possession. In his podcast interview, Mr. Waldron said that he and his associates had managed to get a nascent version of the proposal — to declare a national emergency and use the crisis to order a recount of paper ballots in eight key counties — to Mr. Trump around Thanksgiving, far earlier than public accounts had suggested.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 9The House investigation. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Flynn and Eastman, Scrutinizing Election Plot

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      The latest batch of subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot also includes officials from former President Donald J. Trump’s re-election campaign.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued new subpoenas on Monday for a half-dozen allies of former President Donald J. Trump, including his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, as it moved its focus to an orchestrated effort to overturn the 2020 election.The subpoenas reflect an effort to go beyond the events of the Capitol riot and delve deeper into what committee investigators believe gave rise to it: a concerted campaign by Mr. Trump and his network of advisers to promote false claims of voter fraud as a way to keep him in power. One of the people summoned on Monday was John Eastman, a lawyer who drafted a memo laying out how Mr. Trump could use the vice president and Congress to try to invalidate the election results.In demanding records and testimony from the six Trump allies, the House panel is widening its scrutiny of the mob attack to encompass the former president’s attempt to enlist his own government, state legislators around the country and Congress in his push to overturn the election.Mr. Flynn discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers after the election. Mr. Eastman wrote a memo to Mr. Trump suggesting that Vice President Mike Pence could reject electors from certain states during Congress’s count of Electoral College votes to deny Joseph R. Biden Jr. a majority. And Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who was also subpoenaed, participated in a planning meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington on Jan. 5 after backing baseless litigation and “Stop the Steal” efforts around the country to push the lie of a stolen election.“In the days before the Jan. 6 attack, the former president’s closest allies and advisers drove a campaign of misinformation about the election and planned ways to stop the count of Electoral College votes,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the committee chairman, said in a statement. “The select committee needs to know every detail about their efforts to overturn the election, including who they were talking to in the White House and in Congress, what connections they had with rallies that escalated into a riot and who paid for it all.”The panel also issued subpoenas for Bill Stepien, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, who supervised its conversion into a “Stop the Steal” operation; and Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the campaign who participated at the Jan. 5 meeting at the Willard, where associates discussed pressuring Mr. Pence not to certify the Electoral College results.Also included in the group that received subpoenas on Monday was Angela McCallum, the Trump campaign’s national executive assistant, who left a voice message for an unknown Michigan state representative in which she said she wanted to know whether the campaign could “count on” the representative to help appoint an alternate slate of electors.The subpoenas — which bring to 25 the number issued by the committee — require that the witnesses turn over documents this month and sit for depositions in early December. More than 150 witnesses have testified in closed-door sessions with the committee’s investigators.In a statement on Monday evening, Mr. Kerik said his lawyer had accepted the committee’s subpoena, but he defended his actions. He said that Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, had brought him into the legal effort to investigate claims of voter fraud, but he argued that he had nothing to do with plans to try to sway Congress.“I was not hired to overturn the will of the people — only to look into the integrity of the process and ensure that the results accurately reflected the will of the people,” Mr. Kerik said. “As to the events of Jan. 6, I was not involved.”Mr. Flynn, Mr. Eastman, Mr. Stepien, Mr. Miller and Ms. McCallum did not immediately respond to requests for comment..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The panel’s latest move indicates that it is zeroing in on how — in the days and weeks before a throng of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol and disrupted Congress’s counting of votes — the former president’s closest associates were planning an effort stretching from the Oval Office, the House and Senate to state officials across the country.Critical to that push, investigators believe, was the meeting the day before the riot at the Willard Hotel. The Washington Post reported that Mr. Kerik paid for rooms and suites in Washington hotels as he worked with Mr. Giuliani on “Stop the Steal” efforts.“They are really honing in on this strategy at the Willard Hotel,” said Barbara L. McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and a law professor at the University of Michigan. “If it’s a campaign war room, that’s one thing. But the question is: To what extent are they looking at blocking the certification of the election? The Eastman memo is a real smoking gun. It really appears to be a concerted effort here.”Even as the committee ramps up its inquiry, it is facing stonewalling from Mr. Trump and many of his allies, whom he has directed to defy the panel based on a claim of executive privilege.Mr. Trump has filed suit against the committee to keep secret at least 770 pages of documents concerning handwritten notes, draft speeches and executive orders, and records of his calls, meetings and emails with state officials. But the Biden administration has declined to support his claim to executive privilege, arguing that there is no such prerogative for documents related to an attempt to undermine democracy and the presidency itself.The Justice Department is weighing whether to charge Stephen K. Bannon with criminal contempt of Congress after the House voted last month to recommend his prosecution for defying its subpoena. Another witness, Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who was involved in frenzied efforts to overturn the election, refused to cooperate on Friday.Mr. Flynn, who spent 33 years as an Army intelligence officer, has emerged as one of the most extreme voices in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election.Mr. Flynn attended a meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 18 in which participants discussed seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency, invoking certain national security emergency powers and continuing to spread the false message that the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud, the committee said. That meeting came after Mr. Flynn gave an interview to the right-wing site Newsmax in which he talked about the purported precedent for deploying military troops and declaring martial law to “rerun” the election.Mr. Stepien helmed Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, which urged state and party officials to affect the outcome of the election by asking states to delay or deny the certification of electoral votes and by sending multiple slates of the votes to Congress to allow a challenge to the results, the committee said. In particular, Mr. Stepien supervised a fund-raising effort that sought to profit off the election challenges and promote lies about voting machines that campaign staff had determined to be false, the committee said.Mr. Trump and the Republican Party raised $255.4 million in the eight weeks after the election as he promoted unfounded accusations of fraud.Mr. Eastman has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent weeks after it was revealed that he wrote a memo to Mr. Trump suggesting that Mr. Pence could reject electors from certain states. Mr. Eastman is also reported to have participated in a briefing for nearly 300 state legislators, during which he told the group that it was their duty to “fix this, this egregious conduct, and make sure that we’re not putting in the White House some guy that didn’t get elected,” the committee said.He met with Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence to push his arguments, participated in the meeting at the Willard and spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, before the Capitol assault. As violence broke out, he sent a message blaming Mr. Pence for not going along with his plan. More

