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      Donald Trump’s Latest Indictment May Reshape the 2024 Race

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      The former president, who faces seven criminal charges for mishandling classified documents, is expected to surrender to authorities next week.“I’m an innocent man,” Donald Trump told his supporters on Thursday night.Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTrump indicted: what to expect next For the second time in two months, Donald Trump will surrender to the authorities to face legal charges, dropping another bomb into the 2024 presidential race. Within minutes, he was fund-raising on the back of the news.The indictment hasn’t yet been unsealed, but some details are known. The former president and front-runner for the Republican nomination faces seven criminal charges that he mishandled classified documents from his time in the White House and obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim them. He is expected to turn himself in to the authorities on Tuesday.Mr. Trump himself broke the news last night, a sign his inner circle had been bracing for the indictment for weeks.On his Truth Social platform, Mr. Trump called the charges “election interference at the highest level,” adding, “I’m an innocent man.” Mr. Trump’s legal troubles keep piling up. But this indictment holds greater “legal gravity and political peril,” writes The Times’s Peter Baker. It’s not just a first in American history for a former president, but also involves the nation’s secrets.Here’s a recap of the other legal matters he faces:A federal grand jury last month ordered Mr. Trump to pay $5 million to the journalist E. Jean Carroll in a civil case that he sexually abused and then defamed her; Carroll’s legal team has sued Mr. Trump again over subsequent comments he made about her.In April, the New York authorities charged Mr. Trump with falsifying business documents in connection with hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.Mr. Trump is also under investigation in Georgia for possible election tampering in the state; a decision is expected later this summer.Mr. Trump’s Republican challengers came to his defense. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, his nearest rival in the polls, accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department to take on a political rival. And Vivek Ramaswamy, the anti-woke financier, said he would pardon Mr. Trump if elected president.Mr. Trump gained in the polls the last time he was charged. It is unclear if the public will be so supportive this time. A Yahoo-YouGov poll showed nearly two-thirds of Americans view the charges of removing classified documents and obstructing the investigation as a serious criminal matter; a similar percentage feel that he should not serve as president if convicted.So far, big-money conservative donors have stayed mum on the latest charges. Many have deserted Mr. Trump after backing him in previous election cycles.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The wildfire haze is moving on from the Northeast. Cities including New York and Philadelphia have seen air conditions improve, though the noxious smoke is spreading south and west; the F.A.A. has lifted ground stops at LaGuardia and Newark airports. But scientists confirmed that the El Niño weather phenomenon has started, portending hotter temperatures through next year.China suffers from a lack of inflation. New monthly data shows that producer prices fell 4.6 percent in May, the sharpest year-on-year drop in seven years, while consumer prices rose just 0.2 percent. Though a contrast from Western countries grappling with rapid inflation, the trend suggests China’s faltering economy may soon suffer from deflation.The White House reportedly braces for the death of its student loan forgiveness program. Biden administration officials are privately worrying that the Supreme Court may strike down its proposal, which would eliminate up to $20,000 in education debt per person for millions of Americans, according to The Wall Street Journal. The White House is preparing less legally risky alternatives to help borrowers.G.M. electric vehicles will gain access to Tesla’s charging network. The move, which follows a similar announcement by Ford, will vastly expand charger accessibility for G.M. But some in the industry fear that wider adoption of Tesla’s plugs, which are now likely to become the industry standard, will give Elon Musk’s company even greater power over the E.V. market.The bull market rally is already being testedInvestors shrugged off lousy labor market data and a new round of inflation warnings to push the S&P 500 into bull market territory on Thursday. But that enthusiasm seems to be waning on Friday morning as stock futures suggest markets will open lower.The bear market lasted 248 trading days, the longest such run since 1948. Since its October low, the S&P 500 has gained 20.04 percent, just enough to tip into a bull market. The benchmark index is still roughly 10 percent away from a record high; some market observers say, therefore, that it’s premature to call this a true bull market.Investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence has underpinned this rally. According to Deutsche Bank analysts, the FANG+ Index — a collection of big cap tech stocks, many of which are expanding into A.I. — is up nearly 80 percent since ChatGPT debuted in November.Now to the bad news … A growing number of economists believe that next week’s Consumer Price Index report will show an uptick in core inflation. That could pressure the Fed to raise interest rates further — if not next week, in July.And there are signs of economic weakness. The Labor Department on Thursday reported 261,000 new jobless claims, the highest number since October 2021.Expect a prolonged period of economic uncertainty. That was the message from Mario Draghi, the former Italian prime minister and president of the E.C.B., in a speech on Thursday at M.I.T.The economist, who once famously vowed to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro, has a bearish view of the future. He warned that industrialized economies face a “volatile cocktail” of persistent inflation, high budget deficits, high interest rates and low potential growth as central banks grapple with a climate crisis, the reshoring of supply chains and the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.Crypto’s protagonists lay out their casesRegulators and crypto executives are making their cases in the court of public opinion after the S.E.C. sued Binance and Coinbase, two of the sector’s biggest exchanges, this week in an intensifying crackdown on the industry.