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      Hunting for Voter Fraud, Conspiracy Theorists Organize ‘Stakeouts’

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      One night last month, on the recommendation of a man known online as Captain K, a small group gathered in an Arizona parking lot and waited in folding chairs, hoping to catch the people they believed were trying to destroy American democracy by submitting fake early voting ballots.Captain K — which is what Seth Keshel, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who espouses voting fraud conspiracy theories, calls himself — had set the plan in motion. In July, as states like Arizona were preparing for their primary elections, he posted a proposal on the messaging app Telegram: “All-night patriot tailgate parties for EVERY DROP BOX IN AMERICA.” The post received more than 70,000 views.Similar calls were galvanizing people in at least nine other states, signaling the latest outgrowth from rampant election fraud conspiracy theories coursing through the Republican Party.In the nearly two years since former President Donald J. Trump catapulted false claims of widespread voter fraud from the political fringes to the conservative mainstream, a constellation of his supporters have drifted from one theory to another in a frantic but unsuccessful search for evidence.Many are now focused on ballot drop boxes — where people can deposit their votes into secure and locked containers — under the unfounded belief that mysterious operatives, or so-called ballot mules, are stuffing them with fake ballots or otherwise tampering with them. And they are recruiting observers to monitor countless drop boxes across the country, tapping the millions of Americans who have been swayed by bogus election claims.In most cases, organizing efforts are nascent, with supporters posting unconfirmed plans to watch local drop boxes. But some small-scale “stakeouts” have been advertised using Craigslist, Telegram, Twitter, Gab and Truth Social, the social media platform backed by Mr. Trump. Several websites dedicated to the cause went online this year, including at least one meant to coordinate volunteers.Some high-profile politicians have embraced the idea. Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, asked followers on Twitter whether they would “be willing to take a shift watching a drop box to catch potential Ballot Mules.”Supporters have compared the events to harmless neighborhood watches or tailgate parties fueled by pizza and beer. But some online commenters discussed bringing AR-15s and other firearms, and have voiced their desire to make citizens’ arrests and log license plates. That has set off concerns among election officials and law enforcement that what supporters describe as legal patriotic oversight could easily slip into illegal voter intimidation, privacy violations, electioneering or confrontations.“What we’re going to be dealing with in 2022 is more of a citizen corps of conspiracists that have already decided that there’s a problem and are now looking for evidence, or at least something they can twist into evidence, and use that to undermine confidence in results they don’t like,” said Matthew Weil, the executive director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “When your entire premise is that there are problems, every issue looks like a problem, especially if you have no idea what you’re looking at.”Screenshot from Truth SocialMr. Keshel, whose post as Captain K inspired the Arizona gathering, said in an interview that monitoring drop boxes could catch illegal “ballot harvesting,” or voters depositing ballots for other people. The practice is legal in some states, like California, but is mostly illegal in battlegrounds like Georgia and Arizona. There is no evidence that widespread illegal ballot harvesting occurred in the 2020 presidential election.“In order to quality-control a process that is ripe for cheating, I suppose there’s no way other than monitoring,” Mr. Keshel said. “In fact, they have monitoring at polling stations when you go up, so I don’t see the difference.”The legality of monitoring the boxes is hazy, Mr. Weil said. Laws governing supervision of polling places — such as whether watchers may document voters entering or exiting — differ across states and have mostly not been adapted to ballot boxes.In 2020, election officials embraced ballot boxes as a legal solution to socially distanced voting during the coronavirus pandemic. All but 10 states allowed them.But many conservatives have argued that the boxes enable election fraud. The talk has been egged on by “2000 Mules,” a documentary by the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, which uses leaps of logic and dubious evidence to claim that an army of partisan “mules” traveled between ballot boxes and stuffed them with fraudulent votes. The documentary proved popular on the Republican campaign trail and among right-wing commentators, who were eager for novel ways to keep doubts about the 2020 election alive.“Ballot mules” have quickly become a central character in false stories about the 2020 election. Between November 2020 and the first reference to “2000 Mules” on Twitter in January 2022, the term “ballot mules” came up only 329 times, according to data from Zignal Labs. Since then, the term has surfaced 326,000 times on Twitter, 63 percent of the time alongside discussion of the documentary. Salem Media Group, the executive producer of the documentary, claimed in May that the film had earned more than $10 million.Rise of the ‘Ballot Mule’Mentions of “ballot mules” surged in May after the debunked documentary “2000 Mules” claimed that an army of operatives stuffed ballot boxes during the 2020 election.