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      My Fellow Republicans, Stop Fearing Donald Trump

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      When Donald Trump, the patron saint of sore losers, appeared at a Republican event on Saturday night and compared the 2020 election to a “third-world-country election like we’ve never seen before,” it wasn’t just another false rant from the former president. His words also described his attempted subversion of democracy in the run-up to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.Consider Mr. Trump’s remarks at his rally just before the attack: “If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” he said. “All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president.”Or consider Mr. Trump’s harassment of Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, with the request to “find” him votes, or his relentless harassment of other election officials and governors.Many Republicans want to move on from the Jan. 6 attack. But how is that possible when the former president won’t move on from the Nov. 3 election and continues to push the same incendiary lies that resulted in 61 failed lawsuits before Jan. 6, led to an insurrection and could lead to yet more violence?If you doubt that a threat of violence exists, look at the recent poll from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core, which shows that a dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory is believed by 15 percent of our fellow Americans — including almost one in four Republicans, 14 percent of independents and even 8 percent of Democrats.Republicans, instead of opposing a commission to investigate the events of Jan. 6, need to be at the forefront of seeking answers on the insurrection and diminishing the power of QAnon and the other conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump has fueled. While he is still popular within the party, Mr. Trump is a diminished political figure: 66 percent of Americans now hope he won’t run again in 2024, including 30 percent of Republicans. He is not the future, and Republicans need to stop fearing him. He will continue to damage the party if we don’t face the Jan. 6 facts head-on.Nothing less than a full investigation is essential. As a House Republican chief counsel during the Clinton administration, I see a clear set of unanswered questions about Jan. 6, as well as evidence that needs to be gathered and that our country needs to understand. An investigation should cover the events related and leading up to Jan. 6, as well as all the parties involved. Who planned and funded the Trump rally that day, and who picked the speakers and got attendees there? How did supporters of QAnon, Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys get there? What happened as the White House planned for Jan. 6?Whether it is a congressionally formed commission or a congressional committee, the subpoenas and testimony would produce records that tell the story. Imagine all the thousands of texts, emails, phone calls and other records from the weeks leading to and on Jan. 6 that are not yet part of the public record. This material will come out eventually — in hearings, in books or in the media — but Republicans should be part of the process, to help provide accountability and prevent future attacks.While a commission would be best, a congressional select committee with a five-Democrat, five-Republican split and the same rules as a commission would have, could also work. In the meantime, any standing committee with subpoena power could begin the information-gathering process immediately.Many Republican leaders seem to think any all-encompassing investigation will be bad for the party. I disagree. Some prominent Republicans want to uncover the truth, as are police officers who heroically protected members of Congress and their staff on Jan. 6. Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after engaging with the Trump-inspired mob, supported Mr. Trump. Officer Michael Fanone, who was shocked multiple times with a stun gun and beaten and suffered a heart attack and traumatic brain injury, told me he is a Republican. Officer Harry Dunn said: “We were victims of an assault, of an attack, and we deserve justice and we deserve to know everybody who was involved, and we want them held accountable.” Many of our officers feel they are being left on the field, and they wonder, what happened to “Back the Blue.”Mr. Trump’s lies are red meat to those in the conspiracy world who have already demonstrated what they are prepared to do. The danger also extends to states, as Mr. Trump tells people that election outcomes in Georgia and Arizona will be overturned, and he could be reinstated as president in August. How will QAnon followers or Oath Keepers respond when that does not happen?Many Republicans rationalize ignoring his rhetoric: His speech on Saturday wasn’t even aired live on Fox or CNN, and he may end up being indicted in New York and occupied with legal and financial problems. So, this thinking goes, what’s the harm in humoring the guy a little longer?The harm is that the lies have metastasized and could threaten public safety again. The U.S. Capitol Police report that threats against members of Congress have increased 107 percent this year. Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican, has noted, “There’s no reason to believe that anybody organically is going to come to the truth.” Representative Liz Cheney, another Republican, said, “It’s an ongoing threat, so silence is not an option.”Humoring the guy also emboldens Mr. Trump’s pardoned allies like Steve Bannon and his former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Republicans are now flocking to Mr. Bannon’s podcast to audition for Mr. Trump’s support, and Mr. Bannon says “a litmus test” will be whether they are willing to challenge the outcome of the 2020 election. Later this month, Mr. Flynn will appear at an Oklahoma campaign rally with Jackson Lahmeyer, a political novice who is challenging Senator James Lankford, the Republican incumbent. Mr. Lahmeyer claims the 2020 election was stolen and touts Mr. Flynn’s endorsement, saying we have to be willing to “Fight Like a Flynn.”Republicans would be better advised to fight like Senator Margaret Chase Smith. During the Joseph McCarthy era in 1950, she advised fellow Republicans that the Democrats had already provided Republicans with sufficient campaign issues, and they need not resort to McCarthy’s demagogy.The same is true today. Republicans need to have more faith in their policies and stop being afraid of a dangerous and diminished man who has divided the country and now divides our party. Reconsider the commission, let the investigation go ahead, and run and win in 2022 on the truth.Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican and a lawyer, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019.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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      Michael Flynn Re-emerges Pushing QAnon, Stolen 2020 Election Lies

