House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack

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    Inside Donald Trump’s Embrace of the Jan. 6 Rioters

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    Two days before former President Donald J. Trump was booked at an Atlanta jail on his fourth indictment, he held an event at his golf club in New Jersey for another group of people facing criminal charges: rioters accused of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Standing next to a portrait of himself portrayed as James Bond, Mr. Trump told the defendants and their families that they had suffered greatly, but that all of that would change if he won another term.“People who have been treated unfairly are going to be treated extremely, extremely fairly,” he said to a round of applause at the event last August in Bedminster, N.J. “What you’ve suffered is just ridiculous,” he added. “But it’s going to be OK.”That private event was emblematic of how Mr. Trump has embraced dozens of Jan. 6 defendants and their relatives and highlights how he has sought to undermine law enforcement when it suits him, while he also puts forth a law-and-order campaign.Recently, however, his celebrations of the Capitol riot and those who took part in it have become more public as he has promoted a revisionist history of the attack and placed it at the heart of his 2024 presidential campaign.Despite the nearly 1,000 guilty pleas and convictions that have been secured in criminal cases stemming from Jan. 6, Mr. Trump has repeatedly described the rioters who broke into the Capitol as “hostages” and has started to open his campaign events with a recording of riot defendants singing the national anthem from their jail cells.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Seeks to Delay Jan. 6 Civil Cases

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      The former president’s lawyers told the judge overseeing the proceedings it would be unfair to put on a defense now because it might reveal his strategy for the criminal case on related charges.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a judge on Tuesday night to pause a group of civil lawsuits seeking to hold him accountable for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, until after his federal criminal trial connected to the same events was over.The request by the lawyers to pause the civil cases was the latest example of Mr. Trump trying to pit his multiple legal matters against one another in an effort to delay them. In the past several weeks, the former president and his lawyers have managed to gum up each of the four criminal cases he is facing, sometimes by persuading judges that the timing of the various proceedings were in conflict with one another.In their request for a pause in the civil cases, Mr. Trump’s lawyers told Judge Amit P. Mehta, who is overseeing the proceedings, that it would be unfair to the former president to be forced to defend himself against the suits at this point. They said that in so doing, he might reveal his strategy for defending himself against related criminal charges brought against him by the special counsel Jack Smith.“Given the substantial overlap in factual and legal allegations between these cases and the D.C. criminal case,” the lawyers wrote, there is “a substantial risk that proceeding in this matter now will expose the defense’s theory to the prosecution in advance of trial.”The lawyers added, “This would prejudice President Trump’s ability to effectively defend himself in both these civil cases and the special counsel criminal matter.”In the months after Jan. 6, a half-dozen lawsuits were filed against Mr. Trump by members of Congress and police officers who served at the Capitol that day, accusing him of inciting the mob that stormed the building. The lawsuits, which all are being heard in Federal District Court in Washington, have sought unspecified financial damages from Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Trump Colorado Ballot Case, Outsider’s Theory Takes Center Stage

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      When the Supreme Court considers whether Donald J. Trump is barred from appearing on Colorado’s ballot, a professor’s scholarship, long relegated to the fringes, will take center stage.In the world of American legal scholarship, Seth Barrett Tillman is an outsider in more ways than one. An associate professor at a university in Ireland, he has put forward unusual interpretations of the meaning of the U.S. Constitution that for years have largely gone ignored — if not outright dismissed as crackpot.But at 60, Professor Tillman is enjoying some level of vindication. When the U.S. Supreme Court considers on Thursday whether former President Donald J. Trump is barred from Colorado’s primary ballot, a seemingly counterintuitive theory that Professor Tillman has championed for more than 15 years will take center stage and could shape the presidential election.The Constitution uses various terms to refer to government officers or offices. The conventional view is that they all share the same meaning. But by his account, each is distinct — and that, crucially for the case before the court, the particular phrase “officer of the United States” refers only to appointed positions, not the presidency.If a majority of the court accepts Professor Tillman’s rationale, then Mr. Trump would be allowed to appear on the ballot. At issue is the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, which bars people from holding office if they participated in an insurrection after having sworn to uphold the Constitution as an “officer of the United States.”Professor Tillman, heavily bearded with black-rimmed glasses and a bookish demeanor, flew to the United States this week to watch the arguments. With Josh Blackman, who teaches at South Texas College of Law Houston, Professor Tillman submitted a friend-of-the-court brief and asked to participate in arguments, but the court declined.Still, his hobbyhorse will be on the Supreme Court’s agenda, and it has drawn as much zealous backing as it has ferocious pushback.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Peter Navarro’s Prosecutors Ask for 6-Month Sentence

