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      Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law

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      Over the course of this summer, the nation has been transfixed by the House select committee’s hearings on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and how or whether Donald Trump might face accountability for what happened that day. The Justice Department remained largely silent about its investigations of the former president until this month, when the F.B.I. searched his home in Palm Beach, Fla., in a case related to his handling of classified documents. The spectacle of a former president facing criminal investigation raises profound questions about American democracy, and these questions demand answers.Mr. Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation. The disturbing details of his postelection misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee, leaves little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people. The president, defeated at the polls in 2020, tried to enlist federal law enforcement authorities, state officials and administrators of the nation’s electoral system in a furious effort to remain in power. When all else failed, he roused an armed mob that stormed the Capitol and threatened lawmakers.The Justice Department is reportedly examining Mr. Trump’s conduct, including his role in trying to overturn the election and in taking home classified documents. If Attorney General Merrick Garland and his staff conclude that there is sufficient evidence to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt on a serious charge in a court of law, then they must indict him, too.This board is aware that in deciding how Mr. Trump should be held accountable under the law it is necessary to consider not just whether criminal prosecution would be warranted but whether it would be wise. No American president has ever been criminally prosecuted after leaving office. When President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, he ensured that Nixon would not be prosecuted for crimes committed during the Watergate scandal; Ford explained this decision with the warning that such a prosecution posed grave risks of rousing “ugly passions” and worsening political polarization.That warning is just as salient today. Pursuing prosecution of Mr. Trump could further entrench support for him and play into the conspiracy theories he has sought to stoke. It could inflame the bitter partisan divide, even to the point of civil unrest. A trial, if it is viewed as illegitimate, could also further undermine confidence in the rule of law, whatever the eventual outcome.The risks of political escalation are obvious. The Democratic and Republican parties are already in the thick of a cycle of retribution that could last generations. There is a substantial risk that, if the Justice Department does prosecute Mr. Trump, future presidents — whether Mr. Trump himself or someone of his ilk — could misuse the precedent to punish political rivals. If their party takes a majority in the House of Representatives after the midterm elections, some Republicans have already threatened to impeach President Biden.There is an even more immediate threat of further violence, and it is a possibility that Americans should, sadly, be prepared for. In the hours after federal agents began a court-approved search of Mr. Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, based on a warrant investigating possible violations of three federal laws, including one that governs the handling of defense information under the Espionage Act, his most fervent supporters escalated their rhetoric to the language of warfare. As The Times noted, “The aggressive, widespread response was arguably the clearest outburst of violent public rhetoric since the days leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”Mr. Garland has been deliberate, methodical and scrupulous in his leadership of the Justice Department’s investigations of the Jan. 6 attack and the transfer of documents to Mr. Trump’s home. But no matter how careful he is or how measured the prosecution might be, there is a real and significant risk from those who believe that any criticism of Mr. Trump justifies an extreme response.Yet it is a far greater risk to do nothing when action is called for. Aside from letting Mr. Trump escape punishment, doing nothing to hold him accountable for his actions in the months leading up to Jan. 6 could set an irresistible precedent for future presidents. Why not attempt to stay in power by any means necessary or use the power of the office to enrich oneself or punish one’s enemies, knowing that the law does not apply to presidents in or out of office?More important, democratic government is an ideal that must constantly be made real. America is not sustained by a set of principles; it is sustained by resolute action to defend those principles.Immediately after the Jan. 6 insurrection, cabinet members reportedly debated privately whether to remove Mr. Trump from power under the authority of the 25th Amendment. A week after the attack, the House impeached Mr. Trump for the second time. This editorial board supported his impeachment and removal from office; we also suggested that the former president and lawmakers who participated in the Jan. 6 plot could be permanently barred from holding office under a provision of the 14th Amendment that applies to any official who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or given “aid or comfort” to those who have done so. But most Republicans in the Senate refused to convict