House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack

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      How About Some Predictions for the New Year?

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      Gail Collins: How about some predictions for the new year, Bret?I’ll start: House Republicans will flunk all their deficit-decreasing promises. The skyrocketing sales of those Trump digital trading cards will collapse and plunge streaking back to earth.Bret Stephens: C’mon, Gail — those are safe bets!Gail: OK, how about a pre-new year prediction? This week, the Jan. 6 committee will recommend criminal prosecution of Donald Trump, but the man’s never going to jail.Bret: Another pretty safe bet, I’m afraid.Gail: Sigh. Back to the future: What do you have in the way of thoughts about what’s going to happen in 2023?Bret: I’ll go bold, or semi-bold, so long as you promise not to hold these predictions against me in a year.Gail: Well, OK … maybe.Bret: First, the crypto collapse will continue and the whole crypto phenomenon will be exposed as the tulip bulb mania of our day.Second, President Biden will announce, after considerable holiday reflection, that he will not run for re-election, especially since he’s increasingly unlikely to face a rematch with the former guy.And third, Kevin McCarthy will not be the next speaker of the House.Gail: Well, I’ll give you number one — would never want to be known as a crypto collaborator. Sure hope you’re right on two: As I’ve said before, I’d love to see Biden follow Nancy Pelosi’s lead and give up the top leadership job for some other useful-but-not-in-charge-of-the-world gig.And on three: Fine, but who exactly are the Republicans going to pick? Any faves?Bret: Well, nobody in the current House Republican leadership. All of them are election deniers. And Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, gets special awfulness points because her ethics are purely situational. Also, nearly every House Republican who voted to impeach Trump after Jan. 6 is gone, so that further reduces my options.Gail: The woes of rational Republicans …Bret: I guess the House has the option of electing a speaker who is not a member. In that case, I’d probably look to a Republican I could respect, like Rob Portman, the outgoing senator from Ohio whose seat is being taken by J.D. Vance. Though, really, I doubt Portman would want the job. Today’s definition of a sane Republican is a retired Republican, a former Republican, or both.Gail, let’s look back on the old year, too. What do you rank as the best moment? And what was the worst?Gail: As a political person I’d have to say the elections were the best. Not just that the Democrats did much better than expected, but that many of the loathsome Trumpian Republicans were rejected in races a rational member of their party would have won.Bret: We are in total accord in the politics department. But I’d expand the categories a bit. The best moment, in terms of statesmanship, was President Volodomyr Zelensky’s Churchillian riposte to the American offer to get him out of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”Gail: I agree — that’s a keeper.Bret: The best moment in terms of courage has come from the magnificent women of Iran, leading a revolution against their misogynistic rulers. The best moment, cosmically, were the images of deep space and distant time taken by the Webb telescope. And probably the best moment, as far as future generations are concerned, was the fusion breakthrough by the brilliant scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It gave me faith not only that human ingenuity will ultimately solve our long-term energy and climate challenges, but also that the United States can continue at the frontiers of discovery.Gail: Super choices. Now we’ve got to tackle the worst. And I’m sorry to say that pretty much every year it’s a story about mass shooting. Actually, many stories about mass shootings: innocent citizens mowed down when they’re shopping, or going to school, or working at extremely nonviolent jobs or just out having a good time. Who can ever forget that student slaughter at Uvalde? And it was just a month ago that a gunman in Colorado killed five people and injured at least 18 others at an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub.Bret: Not to mention the everyday gun violence that barely gets reported because it’s so ubiquitous.Gail: And unlike some of our other political crises — say, the Supreme Court ruling on abortion — the gun situation just doesn’t seem to get the political push it needs to get better. Will try to block the memory of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s recent quote-unquote joke about how it would have been so much better if the folks attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6 had been better armed.You?Bret: Agree again. I’d add that repulsive dinner between Donald Trump, Kanye West and the Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes.Gail: Hmm. Mixed feelings on that one. True, Trump’s guest list was remarkably repulsive, even for him. But that kind of behavior shows he’s dreadful in ways even some of his previous supporters can appreciate. Which is kinda useful, given his already announced candidacy for a return to the White House.Bret: As in, “the worse, the better”? Not sure I agree: I think it was yet another case of “defining deviancy down,” as Pat Moynihan famously put it.Switching topics, Gail, we’ve got a huge migration crisis at the southern border, and it looks like it might get a lot worse as soon as the Title 42 policy permitting immediate deportations ends this week. Democrats seem … pretty nonchalant about this. Your thoughts?Gail: Bret, since the Republicans’ big new idea seems to be impeaching the secretary of Homeland Security, I don’t think you’ll win with a partisan critique.Bret: Impeachment is a dumb idea, but it wouldn’t hurt Biden to consider new management in that department. How about Bill Bratton, the former police commissioner of New York City and Los Angeles?Gail: I don’t have a good solution, but my immediate action plan would be to radically increase staffing at the border, raise the salaries of border patrol agents, expand and improve detention facilities and, on our side, get the Dreamers a clear and simple path to citizenship.Now, I’m very interested in your thoughts — except you already know we’re going to fight about anything involving the building of a wall.Bret: Like John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty, I promise not to mention the wall.Gail: A gift for the holidays!Bret: The administration and the courts have a point that Title 42, as a public-health measure, is an awkward legal tool to control the border. Problem is, it’s what we’ve got. And we already have a crisis as far north as New York City as officials deal with a migration crisis on a scale we’ve never seen before. If we don’t control it — not over the coming years, but right now — we’re going to have a full-scale humanitarian crisis here in the United States, along with a cudgel that nativists will use for a generation against those of us who support a generous but controlled immigration policy.Gail: I guess we’re at least in agreement that something must be done.Bret: The other thing to worry about for next year is a possible recession. The housing and manufacturing sectors are already in a big slump. Job cuts in our own industry, too. Even Goldman Sachs is laying off thousands of employees, which can’t be a good sign. Your advice?Gail: Well, a good time for the government to create some more jobs — including maybe some in border security, as I was saying. And a very bad time to dillydally about funding basic operations in the new year.Bret: You know, I wouldn’t be against restarting something like the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps.Gail: I can understand the Republicans wanting to flex their muscles — even itty-bitty muscles — when they take control of the House. But they’re going to be so distracted by showboating over crime, immigration and Hunter Biden that they’d be well advised to let the Democrats do as much as they can on budgetary matters now.How about you?Bret: Gail, what else? Cut government red tape when it comes to permitting and other barriers to doing business in America. Cut taxes to offset the effects of rising interest rates. Increase the number of EB-5 visas tenfold, to 100,000 a year, to attract job creators to the United States. Allow large infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL pipeline to create thousands of blue-collar jobs and enhance our energy security in North America.I know these suggestions must come as a total surprise to you ….Gail: I’m shocked! Guess we’ll be going into the new year continuing to disagree about what’s red tape and what’s critical protection of the consumer, the environment and —Well, we’ve got all of 2023 to argue about that. But there’ll be no more World Cup debates! Before we go, tell me your thoughts about Argentina’s big win.Bret: Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!Greatest. Game. Ever.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Will Conduct Final Hearing and Vote on Trump Referrals