“We’ve seen this story before,” the S.E.C. chairman Gary Gensler said on Thursday at a fintech conference, likening widespread noncompliance in crypto to the era of “hucksters” and fraud a century ago. He rejected claims that digital asset businesses cannot comply with the existing rules or do not realize that they apply: “When crypto asset market participants go on Twitter or TV and say they lacked ‘fair notice’ that their conduct could be illegal, don’t believe it.”Coinbase’s boss says that new regulations are needed. Its C.E.O., Brian Armstrong, addressed the event on Wednesday, saying the rules are opaque and need to be updated. The S.E.C. case is certainly a drag on his company: Moody’s, the ratings agency, downgraded Coinbase on Thursday to negative from stable because of the charges.Binance is regrouping. The company’s American division said on Thursday that it would no longer allow customers to trade in U.S. dollars, after banks stopped working with it. At the same time, the S.E.C. says it is trying to find “alternative means” to serve legal papers to Binance and Changpeng Zhao, the company’s C.E.O., telling a federal court that it was difficult to determine where he was.Who’s judging? The S.E.C.’s case against Coinbase in New York was assigned to District Judge Jennifer Rearden. Her nomination last year angered some Democratic lawmakers because she represented Chevron as a lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She’s also handling the government’s appeal of the sale of the failed crypto broker Voyager to Binance’s U.S. arm and put the deal on hold in March. Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court for D.C. is presiding over the Binance case, and is best known for overseeing the criminal proceedings against two Mr. Trump advisers, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Next week, she will hold a hearing on an S.E.C. request to freeze Binance’s assets.“I did not comprehend that ChatGPT could fabricate cases.” — Steven Schwartz, a lawyer who has practiced in New York for 30 years. He told a federal judge that he regrets using the chatbot to write a legal brief that was found to be filled with fake judicial opinions and legal citations.Buzzphrase of the week: “spatial computing” Apple unveiled its first headset for augmented/virtual/mixed reality this week, but none of those words appears in a nine-minute video on its website about the $3,500 Vision Pro goggles. Instead, the company preferred a more obscure term: “spatial computing.”Apple is trying to put its own stamp on the category. When it comes to spatial computing, “no one knows what that is — and that provides Apple the opportunity to define it,” Marcus Collins, the author of “For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do and Who We Want to Be,” told DealBook.Apple has successfully done this in the past. Before the App Store, people didn’t talk about apps; they talked about “software programs.”And the iPhone and AirPods were neither the first mobile phone nor the first earbuds, but they became runaway hits (despite being priced at a premium to the competition). Jim Posner, a communications consultant who has led teams at Twitter and Google, said that the intended audience may be investors and the media rather than consumers. “They are pitching a product to people,” he said. “For the tech press, industry analysts and investors, they’re pitching a concept.”Elsewhere, Mark Zuckerberg gave his thoughts on Apple’s Vision Pro goggles. “I was really curious to see what they’d ship,” the Meta C.E.O. told employees on Thursday, “and it’s a good sign for our own development that they don’t have any magical solutions to the laws of physics that we haven’t already explored.”THE SPEED READ DealsThe agricultural commodities giant Bunge is said to be finalizing a deal to buy Viterra, a grain trader, that could value the combined firm at $30 billion. (Reuters)UBS has secured a government backstop for losses tied to its takeover of Credit Suisse, clearing the last hurdle for combining Switzerland’s top two banks. (FT)Permira is reportedly weighing a sale or public listing for Golden Goose, a footwear brand favored by Taylor Swift, at a $2.7 billion valuation. (Bloomberg)PolicyLouisiana passed a bill that would block online services — including Instagram, TikTok and Fortnite — for children under 18 without their parents’ permission. (NYT)The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a dog-toy maker whose product closely resembles a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. (NYT)Best of the restSam Altman of OpenAI, Bob Iger of Disney, Jay Monahan of the PGA Tour, Rupert Murdoch of Fox and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet are all on the guest list for this year’s Allen & Company gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho. (Variety)How Taylor Swift is a godsend for Chicago’s hotel industry. (Bloomberg)“What All the Single Ladies (and Men) Say About the Economy” (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Here Are Some of the Charges Trump Faces in Classified Documents Case

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      A grand jury has charged former President Donald J. Trump with a total of seven counts, according to two people familiar with the indictment.While the precise details of all the charges are not yet clear, the people familiar with the matter said the charges include willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.Here is a closer look.Unauthorized retention of national security documentsIt is a crime to retain national security documents without authorization and to fail to deliver them to a government official entitled to take custody of them.To win a conviction, prosecutors would have to show that Mr. Trump knew he was still in possession of the documents after leaving the White House and failed to comply when the government asked him to return them and then subpoenaed him.Each such charged document would be a separate offense, so it is possible that prosecutors have brought as many as five counts of this offense by citing five different records. A conviction would be theoretically subject to 10 years in prison for each count, although defendants in other Espionage Act cases have received significantly less than the maximum.To obtain a conviction, prosecutors would also have to prove to the jury that the documents related to the national defense, that they were closely held and that their disclosure could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.Although Mr. Trump has claimed — without evidence — that he declassified all the files he took to Mar-a-Lago, prosecutors would not technically need to prove