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      Digital mentions of “ballot mules” per week
      Note: Includes mentions on digital platforms including social media, broadcast, traditional media, and other online sites. Source: Zignal LabsBy The New York TimesThe push for civilian oversight of ballot boxes has gained traction at the same time as legislative efforts to boost surveillance of drop-off sites. A state law passed this year in Utah requires 24-hour video surveillance to be installed at all unattended ballot boxes, an often challenging undertaking that has cost taxpayers in one county hundreds of thousands of dollars. County commissioners in Douglas County in Nebraska, which includes Omaha, voted in June to allocate $130,000 for drop box cameras to supplement existing cameras that the county does not own.In June, Arizona lawmakers approved a budget that included $500,000 for a pilot program for ballot box monitoring. The 16 boxes included will have round-the-clock photo and video surveillance, rejecting ballots if the cameras are nonfunctional, and will accept only a single ballot at a time, producing receipts for each ballot submitted.Many supporters of the stakeouts have argued that drop boxes should be banned entirely. Some have posted video tours of drop box sites, claiming that cameras are pointed in the wrong direction or that the locations cannot be properly secured.Melody Jennings, a minister and counselor who founded the right-wing group Clean Elections USA, claimed credit for the Arizona gathering on Truth Social and said it was the group’s “first run.” She said in a podcast interview that any surveillance teams she organized would try to record all voters who used drop boxes. The primaries, she said, were a “dry run” for the midterms in November. Ms. Jennings did not respond to requests for comment.After the Arizona gathering, organizers wrote to high-profile Truth Social users, including Mr. Trump, claiming without evidence that “mules came to the site, saw the party and left without dropping ballots.” Comments on other social media posts about the event noted that the group could have frightened away voters wary of engaging, drawn people planning to report the group’s activities or simply witnessed lost passers-by.On Aug. 2, Ms. Lake and several other election deniers prevailed in their primary races in Arizona, where a GoFundMe campaign sought donations for “a statewide volunteer citizen presence on location 24 hours a day at each public voting drop box location.” Kelly Townsend, a Republican state senator, said during a legislative hearing in May that people would train “hidden trail cameras” on ballot boxes and follow suspected fraudsters to their cars and record their license plate numbers.“I have been so pleased to hear about all you vigilantes out there that want to camp out at these drop boxes,” Ms. Townsend said.Surveillance plans are also forming in other states. Audit the Vote Hawaii posted that citizens there were “pulling together watch teams” to monitor the drop boxes. A similar group in Pennsylvania, Audit the Vote PA, posted on social media that they should do the same.In Michigan, a shaky video filmed from inside a car and posted on Truth Social showed what appeared to be a man collecting ballots from a drop box. It ended with a close-up shot of a truck’s license plate.In Washington, a right-wing group launched Drop Box Watch, a scheduling service helping people organize stakeouts, encouraging them to take photos or videos of any “anomalies.” The group’s website said all its volunteer slots for the state’s primary early this month were filled.The sheriff’s office in King County, Wash., which includes Seattle, is investigating after election signs popped up at several drop box sites in the state warning voters they were “under surveillance.”One Gab user with more than 2,000 followers offered stakeout tips on the social network and on Rumble: “Get their face clearly on camera, we don’t want no fuzzy Bigfoot film,” he said in a video, with his own face covered by a helmet, goggles and cloth. “We need to put that in the Gab group, so there’s a constant log of what’s going on.”Calls for civilian surveillance have expanded beyond ballot boxes. One post on a conservative blog cheers on people who monitor “any suspect activities before, during and after elections” at ballot-printing companies, vote tabulation centers and candidates’ offices.Paul Gronke, the director of the Elections and Voting Information Center at Reed College, suggested that activists hoping for improved election security should push for more data transparency measures and tracking programs that allow voters to monitor the status of their absentee ballot. He said he had never heard of a legitimate example of dropbox watchdogs successfully catching fraud.The prospect of confrontations involving self-appointed overseers largely untrained in state-specific election procedures, charged up by a steady diet of misinformation and militarized rhetoric, is “just a recipe for disaster” and “puts at risk the voters’ ability to cast their ballots,” Mr. Gronke said.“There are ways to secure the system, but having vigilantes standing around drop boxes is not the way to do it,” he said. “Drop boxes are not a concern — it’s just a misdirection of energy.”Cecilia Kang More

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      On the Docket: Atlanta v. Trumpworld

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      ATLANTA — The criminal investigation into efforts by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia has begun to entangle, in one way or another, an expanding assemblage of characters:A United States senator. A congressman. A local Cadillac dealer. A high school economics teacher. The chairman of the state Republican Party. The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. Six lawyers aiding Mr. Trump, including a former New York City mayor. The former president himself. And a woman who has identified herself as a publicist for the rapper Kanye West.Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta area district attorney, has been leading the investigation since early last year. But it is only this month, with a flurry of subpoenas and target letters, as well as court documents that illuminate some of the closed proceedings of a special grand jury, that the inquiry’s sprawling contours have emerged.For legal experts, that sprawl is a sign that Ms. Willis is doing what she has indicated all along: building the framework for a broad case that could target multiple defendants with charges of conspiracy to commit election fraud, or racketeering-related charges for engaging in a coordinated scheme to undermine the election.“All of these people are from very disparate places in life,” Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, said of the known witnesses and targets. “The fact that they’re all being brought together really suggests she’s building this broader case for conspiracy.”What happened in Georgia was not altogether singular. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has put on display how Mr. Trump and his allies sought to subvert the election results in several crucial states, including by creating slates of fake pro-Trump electors. Yet even as many Democrats lament that the Justice Department is moving too slowly in its inquiry, the local Georgia prosecutor has been pursuing a quickening case that could pose the most immediate legal peril for the former president and his associates.Whether Mr. Trump will ultimately be targeted for indictment remains unclear. But the David-before-Goliath dynamic may in part reflect that Ms. Willis’s legal decision-making is less encumbered than that of federal officials in Washington by the vast political and societal weight of prosecuting a former president, especially in a bitterly fissured country.But some key differences in Georgia law may also make the path to prosecution easier than in federal courts. And there was the signal event that drew attention to Mr. Trump’s conduct in Georgia: his call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, whose office, in Ms. Willis’s Fulton County, recorded the president imploring him to “find” the 11,780 votes needed to reverse his defeat.A House hearing this past week discussed a phone call in which President Donald J. Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” an additional 11,780 votes.Shawn Thew/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Trump’s staff did not comment, nor did his local counsel. When Ms. Willis opened the inquiry in February 2021, a Trump spokesman described it as “simply the Democrats’ latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump.” Lawyers for 11 of the 16 Trump electors, Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow and Holly A. Pierson, accused Ms. Willis of “misusing the grand jury process to harass, embarrass and attempt to intimidate the nominee electors, not to investigate their conduct.”Last year, Ms. Willis told The New York Times that racketeering charges could be in play. Whenever people “hear the word ‘racketeering,’ they think of ‘The Godfather,’” she said, before explaining that charges under Georgia’s version of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act could apply in any number of realms where corrupt enterprises are operating. “If you have various overt acts for an illegal purpose, I think you can — you may — get there,” she said.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 8Numerous inquiries. More

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      Andrew Gillum Indicted on Federal Charges of Conspiracy and Fraud

