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      Republican 2024 Candidates Cast Doubt on Hunter Biden Special Counsel

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      Republican presidential candidates, some of whom were stumping in the early-caucusing state of Iowa on Friday, largely derided the news that the prosecutor investigating President Biden’s son Hunter had been elevated to special counsel status.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, during a campaign stop in Audubon, Iowa, cast doubt on the independence of the special counsel, David C. Weiss, who had already been overseeing a yearslong investigation of the president’s son. “It just seems to me that they’re going to find a way to give him some type of soft-glove treatment,’’ he said. And Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, spoke disdainfully of the new title and power for Mr. Weiss.“I don’t think the American people trust the Department of Justice or anything this is going to do,” Ms. Haley said in an appearance on Fox News. “I think this was meant to be a distraction.”At the same time, she called it a “response to the pressure that the Biden family is feeling” and called on House Republicans who have been investigating the Bidens “to keep their foot on the gas.” So far, the investigations have found no hard evidence that President Biden used his influence while vice president to benefit his son’s business deals.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota also said he doubted the independence of Mr. Weiss. In an interview while twirling around on the Iowa State Fair’s Ferris wheel, he called the move “too little, too late” and said few Republicans would view the step as a serious development, given Mr. Weiss’s role in offering Hunter Biden a plea deal in the case. That plea deal has fallen apart.Mr. Weiss is a federal prosecutor in Delaware who was originally appointed by former President Donald J. Trump. He was left in his position by President Biden to continue the Hunter Biden inquiry to avoid the appearance that the president would seek special treatment for his son.In a statement attributed to a spokesperson, Mr. Trump, who is being investigated by the special counsel Jack Smith, claimed without evidence that the Department of Justice has protected President Biden, Hunter Biden and other family members “for decades.” The statement cast doubt on Mr. Weiss’s independence and criticized him for not already bringing “proper charges after a four-year investigation” of Hunter Biden.Mr. Smith has brought two indictments against Mr. Trump.Not all of the candidates were disdainful of the appointment of the special counsel, which Republicans have urged for some time. Vivek Ramaswamy, who said last month that a special counsel was warranted, called the appointment of Mr. Weiss “good” on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “Now let’s see if it’s more than a fig leaf,” he added.Former Vice President Mike Pence, who was flipping cuts of pork at the Iowa State Fair on Friday, said he approved of the Department of Justice’s move to upgrade Mr. Weiss’s power.“I think it’s about time that we saw the appointment of a special counsel to get to the bottom of not only what Hunter Biden was doing, but what the Biden family was doing,” Mr. Pence said. “The American people deserve answers, and I welcome the appointment.”Anjali Huynh More

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      The Prosecution of Donald Trump May Have Terrible Consequences

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      It may be satisfying now to see Special Counsel Jack Smith indict former President Donald Trump for his reprehensible and possibly criminal actions in connection with the 2020 presidential election. But the prosecution, which might be justified, reflects a tragic choice that will compound the harms to the nation from Mr. Trump’s many transgressions.Mr. Smith’s indictment outlines a factually compelling but far from legally airtight case against Mr. Trump. The case involves novel applications of three criminal laws and raises tricky issues of Mr. Trump’s intent, of his freedom of speech and of the contours of presidential power. If the prosecution fails (especially if the trial concludes after a general election that Mr. Trump loses), it will be a historic disaster.But even if the prosecution succeeds in convicting Mr. Trump, before or after the election, the costs to the legal and political systems will be large.There is no getting around the fact that the indictment comes from the Biden administration when Mr. Trump holds a formidable lead in the polls to secure the Republican Party nomination and is running neck and neck with Mr. Biden, the Democratic Party’s probable nominee.This deeply unfortunate timing looks political and has potent political implications even if it is not driven by partisan motivations. And it is the Biden administration’s responsibility, as its Justice Department reportedly delayed the investigation of Mr. Trump for a year and then rushed to indict him well into G.O.P. primary season. The unseemliness of the prosecution will likely grow if the Biden campaign or its proxies uses it as a weapon against Mr. Trump if he is nominated.This is all happening against the backdrop of perceived unfairness in the Justice Department’s earlier investigation, originating in the Obama administration, of Mr. Trump’s connections to Russia in the 2016 general election. Anti-Trump texts by the lead F.B.I. investigator, a former F.B.I. director who put Mr. Trump in a bad light through improper disclosure of F.B.I. documents and information, transgressions by F.B.I. and Justice Department officials in securing permission to surveil a Trump associate and more were condemned by the Justice Department’s inspector general even as he found no direct evidence of political bias in the investigation. The discredited Steele Dossier, which played a consequential role in the Russia investigation and especially its public narrative, grew out of opposition research by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.And then there is the perceived unfairness in the department’s treatment of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, where the department has once again violated the cardinal principle of avoiding any appearance of untoward behavior in a politically sensitive investigation. Credible whistle-blowers have alleged wrongdoing and bias in the investigation, though the Trump-appointed prosecutor denies it. And the department’s plea arrangement with Hunter came apart, in ways that fanned suspicions of a sweetheart deal, in response to a few simple questions by a federal judge.These are not whataboutism points. They are the context in which a very large part of the country will fairly judge the legitimacy of the Justice Department’s election fraud prosecution of Mr. Trump. They are the circumstances that for very many will inform whether the prosecution of Mr. Trump is seen as politically biased. This is all before the Trump forces exaggerate and inflame the context and circumstances, and thus amplify their impact.These are some of the reasons the Justice Department, however pure its motivations, will likely emerge from this prosecution viewed as an irretrievably politicized institution by a large chunk of the country. The department has