that they were still classified because the Espionage Act predates the classification system and does not refer to it as an element.Conspiracy ChargesIt is a crime to agree with another person to break a law. Prosecutors would need to show that Mr. Trump and some other person had a meeting of the minds about committing a specific crime and that one of them took some step toward that goal. The penalty can be up to five years.ObstructionIt is a crime to conceal records to obstruct an official effort. Prosecutors would need to show several things, including that Mr. Trump knew he still had files that were subject to the efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration to take custody of presidential records. They would also need to be able to demonstrate that he willfully defied the Justice Department’s subpoena for files marked as classified, and that he intentionally caused his subordinates to fail to turn them all over while leading officials to believe they had complied. The penalty is up to 20 years per offense.False statementIt is a crime to make a false statement to a law enforcement officer about a fact material to the officer’s investigation. Such crimes carry a penalty of up to five years per offense.Mr. Trump is not known to have directly made substantive statements to the government, but prosecutors could charge him if they can show that he conspired with or induced another person to lie to the Justice Department about there being no further documents responsive to the subpoena.Or, if prosecutors can show that he induced his lawyers to unwittingly lie to the Justice Department, they could charge Mr. Trump directly for causing the false statement even if he himself did not commit the offense himself. The law says that “whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.”It is not known what the other charges are, but here are some possibilities:Mishandling official documentsWhether or not the documents relate to national security, it is a crime to conceal or destroy official documents. Among other disclosures, former aides to Mr. Trump have recounted how he sometimes ripped up official documents. The National Archives has also said that some of the White House paper records the Trump administration transferred to it had been torn up, including some that had been taped back together. The penalty is up to three years per offense, in addition to a ban on holding federal office, although the latter is most likely unconstitutional, legal experts say.Contempt of courtIt is a crime to willfully disobey a court order, like the grand jury subpoena Mr. Trump received in May 2022 that required him to turn over all documents marked as classified that remained in his possession. It carries a penalty of a fine of up to $1,000 and up to six months in prison. To bring this charge, prosecutors would need evidence showing he knew that he was still holding onto other files with classification markings during and after his representatives purported to comply with the subpoena. More

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      As Prosecutors Revisit Police Killings, Charges Are Still Rare

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      Pamela Price, a new district attorney in Northern California, is the latest to reopen cases that had seemingly been shut, including one from more than 15 years ago.Agustin Gonsalez was shot dead in 2018 by police officers in Hayward, Calif., when he refused to drop a sharp object during a confrontation on a dark street.Andrew Moppin-Buckskin was killed by Oakland officers in 2007 after he ran away following a car chase, hid under a vehicle and failed to comply with their demands.Two years ago, Mario Gonzalez died after he was pinned on the ground for more than five minutes by officers in Alameda, Calif.In all three cases, prosecutors determined that the police should not be criminally charged, seemingly closing the book.But shortly after she became the district attorney of Alameda County in January, Pamela Price initiated a new review of those cases and five others in one of the most extensive re-examinations of police killings launched by progressive prosecutors.Ms. Price’s review is notable because her predecessors had already cleared the officers of wrongdoing and two of the reopened cases occurred more than 15 years ago.As high-profile instances of police brutality shocked the public in recent years and raised questions about official law enforcement accounts, liberal prosecutors campaigned on the promise that they would review cases that they felt were hastily closed without charges. Their efforts to revisit old cases have won praise from the activists and liberal Democrats who voted for them.But the re-examinations so far have rarely led to criminal charges.“To reopen a police use-of-force case is, in many ways, a herculean task,” said Steve Descano, the commonwealth’s attorney in Fairfax County, Va. He lost in court after he charged two federal Park Police officers for the 2017 shooting of a man who fled a car crash, a case that the Justice Department previously reviewed and declined to pursue.The incidents almost never have evidence as stark as the bystander video showing George Floyd being pinned to the ground in 2020 for more than nine minutes by Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd.The circumstances often are more ambiguous, the footage less telling. And once a district attorney writes a lengthy memo detailing why criminal charges are unjustified against a police officer, it can be difficult for a successor to overcome those arguments, absent new evidence.“Everybody is going to go through it again, and the outcome in all probability is going to be the same,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “And what’s Einstein’s definition of insanity?”The biggest hurdle for pursuing criminal charges is the wide latitude that officers have to use force. State legislatures, including California’s, have tried to narrow that ability. But officers generally can still use lethal force when they feel they or others could be killed, a level of immunity that law enforcement officials say is necessary to ensure the public’s safety.Pamela Price, the new district attorney of Alameda County, Calif., announced this year that she would review eight police killings, including one dating to 2007.