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      The former Democratic nominee for Florida governor was indicted in a criminal case stemming from his time as Tallahassee mayor and statewide candidate.MIAMI — Andrew Gillum, the Democrat who lost the 2018 Florida governor’s race to Ron DeSantis, surrendered to federal authorities in Tallahassee on Wednesday after he and a close associate were charged with conspiracy and 19 counts of fraud over how they raised and used funds when he was mayor of Tallahassee and a candidate for governor.Mr. Gillum, 42, was also charged with making false statements to the F.B.I.He pleaded not guilty in a court appearance on Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Gillum, dressed in a navy suit with a dark tie and face mask, was cuffed around his wrists and ankles, with a chain around his waist. Inside the courtroom were some of his friends and a gaggle of news reporters. He left the courthouse after his release and gave no comment to the cameras and microphones waiting outside.The once-ascendant Democrat, Mr. Gillum came within 32,000 votes of the governorship in 2018 — which would have made him Florida’s first Black governor and a future White House hopeful — only to lose his political direction and face personal struggles. In 2020, the police found him in a Miami Beach hotel room where another man was suffering from a possible drug overdose.Mr. Gillum entered rehab to seek treatment for alcoholism shortly after. He later came out as bisexual in an interview that also featured his wife.The charges appear to stem from a federal investigation into Tallahassee City Hall that began in 2015 and involved undercover F.B.I. agents posing as developers. Revelations from the investigation, including that Mr. Gillum had socialized with the undercover agents in New York, where they took a boat ride to the Statue of Liberty and saw the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton,” were an issue in the 2018 campaign. Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, said at the time that Mr. Gillum could not be trusted to run the state.Mr. Gillum, who did not disclose the gifts at the time as required by state law, paid a $5,000 Florida ethics fine in 2019.The 21-count indictment against Mr. Gillum shows that a grand jury filed the charges against him on June 7. Also charged was Sharon Lettman-Hicks, 53, a confidante of Mr. Gillum’s since he was in college. According to the indictment, she used her communications company to disguise fraudulent payments to Mr. Gillum as part of her payroll.In a statement, Mr. Gillum said he had run all of his political campaigns “with integrity.”“Make no mistake that this case is not legal, it is political,” he said. “There’s been a target on my back ever since I was the mayor of Tallahassee. They found nothing then, and I have full confidence that my legal team will prove my innocence now.”Ms. Lettman-Hicks, who is running as a Democrat for a State House seat in Tallahassee, was in a wheelchair when she appeared in court on Wednesday and pleaded not guilty. She declined to comment.The indictment covers events involving Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks from 2016 to 2019. The false statements charge against Mr. Gillum is related to his interactions with the undercover agents.According to the indictment, beginning in 2016, Mr. Gillum and two unnamed associates solicited campaign contributions from the undercover agents for Mr. Gillum’s newly formed Forward Florida political action committee. To keep the agents’ names private, the associates promised to funnel the contributions in other ways, including through Ms. Lettman-Hicks’s company, P&P Communications. In exchange, they were promised “unencumbered government contracts,” according to one of the unnamed associates.Mr. Gillum told one of the undercover agents that he “should separate in his mind the campaign contributions and the Tallahassee projects,” the indictment says, adding that Mr. Gillum also “indicated he looked favorably on” the undercover agent’s proposed development projects.The indictment says that when Mr. Gillum voluntarily spoke to F.B.I. agents in 2017, he “falsely represented” that the undercover agents posing as developers never offered him anything and that he had stopped communicating with them after they tried to link their contributions to support for potential Tallahassee projects.The fraud and conspiracy charges are related to Mr. Gillum’s dealings with Ms. Lettman-Hicks with regards to P&P Communications and Mr. Gillum’s campaign.In 2017, when he became a candidate for governor, Mr. Gillum resigned from his position with People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group whose Tallahassee office was leased from Ms. Lettman-Hicks. Mr. Gillum lost his annual $122,500 salary, and Ms. Lettman-Hicks lost $3,000 in monthly rent. Mr. Gillum was also paid about $70,500 a year as mayor, a position he held from 2014 to 2018.Mr. Gillum then became an employee of P&P Communications, where he was given a monthly salary of $10,000. According to the indictment, hiring Mr. Gillum was “only a cover used to provide him funds that he lost” after his resignation from People for the American Way.When Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks solicited $50,000 in grant funding from two unnamed organizations, the money was intended to be used for the Campaign to Defend Local Solutions, an effort by Mr. Gillum to fight state efforts to pre-empt local governments’ power. Instead, according to the indictment, that money ultimately went to P&P Communications to pay Mr. Gillum.In 2018, the indictment says, Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks defrauded an unnamed campaign donor who had given $250,000 intended for Mr. Gillum’s campaign. Instead, $150,000 of that was diverted to Mr. Gillum’s political action committee and to P&P Communications.According to the indictment, in November 2018, $130,000 from the campaign was supposed to go to “get out the vote” efforts. Instead, $60,000 went to P&P Communications and was used in part to pay Mr. Gillum $20,000 in “bonus” payments from Nov. 20 to 29, 2018.Eventually, it was listed falsely in Mr. Gillum’s campaign finance report as a reimbursement for “Get Out the Vote Canvassing.”Alexandra Glorioso More

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      ‘2000 Mules’ Repackages Trump’s Election Lies