Mr. Trump, and Congress has yet to invoke that section of the 14th Amendment against him. As a result, the threat that Mr. Trump and his most ardent supporters pose to American democracy has metastasized.Even now, the former president continues to spread lies about the 2020 election and denounce his vice president, Mike Pence, for not breaking the law on his behalf. Meanwhile, dozens of people who believe Mr. Trump’s lies are running for state and national elected office. Many have already won, some of them elevated to positions that give them control over how elections are conducted. In June the Republican Party in Texas approved measures in its platform declaring that Mr. Biden’s election was illegitimate. And Mr. Trump appears prepared to start a bid for a second term as president.Mr. Trump’s actions as a public official, like no others since the Civil War, attacked the heart of our system of government. He used the power of his office to subvert the rule of law. If we hesitate to call those actions and their perpetrator criminal, then we are saying he is above the law and giving license to future presidents to do whatever they want.In addition to a federal investigation by the Justice Department, Mr. Trump is facing a swirl of civil and criminal liability in several other cases: a lawsuit by the attorney general for the District of Columbia over payments during his inauguration ceremonies; a criminal investigation in Westchester County, N.Y., over taxes on one of his golf courses; a criminal case in Fulton County, Ga., over interference in the 2020 election; a criminal case by the Manhattan district attorney over the valuation of Mr. Trump’s properties; and a civil inquiry by New York’s attorney general into Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization.The specific crimes the Justice Department could consider would likely involve Mr. Trump’s fraudulent efforts to get election officials in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere to declare him the winner even though he lost their states; to get Mr. Pence, at the Jan. 6 congressional certification of the election, to throw out slates of electors from states he lost and replace them with electors loyal to Mr. Trump; and to enlist officials from the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense to persuade officials in certain states to swing the election to him and ultimately stir up a mob that attacked the Capitol. The government could also charge Mr. Trump with seditious conspiracy, a serious charge that federal prosecutors have already brought against leaders of far-right militia groups who participated in the Capitol invasion.The committee hearings make it clear: Mr. Trump must have known he was at the center of a frantic, sprawling and knowingly fraudulent effort that led directly to the Capitol siege. For hours, Mr. Trump refused to call off the mob.The testimony from hundreds of witnesses, many of them high-ranking Republican officials from his own administration, reveal Mr. Trump’s unrelenting efforts, beginning months before Election Day and continuing through Jan. 6, to sow doubt about the election, to refuse to accept the result of that election and then to pursue what he must have known were illegal and unconstitutional means to overturn it. Many participants sought pre-emptive pardons for their conduct — an indication they knew they were violating the law.Other evidence points to other crimes, like obstruction of Congress, defined as a corrupt obstruction of the “proper administration of the law.” The fake-elector scheme that Mr. Trump and his associates pushed before Jan. 6 appears to meet this definition. That may explain why at least three of Mr. Trump’s campaign lawyers were unwilling to participate in the plot. People involved in it were told it was not “legally sound” by White House lawyers, but they moved forward with it anyway.Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Mr. Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, provided powerful evidence that could be used to charge Mr. Trump with seditious conspiracy. In her public testimony at a Jan. 6 committee hearing, she said that Mr. Trump was informed that many in the throng of supporters waiting to hear him speak on the Ellipse that day were armed but that he demanded they be allowed to skip the metal detectors that had been installed for his security. “They’re not here to hurt me,” he said, according to Ms. Hutchinson. “Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.”If Mr. Garland decides to pursue prosecution, a message that the Justice Department must send early and often is that even if Mr. Trump genuinely believed, as he claimed, that the election had been marred by fraud, his schemes to interfere in the certification of the vote would still be crimes. And even though Mr. Trump’s efforts failed, these efforts would still be crimes. More than 850 other Americans have already been charged with crimes for their roles in the Capitol attack. Well-meaning intentions did not shield them from the consequences of their actions. It would be unjust if Mr. Trump, the man who inspired them, faced no consequences.No one should revel in the prospect of this or any former president facing criminal prosecution. Mr. Trump’s actions have brought shame on one of the world’s oldest democracies and destabilized its future. Even justice before the law will not erase that stain. Nor will prosecuting Mr. Trump fix the structural problems that led to the greatest crisis in American democracy since the Civil War. But it is a necessary first step toward doing so.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.