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAlameda County, Ms. Price’s jurisdiction, covers a large swath of the East Bay across from San Francisco, containing 14 cities and numerous police departments. In the county seat of Oakland, where the Black Panther Party emerged in the 1960s, a legacy of radical politics is intertwined with a troubled history of law enforcement. The Oakland Police Department has been under federal oversight for more than two decades.Ms. Price campaigned on a liberal platform that, besides reviewing old cases, included removing local residents from death row and resentencing inmates serving life sentences — an effort, she said, to restore public trust. Since taking office, she has directed her staff to seek the lowest possible prison sentence for most crimes.She said that in the past, prosecutors routinely gave officers a pass when they killed someone on the job, and she wants questionable police killings to face the same rigor that other criminal cases get.“Every case that we’re looking at now was determined under a double standard,” Ms. Price said in an interview. “Police officers received a different standard of justice than everyday people.”Ms. Price is among a growing cadre of progressive prosecutors elected over the last decade, beginning with the 2016 elections of Kim Foxx in Chicago and Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, on promises of reducing jail populations and holding police accountable. The movement gained steam after Floyd’s murder.Some prominent district attorneys have since faced a backlash over crime concerns. Chesa Boudin was recalled last year in San Francisco, while Ms. Gardner resigned last week as she faced criticism for her handling of violent crime. Ms. Foxx is not running for re-election next year and has endured criticism from moderates and conservatives, especially for her support of eliminating cash bail statewide.In Maine, a police officer has never been prosecuted for an on-duty killing. But in July 2020, Natasha Irving, the district attorney for four counties, said she would seek charges for the 2007 police shooting death of Gregori Jackson, who was drunk and ran away after a routine traffic stop in Waldoboro, the town where Ms. Irving grew up.Three years later, however, Ms. Irving said that based on the attorney general’s review of the forensics from the case, she will not file charges.“It’s just not going to be a provable case,” she said in an interview.Karla Gonsalez stood at a memorial to her son at the site in Hayward, Calif., where he was shot and killed by police officers.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn the Virginia case pursued by Mr. Descano, Bijan Ghaisar, 25, was involved in a minor car crash and then fled in his Jeep, pursued by two officers who cornered Mr. Ghaisar in a residential neighborhood. When the vehicle moved toward a police car, they opened fire, killing him.Mr. Descano brought a case, but a judge dismissed the charges, ruling the officers reasonably feared they were in danger. His efforts to pursue the case further were rejected by the state’s attorney general and the Justice Department.Such reviews offer the possibility of justice for still grieving families but also may unrealistically raise their hopes. Karla Gonsalez, the mother of Mr. Gonsalez, the man who was killed in Hayward, said she was torn when she heard Ms. Price was reopening her son’s case.Television outlets began replaying the body camera footage of Mr. Gonsalez’s confrontation with police. For his family, all of the anger, grief and unresolved questions came rushing back. Why had the officers not tried to de-escalate the situation?“I was excited to know that it was going to be opened up again,” Ms. Gonsalez said. “At the same time, I was very nervous that it was going to be another roadblock, another failure.”Less than 2 percent of police killings result in charges, according to Philip M. Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University. That figure has not budged since 2020. The number of people killed by the police is holding steady — last year it was 1,200, compared with 1,147 in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence.“From where I sit, nothing has changed,” Mr. Stinson said.In Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor declined to file charges.Ryan Young for The New York TimesIn Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor, Jackie Lacey, declined to file charges. He also asked an independent team of experts to review more than 300 previous use-of-force cases to see if the evidence warranted criminal charges.The special prosecutor, Lawrence Middleton, had secured convictions in a 1993 federal trial against Los Angeles Police Department officers for beating Rodney King. In the new cases, he has secured indictments against two officers in the 2018 shooting death of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, who was driving a stolen vehicle and had an air rifle between his legs when he was confronted by officers in a grocery store parking lot. (“Both officers’ use of deadly force was reasonable under the circumstances,” Ms. Lacey wrote in a 2019 memo.)The re-examinations themselves take time, and liberal prosecutors may yet file criminal charges against more officers in past cases. But they said that charges should not be the only benchmark of whether their reviews are worthwhile.“I think there is huge value to reopening a case if there is probable cause, or if there is evidence that seems compelling in any way,” Ms. Irving, the prosecutor in Maine, said. “Yes, part of it is to send a message to people who would be bad actors. Part of it is to send a message to families that have lost loved ones, or individuals who have been harmed, that they count.”Ed Obayashi, a California-based expert in use of force who trains law enforcement, said in 2021 that Mario Gonzalez did not seem to be a threat to the public in Alameda and questioned why officers restrained him before he died. The police had responded to a call that Mr. Gonzalez, 26, was acting strangely in a park and talking to himself.Mr. Obayashi said this week that he did not fault Ms. Price for reviewing the case, but he also felt that if there was consensus in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office under her predecessor, Ms. Price should not have reopened it.“It’s a big concern to law enforcement because these types of decisions, to revisit old cases that former prosecutors have decided that no charges should be brought against the officer, it’s political,” Mr. Obayashi said. “It’s politically driven.”Ms. Price’s review also includes two cases from 15 years ago that occurred seven months apart and involved the same officer killing men who ran away after traffic stops, including Mr. Moppin-Buckskin. The officer, Hector Jimenez, was cleared in each case and remains with the Oakland Police Department.