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      Prosecutors in Documents Case Reject Trump’s Claims of Bias

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      The office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, pushed back on the former president’s assertions that his prosecution was motivated by animosity toward him in intelligence agencies.Federal prosecutors pushed back on Friday against former President Donald J. Trump’s contention that his prosecution over the handling of classified documents was motivated by a longstanding bias against him among the intelligence agencies and other government officials.The pushback by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, came in a 67-page court filing. The filing was intended to argue against Mr. Trump’s requests for additional discovery materials in the classified documents case.When Mr. Trump’s lawyers made those requests for materials last month, they signaled that they planned to place accusations that the intelligence community and other members of the so-called deep state were biased against Mr. Trump at the heart of their defense.But Mr. Smith’s team said that the former president’s requests for additional information were “based on speculative, unsupported, and false theories of political bias and animus.”Some of Mr. Trump’s demands for discovery were so ambiguous “that it is difficult to decipher what they seek,” the prosecutors wrote, while others, they added, “reflect pure conjecture detached from the facts surrounding this prosecution.”Discovery disputes can be contentious in criminal cases as defense lawyers push for as much information as they can get and prosecutors seek to limit access to materials that they believe are irrelevant.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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      Judge Declines to Hold Prosecutors in Contempt in Trump Election Case

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      Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued her order after prosecutors continued to file court papers in the former president’s election interference case even though she had put the proceeding on hold.It was one of the odder tit-for-tat battles to have emerged so far in the federal case accusing former President Donald J. Trump of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.Even though the proceeding was put on hold by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan while Mr. Trump seeks to have the charges tossed out with broad claims of immunity, prosecutors, trying to nudge it forward, have continued filing motions and turning over evidence. The former president’s lawyers have angrily accused them of violating the judge’s order and were eventually annoyed enough to ask that the prosecutors be held in contempt.After simmering for a month, the dispute was resolved on Thursday when Judge Chutkan, who is handling the case in Federal District Court in Washington, issued an order saying she would not punish anyone with a finding of contempt.Still, in what felt like an attempt to soothe the tensions between the defense and prosecution, the judge told both sides that they should not file any more “substantive” motions without first asking for permission.From the outset, the quarrel over the filings and disclosures seemed to be the sort of petulant but ultimately harmless one-upmanship that often arises in prominent criminal cases. But it was also a reflection of a much more consequential fight over the timing of the case and whether it will go to trial as scheduled in March.It all began last month when prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, sent Mr. Trump’s legal team a draft list of exhibits and a modest batch of discovery material even though Judge Chutkan had ordered all deadlines in the case put on hold only days before.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Why Donald Trump Will Soon Be Attacking the Fed