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeMurder Charges?The Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPushing QAnon and Stolen Election Lies, Flynn Re-emergesRecast by President Trump’s most ardent supporters as a MAGA martyr, Michael T. Flynn has embraced his role as the man who spent four years unjustly ensnared in the Russia investigation.Michael T. Flynn at the Dec. 12 rally in Washington to protest the presidential election.Credit…Jonathan Ernst/ReutersFeb. 6, 2021Updated 4:48 p.m. ETIn Washington’s respectable circles, Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, is a discredited and dishonored ex-general, a once-esteemed military intelligence officer who went off the rails ideologically and then was fired a mere 24 days into the Trump administration for lying to the F.B.I. about contacts with the Russian ambassador.As if he cared.Where others see disgrace, Mr. Flynn, 62, has found redemption. Recast by former President Donald J. Trump’s most ardent supporters as a MAGA martyr, Mr. Flynn has embraced his role as the man who spent four years unjustly ensnared in the Russia investigation.He was one of the most extreme voices in Mr. Trump’s 77-day push to overturn the election, a campaign that will be under scrutiny as the former president’s second impeachment trial gets underway next week. Mr. Flynn went so far as to suggest using the military to rerun the vote in crucial battleground states. At one point, Mr. Trump even floated the idea of bringing Mr. Flynn back into the administration, as chief of staff or possibly F.B.I. director, people familiar with the conversations told The New York Times.And now, safely pardoned and free to speak his mind, Mr. Flynn has emerged from the Trump presidency much as he entered it — as the angry outsider who pushes fringe ideas, talks of shadowy conspiracies and is positioning himself as a voice of a far right that, in the wake of the Capitol riot, appears newly, and violently, emboldened.All that has changed for Mr. Flynn are the subjects at hand, and his apparent willingness to cash in on his notoriety.Mr. Flynn’s dark view of Islam and eagerness to cultivate President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have given way to an embrace of QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory, and a readiness to question the very fabric of American democracy. He has swapped a government job and an obsessive focus on “radical Islamic terrorism” for selling QAnon-branded T-shirts and a new media partnership with conspiracy theorists called Digital Soldiers.Yet his underlying message remains much the same as it was back in 2016, when he was leading chants of “lock her up” at Trump rallies: Washington’s establishment is irredeemably corrupt, and real Americans — that is, supporters of himself and Mr. Trump — are wise to it.“This country is awake,” he declared at the pro-Trump rally in Washington last month. “We will not stand for a lie.”It was the night before a mob attacked the Capitol, and the crowd on hand in Washington’s Freedom Plaza — some of whom would take part in the coming violence — left little doubt about where Mr. Flynn stood.“We love you, we love you, we love you,” they chanted. None of the other speakers at the rally — a boldface-name collection of Trumpworld characters like Roger Stone and Alex Jones — got as enthusiastic a reception.With Mr. Trump now in his post-presidency at Mar-a-Lago, a loose coalition that draws together militia members and conspiracy theorists along with evangelical Christians and suburban Trump supporters is searching for direction. Call it the alt-truth movement, and if it is to coalesce into something more permanent, it may well be, at least in part, because figures like Mr. Flynn continue to push false claims of how a deep-state cabal stole the election.“In order for us to breathe the fresh air of liberty, we the people, we are the ones that will decide our path forward, America’s future forward,” he said at the Jan. 5 rally. “It may not be a Republican Party, it may not be a Democratic Party, it will be a people’s party.”Martial LawMr. Flynn, who did not respond to an interview request for this article, spent 33 years as an Army intelligence officer, earning a reputation for being outspoken and unconventional and, in the years that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, for being unusually good at unwinding terrorist networks.Much of that work involved mapping out loose webs of ideological fellow travelers, figuring out who gave voice to extremist ideas and who committed the violence — two groups that were not always directly tied to each other. If a similar attempt was made to map the network of people who spread Mr. Trump’s stolen-election lie that led to the storming of the Capitol, Mr. Flynn himself would probably appear as one of those leading voices for his part in riling up Mr. Trump’s