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      Florida Pair Pleads Guilty in Theft of Ashley Biden’s Diary

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      Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander admitted to participating in a conspiracy in which Ashley Biden’s diary ended up in the hands of the conservative group Project Veritas near the end of the 2020 campaign.Federal prosecutors presented new evidence on Thursday implicating the conservative group Project Veritas in the theft of a diary and items belonging to Ashley Biden, President Biden’s daughter, laying out in court papers their fullest account yet of how allies of President Donald J. Trump tried to use the diary to undercut Mr. Biden in the final days of the 2020 campaign.The court papers were filed in connection with the guilty pleas on Thursday of two Florida residents who admitted in federal court in Manhattan that they had stolen the diary and sold it to Project Veritas.Prosecutors directly tied Project Veritas to the theft of Ms. Biden’s items in the court papers, saying that an employee for the group had directed the defendants to steal additional items to authenticate the diary and paid them additional money after receiving them.Citing a text message between the defendants who pleaded guilty — Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander — prosecutors provided new insights into how Project Veritas tried to authenticate the diary and what the group had planned to do with it.“They are in a sketchy business and here they are taking what’s literally a stolen diary and info,” Mr. Kurlander wrote, adding that Project Veritas was “trying to make a story that will ruin” Ms. Biden’s life “and try and effect the election.”Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been investigating the theft of the diary and Project Veritas’s role in it since they were alerted to the theft just days before the 2020 election, as the group sought to interview Mr. Biden about the contents of the diary.The investigation has spurred questions about how much the First Amendment can protect a group that claims it is a news media organization even though its methods fall far outside traditional journalistic norms.And it has put Mr. Biden’s Justice Department in the highly unusual position of investigating a crime in which the president’s daughter was a victim at the same time it is weighing whether to charge his son, Hunter Biden, in a separate case involving potential tax and foreign lobbying violations.In their pleas, Ms. Harris, 40, and Mr. Kurlander, 58, admitted they took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ms. Biden had been living, to New York, where Project Veritas has its headquarters.“Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.“They sold the property to an organization in New York for $40,000 and even returned to take more of the victim’s property when asked to do so,” Mr. Williams said. “Harris and Kurlander sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property, and they now stand convicted of a federal felony as a result.”As part of the investigation, the authorities have executed a search warrant at the homes of two former employees and Project Veritas’s founder, James O’Keefe, and they have obtained a trove of the group’s emails from around the time it purchased the diary.No charges have been filed against Project Veritas or any of its operatives, and the group never published the diary. But in a sign that the investigation into the group will continue, the authorities said Mr. Kurlander had agreed to cooperate with the authorities.Ms. Harris’s lawyer, Sanford Talkin, declined after the hearing to discuss whether she would cooperate with the authorities, saying: “She has accepted responsibility for her actions, and she looks forward to moving forward with her life.”In a brief statement, Project Veritas said its “news gathering was ethical and legal.”“A journalist’s lawful receipt of material later alleged to be stolen is routine, commonplace and protected by the First Amendment,” it said.It is unclear what impact the disclosure about Project Veritas’s role in the scheme will have on its operations, which are often funded by donors. The pleas mark the first time criminal charges have been filed in the theft of Ms. Biden’s diary, which she kept while she recovered from addiction and which contained intimate information about her and her family.“I know what I did was wrong and awful, and I apologize,” Mr. Kurlander said in court.“I sincerely apologize for any actions and know what I did was illegal,” Ms. Harris said.Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris, who surrendered to the authorities early Thursday, were released from custody after the hearing. Both are scheduled to be sentenced in December.Ms. Biden had left the diary at a friend’s home where she had been staying in Delray Beach, Fla., in 2020 and planned to return to retrieve it that year, according to interviews and court documents.After Ms. Biden left, her friend allowed Ms. Harris, who was in a bitter custody dispute and struggling financially, to stay at the home. Ms. Harris learned that Ms. Biden had been living there and found her belongings, including the diary, in August.She told Mr. Kurlander, who texted her that they could make a lot of money from the diary and family photos she had also found among Ms. Biden’s belongings. Mr. Kurlander, The New York Times has reported, then informed a Trump supporter and fund-raiser, Elizabeth Fago.Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander took the diary to a Trump fund-raiser at Ms. Fago’s home, where it was passed around, The Times reported last year, an event also documented in the court filing on Thursday. Before the event, the court papers said, Mr. Kurlander texted Ms. Harris: “On Sunday you may have a chance to make so much money.” Prosecutors said by that time she had stolen additional items belonging to Ms. Biden.