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      Interest rates are heading down. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of this year (at least).Why? Because there are very good reasons for the Federal Reserve, which controls short-term interest rates — that’s how it makes monetary policy — to start reversing the sharp rate hikes it carried out beginning in March 2022. There’s a vigorous debate about whether those rate hikes were excessive, which I’m not going to litigate here. Whatever you think about past policy, the case for cuts going forward is very strong, and I hope the Fed will act on that case.What I don’t know is whether the Fed is ready for the political firestorm it’s about to face, and whether it will stand up to the pressure to keep rates too high for too long. Because it’s a safe prediction that Donald Trump and his supporters will scream that the coming rate cuts are part of a deep-state conspiracy to re-elect President Biden.Let’s talk first about the economics, which should — but might not — be the only thing guiding the Fed’s decisions.The Fed raised rates in an attempt to rein in inflation, which was running hot at the time — its preferred measure of underlying inflation was running far above its target rate of 2 percent. It kept raising rates until the middle of 2023, trying to cool off the economy and ensure that inflation came down.As it turns out, the economy still hasn’t cooled much, at least by the usual measures; the unemployment rate remains near a 50-year low. But inflation has plunged. Over the past six months, the core personal consumption expenditures deflator — try saying that five times fast — has risen at an annual rate of only 1.9 percent, below the Fed’s target, and more complex measures are close to 2 percent. Basically, the war on inflation is more or less over, and we won.So why keep interest rates this high? Right now the labor market looks a lot like it did on the eve of the pandemic, with both unemployment and other measures of market heat, like the rate at which workers are quitting, similar to what they were in late 2019. The Fed is projecting higher inflation over the next year than it was in 2019, but only slightly higher.Back then, however, the federal funds rate — the interest rate the Fed controls — was 1.75 percent. Now it’s 5.5 percent. It’s really hard to come up with a good reason it should stay that high.True, high rates haven’t produced a recession — yet. But there are hints of economic weakness, and the Fed is supposed to try to get ahead of the curve. So it’s time to start cutting rates.But rate cuts will have political implications. They will be good for Biden, although not exactly for the reasons you might think.I don’t know what the unemployment rate or the rate of economic growth will be in November, but because monetary policy works with a lag, what the Fed does in the next few months won’t have much effect on these numbers.Biden, however, is already presiding over a very good economy by normal standards, with solid job growth and plunging inflation. What he needs is for more Americans to accept the good news. And Fed rate cuts will help him with that. They will signal to the public that inflation really is under control; they will lead, other things being equal, to higher stock prices and lower mortgage rates.So we can expect howls from Trump and his allies that politics, not economics, is driving the coming rate cuts — even though Trump himself appointed Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chair.Why do we know this will happen? Partly because paranoia is MAGAworld’s normal condition: It sees sinister conspiracies everywhere.Beyond that, Trump and his allies constantly engage in projection, assuming that their opponents are doing or will do what they themselves would do or have done, like weaponizing the Justice Department for Trump’s own political ends.And when it comes to interest rate policy, Trump has a track record of doing exactly what I’m sure he will accuse Biden of doing: trying to manipulate the Fed. Ever since Richard Nixon pressured the Fed to keep rates low in 1972, possibly helping to set the stage for the stagflation that followed, it has been traditional for the White House to respect the Fed’s independence. But in 2019 Trump attacked Powell and his colleagues as “boneheads” and demanded that they cut interest rates to “ZERO, or less.”So we know that Trumpist attacks on the Fed for cutting interest rates are coming. What we don’t know is how the Fed will react.In a recent dialogue with me about the economy, my colleague Peter Coy suggested that the Fed may be inhibited from cutting rates because it’ll fear accusations from Trump that it’s trying to help Biden. I hope Fed officials understand that they’ll be betraying their responsibilities if they let themselves be intimidated in this way.And I hope that forewarned is forearmed. MAGA attacks on the Fed are coming; they should be treated as the bad-faith bullying they are.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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      Three Years After Jan. 6, Trump’s Immunity Claims to Take Center Stage

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      An appeals court will hear arguments on Tuesday over the former president’s attempt to shut down the federal election case. Much is riding on how — and how quickly — the issue is decided.Three years after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol, former President Donald J. Trump will make his latest and potentially most consequential argument in the coming week for why he should not be held responsible for seeking to overturn the 2020 election.Impeachment proceedings, the House Jan. 6 committee’s inquiry and two separate criminal investigations have established a comprehensive set of facts about Mr. Trump’s deep involvement in overlapping efforts to remain in office despite having been defeated at the polls.But when — or even whether — he will ultimately face a trial on charges related to those efforts remains unclear. One of the most decisive factors in getting an answer to those questions will be the success or failure of the arguments his legal team plans to make on Tuesday in a federal appeals court in Washington.Mr. Trump’s lawyers are banking on a long shot, hoping to convince a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the Constitution affords him complete immunity from actions he undertook as president. The assertion, while untested in the courts, has the advantage to the former president of chewing up time in the service of his strategy of trying to delay any trial until after Election Day.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      The big themes in 2024: elections, antitrust and shadow banking.