supporters without taking part in the attack.Perhaps most responsible for Mr. Flynn’s re-emergence is the conspiracy-theorizing lawyer Sidney Powell. Ms. Powell took over his legal defense in the Russia investigation after he had twice pleaded guilty in a deal to cooperate with prosecutors, and charted a combative new path. She challenged the deal and, marshaling a small army of like-minded Twitter users, recast Mr. Flynn from a turncoat into a victim, a man who had taken the fall to save his son, who was also under investigation.Mr. Flynn with his son, Mike Flynn Jr., at Trump Tower in New York in 2016.Credit…Sam Hodgson for The New York TimesIt was the story of the Russia investigation as a malevolent plot that first began priming tens of millions of Americans to believe Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories about the deep state. As one of the heroes of that narrative, Mr. Flynn became an ideal messenger when it was refashioned into the demonstrably false claim that Democrats and their deep-state allies had rigged the election.Within days of being pardoned on Nov. 27, Mr. Flynn began sharing those views in the right-wing media.In some appearances, he described himself as a marked man. “I gotta make sure I’m a moving target, because these son-of-a-guns, they’re after me, in a literal and a figurative sense,” he told listeners of “The Matrixxx Groove Show,” a QAnon podcast.In an interview with Newsmax, the conservative channel, he suggested Mr. Trump could impose martial law in swing states he had lost and rerun the elections.“People out there talk about martial law like it’s something that we’ve never done,” Mr. Flynn said. He noted that the military had taken over for civilian authorities dozens of times in American history, though he did not mention that it had never done so to help decide an election.The suggestion horrified many of Mr. Flynn’s former compatriots in uniform. Even discussing personal politics is frowned upon in the military, and most generals see it as their duty to stay above the political fray after retirement, as well. There have long been exceptions, of course, but to many who had served with Mr. Flynn, a retired general calling for the military to help decide an American election represented a new level of recklessness.“Mike, stop. Just stop. You are a former soldier,” Tony Thomas, a retired general who headed the Joint Special Operations Command, wrote on Twitter. Throughout his military career, in fact, all most of Mr. Flynn’s fellow soldiers had known about his politics was that he was a registered Democrat. Then came 2016, and the sight of a retired general leading chants for the imprisonment of Hillary Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state.When a number of generals privately and publicly urged him to dial back his support for Mr. Trump, Mr. Flynn called them “disrespectful.” If they could use their titles to get on corporate boards, he could use his to back Mr. Trump, he countered in an interview at the time, saying, “I care deeply about this country.”In any case, he said, he had never really been part of their club.‘Flynn Facts’Mr. Flynn has described his family as “definitely lower middle class,” and he joined the military without the West Point pedigree of many of his peers. He graduated instead from the Army’s Reserve Officer Training Program at the University of Rhode Island, a short drive from the town where he was raised.Yet he rose to be a lieutenant general, among the most respected military officers of his generation. He helped reshape the Joint Special Operations Command at the height of the war in Iraq, and ran military intelligence in Afghanistan during the Obama administration’s troop surge. In 2012, President Barack Obama named him director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.Mr. Flynn, the Obama administration’s director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testing before Congress with James Clapper, then head of national intelligence.Credit…Christopher Gregory/The New York TimesThen his career unraveled. After only two years, he was forced out when his attempt to reform the sprawling agency left subordinates squabbling and his superiors alarmed.Mr. Flynn, though, claimed that he had been fired for refusing to toe the Obama administration’s line that Islamist militants were in retreat. His position was vindicated with the rise of the Islamic State, and Mr. Flynn quickly became something of a cult figure among conservatives for what they saw as his brave stand against the Obama administration’s perfidy..