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      The committee, which consistently broke new ground for a congressional investigation, is expected to approve its final report and vote on issuing criminal and ethics referrals against Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its last public meeting on Monday afternoon, ending an 18-month investigation with the approval of its final report and a vote on issuing criminal and ethics referrals against former President Donald J. Trump and his top allies.During a business meeting at 1 p.m., the committee is expected to discuss some of the findings in its final report and recommendations for legislative changes.The panel is also expected to vote on referring Mr. Trump to the Justice Department on charges of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to a person familiar with the matter.Referrals against Mr. Trump would not carry any legal weight or compel the Justice Department to take any action, but they would send a powerful signal that a congressional committee believes the former president committed certain crimes.The department is already conducting an investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, and the plans to overturn the 2020 election that preceded the violence. In recent weeks, federal prosecutors have issued subpoenas to officials in seven states in which the Trump campaign organized electors to falsely certify the election for Mr. Trump despite the voters choosing Joseph R. Biden Jr.A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.McCarthy’s Fraught Speaker Bid: Representative Kevin McCarthy has so far been unable to quash a mini-revolt on the right that threatens to imperil his effort to secure the top House job.Kyrsten Sinema: The Arizona senator said that she would leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent, just days after the Democrats secured an expanded majority in the Senate.A Looming Clash: Congressional leaders have all but abandoned the idea of acting to raise the debt ceiling before Democrats lose control of the House, punting the issue to a new Congress.First Gen Z Congressman: In the weeks after his election, Representative-elect Maxwell Frost of Florida, a Democrat, has learned just how different his perspective is from that of his older colleagues.In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, dismissed the committee’s planned actions on Monday as those of a “kangaroo court” that held “show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history.”Monday’s meeting will mark the end of one of the most consequential congressional committees in a generation. Over the course of a year and a half, the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, obtained more than one million documents, issued more than 100 subpoenas and held 10 public hearings that consistently drew millions of viewers.The meeting is not expected to be as long as hearings from the summer, which detailed the plot to overturn the 2020 election and featured live witnesses.In recent days, committee members have fanned out on cable television to lay the public groundwork for the vote, making it clear they were in agreement that Mr. Trump needed to be held accountable.“I think the president has violated multiple criminal laws,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “And I think you have to be treated like any other American who breaks the law, and that is, you have to be prosecuted.”Mr. Schiff detailed why he thought a charge of insurrection was appropriate.“In terms of the criminal statute, if you can prove that someone incited an insurrection — that is, they incited violence against the government, or they gave aid and comfort to those who did — that violates that law,” Mr. Schiff said. “And if you look at Donald Trump’s acts, and you match them up against the statute, it’s a pretty good match. I realize that statute hasn’t been used in a long time. But, then, when have we had a president essentially incite an attack on his own government?”The House created the Jan. 6 committee after Senate Republicans used a filibuster to defeat a proposal to create an independent commission to investigate the attack, during which more than 150 police officers were injured as pro-Trump rioters interrupted the peaceful transfer of power from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.The committee — made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans — consistently broke new ground for a congressional investigation. Staffed with more than a dozen former federal prosecutors, the panel set a new production standard for how to hold a congressional hearing. It also got significantly ahead of a parallel Justice Department investigation into the events of Jan. 6, with federal prosecutors later interviewing many of the same witnesses Congress had already spoken with.Lawmakers on the panel also believe they played a significant role in elevating the issue of threats to democracy in the minds of voters, who rejected many election deniers in the November midterms.On Monday, the panel will take another unprecedented step for a legislative body: voting on criminal referrals against a former president. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, has said the panel is considering referrals to “five or six” entities, including the Justice Department, the House Ethics Committee, the Federal Election Commission and bar associations.Among those under scrutiny from the panel are five congressional Republicans who refused to comply with the committee’s subpoenas.In addition to a vote on referrals, the panel also plans to release a portion of its eight-chapter final report into the effort to block the transition of power.The report — which contains an executive summary of more than 100 pages — roughly mirrors the presentation of the committee’s investigative hearings that drew wide viewership over the summer. Chapter topics include Mr. Trump’s spreading of lies about the election, the creation of fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states won by Mr. Biden, and the former president’s pressure campaign against state officials, the Justice Department and former Vice President Mike Pence as he sought to overturn his defeat.The committee’s report is also expected to document how Mr. Trump summoned a mob of his supporters to Washington and then did nothing to stop them as they attacked the Capitol for more than three hours. It will also include a detailed analysis of the breach of the Capitol.In terms of legislative recommendations, the panel has already endorsed overhauling the Electoral Count Act, the law that Mr. Trump and his allies tried to exploit on Jan. 6 in an attempt to cling to power. Lawmakers have also discussed changes to the Insurrection Act and legislation to enforce the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on insurrectionists holding office. More

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      How Will History Remember Jan. 6?