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      A new documentary from Trump allies makes the latest case the election was stolen, but the group behind the claim has been assailed even by some on the hard right.PALM BEACH, Fla. — Votes switched by Venezuelan software. Voting machines hacked by the Chinese. Checking for telltale bamboo fibers that might prove ballots had been flown in from Asia. After the 2020 election, Donald J. Trump and his allies cycled through a raft of explanations for what they claimed was the fraud that stole his rightful re-election as president, all of them debunked.Yet on a recent evening at his Mar-a-Lago resort, there was Mr. Trump showcasing his latest election conspiracy theory, one he has been advancing for months at rallies for his favored midterm candidates.The basic pitch is that an army of left-wing operatives stuffed drop boxes with absentee ballots — a new spin on an old allegation that voter-fraud activists call “ballot trafficking.” And while MAGA-world luminaries like Rudolph W. Giuliani, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and the MyPillow founder Mike Lindell filled the gilded ballroom, the former president called out two lesser-known figures sitting up front — the stars of “2000 Mules,” a documentary film promoting that ballot-trafficking theory and premiering at Mar-a-Lago that night.“These people are true patriots,” Mr. Trump said, gesturing from the podium to the pair — a Tea Party veteran from Texas, Catherine Engelbrecht, and Gregg Phillips, her full-bearded sidekick, a longtime Republican operative — and imploring them to “stand up.”The Mar-a-Lago “2000 Mules” screening earlier this month.Alexandra Berzon/The New York TimesDonald Trump and his allies are pushing the conspiracy theory covered in “2000 Mules.”Alexandra Berzon/The New York TimesWhile the early primaries have delivered a mixed verdict on the former president’s endorsements and stolen-election obsessions, polling nonetheless shows that a majority of Republicans believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen, even though vote fraud is exceedingly rare. Mr. Trump and his allies hope “2000 Mules,” now playing at several hundred theaters, will win over doubters among establishment Republicans.Ms. Engelbrecht, the founder of True the Vote, a group that has spent years warning of the dangers of voter fraud, has criticized the earlier narratives of the 2020 election as unhelpful. “What they were putting out there was a lot of misinformation that just wasn’t true,” she said in a recent interview. “People want to believe the conspiracies in some ways.” Their film, she maintains, offers a more-serious theory.Catherine Engelbrecht, center, founder and president of True the Vote.Michael F. McElroy for The New York TimesYet a close look at the documentary shows that it, too, is based on arguments that fall apart under scrutiny.The film, directed by the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, is based in part on an erroneous premise: that getting paid to deliver other people’s ballots is illegal not just in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia where True the Vote centered its research and where third-party delivery of ballots is not allowed in most cases, but in every state.What’s more, the film claims, but never shows in its footage, that individual “mules” stuffed drop box after drop box. (Mr. Phillips said such footage exists, but Mr. D’Souza said it wasn’t included because “it’s not easy to tell from the images themselves that it is the same person.”) Those claims are purportedly backed up by tracking cellphone data, but the film’s methods of analysis have been pilloried in numerous fact-checks. (True the Vote declined to offer tangible proof — Mr. Phillips calls his methodology a “trade secret.”)More broadly, Ms. Engelbrecht has said that the surge of mail-in voting in 2020 was part of a Marxist plot, aided by billionaires including George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg, to disrupt American elections, rather than a legitimate response to the coronavirus pandemic.Mr. Phillips, whose firm OpSec does data analysis for True the Vote, is perhaps best known for making a fantastical claim in 2017 that more than three million illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election, which was amplified by Mr. Trump but never backed up with evidence. Mr. Phillips is also an adviser to Get Georgia Right, a political action committee that received $500,000 from Mr. Trump’s Save America PAC this past March 25, the day after Mr. Phillips and Ms. Engelbrecht advanced their 2020 vote-fraud theories to a legislative committee in Wisconsin. Mr. Phillips said he had “received zero money” from Get Georgia Right, which backed Mr. Trump’s favored and failed governor-primary candidate, David Perdue.Gregg Phillips, right, at the “2000 Mules” screening at Mar-a-Lago.Alexandra Berzon/The New York TimesMr. Phillips and Ms. Engelbrecht have become controversial even within the hard-right firmament. They are embroiled in litigation with True the Vote’s largest donor, and Ms. Engelbrecht has feuded with Cleta Mitchell, a leading Trump ally and elections lawyer. John Fund, a prominent conservative journalist who was once a booster of Ms. Engelbrecht, has implored donors to shun her, according to videotape provided to The New York Times by Documented, a nonprofit news site.“I would not give her a penny,” Mr. Fund said at a meeting of members of the Council for National Policy, a secretive group of right-wing leaders, in the summer of 2020. “She’s a good person who’s been led astray. Don’t do it.”But Ms. Engelbrecht found support from Salem Media Group, which distributes right-wing talk radio and podcasts, including one hosted by Mr. D’Souza, who was pardoned by Mr. Trump after being convicted of campaign finance fraud. After meeting with Mr. Phillips and Ms. Engelbrecht, Salem Media spent $1.5 million to make the film and $3 million to market it, according to Mr. D’Souza. An elaborate and shadowy film set, with giant screens and flashing lights, was built to show Ms. Engelbrecht and Mr. Phillips conducting their cellphone-data analysis.Directed by the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, “2000 Mules” is based on an erroneous central premise: that getting paid to deliver other people’s ballots is illegal in every state.Shannon Finney/Getty ImagesThe group has not presented any evidence that the ballots themselves — as opposed to their delivery — were improper. “I want to make very clear that we’re not suggesting that the ballots that were cast were illegal ballots. What we’re saying is that the process was abused,” Ms. Engelbrecht said in Wisconsin. In an interview, she backtracked, but when asked to provide evidence of improper votes, she only pointed to previous accusations unrelated to the 2020 general election.A repeated contention of the documentary is that getting paid to deliver other peoples’ ballots is illegal in every state. Mr. D’Souza emailed The New York Times a citation to a federal statute that outlaws getting paid to vote — and does not discuss delivering other people’s ballots. Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation fellow, appears in the movie agreeing that the practice is outlawed nationwide, but in 2019 he wrote that it was “perfectly legal” in some states for “political guns-for-hire” to collect ballots. (Asked about the discrepancy, Mr. von Spakovsky said he believed the practice is illegal based on federal law.)The swing states where Ms. Phillips and Ms. Engelbrecht focused their research do ban the delivery of ballots on behalf of others, with some exceptions. But elections officers in 16 other states surveyed by The Times said their states did not prohibit people getting paid to deliver a ballot. Some of those states limit how many ballots an individual can deliver, or bar campaigns from doing so.Mr. Phillips and Ms. Engelbrecht’s case is largely built on cellphone data. A report created by the group includes an appendix that claims to list “IMEI” numbers of the tracked devices — 15-digit codes unique to each cellphone. But each entry on the list is a 20-character string of numbers and letters followed by a lot of x’s. Mr. Phillips said new IDs had been created “to obfuscate the numbers.”The same report says the group “purchased 25 terabytes of cellphone signal data emitted by devices” in the Milwaukee area in a two-week period before the 2020 election. They claim to have isolated 107 unique devices that made “20 or more visits to drop boxes” and “multiple visits to nongovernmental organizations” that were involved in get out the vote efforts.A number of researchers have said that while cellphone data is fairly precise, it cannot determine if someone is depositing ballots in a drop box or just passing by the area.“It’s really, really hard to assign even what side of the street you’re on when you’re using this kind of data,” said Paul Schmitt, a research scientist and professor at the University of Southern California.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 8Numerous inquiries. More