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.As his relentless focus on Islamist militancy intensified, his views veered hard to the right. He argued that militants posed a threat to the very existence of the United States, and at times crossed the line into outright Islamophobia, tweeting “fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.”In Mr. Trump, he found a presidential candidate who shared his dark and conspiratorial view of Islam.The similarities between the two men did not end there: Both shared a fondness for Twitter and often exhibited a loose relationship with the truth. When Mr. Flynn ran the D.I.A., his dubious assertions were so common that subordinates came up with a name for them: “Flynn facts.” (In January, he was among those banned from Twitter with Mr. Trump.)So it was no great stretch to see Mr. Flynn hurling conspiracy theories about an election that federal election-security experts considered among the best run on record, and for Mr. Trump to listen.Supporters gathered outside a sentencing hearing in Washington in 2018 after Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. Credit…Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLast Dec. 18, Mr. Flynn participated in a raucous White House meeting in which Ms. Powell proposed that the president appoint her as a special counsel investigating voter fraud. Mr. Trump at one point also raised the idea of putting Mr. Flynn in charge of the F.B.I., and later suggested making him chief of staff for the final weeks of his administration, according to Trump and Flynn associates familiar with the conversations, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering either man.Whether the president was serious about either idea is an open question. But Mr. Flynn shot them down, saying he needed to focus on paying off millions of dollars in legal debts he had amassed fighting off the Russia investigation.Joining the FringeHis plan for paying those bills appears to rely on leveraging his public persona into cold, hard cash. There are the T-shirts and other merchandise, which he is selling through a company called Shirt Show USA. The website features shirts emblazoned with #FightLikeAFlynn and camo trucker hats with the emblem “WWG1WGA,” a reference to a popular QAnon motto, “Where we go one, we go all.”Then there is his new media venture, Digital Soldiers, which will publish reader-submitted stories. Mr. Flynn is building it with UncoverDC, a website that has pushed QAnon and conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic and President Biden.The tenor of Digital Soldiers is unmistakably QAnon, a movement centered on the claim that Mr. Trump, secretly aided by the military, was elected to smash a cabal of Democrats, international financiers and deep-state bureaucrats who worship Satan and abuse children. The supposed dishonesty of the mainstream media is central to QAnon, and Digital Soldiers — a phrase followers often use to describe themselves — represents Mr. Flynn’s fullest embrace of the movement to date.“Digital Soldiers from all over the world have stepped up to fill the void where real journalism once stood,” the website says.This past summer, Mr. Flynn posted a video of himself taking QAnon’s “digital soldier” oath. To many of the movement’s followers, Mr. Flynn ranks just below Mr. Trump. Some have speculated that he is the mysterious figure known as “Q,” the purported government insider with a high-level security clearance who began posting cryptic messages in 2017 about the deep state trying to destroy the president.Mr. Flynn posted a video of himself taking a QAnon oath this past summer.“They really take his word as gospel,” said Travis View, a close observer of the movement who hosts the podcast “QAnon Anonymous.” “In the mythology, they often say that he knows where the bodies are buried, and that’s why they tried to railroad him over Russia.”The phrase “digital soldiers” is drawn from a speech Mr. Flynn gave shortly after the 2016 election during which he inadvertently laid the groundwork for the conspiracy theory. He compared the Trump campaign to an insurgency — a theme that QAnon adherents would later adopt for themselves — with “an army of digital soldiers.”“This was irregular warfare at its finest — in politics,” he said.Among QAnon faithful, who believe that Mr. Trump and others use public statements to send secret signals, Mr. Flynn’s speech is considered something of a foundational text. And now, in naming his new media outlet Digital Soldiers, many believe he is sending them a message to carry on, even though Mr. Trump left office before the predicted apocalyptic showdown with his enemies — know as “the storm” — could come to pass.As one QAnon devotee noted in an IRC channel, a relatively dated online chat room technology favored by those particularly suspicious of possible surveillance, “If they kill or capture Trump, Flynn can still carry out the mission.”“The troops march to the beat of his drum,” wrote the user, who went by the screen name “specialist.”The plan, the user added, was “masterful.”Ken Vogel and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How the Obama-Trump Presidential Transition Led to Chaos