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      Far-right groups stockpiling guns and explosives, preparing for a violent overthrow of a government they deem illegitimate. Open antisemitism on the airwaves, expressed by mainstream media figures. Leading politicians openly embracing bigoted, authoritarian leaders abroad who disdain democracy and the rule of law.This might sound like a recap of the last few years in America, but it is actually the forgotten story told in a remarkable new podcast, Ultra, that recounts the shocking tale of how during World War II, Nazi propagandists infiltrated far-right American groups and the America First movement, wormed into the offices of senators and representatives and fomented a plot to overthrow the United States government.“This is a story about politics at the edge,” said the show’s creator and host, Rachel Maddow, in the opening episode. “And a criminal justice system trying, trying, but ill-suited to thwart this kind of danger.”Maddow is, of course, a master storyteller, and never lets the comparisons to today’s troubles get too on the nose. But as I hung on each episode, I couldn’t help think about Jan. 6 and wonder: Will that day and its aftermath be a hinge point in our country’s history? Or a forgotten episode to be plumbed by some podcaster decades from now?When asked about the meaning of contemporary events, historians like to jokingly reply, “Ask me in 100 years.” This week, the committee in the House of Representatives investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot will drop its doorstop-size report, a critical early installment in the historical record. Journalists, historians and activists have already generated much, much more material, and more is still to come.In January, a Republican majority will take over the House and many of its members have pledged to begin their own battery of investigations, including an investigation into the Jan. 6 investigation. What will come from this ouroboros of an inquiry one cannot say, but it cannot help but detract from the quest for accountability for the events of that day.Beyond that, polling ahead of this year’s midterm elections indicated that Americans have other things on their minds, perhaps even more so now that the threat of election deniers winning control over voting in key swing states has receded. But what it means for the story America tells itself about itself is an open question. And in the long run, that might mean more accountability than our current political moment permits.Why do we remember the things we remember, and why do we forget the things we forget? This is not a small question in a time divided by fights over history. We all know the old saying: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But there is another truism that to my mind often countervails: We are always fighting the last war.The story that Maddow’s podcast tells is a doozy. It centers on a German American named George Sylvester Viereck, who was an agent for the Nazi government. Viereck was the focus of a Justice Department investigation into Nazi influence in America in the 1930s. For good reason: Lawmakers helped him in a variety of ways. One senator ran pro-German propaganda articles in magazines under his name that had actually been written by Viereck and would deliver pro-German speeches on the floor of Congress written by officials of the Nazi government. Others would reproduce these speeches and mail them to millions of Americans at taxpayer expense.Viereck also provided moral and financial support to a range of virulently antisemitic and racist organizations across the United States, along with paramilitary groups called the Silver Shirts and the Christian Front. Members of these groups sought to violently overthrow the government of the United States and replace it with a Nazi-style dictatorship.This was front-page news at the time. Investigative reporters dug up scoop after scoop about the politicians involved. Prosecutors brought criminal charges. Big trials were held. But today they are all but forgotten. One leading historian of Congress who was interviewed in the podcast, Nancy Beck Young, said she doubts that more than one or two people in her history department at the University of Houston knew about this scandal.Why was this episode consigned to oblivion? Selective amnesia has always been a critical component of the American experience. Americans are reared on myths that elide the genocide of Indigenous Americans, the central role of slavery in our history, America’s imperial adventures and more. As Susan Sontag put it, “What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened.”Our favorite stories are sealed narrative boxes with a clear arc — a heroic journey in which America is the hero. And it’s hard to imagine a narrative more cherished than the one wrought by the countless books, movies and prestige television that remember World War II as a story of American righteousness in the face of a death cult. There was some truth to that story. But that death cult also had adherents here at home who had the ear and the mouthpiece of some of the most powerful senators and representatives.It also had significant support from a broad swath of the American people, most of whom were at best indifferent to the fate of European Jewry, as “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a documentary series by the filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein that came out in September, does the painful work of showing. A virulent antisemite, Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, hosted by far the biggest radio show in the country. At his peak in the 1930s about 90 million people a week tuned in to hear his diatribes against Jews and communism.In some ways, it is understandable that this moment was treated as an aberration. The America First movement, which provided mainstream cover for extremist groups, evaporated almost instantly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Maybe it was even necessary to forget. When the war was over there was so much to do: rebuild Europe, integrate American servicemen back into society, confront the existential threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Who had the time to litigate who had been wrong about Germany in the 1930s?Even professional historians shied away from this period. Bradley Hart, a historian whose 2018 book “Hitler’s American Friends” unearthed a great deal of this saga, said that despite the wealth of documentary material there was little written about the subject. “This is a really uncomfortable chapter in American history because we want to believe the Second World War was this great moment when America was on the side of democracy and human rights,” Hart told me. “There is this sense that you have to forget certain parts of history in order to move on.”As anyone who has been married for a long time knows, sometimes forgetting is essential to peace. Even countries that have engaged in extensive post-conflict reconciliation processes, like South Africa and Argentina, were inevitably limited by the need to move on. After all, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends.The aftermath of Jan. 6 is unfolding almost like a photo negative of the scandal Maddow’s podcast unfurls. With very few exceptions almost everyone involved in the pro-Nazi movement escaped prosecution. A sedition trial devolved into a total debacle that ended with a mistrial. President Harry Truman, a former senator, ultimately helped out his old friend Senator Burton K. Wheeler, a figure in the plot to disseminate Nazi propaganda, by telling the Justice Department to fire the prosecutor who was investigating it.But the major political figures involved paid the ultimate political price: they were turfed out of office by voters.Many of the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 riot, on the other hand, have been brought to justice successfully: Roughly 900 people have been arrested; approximately 470 have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges; around 335 of those charged federally have been convicted and sentenced; more than 250 have been sentenced to prison or home confinement. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, was convicted of seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge brought in any of these cases. In their report to be released this week, the Jan. 6 committee is expected to recommend further criminal indictments. One big question looming over it all is whether former President Donald Trump will be criminally charged for his role in whipping up the frenzy that led to the assault on the Capitol.A broader political reckoning seems much more distant. Election deniers and defenders of the Jan. 6 mob lost just about every major race in swing states in the 2022 midterms. But roughly 200 Republicans who supported the lie about the 2020 election being stolen won office across the country, The New York Times reported.What larger narrative about America might require us to remember Jan. 6? And what might require us to file it away as an aberration? The historian’s dodge — “ask me in 100 years” — is the only truly safe answer. But if the past is any guide, short-term political expediency may require it to be the latter.After all, it is only now that decades of work by scholars, activists and journalists has placed chattel slavery at the center of the American story rather than its periphery. What are the current battles about critical race theory but an attempt to repackage the sprawling, unfinished fight for civil rights into a tidy story about how Black people got their rights by appealing to the fundamental decency of white people and by simply asking nicely? In this telling, systematic racism ended when Rosa Parks could sit in the front of the bus. Anything that even lightly challenges finality of racial progress is at best an unwelcome rupture in the narrative matrix; at worst it is seen as a treasonous hatred of America.History, after all, is not just what happened. It is the meaning we make out of what happened and the story we tell with that meaning. If we included everything there would be no story. We cannot and will not remember things that have not been fashioned into a story we tell about ourselves, and because we are human, and because change is life, that story will evolve and change as we do.There is no better sign that our interpretation of history is in for revision than the Hollywood treatment. Last week it was reported that Steven Spielberg, our foremost chronicler of heroic World War II tales, plans to collaborate with Maddow to make Ultra into a movie. Perhaps this marks the beginning of a pop culture reconsideration of America’s role in the war, adding nuance that perturbs the accepted heroic narrative.And so I am not so worried about Jan. 6 fading from our consciousness for now. One day, maybe decades, maybe a century, some future Rachel Maddow will pick up the story and weave it more fully into the American fabric, not as an aberration but a continuous thread that runs through our imperfect tapestry. Maybe some future Steven Spielberg will even make it into a movie. I bet it’ll be a blockbuster.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Donald Trump Faces a Week of Headaches on Jan. 6 and His Tax Returns

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      The House panel investigating the Capitol attack is set to release its report and may back criminal charges against the former president, while a separate committee could decide to release his tax returns.After more than five years of dramatic headlines about controversies, scandals and potential crimes surrounding former President Donald J. Trump, the coming week will be among the most consequential.On Monday, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters will hold what is almost certainly its final public meeting before it is disbanded when Republicans take over the majority in the new year.The committee’s members are expected to debate criminal referrals to the Justice Department in connection with the riot and Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power, which culminated on Jan. 6 as the pro-Trump mob tried to thwart the certification of his successor’s 2020 electoral victory. The biggest topic is whether to recommend that Mr. Trump face criminal charges.On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee will meet privately to discuss what to do with the six years of Mr. Trump’s tax returns that it finally obtained after nearly four years of legal efforts by Mr. Trump to block their release.The committee could release them publicly, which would most likely be done in the final days of Democratic control of Congress.And on Wednesday, the Jan. 6 committee is expected to release its report on the attack, along with some transcripts of interviews with witnesses.Taken together, this week will point a spotlight on both Mr. Trump’s refusal to cede power and the issue that he has most acutely guarded for decades, the actual size of his personal wealth and his sources of income.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.“Trump has spent decades avoiding transparency and evading accountability,” said Tim O’Brien, the author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.” “Now both are rushing toward him in the forms of possible tax disclosures and a criminal referral. However much he might want to downplay the significance of all of that, it’s momentous.”Any public release of his tax information would come as Mr. Trump seeks another White House bid, a time in which he’s facing multiple investigations without the immunity that the presidency gave him from indictment.The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Trump’s mishandling of presidential records and classified material, and it remains to be seen whether either he or anyone around him is charged in that case.How much new information will be disclosed this week is unclear. Over the course of more than a year and a half, through nearly a dozen public hearings, the Jan. 6 committee has used testimony and information culled from over 1,000 witnesses to present Mr. Trump as being at the center of an effort to remain in power and thwart the results of a free and fair election.The Justice Department has been conducting a simultaneous investigation but has not been working in lock step with congressional investigators.A congressional referral to the Justice Department does not obligate prosecutors to act. Nonetheless, some of Mr. Trump’s advisers are privately concerned about what the House committee will recommend.Some of Mr. Trump’s tax information is already in the possession of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, whose predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., spent years investigating Mr. Trump and his company.Mr. Trump is also facing a civil suit filed by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who has alleged a widespread practice of fraud over a decade by the former president, his children and his company. Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, helped spur that investigation with testimony before a House committee in 2019 in which he discussed how Mr. Trump, who has always fought anyone asserting he’s worth less than he claims to be, valued his properties.The New York Times has also investigated Mr. Trump’s tax returns, including information from 2020. The investigation showed that Mr. Trump paid no federal income tax for 11 of 18 years The Times examined.Mr. Trump reacted with fury to that investigation. And the possibility of a public disclosure of his tax information looms especially large for Mr. Trump, who has fiercely guarded his actual net worth and the sources of his income.For years leading up to 2016, associates in New York City predicted that, despite repeated feints about a potential campaign, he would never declare because he would have to make his financial information available.He did submit a federally required personal financial disclosure, but during the 2016 presidential campaign he refused to release his tax returns, a voluntary disclosure nearly every candidate has provided since President Richard M. Nixon. Voters had no ability to analyze where the wealthiest person ever to run for president in the United States was getting some of his money, and how much of it he sent the government in taxes.During a debate in 2016, his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, took note of the rare times that Mr. Trump had been forced to disclose his earnings and tax payments.“The only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax,” Mrs. Clinton said.Mr. Trump fired back: “That makes me smart.”Through myriad congressional and Justice Department investigations, including ones related to whether his 2016 campaign conspired with Russian officials to sway the election that year, Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked the investigations, calling them a “witch hunt.” For decades he has insisted that he is a victim whenever he faces scrutiny. Mr. Trump had the same response when his company was convicted of 17 charges of tax fraud and other financial improprieties roughly two weeks ago.But the details that could become public after this week are more consequential, Mr. O’Brien argued, as Mr. Trump prepares to woo voters for his third run for the presidency.“There’s existential consequences on the legal side and reputation and business ones on the tax side,” Mr. O’Brien said. More

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      Justice Dept. Examines Emails from Trump Lawyers in Fake Elector Inquiry

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      Prosecutors have combed through more than 100,000 documents from John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Ken Klukowski, who played roles in the effort to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election.Federal prosecutors have examined more than 100,000 documents seized from the email accounts of three lawyers associated with former President Donald J. Trump in a continuing investigation into the roles they played in a wide-ranging scheme to help Mr. Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to court papers released on Friday.The material came from email accounts belonging to John Eastman, who helped devise and promote a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr., and two former Justice Department lawyers, Jeffrey Clark and Ken Klukowski, who have faced scrutiny for their own roles in the fake electors scheme, the papers say.As part of their inquiry, federal investigators in Washington obtained a search warrant for the three men’s email accounts in May and the following month seized their cellphones and other electronic devices. The court papers, unsealed by Beryl A. Howell, the chief judge in Federal District Court in Washington, revealed for the first time the extent of the emails that investigators had obtained.The court papers, which emerged from a behind-the-scenes review of the material for any that might be protected by attorney-client privilege, said little about the contents of the emails. But they noted that each of the men was in contact with a leader of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, whose own phone was seized in August as part of the investigation into the fake elector scheme.Reviewing seized materials for any that might be privileged is a common step in criminal investigations — especially in sensitive ones targeting lawyers. The review of the emails in this case occurred over the summer and was conducted by a team of prosecutors code-named “Project Coconut” that was walled off from the prosecutors running the main investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Mr. Eastman, a professor of constitutional law, has long been a focus of the Justice Department’s efforts to unravel the fake elector scheme, which involved a broad array of characters, including pro-Trump lawyers, White House aides and numerous local officials in key swing states around the country.Mr. Eastman has also been at the center of a parallel inquiry run by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which has accused him of conspiring with Mr. Trump to defraud the United States and obstruct the final certification of the 2020 election.Encouraged by Mr. Perry, Mr. Trump considered then abandoned a plan in the days before the Capitol attack to put Mr. Clark in charge of the Justice Department as acting attorney general.At the time, Mr. Clark was proposing to send a letter to state officials in Georgia falsely stating that the department had evidence that could lead Georgia to rescind its certification of Mr. Biden’s victory in that key state. The effort to send the letter was cut short by Mr. Clark’s superiors.Mr. Klukowski, who briefly served under Mr. Clark at the Justice Department and had earlier worked at the White House budget office, helped Mr. Clark draft the letter to state officials in Georgia. While working at the department, he was also in contact with Mr. Eastman, according to evidence presented by the Jan. 6 House committee.According to the newly unsealed papers, Mr. Klukowski sent Mr. Perry an email eight days after the election with a document attached titled “Electors Clause/The Legislature Option.” The document outlined an argument central to the fake elector scheme — namely, that “the Constitution makes state legislatures the final authority on presidential elections,” the court papers said.Mr. Eastman’s emails to Mr. Perry suggest that the two men traded phone calls in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6. The court papers note that Mr. Clark exchanged several emails with Mr. Perry in February 2021, after the Capitol was stormed, but the descriptions of their contents were redacted.The papers also say that investigators found a draft of Mr. Clark’s autobiography in his emails, tracing his life from “growing up deplorable in Philadelphia” to working in the Justice Department. An outlined portion of the draft provides a “detailed description” of a previously disclosed meeting that Mr. Clark had on Jan. 3, 2021, with Mr. Trump and two top Justice Department officials at which they “discussed Clark’s draft letter” to the officials in Georgia. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel to Consider Criminal Referrals Against Trump and Allies in Final Session