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      5 G.O.P. Candidates for Michigan Governor Are Disqualified Over Forged Signatures

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      Five Republican candidates for Michigan governor were disqualified by a state canvassing board on Thursday for submitting nominating petitions that officials said had contained thousands of forged signatures. The decision sent the race, in a key battleground state, into chaos and dealt a serious blow to the party’s plans to challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic incumbent.The five candidates, half of the party’s field, were denied a spot on the Aug. 2 primary ballot by the Board of State Canvassers, including James Craig, a former Detroit police chief, and Perry Johnson, a wealthy businessman.Both had widely been viewed as favorites for the Republican nomination before election officials this week rejected thousands of signatures gathered on behalf of the candidates, finding that the names had been forged and were collected by fraudulent petition circulators.The ruling was expected to draw a host of lawsuits from Republicans, who have characterized the move as politically motivated.“It is a travesty that partisans in a position to uphold democracy and the will of the people allowed politics to get in the way,” Mr. Craig said in a statement on Thursday, vowing to appeal the decision in court.Deadlocked along party lines, with two Democrats supporting the disqualification and two Republicans opposing it, the canvassing board upheld a recommendation by the Michigan Bureau of Elections to exclude the candidates. A candidate must get a majority of votes from the board’s four members to be certified for a spot on the ballot.On Monday, the elections bureau determined that the five Republican candidates for governor did not meet the requirement of submitting signatures from at least 15,000 registered voters.In a statement on Thursday, Ron Weiser, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, sharply criticized the decision.“The way this bureau deviated from its historical practice is unprecedented, and I think the arguments laid out by the challengers should have their time in court,” Mr. Weiser said. “This is about fighting against voter disenfranchisement and for choice at the ballot box.”John Yob, a campaign strategist for Mr. Johnson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. In a series of tweets on Monday night, Mr. Yob said Mr. Johnson’s campaign would challenge the ruling.Perry Johnson greeting supporters last month at the Michigan Republican Convention.Daniel Shular/Mlive.Com/The Grand Rapids Press, via Associated PressRepublicans have directed criticism at the head of the state agency that runs the elections bureau: Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is secretary of state.A spokeswoman for Ms. Benson declined to comment on Thursday after the canvassing board’s decision, noting that it is an independent entity.In its review this week of the nominating petitions, the elections bureau issued a stinging indictment of the methods used by the candidates’ campaigns to collect signatures and the operatives working for the candidates.“The bureau is unaware of another election cycle in which this many circulators submitted such a substantial volume of fraudulent petition sheets consisting of invalid signatures,” the bureau said. It also clarified that it saw no evidence that the candidates had any knowledge of the fraud.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      Two Republicans Face Disqualification in Michigan Governor’s Race