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      Mr. Navarro would be the second Trump official to be sentenced for stonewalling Congress in its Jan. 6 investigation.Federal prosecutors asked on Thursday night for a sentence of six months in prison for Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser to President Donald J. Trump, for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Prosecutors said they were seeking a sentence at the top end of the guidelines because of his “bad-faith strategy” of “sustained, deliberate contempt of Congress.”“The defendant, like the rioters at the Capitol, put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation,” they wrote in their sentencing memo. “The defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law.”The memo echoed the sentence recommendation for Stephen K. Bannon, who was ultimately given four months in prison for defying his own subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee. The sentencing would make Mr. Navarro the second Trump official to be sentenced for ignoring the committee’s subpoenas.Sentencing is set for Jan. 25 in Federal District Court in Washington.Mr. Navarro was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in September, and this week the judge presiding over the case, Amit P. Mehta, turned down a request from his lawyers to dismiss the verdict and convene a new trial. Mr. Navarro had argued that jurors were exposed to political bias while lunching outside the courthouse where demonstrators were protesting.“The evidence establishes that the jurors only interacted with each other” and a court security officer, Judge Mehta wrote in a ruling on Tuesday.Mr. Navarro’s lawyers argued that the subpoena flew in the face of the notion that a president could direct his subordinates to refuse to testify before Congress, citing executive immunity.In their own memo, they wrote that “history is replete” with people who “have refused to comply with congressional subpoenas, and Dr. Navarro’s sentence should not be disproportionate from those similarly situated individuals.”Mr. Navarro, a Harvard-trained economist and a vocal critic of China, helped devise some of the Trump administration’s most adversarial trade policies and played a role in the U.S. pandemic response. But after the 2020 presidential election, he became more focused on efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power.Mr. Navarro frequently made television appearances in which he cast doubt on the election results and peddled specious claims of voter fraud. He also documented those assertions in a report, as well as in a memoir he published after leaving the White House in which he described a strategy known as the Green Bay Sweep aimed at overturning the election results.When the committee asked Mr. Navarro to testify, he repeatedly asserted executive privilege, insisting that Mr. Trump had ordered him not to cooperate. But Judge Mehta ruled that Mr. Navarro could not raise executive privilege in his defense at trial, saying that there was no compelling evidence that Mr. Trump had ever told him to ignore the committee. More

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      Majorie Taylor Greene Book-Signing on Jan. 6 Stirs Backlash in Florida