been on a downward spiral because of its serial mistakes in high-profile contexts, accompanied by sharp political attacks from Mr. Trump and others on the right. Its predicament will now likely grow much worse because the consequences of its election-fraud prosecution are so large, the taint of its past actions so great and the potential outcome for Mr. Biden too favorable.The prosecution may well have terrible consequences beyond the department for our politics and the rule of law. It will likely inspire ever-more-aggressive tit-for-tat investigations of presidential actions in office by future Congresses and by administrations of the opposite party, to the detriment of sound government.It may also exacerbate the criminalization of politics. The indictment alleges that Mr. Trump lied and manipulated people and institutions in trying to shape law and politics in his favor. Exaggeration and truth-shading in the facilitation of self-serving legal arguments or attacks on political opponents have always been commonplace in Washington. Going forward, these practices will likely be disputed in the language of, and amid demands for, special counsels, indictments and grand juries.Many of these consequences of the prosecution may have occurred in any event because of our divided politics, Mr. Trump’s provocations, the dubious prosecution of him in New York State and Mr. Smith’s earlier indictment in the classified documents case. Yet the greatest danger comes from actions by the federal government headed by Mr. Trump’s political opponent.The documents case is far less controversial and far less related to high politics. In contrast to the election fraud case, it concerns actions by Mr. Trump after he left office, it presents no First Amendment issue and it involves statutes often applied to the mishandling of sensitive government documents.Mr. Smith had the option to delay indictment until after the election. In going forward now, he likely believed that the importance of protecting democratic institutions and vindicating the rule of law in the face of Mr. Trump’s brazen attacks on both outweighed any downsides. Or perhaps he believed the downsides were irrelevant — “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.”These are entirely legitimate considerations. But whatever Mr. Smith’s calculation, his decision will be seen as a mistake if, as is quite possible, American democracy and the rule of law are on balance degraded as a result.Watergate deluded us into thinking that independent counsels of various stripes could vindicate the rule of law and bring national closure in response to abuses by senior officials in office. Every relevant experience since then — from the discredited independent counsel era (1978-99) through the controversial and unsatisfactory Mueller investigation — proves otherwise. And national dissensus is more corrosive today than in the 1990s, and worse even than when Mr. Mueller was at work.Regrettably, in February 2021, the Senate passed up a chance to convict Mr. Trump and bar him from future office, after the House of Representatives rightly impeached him for his election shenanigans. Had that occurred, Attorney General Merrick Garland may well have decided not to appoint a special counsel for this difficult case.But here we are. None of these considerations absolve Mr. Trump, who is ultimately responsible for this mammoth mess. The difficult question is whether redressing his shameful acts through criminal law is worth the enormous costs to the country. The bitter pill is that the nation must absorb these costs to figure out the answer to that question.Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a co-author of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.”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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      Ex-F.B.I. Official in Talks to Resolve Charges of Working for Oligarch

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      Once the F.B.I.’s top counterintelligence official in New York City, Charles F. McGonigal was charged with concealing contacts with foreign nationals.A former senior F.B.I. official is in talks to resolve criminal charges in two separate indictments, including entering a possible guilty plea as early as next week in a case involving accusations that he worked for a Russian oligarch, according to a public filing and statements by his lawyer in court.Charles F. McGonigal, who retired in 2018 as the counterintelligence chief in the F.B.I.’s New York field office, one of the agency’s most sensitive posts, has been accused by federal prosecutors in New York of violating U.S. sanctions, money laundering and conspiracy in connection with Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch once seen as close to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.Mr. McGonigal was also charged by federal prosecutors in Washington with concealing his relationship with a businessman who paid him $225,000, as well misleading the F.B.I. about his contacts with foreign nationals and foreign travel, creating a conflict of interest with his official duties.Mr. McGonigal pleaded not guilty to both indictments. But on Monday, the district judge overseeing his New York case, Jennifer H. Rearden, set a plea hearing for Aug. 15, saying that she had been informed that Mr. McGonigal “may wish to enter a change of plea.”At a hearing in the Washington case on Friday, Mr. McGonigal’s lawyer, Seth D. DuCharme, told the federal judge there, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, that discussions about resolving the charges were ongoing and that he hoped to update her by the next scheduled hearing in September.Although some of the current charges carry up to 20 years in prison, a judge could also impose a far lighter sentence.Mr. DuCharme declined to comment on either case. Spokespeople for the U.S. attorney’s offices in New York and Washington also declined to comment.Judge Rearden’s order in New York and the discussions in Washington were reported earlier by CNN. Mr. McGonigal’s co-defendant in the New York case, Sergey Shestakov, has also pleaded not guilty to sanctions violations and money laundering in connection with Mr. Deripaska, as well as making false statements to the F.B.I. (Mr. McGonigal does not face that last charge.) There has been no public indication that Mr. Shestakov is about to change his plea; his lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.The arrest in January of Mr. McGonigal, 55, reverberated through the F.B.I., shocking colleagues who had worked with him over his 22-year career on some of the bureau’s most sensitive cases, including an investigation into the information breach that led to the disappearance, imprisonment or execution of C.I.A. informants in China.The accusations also raised questions about what agency secrets Mr. McGonigal might have compromised. But a more than three-year F.B.I. investigation produced no evidence that he had done so, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. That a plea agreement may be reached relatively quickly also suggests that Mr. McGonigal’s former colleagues at the F.B.I., and Justice Department prosecutors, have concluded his behavior stopped at corruption and did not extend to espionage.The New York indictment accused Mr. McGonigal and Mr. Shestakov of working for Mr. Deripaska, a wealthy Russian metals magnate. Mr. Shestakov, 69, is a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who lived in the U.S. and worked after his retirement as an interpreter in U.S. courts in New York.Federal prosecutors suggested that while still at the F.B.I., Mr. McGonigal attempted to build a relationship with an aide to Mr. Deripaska by arranging for the aide’s daughter to do an internship with the New York City Police Department. (A senior police official told The New York Times that the woman was given a “V.I.P.