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      From elections and A.I. to antitrust and shadow banking, here are the big themes that could define the worlds of business and policy.What we’re watching in 2024 Andrew here. As we look ahead to the new year, the DealBook team has identified about a dozen themes that are likely to become running narratives that could define the business and policy ecosystem for the next 12 months.Of course, the presidential election, perhaps one of the most polarizing in history, is going to infect every part of the business world. Watch out for which C.E.O.s and other financiers back candidates — and, importantly, which ones go silent — and how companies deal with outspoken employees. Also: Look for some wealthy executives to avoid giving directly to candidates but instead donate to PACs as a shield, of sorts, from public scrutiny.Another story line that will probably remain part of the water cooler — er, Slack and X — conversation in business is the backlash against environmental, social and corporate governance principles, or E.S.G. This fight has manifested itself into a political battle and increasingly found its way in the past year into a debate about free speech on campuses (another theme that isn’t going away).Here’s a bit more detail on what we’re looking out for this year.The U.S. presidential election. The race seems set to come down to a rerun of 2020, with Donald Trump leading opinion polls to be the Republican candidate despite his mounting legal battles. The big question is how business leaders will respond. Will they coalesce around (and direct their money to) an anyone-but-Trump candidate? Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, is leading that race, but she has a long way to go to catch up to Trump. President Biden, who has made a series of consequential decisions on the economy, hopes voters will start to feel an economic upswing to reverse his sagging poll ratings.Private credit could be hit by a wave of defaults. Just as 1980s-style leveraged buyouts have been rechristened “private equity,” so too has “shadow banking” been rebranded as “private credit” and “direct lending” in time for the business to reach its highest levels yet. Direct lending by investment firms and hedge funds has become a $1.5 trillion titan, with scores of companies turning to the likes of Apollo and Ares for loans instead of, say, JPMorgan Chase.But the industry may face a test in 2024: Indebted borrowers, facing looming debt maturities and high interest rates, already are turning to private credit for yet more loans, raising concerns that lenders could face a wave of defaulting clients. A string of failures could hit these lenders hard, skeptics fear — leaving pension funds, insurers and other backers of private credit funds holding the bag.Paramount Pictures may be sold, a move that could be the start of a year of media deal-making.Hunter Kerhart for The New York TimesMedia deal mania? Reports that David Zaslav, the C.E.O. of Warner Bros. Discovery, held talks last month about a potential merger with Paramount set off a wave of speculation that 2024 would be a year of media consolidation. The industry has been transformed in recent years by the growth of streaming, changes in the way people consume media and big tech’s encroachment into sectors typically dominated by old-school media companies. Now, the industry is on the cusp of the next major shift with the rise of artificial intelligence.One date to put in your diary: April 8, 2024, the two-year anniversary of the merger of Warner Media and Discovery to create Warner Bros. Discovery — and the first day that the new company can be sold without risking a big tax bill.Will unions maintain their momentum? Organized labor had a banner year in 2023, with big wins in fights with Hollywood studios and the auto industry. Whether that signals a permanent turnaround for the labor movement is up for debate. But the election most likely will be a key factor. Both Biden and Trump tried to woo striking autoworkers this year, so expect more efforts to win over blue-collar voters.Middle East money will keep flowing. Tensions with China and economic sanctions have made it increasingly difficult for companies to raise money from a place that used to be top of the list. Middle Eastern investors have picked up the slack. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and others are spending money as they look to diversify their fossil fuel-dependent economies. The sectors are wide-ranging, including sports, tech companies, luxury, retail and media. Critics say the petrostates with dubious human rights records are trying to launder their reputations, but that hasn’t stopped Western business from seeking their lucre.One trend to watch: the growing ties between China and Middle Eastern money. Beijing is trying to deepen links with countries outside of Washington’s orbit or, at least, with those willing to play both sides.Lina Khan, the chair of the F.T.C., will keep challenging big deals despite losing some legal fights in 2023.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMore antitrust fights. A tough year for regulators — like Lina Khan at the F.T.C. and Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department — ended with two wins after both Illumina and Adobe called off multibillion-dollar takeovers in the face of government pressure. Enforcers could already claim some success by forcing deal makers to weigh whether a big deal is worth pursuing, given the potential risk that they might have to spend months in court defending it. Don’t expect Khan to ease the pressure; do expect more antitrust fights.New climate disclosure rules. Public companies have been bracing for years for new climate-related disclosure rules from the S.E.C. In 2021, the agency signaled that climate change would be one of its priorities. About a year later, Gary Gensler, the S.E.C. chair, proposed new rules. The most contentious aspect of the draft regulations was a requirement that large companies disclose greenhouse gasses emitted along their value chain. The new rules are set to be finalized in the spring. But the probable lawsuits could go all the way to the Supreme Court.Another election to watch: India’s. The world’s biggest democracy and a rising superpower, India will go to the polls in April and May. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is benefiting from the West’s search for a regional bulwark to counter China. Business is looking at opportunities in India, as companies work to diversify their supply chains and tap into a fast-growing economy. The election will also be a crucial early test of how A.I. can factor into the spread of (mis)information during an election.Workplace shake-up. In late 2022, the release of ChatGPT propelled A.I. into the public consciousness. In 2023, companies experimented with new ways to build the technology into their operations, but few had yet to overhaul their procedures to cope with it. It’s still not clear exactly what A.I. will mean for jobs, but in 2024 we may see more companies making decisions about its use in ways that will have consequences for workers.The other big topic workplaces are grappling with is the response to the war in Gaza. Some companies are already considering changes to their workplace diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and executives face some of the same pressures as university presidents when it comes to how to handle their statements and responses to incidents related to the war. More

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      Biden’s Christian ‘Persecution’? We Assess Trump’s Recent Claims.