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      A Florida venue canceled an event on Saturday featuring Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman and acolyte of Donald J. Trump, after materials promoting the event advertised it, in part, as an occasion marking the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The gathering was being organized by the Osceola County Republican Party in central Florida as a book-signing event for Ms. Greene. It was supposed to take place on Saturday at the Westgate Resorts in Kissimmee, Fla. But backlash ensued after State Representative Anna V. Eskamani, a Democrat, posted on social media a screenshot of a text that advertised the event as being on the “3rd Anniversary of Jan 6.”Ms. Greene has repeatedly downplayed, and at times defended, the deadly insurrection at the Capitol three years ago. She has elevated popular right-wing claims, which have been refuted, that the attack was orchestrated by F.B.I. agents. In November, she called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to create a new Jan. 6 select committee to investigate the original committee’s members.Ms. Greene addressed the change in venue on Friday night, writing on the social media platform X that she won’t be backing down to Democrats who she claimed “tried to shut down my book-signing, but the show must go on!!”Mark Cross, the chairman of the Osceola County Republican Party, said he had first received notice that the venue had pulled out on Thursday evening. He attributed the cancellation to a “combination of disinformation that was put out and a lot of miscommunication between parties.”The theme of the event was meant to honor Republican women, Mr. Cross said, and the event “just happened to be on Jan. 6.” He added, “We’re not going out of the way to celebrate Jan. 6 — it’s something that happened. It was a negative thing for everyone involved.” He noted that the group “didn’t pick the day.”A representative for the resort confirmed that the event was no longer taking place there but declined to elaborate. “Please be advised that Westgate was not made aware of the purpose of this event when we were approached to host a book-signing,” Westgate Resorts said in a statement to NBC News, which first reported on the event. The party’s book-signing for Ms. Greene will now take place on Saturday at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in St. Cloud, Fla., Mr. Cross said.The event was originally advertised as an opportunity for attendees to hear from Ms. Greene and receive signed copies of her book, “M.T.G.” Prices to attend started at $45 for general admission and went up to $1,000 for “super V.I.P.s,” who would be allowed to attend a “special private briefing on J6 and DC.”Ms. Eskamani said in an interview that she was sent screenshots of the text by two friends. She praised Floridians who had “created the backlash” that preceded the cancellation of the event at the resort.“When I saw that text message, my first reaction was, ‘Is this a joke?’” she said. “No one should be commemorating, in a celebratory fashion or even with a book-signing, Jan. 6.” More

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      A Trump Conviction Could Cost Him Enough Voters to Tip the Election