-type” tour over several days that included spending time with specialized Police Department units, including the harbor patrol and mounted units, but it was not an internship.)In April 2018, Mr. Deripaska was placed on a sanctions list by the U.S. State Department, which cited his connections to the Kremlin and Russia’s interference in the presidential election of 2016. Mr. McGonigal reviewed the proposed list of people to be sanctioned, including Mr. Deripaska, before it was finalized, prosecutors said.In 2019, after Mr. McGonigal’s retirement, he and Mr. Shestakov connected Mr. Deripaska to a law firm for aid in getting the sanctions lifted, federal prosecutors in New York said. Mr. McGonigal met with Mr. Deripaska and others in London and Vienna and was paid $25,000 a month through the law firm as a consultant and an investigator until about March 2020, the indictment says.Then, in the spring of 2021, Mr. McGonigal and Mr. Shestakov negotiated an agreement with Mr. Deripaska’s aide to investigate a rival oligarch, for which they were paid more than $200,000, according to the indictment. The criminal charges in the indictment appear to relate primarily to this arrangement, which ended, prosecutors said, when the men’s devices were seized by the F.B.I. in November 2021.Adam Goldman More

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      How Jack Smith Structured the Trump Election Indictment to Reduce Risks

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      The special counsel layered varied charges atop the same facts, while sidestepping a free-speech question by not charging incitement.In accusing former President Donald J. Trump of conspiring to subvert American democracy, the special counsel, Jack Smith, charged the same story three different ways. The charges are novel applications of criminal laws to unprecedented circumstances, heightening legal risks, but Mr. Smith’s tactic gives him multiple paths in obtaining and upholding a guilty verdict.“Especially in a case like this, you want to have multiple charges that are applicable or provable with the same evidence, so that if on appeal you lose one, you still have the conviction,” said Julie O’Sullivan, a Georgetown University law professor and former federal prosecutor.That structure in the indictment is only one of several strategic choices by Mr. Smith — including what facts and potential charges he chose to include or omit — that may foreshadow and shape how an eventual trial of Mr. Trump will play out.The four charges rely on three criminal statutes: a count of conspiring to defraud the government, another of conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and two counts related to corruptly obstructing a congressional proceeding. Applying each to Mr. Trump’s actions raises various complexities, according to a range of criminal law experts.At the same time, the indictment hints at how Mr. Smith is trying to sidestep legal pitfalls and potential defenses. He began with an unusual preamble that reads like an opening statement at trial, acknowledging that Mr. Trump had a right to challenge the election results in court and even to lie about them, but drawing a distinction with the defendant’s pursuit of “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”While the indictment is sprawling in laying out a case against Mr. Trump, it brings a selective lens on the multifaceted efforts by the former president and his associates to overturn the 2020 election.“The strength of the indictment is that it is very narrowly written,” said Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law School professor and former public defender. “The government is not attempting to prove too much, but rather it went for low-hanging fruit.”For one, Mr. Smith said little about the violent events of Jan. 6, leaving out vast amounts of evidence in the report by a House committee that separately investigated the matter. He focused more on a brazen plan to recruit false slates of electors from swing states and a pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to block the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.That choice dovetails with Mr. Smith’s decision not to charge Mr. Trump with inciting an insurrection or seditious conspiracy — potential charges the House committee recommended. By eschewing them, he avoided having the case focus on the inflammatory but occasionally ambiguous remarks Mr. Trump made to his supporters as they morphed into a mob, avoiding tough First Amendment objections that defense lawyers could raise.For another, while Mr. Smith described six of Mr. Trump’s associates as co-conspirators, none were charged. It remains unclear whether some of them will eventually be indicted if they do not cooperate, or whether he intends to target only Mr. Trump so the case will move faster.Mr. Smith chose to say very little about the violent events of Jan. 6 and instead focused on the scheme to recruit slates of fake electors and the pressure Mr. Trump brought upon Vice President Pence.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesAmong the charges Mr. Smith did bring against Mr. Trump, corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding is the most familiar in how it applies to the aftermath of the 2020 election. Already, hundreds of ordinary Jan. 6 rioters have been charged with it.To date, most judges in Jan. 6 cases, at the district court and appeals court level, have upheld the use of the statute. But a few Trump-appointed judges have favored a more narrow interpretation, like limiting the law to situations in which people destroyed evidence or sought a benefit more concrete than having their preferred candidate win an election.Mr. Trump, of course, would have personally benefited from staying in office, making that charge stronger against him than against the rioters. Still, a possible risk is if the Supreme Court soon takes up one of the rioter cases and then narrows the scope of the law in a way that would affect the case against Mr. Trump.Proving IntentSome commentators have argued in recent days that prosecutors must persuade the jury that Mr. Trump knew his voter fraud claims were false to prove corrupt intent. But that is oversimplified, several experts said.To be sure, experts broadly agree that Mr. Smith will have an easier time winning a conviction if jurors are persuaded that Mr. Trump knew he was lying about everything. To that end, the indictment details how he “was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue” and “deliberately disregarded the truth.”