“For the life of me I can’t understand what Ms. Price thinks she’s doing with those kinds of cases, some 15 years after they occurred,” said Michael Rains, a lawyer for Mr. Jimenez.In Hayward, the city agreed to pay $3.3 million to settle a federal lawsuit with Agustin Gonsalez’s family but said it was a way to support his children rather than an admission of wrongdoing. The city said in April that there appeared to be no new evidence that warranted reopening the case.Mr. Gonsalez was shot in November 2018 after police officers confronted him. He was suicidal and was holding a razor blade. He refused to drop the blade and approached the officers with his arms outstretched. That’s when the two veteran police officers shot him 12 times.Karla Gonsalez recently sat in her sister’s kitchen and described her son as a father of two who was an Oakland sports fan and often drove nearly 400 miles south to Disneyland with his season pass. In the corner of her living room was a makeshift shrine, with a flickering candle and a crucifix draped over his portrait.Cynthia Nunes, Mr. Gonsalez’s cousin, said her family was grateful his case was being reopened. But they want more.“Charges actually have to be brought forward, too,” she said. “The system needs to change.”Julie Bosman More

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      Mark Meadows Testified to Grand Jury in Trump Special Counsel Investigation

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      Mr. Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, is seen as a potentially key witness in the documents and Jan. 6 inquiries.Mark Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under President Donald J. Trump and a potentially key figure in inquiries related to Mr. Trump, has testified before a federal grand jury hearing evidence in the investigations being led by the special counsel’s office, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Meadows is a figure in both of the two distinct lines of inquiry being pursued by the special counsel appointed to oversee the Justice Department’s scrutiny of Mr. Trump, Jack Smith.One inquiry is focused on Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, culminating in the attack by a pro-Trump mob on the Capitol during congressional certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021. The other is an investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of hundreds of classified documents after he left office and whether he obstructed efforts to retrieve them.It is not clear precisely when Mr. Meadows testified or if investigators questioned him about one or both of the cases.For months, people in Mr. Trump’s orbit have been puzzled by and wary about the low profile kept by Mr. Meadows in the investigations. As reports surfaced of one witness after another going into the grand jury or to be interviewed by federal investigators, Mr. Meadows has kept largely out of sight, and some of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he could be a significant witness in the inquiries.Mr. Trump himself has at times asked aides questions about how Mr. Meadows is doing, according to a person familiar with the remarks.Asked about the grand jury testimony, a lawyer for Mr. Meadows, George Terwilliger, said, “Without commenting on whether or not Mr. Meadows has testified before the grand jury or in any other proceeding, Mr. Meadows has maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has a legal obligation to do so.”Mr. Meadows was a polarizing figure at the White House among some of Mr. Trump’s aides, who saw him as a loose gatekeeper at best during a final year in which the former president moved aggressively to mold the government in his image.Mr. Meadows was around for pivotal moments leading up to and after the 2020 election, as Mr. Trump plotted to try to stay in office and thwart Joseph R. Biden Jr. from being sworn in to succeed him. Some of them were described in hundreds of text messages that Mr. Meadows turned over to the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol before he decided to stop cooperating. Those texts served as a road map for House investigators.But Mr. Meadows also has insight into efforts by the National Archives to retrieve roughly two dozen boxes of presidential material that officials had been told Mr. Trump took with him when he left the White House in January 2021. Mr. Meadows was one of Mr. Trump’s representatives to the archives, and he had some role in trying to discuss the matter with Mr. Trump, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Meadows is also now connected tangentially to a potentially vital piece of evidence that investigators uncovered in recent months: an audio recording of an interview that Mr. Trump gave to two people assisting Mr. Meadows in writing a memoir of his White House years.Mr. Meadows did not attend the meeting, which took place in July 2021 at Mr. Trump’s club at Bedminster, N.J. During the meeting, Mr. Trump referred to a document he appeared to have in front of him and suggested that he should have declassified it but that he no longer could, since he was out of office.That recording could undercut Mr. Trump’s claim that he believed he had declassified all material still held at his properties for months after he left office. More

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      Pence Won’t Face Charges in Classified Documents Inquiry

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      The Justice Department informed the former vice president of its decision days before he was expected to announce his campaign for president.The Justice Department has declined to pursue charges against former Vice President Mike Pence in its investigation into his retention of classified documents at his home in Indiana, informing him in a brief letter on Thursday night, according to three people familiar with the situation.Word that the case would be closed came days before Mr. Pence, 63, was set to announce his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in Iowa.The F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s national security division “conducted an investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information,” the department wrote to Mr. Pence’s lawyer, according to a person who had read the letter. Based on the results of that investigation, “no criminal charges will be sought,” that person said.The decision served as a reminder of an enormously consequential plotline that remains unresolved as the 2024 election season gets underway.The most important, by far, is the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and whether he sought to obstruct the inquiry now led by a special counsel, Jack Smith, after Mr. Trump and his aides repeatedly resisted efforts to return sensitive government documents. President Biden is also under