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      Recent general-election polling has generally shown Donald Trump maintaining a slight lead over President Biden. Yet many of those polls also reveal an Achilles’ heel for Mr. Trump that has the potential to change the shape of the race.It relates to Mr. Trump’s legal troubles: If he is criminally convicted by a jury of his peers, voters say they are likely to punish him for it.A trial on criminal charges is not guaranteed, and if there is a trial, neither is a conviction. But if Mr. Trump is tried and convicted, a mountain of public opinion data suggests voters would turn away from the former president.Still likely to be completed before Election Day remains Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution of Mr. Trump for his alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election, which had been set for trial on March 4, 2024. That date has been put on hold pending appellate review of the trial court’s rejection of Mr. Trump‘s presidential immunity. On Friday, the Supreme Court declined Mr. Smith’s request for immediate review of the question, but the appeal is still headed to the high court on a rocket docket. That is because the D.C. Circuit will hear oral argument on Jan. 9 and likely issue a decision within days of that, setting up a prompt return to the Supreme Court. Moreover, with three other criminal cases also set for trial in 2024, it is entirely possible that Mr. Trump will have at least one criminal conviction before November 2024.The negative impact of conviction has emerged in polling as a consistent through line over the past six months nationally and in key states. We are not aware of a poll that offers evidence to the contrary. The swing in this data away from Mr. Trump varies — but in a close election, as 2024 promises to be, any movement can be decisive.To be clear, we should always be cautious of polls this early in the race posing hypothetical questions, about conviction or anything else. Voters can know only what they think they will think about something that has yet to happen.Yet we have seen the effect in several national surveys, like a recent Wall Street Journal poll. In a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump leads by four percentage points. But if Mr. Trump is convicted, there is a five-point swing, putting Mr. Biden ahead, 47 percent to 46 percent.In another new poll by Yahoo News-YouGov, the swing is seven points. In a December New York Times-Siena College poll, almost a third of Republican primary voters believe that Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s nominee if he is convicted even after winning the primary.The damage to Mr. Trump is even more pronounced when we look at an important subgroup: swing-state voters. In recent CNN polls from Michigan and Georgia, Mr. Trump holds solid leads. The polls don’t report head-to-head numbers if Mr. Trump is convicted, but if he is, 46 percent of voters in Michigan and 47 percent in Georgia agree that he should be disqualified from the presidency.It makes sense that the effect is likely greater in swing states: Those are often places where a greater number of conflicted — and therefore persuadable — voters reside. An October Times/Siena poll shows that voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania favored Mr. Trump, with President Biden narrowly winning Wisconsin. But if Mr. Trump is convicted and sentenced, Mr. Biden would win each of these states, according to the poll. In fact, the poll found the race in these six states would seismically shift in the aggregate: a 14-point swing, with Mr. Biden winning by 10 rather than losing by four percentage points.The same poll also provides insights into the effect a Trump conviction would have on independent and young voters, which are both pivotal demographics. Independents now go for Mr. Trump, 45 percent to 44 percent. However, if he is convicted, 53 percent of them choose Mr. Biden, and only 32 percent Mr. Trump.The movement for voters aged 18 to 29 was even greater. Mr. Biden holds a slight edge, 47 percent to 46 percent, in the poll. But after a potential conviction, Mr. Biden holds a commanding lead, 63 percent to 31 percent.Other swing-state polls have matched these findings. In a recent survey in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for example, 64 percent said that they would not vote for a candidate whom a jury has convicted of a felony.National polls also offer accounts of potential unease. In a Yahoo News poll from July, 62 percent of respondents say that if Mr. Trump is convicted, he should not serve as president again. A December Reuters-Ipsos national poll produced similar results, with 59 percent of voters overall and 31 percent of Republicans saying that they would not vote for him if he were convicted.New data from our work with the Research Collaborative confirm the repercussions of a possible conviction on voters. These questions did not ask directly how a conviction would affect people’s votes, but they still support movement in the same direction. This survey, conducted in August and repeated in September (and then repeated a second time in September by different pollsters), asked how voters felt about prison time in the event that Mr. Trump is convicted. At least two-thirds (including half of Republicans) favored significant prison time for Mr. Trump.Why do the polls register a sharp decline for Mr. Trump if he is convicted? Our analysis — including focus groups we have conducted and viewed — shows that Americans care about our freedoms, especially the freedom to cast our votes, have them counted and ensure that the will of the voters prevails. They are leery of entrusting the Oval Office to someone who abused his power by engaging in a criminal conspiracy to deny or take away those freedoms.We first saw this connection emerge in our testing about the Jan. 6 hearings; criminality moves voters significantly against Mr. Trump and MAGA Republicans.But voters also understand that crime must be proven. They recognize that in our legal system there is a difference between allegations and proof and between an individual who is merely accused and one who is found guilty by a jury of his peers. Because so many Americans are familiar with and have served in the jury system, it still holds sway as a system with integrity.Moreover, recent electoral history suggests that merely having Mr. Trump on trial will alter how voters see the importance of voting in the first place. In the wake of the Jan. 6 committee hearings, the 2022 midterms saw turnout at record levels in states where at least one high-profile MAGA Republican was running.The criminal cases are also unfolding within a wider context of other legal challenges against Mr. Trump, and they may amplify the effect. That includes several state cases that seek to disqualify him under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Colorado’s top court has already ruled that he is disqualified, though the case is now likely being appealed to the Supreme Court. This constellation of developments — also encompassing the New York civil fraud trial — offer a negative lens through which Americans may view Mr. Trump.Again, this is all hypothetical, but the polls give us sufficient data to conclude that felony criminal convictions, especially for attacking democracy, will foreground the threat that Mr. Trump poses to our nation and influence voters in an election-defining way.Norman Eisen was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump. Celinda Lake is a Democratic Party strategist and was a lead pollster for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. Anat Shenker-Osorio is a political researcher, campaign adviser and host of the “Words to Win By” podcast.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Is Liz Cheney Really Thinking About Running for President in 2024?