“What you see in Trump — a guy who seems to inhabit his own fictional universe — is something you see in other fraud defendants,” said David Alan Sklansky, a Stanford University law professor. “It’s a common challenge in a fraud case to prove that at some level the defendant knew what he was telling people wasn’t true. The way you prove it is, in part, by showing that lots of people made clear to the defendant that what he was saying was baseless.”Moreover, the indictment emphasizes several episodes in which Mr. Trump had firsthand knowledge that his statements were false. Prosecutors can use those instances of demonstrably knowing lies to urge jurors to infer that Mr. Trump knew he was lying about everything else, too.The indictment, for example, recounts a taped call on Jan. 2 with Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which Mr. Trump shared a series of conspiracy theories that he systematically debunked in detail. But on Twitter the next day, Mr. Trump “falsely claimed that the Georgia secretary of state had not addressed” the allegations.And on Jan. 5, Mr. Pence told Mr. Trump that he had no lawful authority to alter or delay the counting of Mr. Biden’s electoral votes, but “hours later” Mr. Trump issued a statement through his campaign saying the opposite: “The vice president and I are in total agreement that the vice president has the power to act.”Vice President Pence appears during House committee hearings investigating Jan. 6. The indictment suggests Mr. Trump knew he was lying about what Mr. Pence had told him on January 5.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn any case, several rioters have already argued that they did not have “corrupt intent” because they sincerely believed the election had been stolen. That has not worked: Judges have said that corrupt intent can be shown by engaging in other unlawful actions like trespassing, assaulting the police and destroying property.“Belief that your actions are serving a greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing,” Judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote last month.Mr. Trump, of course, did not rampage through the Capitol. But the indictment accuses him of committing other crimes — the fraud and voter disenfranchisement conspiracies — based on wrongful conduct. It cites Mr. Trump’s bid to use fake electors in violation of the Electoral Count Act and his solicitation of fraud at the Justice Department and in Georgia, where he pressured Mr. Raffensperger to help him “find” 11,780 votes, enough to overcome Mr. Biden’s margin of victory.“Whether he thinks he won or lost is relevant but not determinative,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former prosecutor who worked on the independent counsel investigation into President Bill Clinton. “Trump could try to achieve vindicating his beliefs legally. The conspiracy is tied to the illegal means. So he has to say that he thought ‘finding’ 11,000 votes was legal, or that fake electors were legal. That is much harder to say with a straight face.”Proving Mr. Trump’s intent will also be key to the charges of defrauding the government and disenfranchising voters. But it may be easier because those laws do not have the heightened standard of “corrupt” intent as the obstruction statute does.Court rulings interpreting the statute that criminalizes defrauding the United States, for example, have established that evidence of deception or dishonesty is sufficient. In a 1924 Supreme Court ruling, Chief Justice William H. Taft wrote that it covers interference with a government function “by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest.” A 1989 appeals courts ruling said the dishonest actions need not be crimes in and of themselves.This factor may help explain the indictment’s emphasis on the fake electors schemes in one state after another, a repetitive narrative that risks dullness: It would be hard to credibly argue that Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators thought the fake slates they submitted were real, and the indictment accuses them of other forms of trickery as well.The opening of the Michigan Electoral College session at the State Capitol in 2020. The indictment emphasizes Mr. Trump’s involvement in fake electors schemes in several swing states.Pool photo by Carlos Osorio“Some fraudulent electors were tricked into participating based on the understanding that their votes would be used only if the defendant succeeded in outcome-determinative lawsuits within their state, which the defendant never did,” it said.A Novel ChargeThe inclusion of the charge involving a conspiracy to disenfranchise voters was a surprising development in Mr. Smith’s emerging strategy. Unlike the other charges, it had not been a major part of the public discussion of the investigation — for example, it was not among the charges recommended by the House Jan. 6 committee.Congress enacted the law after the Civil War to provide a tool for federal prosecutors to go after Southern white people, including Ku Klux Klan members, who used terrorism to prevent formerly enslaved Black people from voting. But in the 20th century, the Supreme Court upheld a broadened use of the law to address election-fraud conspiracies. The idea is that any conspiracy to engineer dishonest election results victimizes all voters in an election.“It was a good move to charge that statute, partly because that is really what this case really is about — depriving the people of the right to choose their president,” said Robert S. Litt, a former federal prosecutor and a top intelligence lawyer in the Obama administration.That statute has mostly been used to address misconduct leading up to and during election, like bribing voters or stuffing ballot boxes, rather than misconduct after an election. Still, in 1933, an appeals court upheld its use in a case involving people who reported false totals from a voter tabulation machine.It has never been used before in a conspiracy to use fake slates of Electoral College voters from multiple states to keep legitimate electors from being counted and thereby subvert the results of a presidential election — a situation that itself was unprecedented.Mr. Trump’s lawyers have signaled they will argue that he had a First Amendment right to say whatever he wanted. Indeed, the indictment acknowledged that it was not illegal in and of itself for Mr. Trump to lie.But in portraying Mr. Trump’s falsehoods as “integral to his criminal plans,” Mr. Smith suggested he would frame those public statements as contributing to unlawful actions and as evidence they were undertaken with bad intentions, not as crimes in and of themselves.Mr. Trump at Reagan National Airport Thursday following his court appearance. Mr. Trump’s legal team has signaled they will argue that he had a First Amendment right to say whatever he wanted.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA related defense Mr. Trump may raise is the issue of “advice of counsel.” If a defendant relied in good faith on a lawyer who incorrectly informed him that doing something would be legal, a jury may decide he lacked criminal intent. But there are limits. Among them, the defendant must have told the lawyer all the relevant facts and the theory must be “reasonable.”The indictment discusses how even though White House lawyers told Mr. Trump that Mr. Pence had no lawful authority to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory, an outside lawyer — John Eastman, described in the indictment as Co-Conspirator 2 and who separately faces disbarment proceedings — advised him that Mr. Pence could.Several legal specialists agreed that Mr. Trump has an advice-of-counsel argument to make. But Samuel W. Buell, a Duke University law professor, said Mr. Smith was likely to try to rebut it by pointing to the repeated instances in which Mr. Trump’s White House legal advisers told him that Mr. Eastman was wrong.“You have to have a genuine good-faith belief that the legal advice is legitimate and valid, not just ‘I’m going to keep running through as many lawyers as I can until one tells me something I want to hear, no matter how crazy and implausible it is,’” Mr. Buell said. More