investigation by a special counsel, Robert K. Hur, over the improper retention of materials dating from his eight years as vice president — although Mr. Biden has been far more cooperative with investigators.A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the Pence investigation. But Attorney General Merrick B. Garland did not deem the matter serious enough to appoint a special counsel in the case, as he had done for the investigations into Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, senior law enforcement officials said.For Mr. Pence, a man who has made personal probity — and a determination to defend the rule of law in defiance of Mr. Trump after the 2020 election — the core of his long-shot presidential campaign, the decision represented bittersweet vindication, ending an embarrassing episode that had threatened his reputation.From the start, Mr. Pence and his team cooperated with the authorities, in stark contrast to Mr. Trump, who defied a federal subpoena to return materials stored at his Florida residence and resort, Mar-a-Lago.In January, a lawyer for Mr. Pence voluntarily searched the former vice president’s house in Carmel, Ind., for documents after aides to President Biden discovered sensitive material at an office the president had once occupied in Washington and at his home in Delaware.About a dozen documents with classified markings were “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Mr. Pence’s home, according to one of his aides at the time, and subsequently returned to the National Archives and Records Administration.After the F.B.I. searched his home in February and found one additional classified document, his advisers continued to emphasize his cooperation.“The vice president has directed his legal team to continue its cooperation with appropriate authorities and to be fully transparent through the conclusion of this matter,” his adviser, Devin O’Malley, said then.Mr. Pence and Trump remain in a legal and political tangle resulting from their odd-couple White House partnership.In April, Mr. Pence testified for more than five hours before a federal grand jury in Washington investigating the actions of Mr. Trump and his aides in the days leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He had sought to limit his testimony and avoid appearing, citing the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution to argue that he was protected from legal scrutiny.Mr. Trump unsuccessfully sought to prevent Mr. Pence from discussing their private interactions, citing executive privilege.It is not clear what testimony Mr. Pence provided. But prosecutors were surely interested in Mr. Pence’s account of his interactions with Mr. Trump and Trump advisers including John Eastman, a lawyer who promoted the idea that he could delay or block the congressional certification process on Jan. 6 to give Mr. Trump a chance to remain in office.Mr. Pence’s unwillingness to go along with that plan infuriated Mr. Trump, who assailed his vice president privately and publicly on Jan. 6.He subsequently became a target of the Trump loyalists who stormed the Capitol building that day, with some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” Someone erected a fake gallows outside the building.Mr. Pence, a former governor of Indiana, faces significant challenges in his bid for the presidency. He trails far behind his former boss and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in the polls, and has made no effort to channel the harder-edged populist energies overtaking the Republican Party.Instead, he is expected to pitch himself as a “classical conservative” who would return his party to its Reagan-era brand of mainstream conservatism. He is also likely to appeal to evangelicals, adopting a hard-line position in support of a federal abortion ban and promoting free trade and government regulations. More

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      Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert

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      The special counsel is scrutinizing the dismissal of Christopher Krebs, who contradicted baseless claims by the former president that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.The special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who may have been involved in firing the government cybersecurity official whose agency judged the election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter.The team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has been asking witnesses about the events surrounding the firing of Christopher Krebs, who was the Trump administration’s top cybersecurity official during the 2020 election. Mr. Krebs’s assessment that the election was secure was at odds with Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions that it was a “fraud on the American public.”Mr. Smith’s team is also seeking information about how White House officials, including in the Presidential Personnel Office, approached the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump turned to after his election loss as a way to try to stay in power, people familiar with the questions said.The investigators appear focused on Mr. Trump’s state of mind around the firing of Mr. Krebs, as well as on establishing a timeline of events leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. The latest subpoenas, issued roughly two weeks ago, went to officials in the personnel office, according to the two people familiar with the matter.Mr. Krebs enraged Mr. Trump when his agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, released a statement nine days after the 2020 election attesting to the security of the results. The statement added a sharp rebuke — in boldface type — to the unfounded conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies were spreading about compromised voting machines.