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      The former congresswoman is working to ensure that Donald Trump never returns to the Oval Office. She is also keeping her own door wide open.Liz Cheney was widely seen as a Republican superstar in the making, perhaps even a future president, before she was elected to Congress in 2016. Ms. Cheney never discouraged the talk, but Donald J. Trump shattered her glittering future after she voted to impeach him in 2021 and became a pariah in the G.O.P.Now, while vowing to do “everything I can” to ensure that Mr. Trump never returns to the White House, Ms. Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, has suggested that she has not abandoned her own presidential ambitions. In interviews with The Washington Post and USA Today ahead of the publication on Tuesday of her new book, “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” Ms. Cheney broached the possibility of a third-party challenge to Mr. Trump’s candidacy.“Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Ms. Cheney told Maeve Reston of The Post. But, she said, “democracy is at risk” in the United States as well as overseas. Ms. Cheney said she would make a final decision in the next few months.Her comments were in keeping with the answer she gave in October to Jake Tapper of CNN about whether she was ruling out a presidential run. “No, I’m not,” she said.Ms. Cheney declined to comment to The New York Times.Despite her remarks, there is no evidence that Ms. Cheney has taken any steps toward running beyond keeping her options open while maximizing her relevancy during a book-promotion tour.She has not hired any campaign staff members. Close associates of hers say they are unaware of any polling, signature-gathering or related efforts associated with mounting a third-party campaign. Her political action committee, the Great Task, has stalled in activity since the 2022 midterms, when Ms. Cheney backed efforts by some Democratic candidates against Republicans who had claimed the 2020 election was stolen.In the meantime, time is running short. Filing deadlines to appear on ballots as a third-party candidate in 2024 begin as early as March in some states. Though she expressed an openness to USA Today to “setting up a new party” that might supplant a Trump-centric G.O.P., such an effort would require the kind of money, personnel and legal maneuvering that would take months if not years to produce.A Cheney presidential run is also likely to undermine her mission of thwarting Mr. Trump’s 2024 ambitions, said one close friend, because her candidacy could siphon some votes away from President Biden. According to the friend, Ms. Cheney’s comment to The Post that she would not have contemplated a third-party run until recently seemed more about her long allegiance to the G.O.P. and less about a new appetite for running as an independent.Among Beltway conservatives, including lobbyists and military hawks, Ms. Cheney remains a popular figure and a woman of presidential timber. Lawmakers and staff members who served with Ms. Cheney on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol privately wondered whether the vice chairwoman was prioritizing her ambitions over a comprehensive investigation of the Capitol riot. To Mr. Trump’s allies, of course, the question answered itself.If the current moment suggests anything beyond the desire to sell books, it is a reminder that Liz Cheney, like her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, has long understood the importance of political leverage in furthering her core beliefs. For now, she holds no office and has no place in either major party. But she has her voice. More

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      Is Trump Disqualified From Holding Office? The Question Matters, Beyond Him.

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      State courts in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and elsewhere have so far declined to rule in favor of challenges asserting that Donald Trump should be disqualified from holding the presidency again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. (Cases in Michigan and Colorado have been appealed.)Challengers assert that Mr. Trump is barred because, as stated in Section 3, he was an officer of the United States who, after taking an oath to support the Constitution, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the country, or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Mr. Trump and his campaign have called this claim an “absurd conspiracy theory” and efforts to bar him “election interference.” Some election officials and legal scholars — many of them otherwise opposed to the former president — have also been critical of the efforts.The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, writes that invoking Section 3 “is merely the newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box.” Michael McConnell, a former judge and professor at Stanford Law School, claims that keeping Mr. Trump off the ballot on grounds that are “debatable at best is not something that will be regarded as legitimate.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Jenna Ellis Could Become a Star Witness Against Trump