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      Former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of criminalizing Christians, and Catholics in particular, for their faith. Here are the facts.Former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly tried to appeal to Christian voters in recent weeks by accusing the Biden administration of criminalizing Americans for their faith.On multiple occasions this month, Mr. Trump has claimed that President Biden has “persecuted” Catholics in particular. Mr. Biden himself is Catholic.“I don’t know what it is with Catholics,” Mr. Trump said during a rally in Coralville, Iowa. “They are going violently and viciously after Catholics.”Mr. Trump repeated similar comments days later at another rally, in Waterloo, and in a video posted before Christmas he said that “Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before.”The message fits into a larger theme for Mr. Trump, who — facing criminal charges in relation to his bid to say in office after losing the 2020 election and criticism for praising strongmen — has tried to paint Mr. Biden and Democrats as being the real threat to democracy.Here’s a closer look at his claims.WHAT WAS SAID“Under Crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before. Catholics in particular are being targeted and evangelicals are surely on the watchlist as well.”— in a video on Truth Social this monthFalse. Experts say they are unaware of any data to support the idea that Catholics in the United States are being persecuted by the government for their faith — let alone at record levels.“In terms of the evidence, I find it to be pretty hard to kind of support the idea that there’s a concerted, marked increase in a particular kind of Christian targeting,” said Jason Bruner, a religious studies professor at Arizona State University and historian who studies Christian persecution.Instead, Mr. Bruner said, it’s most likely that Mr. Trump is extrapolating from cases — say, churches that faced penalties for congregating during the Covid pandemic or anti-abortion activists who have been charged with crimes — to suggest a systemic issue.“There’s a long history of discrimination against Catholics in the United States, from the framing way through the 1970s,” said Frank Ravitch, a professor of law and religion at Michigan State University. “And if anything, it’s probably better now in terms of nondiscrimination than it ever, probably, ever has been.”Mr. Trump’s claims, Mr. Ravitch said, show “such an incredible blindness to the history of anti-Catholicism in the U.S.”Advocates who track Christians fleeing persecution around the world note that the Biden administration has been gradually increasing the number of refugees admitted into the United States after the number dropped precipitously during the Trump era. At the end of fiscal year 2023, the country recorded about 31,000 Christian refugee arrivals — about half of all refugees and the highest number recorded since fiscal year 2016. (Not all were necessarily fleeing persecution on religious grounds.)“We’re encouraged by that trajectory,” said Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization that has pushed the Biden administration to establish policies welcoming those facing faith-based discrimination.The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for the sources behind his claims.WHAT WAS SAID“Over the past three years, the Biden administration has sent SWAT teams to arrest pro-life activists.”— in a video on Truth Social this monthThis is misleading. The Justice Department has initiated an increasing number of criminal prosecutions under a law that makes it a violation to interfere with reproductive health care by blocking entrances, using threats or damaging property. In at least one case, a defendant’s family claimed he was arrested by a “SWAT” team, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that was not the case.The law is called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act and was enacted in 1994. Federal prosecutors have used it to initiate 24 criminal cases, involving 55 defendants, since January 2021, according to the Justice Department.While a majority of those cases have involved acts at facilities that provided abortion services, prosecutors have also used it to charge several individuals who supported abortion access and targeted Florida centers that offered pregnancy counseling and abortion alternatives.Moreover, Mr. Trump omits that such arrests are not for “pro-life” activism but for specific actions, including violence, that prosecutors argue were attempts at blocking access to or interfering with reproductive health care services.In one case, federal attorneys charged a man for allegedly using a slingshot to fire metal ball bearings at a Chicago-area Planned Parenthood clinic. In another, prosecutors said that a New York man used locks and glue to prevent the opening of a clinic’s gate. And three men were accused of firebombing a clinic in California; one recently pleaded guilty.Mr. Trump’s claims about the use of “SWAT teams” may be a reference to the 2022 arrest of a Catholic activist in Pennsylvania. The defendant, Mark Houck, was charged with shoving a volunteer at a Planned Parenthood center in Philadelphia in 2021. Mr. Houck’s defense maintained that he was responding to abusive comments made toward his 12-year-old son by the volunteer. He was acquitted earlier this year.Republican lawmakers have criticized Mr. Houck’s arrest by armed agents, but the F.B.I. has rejected the claim that it used a SWAT team and said its tactics were consistent with standard practices.“There are inaccurate claims being made regarding the arrest of Mark Houck,” the F.B.I. said in a statement. “No SWAT team or SWAT operators were involved. F.B.I. agents knocked on Mr. Houck’s front door, identified themselves as F.B.I. agents and asked him to exit the residence. He did so and was taken into custody without incident pursuant to an indictment.”Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, when asked about the circumstances of Mr. Houck’s arrest, has said such decisions are made at the local level, “by the career agents on the ground, who have the closest visibility to the circumstances.”WHAT WAS SAID“The F.B.I. has been caught profiling devout Catholics as possible domestic terrorists and planning to send undercover spies into Catholic churches, just like in the old days of the Soviet Union.”— in a video on Truth Social this monthThis needs context. Mr. Trump was likely referring to a leaked January memo prepared by the F.B.I.’s field office in Richmond, Va., that warned of the potential for extremism for adherents of a “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology. Republicans have criticized the memo for months.But the memo was withdrawn and the nation’s top law enforcement officials have repeatedly denounced it.The memo warned of potential threats ahead of the 2024 election and suggested gathering information and developing sources within churches to help identify suspicious activity. It also distinguished between those radicalized and not radicalized, saying “radical-traditionalist Catholics” were a small minority.Some researchers believe there is some merit to those concerns, even if the memo was flawed. Mr. Ravitch, the Michigan State University professor, said he believed agents erred in focusing on Catholicism. “What they’re really talking about is an extremely radical brand of Christian nationals,” he said, emphasizing that they are a small subset and not representative of the Roman Catholic Church or evangelicals.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said during a September congressional hearing that he was “appalled” by the memo and that “Catholics are not extremists.” He called suggestions that the government was targeting Americans based on their faith “outrageous,” referencing the fact that his own family fled Europe to escape antisemitism before the Holocaust.And earlier this month during a Senate hearing, Mr. Wray said of the document: “That particular intelligence product is something that, as soon I saw it, I was aghast. I had it withdrawn.”In a statement this week, the F.B.I. reiterated, “Any characterization that the F.B.I. is targeting Catholics is false.”Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com. More