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      Two top Republican candidates for governor in Michigan are in danger of being denied a spot on the primary ballot after the state’s election bureau invalidated thousands of signatures submitted by their campaigns, saying many of the names had been forged and were collected by fraudulent petition circulators.The Michigan Bureau of Elections recommended on Monday that James Craig, a former Detroit police chief, and Perry Johnson, a wealthy businessman, be excluded from the Aug. 2 primary, finding that neither candidate met the requirement of submitting signatures from at least 15,000 registered voters.Republicans in the state characterized the move as a politically motivated effort from a Democratic-led agency, while Mr. Craig pointed to his standing in the race.“They want me out,” Mr. Craig said, alluding to Republicans and Democrats. “I’ve been leading.”Three other lesser-known Republican candidates for governor also fell short of the threshold, the bureau determined, meaning that five of the party’s 10 candidates who filed to run for the state’s top office would be ineligible.In its review of the nominating petitions for both candidates, the elections bureau issued a stinging indictment of the methods used by their campaigns to collect signatures and the operatives working for the candidates.“The Bureau is unaware of another election cycle in which this many circulators submitted such a substantial volume of fraudulent petition sheets consisting of invalid signatures,” the bureau said, but clarified that it saw no evidence that the candidates had any knowledge of the fraud.Mr. Craig said in an interview on Tuesday that he would go to court to challenge any effort to deny him access to the ballot.“None of the candidates knew about the fraud,” Mr. Craig said. “Certainly, I didn’t. There needs to be an investigation and prosecution, if, in fact, there is probable cause that they did in fact commit fraud.”While the final say over the candidates’ eligibility rests with the Board of State Canvassers, a separate panel that will meet on Thursday, the recommended disqualification of Mr. Craig and Mr. Johnson threatened to create chaos for Republicans in their quest to challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.Perry Johnson was also widely viewed as one of the top candidates in the state’s Republican primary for governor.Daniel Shular/The Grand Rapids Press, via Associated PressBoth Mr. Craig and Mr. Johnson were widely viewed as front-runners for the party’s nomination in a key battleground state, where Republicans have clashed with Democrats over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and pandemic restrictions.More than half of the 21,305 signatures submitted by Mr. Craig’s campaign were rejected, leaving him with 10,192 valid signatures, the bureau said in its report, which noted that little effort was made to vary handwriting.“In some cases, rather than attempting varying signatures, the circulator would intentionally scrawl illegibly. In other instances, they circulated petition sheets among themselves, each filling out a line,” the bureau said of the petitions for Mr. Craig.Mr. Craig identified Vanguard Field Strategies, an Austin, Texas, firm, as helping to manage the canvassing effort, one that he said relied on several subcontractors that were previously unknown to him. He said that the onus was on the firm to have checks and balances to detect fraud, and he called it “shortsighted” and unrealistic to expect that a busy candidate would verify more than 20,000 signatures.Vanguard Field Strategies confirmed on Tuesday that 18 of the people identified in the elections bureau’s report as circulating the fraudulent petitions had been working for another firm that it had subcontracted to help it gather signatures. The company would not identify the subcontractor, which it characterized in a statement on Tuesday as a nationally respected Republican firm.“The allegations of fraudulent activity, and individuals infiltrating Chief Craig’s campaign in an effort to sabotage it, is very concerning,” Joe J. Williams, Vanguard’s president, said in a statement. “I hope the individuals charged with fraud (none of which worked for or were paid by Vanguard) are held responsible if the allegations are true.”According to Vanguard, Mr. Craig’s campaign retained its services about two months ago, having collected just 500 signatures at the time — the deadline to submit them was April 19.The elections bureau rejected 9,393 of the 23,193 signatures submitted by Mr. Johnson’s campaign, leaving him with 13,800 valid signatures. Some of the fraudulent signatures represented voters who had died or moved out of the state, the bureau said.John Yob, a campaign strategist for Mr. Johnson, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. In a series of tweets on Monday night, Mr. Yob said that the move to disqualify Republican candidates en masse was politically motivated and criticized the head of the state agency that the elections bureau is part of: Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is secretary of state.Mr. Yob said that the campaign would contest the bureau’s recommendation.“We strongly believe they are refusing to count thousands of signatures from legitimate voters who signed the petitions and look forward to winning this fight before the Board, and if necessary, in the courts,” he said.On Tuesday, Ron Weiser, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, slammed the move to exclude the Republicans from the primary ballot on Twitter.“This is far from over,” Mr. Weiser said. “Democrats claim to be the champions of democracy but are actively angling behind the scenes to disqualify their opponents in an unprecedented way because they want to take away choice from Michigan voters.”Tracy Wimmer, a spokeswoman for Ms. Benson, said in an email on Tuesday night that the election bureau was not swayed by politics.“The Bureau of Elections is staffed by election professionals of integrity who conducted their review of candidate submissions in a nonpartisan manner in accordance with state law,” Ms. Wimmer said.Election officials said that they had identified 36 people who had submitted fraudulent petition sheets consisting entirely of invalid signatures. On Monday, a total of 19 candidates learned that they had not met the signature requirement to get onto the ballot, including three Republicans and one Democrat seeking House seats, and 10 nonpartisan candidates seeking judicial posts.Democrats had separately challenged the petitions of Mr. Craig and Mr. Johnson, but the bureau did not take action because those candidates did not have enough signatures. Mark Brewer, a former chairman of the Michigan Democrats and a lawyer who challenged Mr. Craig’s petitions, defended the steps taken by the elections bureau on Twitter.“What kind of message does it send if any candidate with forged signatures is allowed on the ballot?” Mr. Brewer said on Tuesday. In a 17-page report detailing its findings on Monday, the elections bureau said that the head of one canvassing firm used by the candidates to gather signatures had pleaded guilty to two counts of election fraud in 2011 in Virginia. He was accused of instructing two individuals to sign as a witness on dozens of petition sheets filled with signatures they did not collect, the bureau said.The report did not identify the person, but cited links to news stories and court cases that pointed to Shawn Wilmoth, a political operative based in Michigan, and Mr. Wilmoth’s company, First Choice Contracting LLC.A person who answered the phone at the company on Tuesday said that Mr. Wilmoth was not available, and Mr. Wilmoth did not respond to messages seeking comment.When asked if Mr. Wilmoth or his firm had done work for his campaign, Mr. Craig said on Tuesday that he had learned only that day of a potential nexus.“I don’t want to make excuses,” Mr. Craig said. More

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      How the Manhattan DA's Investigation Into Donald Trump Unraveled