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      When Jenna Ellis last week became the most recent lawyer to join in an accelerating series of guilty pleas in the Fulton County, Ga., prosecution of Donald Trump and his co-conspirators, she offered a powerful repudiation of the “Big Lie” that could potentially cut the legs out from under Donald Trump’s defense, make her a star witness for prosecutors and a potent weapon against the former president’s political ambitions.Ms. Ellis admitted that the allegations of election fraud she peddled as an advocate for the effort to overturn the 2020 election were false. Two other plea deals, from Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have been important, but Ms. Ellis is in a unique position to aid prosecutors in the Georgia case and possibly even the parallel federal one — as well as Mr. Trump’s opponents in the court of public opinion.Ms. Ellis pleaded guilty to a felony count of aiding and abetting the false statements made by co-defendants (including Rudy Giuliani) to the Georgia Senate about supposed voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election. These included that “10,315 or more dead people voted” in Georgia, “at least 96,000 mail-in ballots were counted” erroneously and “2,506 felons voted illegally.”These lies were at the cutting edge of Mr. Trump’s assault on the election. Both the state and federal criminal prosecutions allege that Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators knowingly deployed falsehoods like these in their schemes to overturn the election.Ms. Ellis emerged from her plea hearing as a likely star witness for prosecutors, starting with the one who secured her cooperation, the Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis. Unlike Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell, in pleading guilty Ms. Ellis spoke in detail about her “responsibilities as a lawyer.” Tearing up, she talked about the due diligence that “I did not do but should have done” and her “deep remorse for those failures of mine.” The judge, a tough former prosecutor, thanked her for sharing that and noted how unusual it was for a defendant to do so.Trials are about the evidence and the law. But they are also theater, and the jury is the audience. In this case, the jury is not the only audience — the Georgia trials will be televised, so many Americans will also be tuned in. Ms. Ellis is poised to be a potent weapon against Mr. Trump in the courtroom and on TVs.That is bad news for her former co-defendants — above all, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump. Ms. Ellis was most closely associated with Mr. Giuliani, appearing by his side in Georgia and across the country. If her court appearance last week is any indication, she will be a compelling guide to his alleged misconduct. She will also add to what is known about it; she and Mr. Giuliani undoubtedly had many conversations that are not yet public and that will inform the jury. And because Mr. Giuliani was the senior lawyer on the case, her pointed statement that she was misled by attorneys “with many more years of experience” hits him directly.Ms. Ellis’s likely trial testimony will also hit Mr. Trump hard. She has now effectively repudiated his claims that he won the election — an argument that is expected to be a centerpiece of his trial defense. Coming from a formerly outspoken MAGA champion, her disagreement has the potential to resonate with jurors.It also builds on substantial other evidence against the former president, which includes voluminous witness testimony collected by the House Jan. 6 committee indicating that many advisers told him the election was not stolen — and that in private he repeatedly admitted as much.Ms. Ellis’s testimony may also compromise one of Mr. Trump’s main defenses. He has made clear he intends to claim he relied on advice of counsel. But that defense is available only if the lawyers are not part of the alleged crimes. Ms. Ellis’s plea puts her squarely within the conspiracy, as do those of Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell. That will hamper Mr. Trump’s effort to present a reliance-on-counsel defense.In comparing Ms. Ellis to the two other lawyers who pleaded guilty, it is also critical to note that she is promising full cooperation with Ms. Willis. Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell have important contributions to make to the prosecution, but they merely agreed to provide documents, preview their testimony and testify truthfully if called.Ms. Ellis took the additional step of also agreeing “to fully cooperate with prosecutors,” which could include doing interviews with prosecutors, “appearing for evidentiary hearings, and assisting in pretrial matters.”To our knowledge, Ms. Ellis is not yet cooperating with prosecutors in the federal case led by the special counsel Jack Smith, but if she does, she would have a comparative advantage for the prosecution over Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell: They are identified as unindicted co-conspirators in that case and would be more problematic for Mr. Smith to deal with. He may not, for example, be willing to immunize them should they assert their privilege against self-incrimination, since that would hamper prosecuting them. But because he has not named Ms. Ellis among Mr. Trump’s alleged federal co-conspirators, he may feel more free to extend immunity to secure her valuable testimony. (He has reportedly done just that with Mark Meadows, a former Trump White House chief of staff.)Ms. Ellis’s guilty plea may also have political reverberations. It is riveting to see a MAGA champion who helped lead the election assault tearfully admitting she and that effort misled the American people. Her court appearance was live-streamed and repeated in a loop on television and social media.Looking ahead in the Georgia case, the judge just got back the five months that he had set aside for the Chesebro and Powell trial. Even if Mr. Trump manages to postpone appearing before a Georgia jury during that window, the trial of other defendants could begin within it — and certainly during 2024. That means Ms. Ellis and other existing and potential witnesses against Mr. Trump will likely be critical not only in the legal arena, but the political one.With Mr. Trump showing no signs of backing down from his claims of 2020 election fraud and a new election upon us, Ms. Ellis’s plea — like the televised Jan. 6 committee testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, another Trump insider who turned on him with powerful effect — could be a potential turning point in the court of public opinion. When Mr. Trump’s lies are repeated in the future, in whatever venue, expect to see Ms. Ellis often.Norman Eisen was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of Donald Trump. Amy Lee Copeland, a former federal prosecutor, is a criminal defense and appellate lawyer in Savannah, Ga.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