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      Trump, Arraigned on Election Charges, Pleads Not Guilty

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      The former president appeared in federal court in Washington after being indicted over his efforts to overturn his defeat in 2020. His first pretrial hearing was set for Aug. 28.Former President Donald J. Trump appeared in federal court in Washington on Thursday for the first time to face charges that he conspired to remain in office despite his 2020 election loss, pleading not guilty at a hearing conducted in the shadow of the Capitol, where his supporters, fueled by his lies, had rampaged to block the peaceful transfer of power.Mr. Trump was booked and fingerprinted before entering the courtroom and offering a soft-spoken “not guilty” to each of the four counts lodged against him on Tuesday by Jack Smith, the special counsel.He was allowed to leave court without paying any bail or agreeing to any travel restrictions. A first pretrial hearing was set for Aug. 28.Mr. Trump arrived in Washington in the remarkable position of being under indictment in three separate cases as he is running for president again. In addition to the election case, he faces federal charges of mishandling classified documents and accusations in New York related to hush money payments to a porn star.But even as he sped in and out of Federal District Court in about an hour and a half, he was leading his rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination by wide margins and remained defiant.Crowds gathered outside the federal courthouse where Mr. Trump appeared for his arraignment on Thursday.Jason Andrew for The New York Times“This is a very sad day for America,” Mr. Trump said at the airport in Washington before boarding his plane back to his golf club in New Jersey. “This is a persecution of a political opponent. This was never supposed to happen in America.”Holding his umbrella for him as he emerged from his SUV on the tarmac was Walt Nauta, his personal aide, who was charged alongside him in the classified-documents case.Thursday’s hearing was held inside a courthouse that has been the venue for hundreds of trials stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. His lawyers used the procedural hearing to hint at one of his central defense strategies — a request to delay a second pending federal trial for months, if not years.The arraignment took place about six weeks after he entered another not-guilty plea in a Miami courtroom after being indicted on charges of illegally retaining classified documents at his resort in Florida and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them.Thursday’s arraignment had deeper historical resonance. It began a process in which federal prosecutors will seek to hold Mr. Trump to account for what they say was his refusal to adhere to core democratic principles, a trial that will be held little more than a mile and a half from the White House and at the foot of the Capitol complex where his supporters chanted two and a half years ago for his vice president to be hanged and tried to block Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory.The indictment charged that Mr. Trump lied repeatedly to promote false claims of fraud, sought to bend the Justice Department toward supporting those claims and oversaw a scheme to create false slates of electors pledged to him in states that Mr. Biden had won. And it described how he ultimately pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to use so-called fake electors to subvert the certification of the election at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, that was cut short by the violence at the Capitol.Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya, who oversaw the roughly half-hour intake hearing on Thursday, ordered Mr. Trump not to communicate about the case with any witnesses except through lawyers or in the presence of lawyers. She set the first hearing before the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, for Aug. 28 — the date chosen by Mr. Trump’s lawyers from among the three options she provided and the latest of them.Police officers near the federal courthouse.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesDelaying the proceedings as much as possible is widely expected to be part of Mr. Trump’s legal strategy, given that he could effectively call off federal cases against him if he wins the 2024 election.The jockeying began on Thursday. After Judge Upadhyaya gave prosecutors a week to propose a trial date, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, John F. Lauro, complained that the government had had years to investigate and that he and his colleagues were going to need time to defend their client. She directed him to bring it up with the trial judge and prosecutors to respond within five days of his filing.“Mr. Trump is entitled to a fair and just trial,” Mr. Lauro said after Justice Department prosecutors requested invocation of a provision that could result in a start date within 90 days.Mr. Trump’s defense team has signaled that it intends to employ a variety of arguments to fight the charges.They include asserting that Mr. Trump had a First Amendment right to promote his view that the 2020 election was marred by fraud, and making a case that Mr. Trump sincerely believed his claims that he had been robbed of victory, an argument intended to make it more difficult for prosecutors to establish that he intended to violate the law.The defense team has also suggested that it will argue that Mr. Trump was relying on advice from lawyers when he sought to block certification of Mr. Biden’s victory, and that it could seek to move the trial out of Washington — a Democratic stronghold — to a more politically friendly setting.The wrangling over the timetable underscored the logistical and political complexities facing Mr. Trump and his team as they juggle three criminal proceedings and a presidential campaign.To give a sense of the crowded calendar his legal team will face, some of its members are scheduled to be in Fort Pierce, Fla., for a hearing in the classified-documents case on Aug. 25, and then to turn around and be in Washington on Aug. 28. Mr. Trump does not need to be in the courtroom for the pretrial hearings.Judge Upadhyaya arrived for the hearing 14 minutes late — creating long periods of awkward silence and pen-twiddling as Mr. Trump and his team sat across from equally antsy prosecutors.While the lawyers sparred, most eyes in the courtroom were on the second face-to-face encounter between the former president and Mr. Smith, who has filed charges that could put the 77-year-old Mr. Trump in a federal prison for the rest of his life. This time, unlike in Miami, the two men were positioned in such a way that they could