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      On a late January afternoon, two senior prosecutors stood before the new Manhattan district attorney, hoping to persuade him to criminally charge the former president of the United States.The prosecutors, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne, detailed their strategy for proving that Donald J. Trump knew his annual financial statements were works of fiction. Time was running out: The grand jury hearing evidence against Mr. Trump was set to expire in the spring. They needed the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to decide whether to seek charges.But Mr. Bragg and his senior aides, masked and gathered around a conference table on the eighth floor of the district attorney’s office in Lower Manhattan, had serious doubts. They hammered Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne about whether they could show that Mr. Trump had intended to break the law by inflating the value of his assets in the annual statements, a necessary element to prove the case.The questioning was so intense that as the meeting ended, Mr. Dunne, exasperated, used a lawyerly expression that normally refers to a judge’s fiery questioning:“Wow, this was a really hot bench,” Mr. Dunne said, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. “What I’m hearing is you have great concerns.”The meeting, on Jan. 24, started a series of events that brought the investigation of Mr. Trump to a sudden halt, and late last month prompted Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne to resign. It also represented a drastic shift: Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had deliberated for months before deciding to move toward an indictment of Mr. Trump. Mr. Bragg, not two months into his tenure, reversed that decision.Mr. Bragg has maintained that the three-year inquiry is continuing. But the reversal, for now, has eliminated one of the gravest legal threats facing the former president.This account of the investigation’s unraveling, drawn from interviews with more than a dozen people knowledgeable about the events, pulls back a curtain on one of the most consequential prosecutorial decisions in U.S. history. Had the district attorney’s office secured an indictment, Mr. Trump would have been the first current or former president to be criminally charged.Mr. Bragg was not the only one to question the strength of the case, the interviews show. Late last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorney’s office opted to leave the investigation, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they maintained were gaps in the evidence. The tension spilled into the new administration, with some career prosecutors raising concerns directly to the new district attorney’s team.Mr. Bragg, whose office is conducting the investigation along with lawyers working for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, had not taken issue with Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz presenting evidence to the grand jury in his first days as district attorney. But as the weeks passed, he developed concerns about the challenge of showing Mr. Trump’s intent — a requirement for proving that he criminally falsified his business records — and about the risks of relying on the former president’s onetime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, as a key witness.Mr. Cohen’s testimony, the prosecutors leading the investigation argued, could help to establish that Mr. Trump was intentionally misleading when he exaggerated the value of his properties. The financial statements Mr. Trump submitted to banks to secure loans — documents that say “Donald J. Trump is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation” of the valuations — could also support a case.Mr. Bragg was not persuaded. Once he told Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne that he was not prepared to authorize charges, they resigned. Explaining the resignation to his team of prosecutors in a meeting a day later, Mr. Dunne said he felt he needed “to disassociate myself with this decision because I think it was on the wrong side of history.”Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz also bristled at how Mr. Bragg had handled the investigation at times. Mr. Bragg left the pivotal Jan. 24 meeting before the discussion ended, though several of his top aides stayed behind. And after that day, Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz — two of New York’s most prominent litigators, who had become accustomed to driving the case — were not included in closed-door meetings where decisions were made.Mark Pomerantz, one of two lawyers who were leading a criminal inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump’s business practices. The two resigned last week after the investigation came to a sudden halt.David Karp/Associated PressMr. Bragg’s choice not to pursue charges is reminiscent of the high hurdle that others have failed to clear over the years as they sought to hold Mr. Trump criminally liable for his practices as a real estate mogul. Mr. Trump famously shuns email, and he has cultivated deep loyalty among employees who might otherwise testify against him, a one-two punch that has stymied other prosecutors in search of conclusive proof of his guilt.In the Manhattan investigation, the absence of damning emails or an insider willing to testify would make it harder to prove that any exaggerations were criminal. Mr. Trump, who has a history of making false statements, has in the past referred to boastful claims about his assets as “truthful hyperbole.”The interviews with people knowledgeable about the Manhattan investigation also highlight the success of Mr. Trump’s efforts to delay it.He fought many of the subpoenas issued by the district attorney. In one of those battles — for Mr. Trump’s tax returns and other financial documents — it took nearly 18 months and two trips to the Supreme Court for Mr. Vance’s office to obtain the records. As a result, the ultimate decision of whether to pursue charges fell to Mr. Bragg, his more skeptical successor.A public uproar over his handling of the investigation has added to the turbulence of Mr. Bragg’s early tenure.As he was weighing the fate of the Trump investigation, Mr. Bragg was also contending with a firestorm over a number of criminal justice reforms he introduced in a memo his first week in office. The memo immediately embroiled his administration in controversy, a public relations debacle that worsened with a handful of high-profile shootings, including the killing of two police officers in late January.Although it is unclear whether those early travails influenced Mr. Bragg’s management of the Trump inquiry, there is no doubt that they contributed to his frenzied first days in office.Mr. Bragg’s decision on the Trump investigation may compound his political problems in heavily Democratic Manhattan, where many residents make no secret of their enmity for Mr. Trump.Mr. Bragg has told aides that the inquiry could move forward if a new piece of evidence is unearthed, or if a Trump Organization insider decides to turn on Mr. Trump. Other prosecutors in the office saw that as fanciful.Mr. Trump has long denied wrongdoing and has accused Mr. Bragg and Ms. James, both of whom are Democrats and Black, of carrying out a politically motivated “witch hunt” and being “racists.”Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg, said that the investigation into Mr. Trump was continuing under new leadership.“This is an active investigation and there is a strong team in place working on it,” Ms. Filson said. She added that the inquiry was now being led by Susan Hoffinger, the executive assistant district attorney in charge of the office’s Investigation Division.Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne declined to comment.The Brain TrustCyrus R. Vance Jr., the previous Manhattan district attorney, began the investigation into Mr. Trump, including whether he had intentionally inflated the value of his assets to defraud lenders.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesMr. Vance and his top deputies were riding high last summer.They had just announced criminal tax charges against Mr. Trump’s family business and his longtime finance chief, Allen H. Weisselberg. The next step for Mr. Dunne, Mr. Pomerantz and their team was to build a case against Mr. Trump himself.The two were suited to the task. Mr. Pomerantz, 70, had once run the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. He had also been a partner at the prestigious law firm Paul Weiss, and he came out of retirement to work on the investigation without pay.Mr. Dunne had begun his career trying cases as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, gone on to become a partner at another top firm, Davis Polk, and was a former president of the New York City bar association. As Mr. Vance’s general counsel, he had successfully argued before the Supreme Court, winning access to Mr. Trump’s tax records.Helped by lawyers from Ms. James’s office, which was conducting a separate, civil inquiry into Mr. Trump, Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz pressed ahead with their investigation into whether Mr. Trump had used his financial statements to deceive lenders about his net worth and secure favorable loan terms. Mr. Cohen had testified before Congress that Mr. Trump was a “con man” who “inflated his total assets when it served his purposes.”By the fall, a number of the prosecutors assigned to the investigation thought it was likely that Mr. Trump had broken the law. Proving it would be another matter.Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, has been leading a parallel inquiry focused on whether financial statements for Mr. Trump’s family company intentionally included false information.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesSoon, some of the career prosecutors who had worked on the inquiry for more than two years expressed concern. They believed that Mr. Vance, who had decided not to seek re-election, was pushing too hard for an indictment before leaving office, and that the evidence gathered so far did not justify the speed at which the inquiry was moving.The debate was born of painful experience from past investigations, including one involving the Trump family. In 2012, in the first of his three terms, Mr. Vance closed an investigation into accusations that Mr. Trump’s son Donald Jr. and his daughter Ivanka had misled potential buyers of apartments at one of the Trump Organization’s New York hotels, Trump Soho. The decision trailed Mr. Vance for years, subjecting him to criticism after Mr. Trump was elected president.Concern among the office’s career prosecutors about the investigation into the former president came to a head in September at a meeting they sought with Mr. Dunne. Mr. Dunne offered to have them work only on the pending trial of Mr. Weisselberg or leave the Trump team altogether.Two prosecutors eventually took him up on the latter.Mr. Vance pressed on, and in early November, convened a new special grand jury to start hearing evidence against the former president. Still, he had yet to decide whether to direct the prosecutors to begin a formal grand jury presentation with the goal of seeking charges. As his tenure drew to a close in December, he consulted a group of prominent outside lawyers to help inform what would be his final decision.The group was referred to internally as “the brain trust” — a handful of former prosecutors that included two senior members of Robert S. Mueller’s special counsel inquiry into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.Before they all convened for a meeting on Dec. 9, Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz circulated hypothetical opening arguments in advance: one for the prosecution; another for the defense.In the meeting, which lasted much of the day, the outside lawyers raised a number of questions about the evidence and the lack of an insider witness. Mr. Weisselberg, who has spent nearly a half-century working as an accountant for the Trump family, had resisted pressure from the prosecutors to cooperate.The brain trust puzzled over how to prove that Mr. Trump had intended to commit crimes, and the group questioned Mr. Cohen’s potential strength as a witness at trial. A former Trump acolyte turned antagonist, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges of lying to Congress on behalf of Mr. Trump and paying hush money to a pornographic actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.Mr. Bragg, who had not yet been sworn in, was not aware of the Dec. 9 meeting.And there are differing accounts of how well the brain trust responded to the evidence, with one participant calling the reaction “mixed at best,” but another saying that there was agreement that the prosecutors had credible evidence to support charges and that no one recommended against a case.The deliberations led prosecutors to simplify the charges they planned to seek to make it easier to win a conviction, and Mr. Vance was soon persuaded. Three days later, Mr. Dunne sent the team an email announcing that they would proceed. The plan, he said, was to seek charges from the panel in the spring. Most of the remaining career prosecutors were on board. But that week, a third prosecutor left the investigation into Mr. Trump.‘Time Is of the Essence’Carey Dunne, Mr. Vance’s general counsel. A leader, with Mr. Pomerantz, of the Trump inquiry, Mr. Dunne became frustrated, and he ultimately resigned, over questions about the strength of the case.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesWith Mr. Vance about to leave office, the investigators’ attention turned to their future boss.Born in Harlem and educated at Harvard, Mr. Bragg won a hotly contested Democratic primary last year with a campaign that balanced progressive ideals with public safety. He had served as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and also in the state attorney general’s office, where he rose to become a top deputy managing hundreds of lawyers.Understand the New York A.G.’s Trump InquiryCard 1 of 6An empire under scrutiny. More