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      The committee announced a Dec. 19 meeting to discuss its final report and consider criminal and civil referrals against the former president and key players in his plot to overturn the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans on Monday to consider issuing criminal referrals against former President Donald J. Trump and his top allies during a final meeting as it prepares to release a voluminous report laying out its findings about the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.The committee announced a business meeting scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday during which members are expected to discuss the forthcoming report and recommendations for legislative changes, and to consider both criminal and civil referrals against individuals it has concluded broke laws or committed ethical violations.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said the panel was considering referrals to “five or six” different entities, including the Justice Department, the House Ethics Committee, the Federal Election Commission and bar associations. Such referrals, which the committee is slated to approve as it adopts its report, would not carry any legal weight or compel any action, but they would send a powerful signal that a congressional committee believes that the individuals cited committed crimes or other infractions.In the case of Mr. Trump, an official finding that a former president should be prosecuted for violating the law would be a rare and unusual step for the legislative branch to take.In addition to the former president, the panel is likely to consider referring some of his allies to the Justice Department, including John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who was an architect of Mr. Trump’s efforts to invalidate his electoral defeat. The committee has argued in court that Mr. Eastman most likely violated two federal laws for his role in the scheme, including obstructing an official act of Congress and defrauding the American public.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.“Stay tuned,” Mr. Thompson told reporters this week, declining to divulge any charges or individuals who would be named. “We’re going with what we think are the strongest arguments.”The panel plans to release a portion of its eight-chapter final report into the effort to block the peaceful transfer of power from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr. The committee’s full report is scheduled for release on Wednesday. Additional attachments and transcripts will be released before the end of the year, according to a committee aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity without authorization to discuss the plans in advance..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the committee member whom Mr. Thompson tasked with studying criminal referrals, said the panel would present evidence of the alleged wrongdoing along with the names of the individuals it is referring to the Justice Department.“We are focused on key players where there is sufficient evidence or abundant evidence that they committed crimes,” Mr. Raskin said. “We’re focused on crimes that go right to the heart of the constitutional order, such that the Congress can’t remain silent.”The final report — which contains a lengthy executive summary of more than 100 pages — roughly mirrors the presentation of the committee’s investigative hearings that drew wide viewership over the summer. Chapter topics include Mr. Trump’s spreading of lies about the election, the creation of fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states won by Mr. Biden, and the former president’s pressure campaign against state officials, the Justice Department and former Vice President Mike Pence as he sought to overturn his defeat.The committee’s report is also expected to document how Mr. Trump summoned a mob of his supporters to Washington and then did nothing to stop them as they attacked the Capitol for more than three hours. It will also include a detailed analysis of the breach of the Capitol.“This report is written with some energy and precision and focus,” Mr. Raskin said, adding: “We’re all determined that this be a report that is made part of the national dialogue. We don’t want it to just sit up on a shelf.”The panel has already endorsed overhauling the Electoral Count Act, the law that Mr. Trump and his allies tried to exploit on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to cling to power. Lawmakers have also discussed changes to the Insurrection Act and legislation to enforce the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on insurrectionists holding office.“We obviously want to complete the story for the American people,” Mr. Raskin said. “Everybody has come on a journey with us, and we want a satisfactory conclusion, such that people feel that Congress has done its job.”He said the panel would also seek to address what must be done to prevent an event like the Jan. 6 attack from happening again.“That’s the heart of it,” Mr. Raskin said, “because we think there is a clear, continuing present danger to democracy today.”Stephanie Lai More

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      Trump Is Unraveling Before Our Eyes, but Will It Matter?

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      In the weeks immediately surrounding the midterm elections, Donald Trump called for the “termination” of constitutional rule, openly embraced the conspiratorial QAnon movement, pledged support for the Jan. 6 rioters and hosted, over dinner at Mar-a-Lago, the white supremacist Nicholas Fuentes and Ye (once known as Kanye West), both of whom are prominent antisemites.Does every step Trump takes off the deep end make him a greater liability for the Republican Party, potentially leading to a second Biden term, the loss of the party’s precarious control of the House and an across-the-board weakening of Republican candidates up and down the ticket — from the U.S. Senate to local school boards?Will Trump’s wrecking ball bid for the presidency fracture his party? Will Trump’s extremism prompt the mainstream right — Mitch McConnell, Ron DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin, Nikki Haley and all the rest — to rise up in revolt? How are the worsening intraparty fissures likely to play out over the next two years?Most of the strategists and scholars to whom I posed these questions outlined scenarios in which a Trump candidacy is mainly helpful to the Democratic Party and its candidates. They often cited the hurdles confronting those seeking to nominate a more mainstream candidate.“The Republican Party faces a lose-lose proposition as long as Trump is politically active,” Martin Wattenberg, a political scientist at the University of California-Irvine, wrote by email in response to my inquiry.“If Trump succeeds in getting the nomination again, it would seem that his brand is so damaged among Independents and some Republicans that he will be unelectable,” Wattenberg continued. “And if Trump loses his nomination fight, it seems highly likely that he will charge that he is a victim of voter fraud and damage the legitimacy of the Republican nominee.”If that were not enough to satisfy Trump’s thirst for vengeance, Wattenberg suggested that “it is certainly conceivable that he would mount an independent candidacy and split some of the Republican vote. Continuing his fight as an independent would enable him to continue to raise big sums of money and attract the attention that he so intently craves. All in all, it could well be a disaster for the G.O.P.”While Trump has suffered setbacks on both the political and the legal front, no one I contacted suggested that he should be counted out in the 2024 nomination fight. Instead, just as was the case in 2016, the most favorable situation in 2024 for Trump would be a multicandidate field, as opposed to a single opponent who could consolidate those opposed to him.