be visible to each other.Jack Smith, the special counsel, announced the indictment of Mr. Trump in Washington on Tuesday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Smith entered the courtroom — normally used by the district’s chief judge, James E. Boasberg — about 15 minutes before the scheduled 4 p.m. start, with his lead prosecutor in the case, Thomas P. Windom, and positioned himself in a chair behind his team, with his back against the rail dividing participants from the gallery.Mr. Trump walked in very slowly in his signature long red tie and long blue suit coat, surveying the room and mouthing a greeting to no one in particular. He glanced briefly in the direction of Mr. Smith — whom he has called “deranged” — but he did not seem to make eye contact.Mr. Trump spoke in respectful tones when questioned by Judge Upadhyaya, the magistrate judge who presided over the proceeding.Yet if he had seemed chastened and ill at ease in Florida, he was more his defiant self on Thursday.When she asked his name, he replied, “Donald J. Trump” and then added “John!”When she asked his age, he raised his voice a notch and intoned, “Seven-seven!”At the end of the proceeding, Judge Upadhyaya thanked Mr. Trump, who said, “Thank you, your honor.” On the “all rise” command, he stood up. One of his lawyers put his arm on Mr. Trump’s back and guided him away from the table and out the courtroom door.Mr. Smith, known for his implacable demeanor, remained still for most of the hearing. But after Mr. Trump’s entourage exited, he appeared to let his guard down, smiling broadly as he shook hands with F.B.I. agents who had been working on the case.But the gravity of the case weighed heavily on participants and observers alike.At least three of the district court judges who have presided over trials of the Trump supporters charged for their roles in the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6 filed into the back row of the visitors’ gallery to observe. One was Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who had criticized what she called Mr. Trump’s “irresponsible and knowingly false claims that the election was stolen” in imposing a harsh sentence on a rioter who had bludgeoned a Capitol Police officer into unconsciousness.Outside the courthouse, security was heavy, with officers on foot and on horseback and barricades erected on the sidewalk. The crowd, made up of Mr. Trump’s critics and his supporters, clogged the area outside the courthouse, with some carrying pro-Trump signs and others shouting anti-Trump slogans, including “Lock him up!”The former president arrived in Washington by motorcade in the remarkable position of being under indictment in three separate cases.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMaggie Haberman More

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      Fact-Checking Trump Defenders’ Claims After Indictment in Election Case

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      Former President Donald Trump’s supporters have made inaccurate claims about the judge presiding over his case and misleadingly compared his conduct to that of other politicians.Allies of former President Donald J. Trump have rushed to his defense since he was charged on Tuesday in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.They inaccurately attacked the judge assigned to oversee the trial, baselessly speculated that the timing of the accusations was intended to obscure misconduct by the Bidens and misleadingly compared his conduct to that of Democratic politicians.Here’s a fact check.What Was Said“Judge Chutkan was appointed to the D.C. District Court by Barack Obama, and she has a reputation for being far left, even by D.C. District Court standards. Judge Chutkan, for example, has set aside numerous federal death-penalty cases, and she is the only federal judge in Washington, D.C., who has sentenced Jan. 6 defendants to sentences longer than the government requested.”— Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, in a podcast on WednesdayThis is exaggerated. Mr. Cruz is correct that Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the trial judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s prosecution in the case, was appointed by President Barack Obama. While she has gained a reputation for handing down tough sentences to people convicted of crimes in the Jan. 6 riot, she is not the only federal judge who has exceeded prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations.Of the more than 1,000 people who have been charged for their activities on Jan. 6, 2021, about 561 people have received a sentence, including 335 in jail and another 119 in home detention, as of July 6, according to the Justice Department. Judges have largely issued sentences shorter than what prosecutors sought and what federal sentencing guidelines recommend, data compiled by NPR and The Washington Post shows.Senator Ted Cruz described Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s appointment as “highly problematic,” but in the Federal District Court in Washington, cases are randomly assigned.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesJudge Chutkan ordered longer penalties in at least four cases, according to NPR, and appears to have done so more frequently than her peers. But other judges in Federal District Court in Washington have also imposed harsher sentences.Those include Judge Royce C. Lamberth, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, who sentenced a man to 60 days in prison while the government had asked for 14 days. He sentenced another to 51 months, rather than 46 months, and another to 60 days, rather than 30.Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, sentenced another defendant to 30 days, twice as long as the government recommendation. Judge Reggie B. Walton, nominated by President George W. Bush, sentenced a defendant to 50 days compared with the recommended 30 days. And Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, appointed by President Bill Clinton, sentenced a man to 60 days rather than 45 days.Moreover, Mr. Cruz described Judge Chutkan’s appointment as “highly problematic” given her political leanings. But it is worth noting that in the Federal District Court in Washington, cases are randomly assigned — similar to how Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee, was randomly assigned to preside over the case involving Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left office.What Was Said“All of these indictments have been called into question because they come right after massive evidence is released about the Biden family. On June 7, the F.B.I. released documents alleging that the Bidens took in $10 million in bribes from Burisma. The very next day, Jack Smith indicted Trump over the classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. And then you go to July 26. That’s when Hunter Biden’s plea deal fell apart after the D.O.J. tried giving him blanket immunity from any future prosecutions. The very next day, Jack Smith added more charges to the Mar-a-Lago case. And now, just one day after Devon Archer gave explosive testimony about Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter Biden’s business deals, Smith indicts Trump for Jan. 6.”