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      Where the Investigations Into Donald Trump Stand

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      One of the highest profile investigations into the former president appeared to stall on Wednesday, but several other inquiries are in progress around the country.The abrupt resignation of the two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Donald J. Trump leaves the future of the inquiry, which had been put on a monthlong pause, in doubt.But that does not mean that the former president or his family business, the Trump Organization, are out of legal jeopardy.In addition to the Manhattan criminal investigation — which resulted in criminal charges last summer against the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer — Mr. Trump and his business face civil and criminal inquiries into his business dealings and political activities in several states.Mr. Trump and his family have criticized the Manhattan investigation, and the other investigations, as partisan or inappropriate, and have denied wrongdoing.Here is where each notable inquiry now stands.Manhattan Criminal CaseThe Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has said that his office’s investigation is ongoing and that it will continue without the two prosecutors. How it will proceed is unclear, though the investigation has already produced criminal charges against the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg.In July, before Mr. Bragg’s election, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged the Trump Organization with running a 15-year scheme to help its executives evade taxes by compensating them with fringe benefits that were hidden from authorities.The office, then under Cyrus R. Vance Jr., also accused Mr. Weisselberg of avoiding taxes on $1.7 million in perks that should have been reported as income.On Tuesday, lawyers for the company and for Mr. Weisselberg argued in court documents that those charges should be dismissed. The district attorney’s office will have a chance to respond before the judge overseeing the case decides whether to dismiss some of the charges.The case has been tentatively scheduled to go to trial at the end of this summer.New York State Civil InquiryThe New York attorney general, Letitia James, had been working with Manhattan prosecutors on their criminal investigation. But she is also conducting a parallel civil inquiry into some of the same conduct, including scrutinizing whether Mr. Trump’s company fraudulently misled lenders about the value of its assets.Ms. James, a Democrat who is running for re-election this fall, is expected to continue her civil investigation.The inquiry is focused on whether Mr. Trump’s statements about the value of his assets — which Ms. James has said were marked by repeated misrepresentations — were part of a pattern of fraud, or simply Trumpian showmanship.Last week, a state judge ruled that Ms. James can question Mr. Trump and two of his adult children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, under oath as part of the inquiry in the coming weeks.The Trumps said they would appeal the decision. Even if their appeals are unsuccessful, it is likely they would decline to answer questions if forced to sit for interviews under oath. When another son of Mr. Trump’s, Eric Trump, was questioned in October 2020, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against incriminating himself, according to a court filing.Westchester County Criminal InvestigationIn Westchester County, Miriam E. Rocah, the district attorney, appears to be focused at least in part on whether the Trump Organization misled local officials about the value of a golf course to reduce its taxes. She has subpoenaed the company for records on the matter.But the Manhattan investigation, in which prosecutors had been bringing witnesses before a grand jury before pausing in mid-January, appeared to be more advanced.Understand the New York A.G.’s Trump InquiryCard 1 of 6An empire under scrutiny. More