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      Judge Gives Prosecutors Access to G.O.P. Lawmaker’s Messages in Jan. 6 Case

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      The roughly 1,700 messages are from the cellphone of Representative Scott Perry, who was involved in discussions with Trump administration officials about overturning the election.A federal judge has allowed the special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election access to about 1,700 messages from the seized phone of Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.Mr. Perry, the chairman of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus who played a role in attempts to overturn the election, had sought to keep the messages from prosecutors. But in an order late Tuesday, James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, prohibited federal prosecutors from retrieving just 396 messages from more than 2,000.Judge Boasberg wrote that those messages were covered by the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which provides protections for lawmakers’ legislative discussions, while also ordering that a majority be turned over.The messages could offer additional evidence for Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the federal election case against Mr. Trump. Judge Boasberg said they concerned Mr. Perry’s attempts to get information about possible voter fraud; influence people outside the federal government; discuss Vice President Mike Pence’s certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory; and communicate about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.A lawyer for Mr. Perry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.As federal officials investigated the effort to overturn the 2020 election, the F.B.I. seized Mr. Perry’s personal cellphone in the summer of 2022 and created a forensic copy of its contents. The F.B.I. later returned the phone and told Mr. Perry he was not the target of the investigation, his lawyer said at the time.“The Justice Department informed us that Representative Perry is not a target of its investigation,” the lawyer, John Irving, said in a statement. “Representative Perry has directed us to cooperate with the Justice Department in order to ensure that it gets the information it is entitled to, but to also protect information that it is not entitled to.”Mr. Perry then filed a motion to prohibit investigators from getting the messages, arguing that they were protected under the Constitution. He lost that motion, but an appellate court ordered a judge to review the communications on a document-by-document basis.In the weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Perry was among at least 11 Republican members of Congress involved in discussions with Trump administration officials about overturning the results, according to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. Those included plans to pressure Mr. Pence to throw out electoral votes from states won by Mr. Biden. Mr. Perry also endorsed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol, the committee said.He played an active role in the attempt to replace Jeffrey A. Rosen, then the acting attorney general, with a more compliant official, Jeffrey Clark. More

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      Ex-N.Y.P.D. Officer Sentenced to 22 Months for Her Role in Jan. 6 Riot

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      Sara Carpenter slapped a police officer while wielding a tambourine when former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, prosecutors said.A former New York City police officer was sentenced on Tuesday to 22 months in prison for her role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, during which, federal prosecutors said, she pushed against and slapped police officers while yelling and wielding a tambourine.The sentencing of the former officer, Sara Carpenter, followed her conviction in March on several felony and misdemeanor counts, including civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding and entering or remaining in a restricted building or ground, court records show.Ms. Carpenter, 54, of Richmond Hill, Queens, is among more than 1,200 people — and one of at least 15 with law enforcement ties — to be criminally charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, according to court records and a Justice Department news release.She and other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol that day in a bid to disrupt the certification of President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. Mr. Trump has been charged with conspiracy and the corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding as a result of the riot, and a federal investigation into the day’s events is continuing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More