“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” the statement from Mr. Krebs’s agency read.Five days later, Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Krebs was “terminated” after releasing a “highly inaccurate” statement about the 2020 election.Mr. Krebs later testified to the House special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that before his firing, he was aware of “skepticism” among Trump allies about his “loyalty to the president.”It was far more than skepticism. Within the Presidential Personnel Office, a small group of Trump loyalists, led by Mr. Trump’s former personal aide, John McEntee, were on a mission to find and fire people perceived as disloyal to Mr. Trump within the federal bureaucracy. And they had fingered the outspoken Mr. Krebs, who had been appointed by Mr. Trump himself, as among the ranks of the disloyal.Staff members within the personnel office had drafted a document about Mr. Krebs that outlined reasons to distrust him. The memo, first reported by Jonathan Karl of ABC News, detailed a litany of Mr. Krebs’s alleged sins against Mr. Trump, including: “Wife posted a family photo on Facebook with the ‘Biden Harris’ logo watermarked at the bottom.”Mr. Smith’s team is asking witnesses about broader efforts made by Mr. Trump’s personnel officials to test the loyalty of federal officials and potential hires, the people briefed on the matter said. Mr. McEntee was seen going into the grand jury in recent months.Months before the 2020 election, Mr. McEntee, now the head of a dating app for conservatives, and a deputy sought to overhaul the government’s hiring process. They developed what became known by some officials as “the loyalty test” — a new questionnaire for government hires that asked such questions as “What part of Candidate Trump’s campaign message most appealed to you and why?”Mr. Krebs is among those whom Mr. Smith’s team has interviewed, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Krebs declined to comment when contacted.Mr. Smith’s team has also been trying to figure out how the personnel office interacted with the Justice Department as Mr. Trump grasped at any available instrument within his bureaucracy that might help him subvert the 2020 election result.In his final weeks in office, Mr. Trump grew increasingly frustrated with the department’s leaders as one after another rebuffed his pressure on them to falsely declare that large-scale voter fraud had occurred in swing states, such as Georgia, that Mr. Trump had lost to Mr. Biden.By the time the election took place, Heidi Stirrup, a loyalist close to Mr. Trump’s policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had been installed as the White House liaison at the Justice Department. Mr. Smith’s office has asked questions about her role, one of the people briefed on the matter said.Ms. Stirrup was banned from entering the Justice Department building a month after the 2020 election, after she tried to glean sensitive information from department officials about efforts to hunt for election fraud, according to officials with knowledge of the episode.Soon after, Attorney General William P. Barr, whom Mr. Trump had long seen as an ally, resigned after telling Mr. Trump that his election fraud theories were bogus and that the legal team he had assembled to challenge the results was a “clown show.” Jeffrey A. Rosen, who replaced Mr. Barr, also refused to follow Mr. Trump’s orders to use the machinery of the Justice Department to overturn the election.Jeffrey B. Clark, the acting head of the civil division, was the one senior Justice Department official who embraced Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn President Biden’s victory. Mr. Clark had a relatively low profile, but in the frantic period after the election, Mr. Trump identified him as his most important ally inside the department. Mr. Trump seriously considered firing Mr. Rosen and putting Mr. Clark in charge.Justice Department leaders were horrified and pledged to collectively resign. Mr. Trump shelved the plan, but during the past two years has spoken warmly of Mr. Clark and hosted him at his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.Mr. Clark has been the focus of investigators’ attention as well in connection with his role in helping Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse the election outcome. More

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      Trump Lawyers Seek Meeting With Garland Over Special Counsel Inquiries

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      Two lawyers for the former president asserted that he was being treated unfairly in the investigations into his handling of classified documents and his efforts to remain in power.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump sent a letter on Tuesday requesting a meeting with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland related to the special counsel investigations into Mr. Trump’s conduct.The letter cited no specifics but asserted that Mr. Trump was being treated unfairly by the Justice Department through the investigations led by the special counsel, Jack Smith. Mr. Smith is scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s handling of classified material that was discovered at his private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, after his presidency, as well as his efforts to retain power after he lost the 2020 election.There are indications that Mr. Smith is approaching the stage of the investigation where he could start making decisions about whether to seek indictments of Mr. Trump and others in the documents case. The status of his other line of inquiry, into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss and how they contributed to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by his supporters, is less clear.“Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter and the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly,” the lawyers for Mr. Trump, James Trusty and John Rowley, wrote to Mr. Garland.“No president of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such outrageous and unlawful fashion,” they wrote.They requested a meeting to discuss the “ongoing injustice” by Mr. Smith’s team.The letter was reported earlier by ABC News.A spokesman for Mr. Smith declined to comment.The letter’s tone is markedly different from the approach taken by Mr. Trump shortly after the F.B.I. executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, recovering documents that Mr. Trump had failed to turn over after receiving a subpoena demanding that they be returned to the government. At the time, Mr. Trump, through an intermediary, sent a message to Justice Department officials that the search inflamed the country, and he asked how he could help to lower the temperature.The letter from his lawyers on Tuesday was directly confrontational. It implied that the family of Mr. Biden, who appointed Mr. Garland and who is himself the focus of a special counsel investigation into a far smaller number of classified documents from his vice-presidential and Senate days found in spaces where he worked and in his home, is benefiting from more favorable treatment.Hunter Biden is under separate investigation on possible tax charges and for possibly having lied about his drug use on a federal form he filled out to purchase a handgun.Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination in an increasingly crowded Republican field. But with the letter, Mr. Trump is relying on a frequently used playbook, in which he suggests a judge or prosecutor is treating him unfairly by the act of investigating him.Most recently, he tried suggesting the judge overseeing an indictment against him in a state court in Manhattan has a conflict because a family member works for Democrats.Seen another way, the letter could be an attempt by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to lay down a marker toward asking Mr. Garland to recuse himself from involvement in whether Mr. Trump faces charges.While Mr. Smith will make the recommendation on whether to charge Mr. Trump with federal crimes in the two cases, a final decision would be made by Mr. Garland. In the documents-related case, prosecutors have examined evidence related to obstruction of justice, as well as to whether he mishandled classified material.Mr. Smith’s team is still hearing from witnesses in the two cases, according to multiple familiar with the activity, although all signs point to the documents investigation nearing its end point.Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have privately predicted that the former president will face charges in the case related to the documents at a minimum, although they maintain he did nothing wrong. They have also grown angry at the number of people who have been subpoenaed, from low-level workers at Mar-a-Lago to former government officials.Mr. Trump is under indictment in New York on charges of paying hush money to a porn star and is facing a separate investigation in Georgia into his efforts to reverse his defeat at the polls there in 2020.It is highly unlikely that Mr. Garland would agree to meet with Mr. Trump’s lawyers, one of the attorney general’s former aides said.“Merrick Garland will not meet with Trusty or any of the other Trump lawyers,” said Anthony Coley, Mr. Garland’s former spokesman. “Jack Smith is running this investigation, not Merrick Garland.”Glenn Thrush More

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      Trump Lawyer Resigns From Defense Team in Special Counsel Inquiries

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      Timothy Parlatore, who has been defending the former president in the investigations into classified documents and Jan. 6, is leaving as federal prosecutors appear to be nearing decisions about bringing charges.Timothy Parlatore, one of the lawyers representing former President Donald J. Trump in the federal investigations into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has resigned from the former president’s legal team.In a brief interview on Wednesday, Mr. Parlatore declined to discuss the specific reasons for his departure, but said it was not related to the merits of either inquiry — both of which are being led by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Mr. Parlatore said that he informed Mr. Trump of his decision directly and that he left the legal team on good terms with the former president.His departure was reported earlier by CNN.Mr. Parlatore’s withdrawal from the twin special counsel cases leaves Mr. Trump a lawyer short at a moment when prosecutors under Mr. Smith seem to be nearing the end of their sprawling grand jury investigations and may be approaching a decision about whether to bring charges.Two other lawyers — James Trusty and John Rowley — will for now continue to take the lead in representing Mr. Trump in both of the cases.Mr. Parlatore informed Mr. Trump’s team on Monday that he anticipated withdrawing, according to a person familiar with the events.Since last summer and until recently, Mr. Parlatore played a key role in Mr. Trump’s attempts to use attorney-client and executive privilege to limit the scope of the testimony provided by a series of witnesses who appeared in front of grand juries hearing evidence in both of the matters.Over and over in sealed filings and at closed-door hearings, Mr. Parlatore and his colleagues sought to assert privilege on behalf of Mr. Trump in the hopes of narrowing testimony from top Trump aides like Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff, and former Vice President Mike Pence. But their efforts were almost completely unsuccessful.At one point, Mr. Parlatore himself was subpoenaed to appear in front of the grand jury investigating the documents case. During his appearance, he answered questions about efforts made by Mr. Trump’s legal team to comply with a subpoena issued by the Justice Department last May demanding the return of all classified material in the former president’s possession.Among the things that Mr. Parlatore said he discussed with the grand jury were searches — ordered by a judge in response to a push from the Justice Department — that he oversaw at the end of last year of several properties belonging to Mr. Trump, including Trump Tower in New York; Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J.; and a storage site in West Palm Beach, Fla. During the search of the storage site, investigators found at least two more documents with classified markings.Those searches followed a search in August of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, by the F.B.I., which led to the discovery of more than 100 classified documents that had not been returned in response to the earlier subpoena.Mr. Parlatore was brought on to the legal team by Boris Epshteyn, who had been serving as something of an in-house counsel, hiring and negotiating contracts for lawyers. Mr. Epshteyn has shown a penchant for delivering sunny news to Mr. Trump despite bad circumstances, and for creating a bottleneck for the lawyers in dealing with the client, according to several people familiar with the events.Last month, Mr. Parlatore wrote a letter to Congress asking lawmakers for help in taking the documents investigation away from prosecutors and giving it to the intelligence community — a move that, among other things, would have removed the threat of a criminal indictment against Mr. Trump.The letter also seemed to preview some of Mr. Trump’s potential defenses in the documents case, noting that during his chaotic departure from the White House, aides “quickly packed everything into boxes and shipped them to Florida.” This hasty process, Mr. Parlatore argued, suggested that “White House institutional processes,” not “intentional decisions by President Trump,” were responsible for sensitive material being hauled away.Last week, Mr. Trump appeared to undercut those assertions on live television, declaring at a CNN town hall event that he knowingly removed government records from the White House and claiming that he was allowed to take anything he wanted with him as his personal property.“I took the documents,” he said at the event. “I’m allowed to.” More