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      On Jan. 5, the night before Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, Michael Flynn — the retired three-star general, ousted national security adviser and pardoned felon — gave an interview to the prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in which he assured the viewers of Infowars.com that Donald Trump would serve as president for another four years. It was a certainty, Flynn said. He referred to his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan — “taking over countries, or running elections in countries” — and broke the present conflict down to the binary of “we” versus “they.” Flynn did not specify how, exactly, the intervention into the American election would work, though he alluded to “procedures” related to Trump’s authorities under a national emergency because of “foreign interference from multiple countries.”

      “They tried to silence you,” Jones said, referring to Flynn’s 2017 expulsion from the White House. “They failed. Now you’ve come through the fire as a phoenix.” Later that night, Flynn addressed a crowd of several thousand (Jones said there were a million) gathered in Washington. “We are the ones that will decide,” Flynn said. The following afternoon, as the electoral votes were being counted, a pro-Trump mob invaded the Capitol.

      Flynn’s re-emergence on the national stage was taking place almost four years to the date after the events that brought him down during the first days of Trump’s presidency — events that have since become the founding legend of a right-wing mythology. The crucial date was Jan. 24, 2017, when Flynn, the incoming national security adviser, sat down in his new West Wing office with two F.B.I. agents, who wanted to talk to him about a series of phone calls he had with the Russian ambassador. The battle that ensued over those phone calls cost Flynn his job, and later he would twice plead guilty to a felony for making false statements.