— Maria Bartiromo, anchor on Fox Business Network, on WednesdayThis lacks evidence. Mr. Trump and many of his supporters have suggested that the timing of developments in investigations into his conduct runs suspiciously parallel to investigations into the conduct of Hunter Biden and is meant as a distraction.But there is no proof that Mr. Smith, the special counsel overseeing the cases, has deliberately synced his inquiries into Mr. Trump with investigations into the Bidens, one of which is handled by federal prosecutors and others by House Republicans.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Mr. Smith as special counsel in November to investigate Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol as well as the former president’s retention of classified documents. After Republicans won the House that same month, lawmakers in the party said they would begin to investigate the Bidens. (The Justice Department separately began an inquiry into Hunter Biden’s taxes and business dealings in 2018.)Over the next few months, the inquiries barreled along, with some developments inevitably occurring almost in tandem. In some cases, Mr. Smith has little control over the developments or when they are publicly revealed.The first overlap Ms. Bartiromo cited centered on an F.B.I. document from June 2020 that contained an unsubstantiated allegation of bribery against President Biden and his son, and on charges filed against Mr. Trump over his handling of classified documents.Jack Smith was appointed in November 2022 to investigate Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot.Doug Mills/The New York TimesRepresentative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, issued a subpoena in May for the document. The F.B.I. allowed Mr. Comer and the committee’s top Democrat access to a redacted version on June 5. That same day, Mr. Comer said he would initiate contempt-of-Congress hearings against the F.B.I. director on June 8, as the agency was still resisting giving all members access to the document.Two days later, on June 7, Mr. Comer announced that the F.B.I. had relented and that he would cancel the contempt proceedings. Members of the committee viewed the document on the morning of June 8, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, held a news conference that afternoon describing the document.That night, Mr. Trump himself, not the Justice Department, announced that he had been charged over his mishandling of classified documents, overtaking any headlines about the Bidens. The department declined to comment, and the indictment was unsealed a day later, on June 9.In the second overlap, on July 26, a federal judge put on hold a proposed plea deal between Hunter Biden and the Justice Department over tax and gun charges. Ms. Bartiromo is correct that a grand jury issued new charges against Mr. Trump in the documents case on July 27.The timing of the latest developments in Ms. Bartiromo’s third example, too, was not entirely in Mr. Smith’s hands.Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer was first subpoenaed on June 12 to testify before the committee on June 16. Mr. Comer told The Washington Examiner that Mr. Archer rescheduled his appearance three times before his lawyer confirmed on July 30 that he would appear the next day. Mr. Archer then spoke to the House oversight committee in nearly five hours of closed-door testimony on July 31. Republicans and Democrats on the committee gave conflicting accounts of what Mr. Archer said.Mr. Trump announced on July 18 that federal prosecutors had informed him he was a target of their investigation into his efforts to stay in office, suggesting that he would soon be indicted. Mr. Trump’s lawyers met with officials in the office of Mr. Smith on July 27. A magistrate judge ordered the indictment unsealed at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 1.What Was Said“All of the people who claim that the 2016 election wasn’t legitimate, all of the people who claimed in 2004, with a formal objection in the Congress, that that election wasn’t legitimate, and in fact, objected to the point where they said that the voting machines in Ohio were tampered with and that President Bush was selected, not elected — and not to mention former presidents of the United States and secretary of states, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter and a whole slew of House Democrats who repeatedly led the nation to believe — lied to the nation, that they said Russia selected Donald Trump as president, that the election was completely illegitimate — all of that was allowed to pass, but yet, once again, we see a criminalization when it comes to Donald Trump.”— Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, on CNN on WednesdayThis is misleading. Mr. Trump’s supporters have long argued that Democrats, too, have objected to election results and pushed allegations of voting malfeasance. None of the objections cited, though, have been paired with concerted efforts to overturn election results, as was the case for Mr. Trump.Democratic lawmakers objected to counting a state’s electors after the elections of recent Republican presidents in 2001, 2005 and 2017. In 2001 and 2017, objecting House members were unable to find a senator to sign on to their objections, as is required, and were overruled by the vice president. In 2005, two Democrats objected to counting Ohio’s electoral votes. The two chambers then convened debate and rejected the objections.In each case, the losing candidate had already conceded, did not try to overturn election results and did not try to persuade the vice president to halt proceedings as Mr. Trump is accused of doing in 2020.Mrs. Clinton has said repeatedly that Russian interference was partly to blame for her defeat in the 2016 presidential election. But she is not accused of trying to overthrow the results of the election. Prosecutors have not detailed any involvement on her part in a multifaceted effort to stay in power, including by organizing slates of false electors or pressuring officials to overturn voting results.What Was Said“Indicting political opponent candidates during a presidential election is what happens in banana republics and Third World countries.”— Representative Andy Harris, Republican of Maryland, in a Twitter post on TuesdayThis is exaggerated. Mr. Trump is the first former U.S. president to be indicted on criminal charges, but he is not the only presidential candidate to face charges in the United States and certainly not in the world.Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, was indicted in August 2014 and accused of abusing his power. Mr. Perry, who ran for president in 2012, had hinted that he would run again and set up a political action committee the same month he was indicted. He officially announced his presidential bid in 2015 but dropped out before a court dismissed the charges against him in 2016.Eugene V. Debs, the socialist leader, ran for president behind bars in 1920 after he was indicted on a charge of sedition for opposing American involvement in World War I. He was sentenced in 1918 to 10 years in prison.It is also not unheard-of for political leaders in advanced economies and democracies to face charges while campaigning for office. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of fraud and bribery. After losing power, he returned to his post in November 2022 while still facing charges. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi faced numerous charges and scandals over tax fraud and prostitution while he served as prime minister in the 2000s.And in Taiwan, prosecutors said in 2006 that they had enough evidence to bring corruption charges against the president at the time, Chen Shui-bian. Mr. Chen remained his party’s chairman through parliamentary elections in 2008 as the investigation loomed over him, and he was arrested and charged that November. More