“It is hard to see President Trump getting more votes in 2024 than he did in the 2020 general election,” Arthur Lupia, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, said by email:Still, if he has 16 primary election opponents like he did in 2016, his name recognition and loyal base will give him real advantages in securing the nomination. He will get 30-40 percent of every vote, leaving the other 15 candidates to split the remaining 60-70 percent. Unless someone like DeSantis can clear the others out quickly, Trump will maintain an advantage.The split in the Republican Party, Lupia continued,has been brewing for several decades. The Tea Party is a focal point and a precursor to the current populist movement. The evolving split within the G.O.P. represents a divide between people who believe in government but want to run it according to conservative principles and an approach that increasingly questions the legitimacy of government itself.Lupia argued that “Despite that split, there is little or no chance that either faction will split off into a third party”:The rules of the American electoral system are stacked against third parties at nearly every turn. The fact that the U.S.A. elects nearly all members of Congress and state legislatures from single-member districts makes it difficult for third parties to win elections. To have viable third parties, you typically need legislators elected from multi-member districts (imagine that your Congressional district sent the top three vote getters to Congress instead of just one).While exploring various scenarios, Robert Erikson, a political scientist at Columbia, warned that there was a substantial chance that unanticipated and unpredictable developments would radically change the course of politics over the next two years and beyond:I think we should consider the likelihood of something very different. Suppose for instance it turns out that DeSantis cannot attract G.O.P. primary election voters and is just another bland Scott Walker. What then? The aftermath would be hard to imagine.Instead, Erikson wrote by email,We should steel ourselves for the possibility that the G.O.P. future turns out like nothing like we imagine today. The same is true regarding the Democrats’ presidential nominee if Biden does retire before 2024. That outcome might be something we could not imagine today. Trump critics have continually predicted that his latest outrage would be his downfall. Not even Jan. 6 caused a revolt within the G.O.P. G.O.P. leaders are too fearful of Trump’s baseBut, Erikson argued,If the fall comes, it could be swift and decisive. The template is the fate of Joe McCarthy. He seemed invincible, with the full support of elements of the American right. Then, following Joseph Welch’s condemnation in his “Have you no sense of decency?” speech, McCarthy was defeated, and swiftly. The circumstances of McCarthy’s downfall may seem hard to believe today. But this is what can happen to a bully when they do lose their power of intimidation.I asked Erikson and others how serious the current divisions within the Republican Party are.“The fissures in the Republican Party are larger than usual, but still comparable to those that regularly occur in American political parties,” he replied, but “compared to the realignment of the parties in the civil-rights era, the current conflict in the Republican Party is mild.”Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, sees some potential for destructive intraparty conflict:Republicans have a real dilemma, because they can’t win without the MAGA faction and are having a hard time winning with it. It comprises at least half the party so they have no choice but to try to keep it in the fold. I think they will succeed; opposition to Biden and the Democrats unites them for the time being at least.Would the defeat of Trump in the primaries by DeSantis, Youngkin or another candidate provoke a damaging schism in the general election?Jacobson replied by email:Depends on how Trump reacts if he is denied the nomination. If it comes about because of his legal difficulties or because he appears to be increasingly off the rails (e.g., demanding we ignore laws and the Constitution to put him back in the White House NOW), then the MAGA faction may look to a DeSantis (if not Youngkin) to take up their banner. If it is an all-out battle through the primaries, then whoever backs the losing side might be disinclined to show up in 2024.But, Jacobson cautioned, “Never underestimate the motivating force of negative partisanship; you really have to hate Democrats and want your party in power to show up and vote for someone with Herschel Walker’s character, but the vast majority of Georgia Republicans” did so.Trump, Jacobson wrote,is still very popular in the party at about 75 percent favorable in the recent Economist/YouGov and Quinnipiac polls. I think if the nomination took place now, he would certainly be the winner. But given his legal jeopardy and recent behavior that seems even more self-destructive than usual, on top of his damage to the Republican cause in 2022, I think Republican leaders and conservative pundits will be making every effort to keep him off the ticket to avoid losing again in 2024.A key question, according to Jacobson, is whether Trump’spursuit of self-preservation leads him to back away from the crazy tweets and wacko supporters or to embrace them even further. If the former, non-MAGA Republicans may treat him as they always have. If the latter, he will put them in a real bind. They’ve shown a capacity to put up with a lot over the years, but the combination of losing winnable elections and the constant humiliation of having to answer, or duck answering, for Trump’s latest folly may finally turn them openly against him. If he fights back as hard as he is capable of, the party will split.Robert Nickelsberg/Getty ImagesI posed the same question to all those I queried for today’s column:Is it possible to quantify the size of the extremist vote in the Republican primary electorate? By this, I mean not only active supporters of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon etc., but also the presumably larger constituency of those who sympathize with the aims of these groups — those with high levels of racial hostility that they want to see expressed in the political system, and those who are particularly fearful that they will be, or already have been, displaced from their position of status?Only Jacobson offered an answer:I took a quick look at some survey data I’ve been gathering over the past two years. One set of questions (27 surveys) ask if people approve of or support or have a favorable opinion of the people who invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6. The results are quite consistent regardless of how the question is framed, with no trend over the two years: An average of 25 percent of Republicans have positive things to say about insurrectionists.Another question, asked 20 times by the Economist/YouGov poll in between August and December 2021: “How likely or unlikely do you think it is that Donald Trump will be reinstated as President before the end of 2021? An average of 22 percent of Republicans said it was very or somewhat likely that he would be reinstated. Finally, 20 percent of Republicans responding to an April 2022 Economist/YouGov poll said it was definitely true that “Top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings.”My estimate is thus 20-25 percent of the Republican electorate can be considered extremists.The continued polarization of the two parties, especially at the extreme left and right, creates complex interactions within each party and between each party.Trump, according to David Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College, transformed the political environment in ways that have made it difficult, if not impossible, for other prominent Republicans to renounce some of the more extreme groups:The reason Republican politicians are often reluctant to explicitly separate themselves from the Proud Boys, QAnon, or other groups on the right-most fringe isn’t that those groups cast a lot of votes in either Republican primaries or general elections. It’s that denouncing those groups would make a candidate sound like a liberal, or at least like someone who buckles under pressure from liberals.Trump, Hopkins notes, “became a hero to Republican voters not just by adopting conservative policy positions, but also by refusing to make rhetorical concessions to Democrats, journalists, and other perennial conservative nemeses.”Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, contended in an email thatThe Republican Party is in the midst of an identity crisis. Traditional Republicans who push national defense, support for NATO and economic stability are fighting against insurgents who oppose these core tenets of the Republican brand. To these insurgents, isolationism and protectionism are the new mantra.In this struggle for the power to set the agenda in the House of Representatives, Westwood argued, the Republicans’ mediocre performance in the 2022 midterm elections empowered the party’s right wing:The great irony is that the defeat of the red wave gave more power to the extremes of the Republican Party. Had the red wave reshaped Congress, Republicans would have had a strong majority and could have governed with a more traditional policy platform, but because their margin of control is so narrow the new Speaker has no choice but to try to appease the Freedom Caucus and other extremes.Robert Y. Shapiro, a political scientist at Columbia, suggested that Republican Party leaders could make a concerted effort to block a Trump nomination, but it might take more fortitude than they have exhibited in the past. “This is one plausible resolution: first and foremost, if Republicans are thinking rationally and give highest priority to winning, they should see that Biden would defeat Trump in 2024 since he did so in 2020,” Shapiro wrote, “and since then Trump has been damaged by Jan. 6 and other investigations, and election deniers got trounced in 2022. DeSantis has been polling better than Trump against Biden and Youngkin probably would too.”One crucial but politically difficult step party leaders could take would be to unite behind — and endorse — a single candidate while pressuring the others to withdraw and, in Shapiro’s words, leave “only one such candidate opposing Trump in the primaries — otherwise multiple candidates would split the vote and Trump would be the party candidate, as happened in 2016.”Eric Groenendyk — a political scientist at the University of Memphis and a co-author of “Intraparty Polarization in American Politics” with Michael Sances and Kirill Zhirkov, political scientists at Temple University and the University of Virginia — wrote me by email:As party elites polarize, extreme partisans have reason to like it and identify more closely with their party, but not all partisans feel this way. Less extreme partisans have reason to like their party less. The part that is often overlooked is that these less extreme partisans also have reason to like the other party less, since that party is also moving away from them. If these less extreme partisans perceive both parties to be moving away from them at the same rate, they will still be closer to their own party, forcing the less extreme voters to adopt a ‘lesser of two evils’ justification for sticking with their party. And even if the other party is not moving away from the less extreme voters at the same rate, rehearsing negative thoughts about that party will also help them to rationalize sticking with their own party.This, in Groenendyk’s view,seems to be where many Republicans are stuck today. They are frustrated with the Trump wing of the party, but they can’t stomach voting for Democrats. The key point is that this shared hatred for Democrats is what’s holding their coalition together.Most of those I contacted downplayed the possibility that Trump would run as a third-party candidate if he were rejected as the Republican nominee, citing his aversion to losing and the logistical and financial difficulties of setting up a third party bid. Marc Hetherington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, disagreed.I asked Hetherington: “If a DeSantis or Youngkin were to defeat Trump for the nomination, would either of them alienate Trump’s supporters, or could either one keep those voters in the tent?”Hetherington replied, “As long as Trump doesn’t run as a third-party candidate or actively tell his supporters to stay home, I suspect they’ll still vote Republican. What motivates them is their hatred of the Democrats.”But, Hetherington wrote, “There is every reason to think that Trump might actually do those things” — tell his loyalists to stay home on Election Day or run as a third-party candidate — “if he’s not the nominee”:If he has proven anything over the years, it is that Trump cares about Trump. In deciding to contest the 2020 vote, he asked “What do I have to lose?” He didn’t think at all about what the country had to lose. If he thinks he benefits from splitting the party — even if doing so just makes him feel better because he gets to settle an old score — then he’ll do it.Westwood noted that “it is not clear what power Trump will have to fight with if he doesn’t get the nomination in 2024, especially if he happens to be in a prison cell, which is increasingly likely.”In fact, however, conviction and imprisonment would not, under the Constitution, preclude a Trump candidacy and might in fact provide additional motivation, both for him and his most zealous supporters. Zijia Song, a reporter at Bloomberg, laid out the possible criminal charges Trump could face on Nov. 15 and then posed the question, “Could any of this disqualify him as a presidential candidate?”Her answer:Broadly speaking, no. Article II of the US Constitution, which lays out qualifications for the presidency, says nothing about criminal accusations or convictions. Trump opponents see two possible avenues to challenging his eligibility, however. One is a federal law barring the removal or destruction of government records: It says anyone convicted of the offense is disqualified from federal office. This could conceivably apply to Trump if — and this is a big if — he’s charged and convicted for taking classified documents from the White House. The other is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which says that nobody can hold a seat in Congress, or “any office, civil or military,” if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”Which gets to the larger question that supersedes all the ins and outs of the maneuvering over the Republican presidential nomination and the future of the party.How, in a matter of less than a decade, could this once-proud country have evolved to the point at which there is a serious debate over choosing a presidential candidate who is a lifelong opportunist, a pathological and malignant narcissist, a sociopath, a serial liar, a philanderer, a tax cheat who does not pay his bills, a man who socializes with Holocaust deniers, who has pardoned his criminal allies, who encouraged a violent insurrection, who, behind a wall of bodyguards, is a coward, and who, without remorse, continuously undermines American democracy?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