      Flynn’s dismissal was among the first public flash points in what would become an all-consuming political war over Trump’s relationship with Russia, a fight that would consume both his presidency and the country for years. Trump, for his part, never seemed interested in dispelling his opponents’ suspicions. During a campaign news conference, he asked the Russians to find a tranche of Hillary Clinton’s emails, a request that was directly followed by an actual Russian-backed email hacking attempt. Later, as president, he divulged classified information to Russian officials in the Oval Office, refused to accept his own government’s account of Russia’s role in the 2016 election and sided with Vladimir Putin on that question at a summit in Helsinki. “He just said it’s not Russia,” Trump said. “I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Just this past December, when news of a devastating cyberattack on the federal government was made public, almost everyone, including members of Trump’s cabinet and his former homeland security adviser, attributed the attack to Russia, but Trump pointedly did not. “Everything is well under control,” the president tweeted — before raising the possibility that China, not Russia, was the culprit.

      For many Trump critics, the Russia question still lingers. John Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, has noted Trump’s “strange obsequiousness” to Putin; Jim Comey, a former F.B.I. director, has acknowledged the possibility that the Russians “have leverage.” “I suspect they may have something on him either financial or personal, or both, but that’s just speculation,” James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, wrote to me in an interview conducted by email in late 2020. “I don’t know, but it’s hard to come up with another plausible explanation for his inexplicable deference.” The worries about Trump’s loyalties extend into his own circle. Dan Coats, who served under Trump as director of national intelligence, harbored “deep suspicions” that Putin “had something” on Trump, according to a book by Bob Woodward. (Some Trump critics remain skeptical. I asked John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, what he would say to those who claim that Trump is compromised by Russia. “I’d say the same thing to them that I’d say to the Trump campaign about the so-called fraud in the election,” he replied. “Where’s the evidence?”)

      Few Trump allies on Capitol Hill go as far as Flynn or Alex Jones, but many partake of the same grievance narrative, in which the Russia-related wounds inflicted on Trump’s legitimacy after the 2016 election somehow justify their refusal to accept the outcome of this one. “It bothers me greatly that they would be monitoring the incoming national security adviser,” Senator Lindsey Graham told me, referring to Flynn’s treatment by departing members of the Obama administration. “That is really damaging to the transition of power.” (Graham’s claim that Flynn was monitored is misleading. There is no evidence that Flynn’s communications were singled out for persistent surveillance; instead it was what he said and whom he said it to that caused some of his calls to surface later.)

      It took until Jan. 6 for Graham to formally recognize Biden as the legitimate president-elect; when we spoke in mid-December, he did not seem sure how best to refer to his former Senate colleague. “I am sure that the uh, the uh, Biden administration-in-waiting is talking to people all over the world right now,” he said, arguing that Flynn’s engagement with the Russians during the transition was normal. The Obama administration “had no business getting the transcripts” of Flynn’s calls, he said, because Flynn was “talking to the Russian ambassador as the national security adviser.”

      At the more vocal end of electoral deniers is Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio. Without offering any evidence, Jordan alleged that the Obama administration concocted a “plot” to “take down Michael Flynn” because Flynn’s intelligence background meant he would “figure out what they did” to Trump. “We hear so much about this term ‘peaceful transfer of power,’” Jordan told me in mid-December. “They didn’t follow that. They were trying not to let him” — that is, Trump — “be president.”

      The crisis of Trump’s departure from Washington has exposed the degree to which factions in American political life now inhabit entirely separate realities. But to understand that divergence, which has taken increasingly dire forms as a new presidential transition concludes, it’s important to revisit the transition of four years ago: Trump’s own messy ascension to the presidency, with its murkiness surrounding his relationship with Russia and the debate over what to do about it. The questions that Obama’s national-security team had to come to grips with about its successors almost sound like the premise of an airport novel. Was the president-elect a Manchurian candidate? Was he secretly videotaped by the Russian security service? Was his national security adviser a Russian asset? In January 2017, with less than three weeks to go before Trump assumed power, it was up to them to decide how to continue the Russia investigation under a president who could easily wind up in its cross hairs.

      The earliest debates about how to deal with Trump have been recorded by congressional testimony, recently declassified documents, investigations by the Justice Department’s inspector general and a five-volume report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. In addition to existing sources, this account draws on interviews and correspondence with more than a dozen participants who experienced both sides of the transition firsthand. Looming over all of those events was the same, bracing question that America faces now, on the eve of a new transition: In our era of extreme polarization, can the presidency successfully pass from one party to the other without the entire political system threatening to fall apart? More