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      The Charges That Were Notably Absent From the Trump Indictment

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      An indictment this week did not accuse former President Donald Trump of inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol, but it did show that some close to him knew violence might be coming.There was something noticeably absent when the special counsel, Jack Smith, unsealed an indictment this week charging former President Donald J. Trump with multiple conspiracies to overturn the 2020 election: any count that directly accused Mr. Trump of being responsible for the violence his supporters committed at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The indictment asserted that as violence erupted that day, Mr. Trump “exploited the disruption,” using it to further his goal of stopping the certification of his loss in the election. But it stopped short of charging him with actually encouraging or inciting the mob that stormed the building, chasing lawmakers from their duties.Still, the charging document, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, made abundantly clear that a group of aides and lawyers surrounding Mr. Trump were highly aware that he was playing with fire by pushing forward with his plan to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, to throw the election his way during the congressional proceeding on Jan. 6.While some of the aides and lawyers were aghast by what might, and ultimately did, take place, others seemed unconcerned, especially those who were later named as Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in the case.In one scene described in the indictment, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump warned the lawyer John Eastman just days before the Capitol was attacked that his plan to have Mr. Trump strong-arm Mr. Pence was “going to cause riots in the streets.”According to the indictment, Mr. Eastman “responded that there had previously been points in the nation’s history where violence was necessary to protect the republic.”More than 1,000 people have been charged so far with taking part in the Capitol attack, which caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage and injuries to more than 100 police officers. Among those accused are nearly 350 defendants charged with assaulting the police and 10 members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia who were convicted at trial of seditious conspiracy, a crime that requires showing that physical force was used against the government.In December, the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 recommended that the Justice Department charge Mr. Trump with several federal crimes, including inciting insurrection — a count that would have directly placed the blame for the attack on Mr. Trump’s shoulders. But Mr. Smith’s prosecutors did not include that charge in the indictment.Instead, they focused on counts that detailed Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging machinations to remain in power in the weeks leading up to the attack and on how he took his time in issuing a plea for calm to his supporters once the attack was underway.At a news conference announcing the charges, Mr. Smith asserted that the assault on the Capitol was “fueled by lies,” but over the course of its 45 pages, the indictment itself never quite makes that accusation directly against Mr. Trump.And yet the charges did lay out how Mr. Eastman, who is identified in the indictment only as Co-Conspirator 2, and Jeffrey Clark, a loyalist in Mr. Trump’s Justice Department who appears as Co-Conspirator 4, understood and even accepted that violence might result from their plans to subvert the democratic process and keep Mr. Trump in the White House.Three days before the Capitol was attacked, the indictment says, a deputy White House counsel told Mr. Clark that there had been no voting fraud sufficient to change the results of the election and that if Mr. Trump nonetheless maintained his grip on power, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.”Mr. Clark’s response, according to the indictment, was to bring up a federal law that allows the president to summon the military to quell domestic unrest.“That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act,” he said.For reasons that remain unknown, prosecutors chose not to include in the indictment any evidence from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows. In a gripping testimony last year in front of the House Jan. 6 committee, Ms. Hutchinson described how Mr. Trump, knowing his supporters were armed and threatening violence on Jan. 6, urged them to march to Capitol anyhow — and even sought to join them.Ms. Hutchinson told the panel that Mr. Trump had demanded that security checkpoints be removed outside his rally on the Ellipse, near the White House, even though he had been warned that some in the crowd had been spotted with weapons.“They’re not here to hurt me,” she quoted Mr. Trump as saying.In theory, Mr. Smith’s team could bring new charges against Mr. Trump at almost any time, using accounts like Ms. Hutchinson’s to support an accusation that Mr. Trump played some role in encouraging the violence at the Capitol. The incitement charge recommended by the House committee is written quite broadly, making it a crime to “incite, assist with or participate in” a rebellion or an insurrection against federal laws or government authority.Prosecutors could also try to connect Mr. Trump more directly with the violence through the statements made by scores of rioters charged in the Capitol attack who have said that they were answering Mr. Trump’s call when they traveled to Washington and joined in the assault.“Hey we’re going back to Washington January 6 — Trump has called all patriots,” an Iowa woman named Deborah Sandoval wrote on Facebook on Dec. 21, 2020, two days after Mr. Trump summoned his followers to a “wild” protest in the city. “If the electors don’t elect, we will be forced into civil war.”Still, prosecutors are often wary of bringing incitement charges because they typically involve behavior like speeches or social media posts that the First Amendment protects, within limits.And Mr. Trump’s lawyers have already signaled that he intends to use a First Amendment defense against the charges he is facing.During his speech before the attack, Mr. Trump did at one point tell his followers to march on the Capitol “peacefully,” and, after the building had been stormed, he posted messages on Twitter belatedly asking people in the crowd to “remain peaceful.”But prosecutors say that even though he issued those calls, he did not ask his supporters to leave the Capitol grounds until after 6 p.m. that day. And as he made that request, the indictment said, he continued to repeat his false claims that a “sacred landslide victory” had been “viciously stripped away” from him. More