“Omg. Coming with stuff that neither one of us have seen or spoken about,” Ms. Harris texted Mr. Kurlander. “I can’t wait to show you what Mama has to bring Papa.”Prosecutors said the pair had hoped to sell the items to the Trump campaign. But a representative of the campaign who was not identified in the court papers told the pair that they were not interested in buying the property and that they should take it to the F.B.I. Instead, The Times has reported, Ms. Fago ultimately helped direct Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander to Project Veritas.Aimee Harris admitted she took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ms. Biden had been living, to New York.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesIn September, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander traveled to Manhattan to show Project Veritas the diary, telling two operatives for the group that they had found it and other items at the Delray Beach home where Ms. Biden had been staying with a friend. Project Veritas paid for the pair to go to New York and stay at a luxury hotel, prosecutors said.Prosecutors said that a Project Veritas operative wanted more of Ms. Biden’s property to try to authenticate the diary and would pay more for those additional items. Mr. Kurlander realized there was an opportunity to make more money from Project Veritas.Mr. Kurlander texted Ms. Harris, the court filing said, that they had “to tread even more carefully and that stuff needs to be gone through by us and if anything worthwhile it needs to be turned over and MUST be out of that house.”Ultimately, Project Veritas paid them $40,000.Prosecutors did not name the Project Veritas employees who met with Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander in New York, but last year the F.B.I. searched the home of Spencer Meads, a confidant of Mr. O’Keefe. The Times has previously reported that Mr. Meads was sent to Florida to authenticate the diary.Prosecutors said that one of the Project Veritas employees traveled to Florida on the same day that Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander stole the additional items. All three of them met, and Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris gave the Project Veritas operative the items. Mr. Kurlander also met with the operative the next day and provided an additional bag, prosecutors said.Project Veritas, which uses deceptive tactics to ensnare targets, undertook a wide-ranging effort to authenticate the diary. As part of that effort, an operative tried to trick Ms. Biden during a phone call into confirming that the diary was hers.Project Veritas later contacted Ms. Biden’s lawyers about the diary in an attempt to secure an interview with her father before the election. Ms. Biden’s lawyers told the group that the idea that she had abandoned the diary was “ludicrous” and accused the group of an “extortionate effort to secure an interview,” according to emails obtained by The Times. Ms. Biden’s lawyers then contacted federal prosecutors in Manhattan.In the midst of this exchange, a conservative website, National File, published excerpts from the diary on Oct. 24, 2020, and its full contents two days later. The disclosure drew little attention.National File said it had obtained the diary from someone at another organization that was unwilling to publish it in the campaign’s final days. Mr. O’Keefe was said to be furious that the diary ended up in the hands of National File.In early November 2020 — days after the election — Project Veritas arranged for Ms. Biden’s items to be taken to the Delray Beach Police Department, where a lawyer was captured on video saying the belongings might have been stolen. The police then contacted the F.B.I. More

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      Memo Details Barr’s Justifications for Clearing Trump of Obstruction

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      A document released by court order showed how in 2019, Justice Department lawyers argued that President Donald J. Trump had not illegally impeded the Russia investigation.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration released a Trump-era memorandum on Wednesday that provided the most detailed look yet at the Justice Department’s legal reasoning for proclaiming that President Donald J. Trump could not be charged with obstruction of justice over his efforts to impede the Russia investigation.The March 2019 memo, delivered to the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, concluded that none of Mr. Trump’s actions chronicled in the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III — from firing his F.B.I. director to pressuring the White House counsel to recant his testimony to prosecutors — could be shown beyond a reasonable doubt to be criminal acts.Many of these actions, two senior Justice Department officials wrote, should be interpreted by an inference that Mr. Trump “reasonably believed” the investigations were impeding his government agenda, meaning he lacked the corrupt intent necessary to prosecute him for obstruction.The Justice Department under both the Trump and the Biden administrations fought unsuccessfully in court to avoid releasing the full text of the memo, which was the subject of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.After losing in court on Friday, the Justice Department had the option to appeal the case. But the department’s senior leadership decided to release the document, according to a senior official in federal law enforcement. The leadership never opposed airing its contents, but had contested its release on narrower legal grounds, the person added.The memo’s release in 2022 — long after the Mueller investigation and its aftermath — is largely significant for historical reasons. While Mr. Barr immediately pronounced Mr. Trump cleared of any obstruction of justice offense, he never discussed in detail his rationale for rejecting many of the episodes in the Mueller report.The memo to Mr. Barr was signed by Steven A. Engel, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and Ed O’Callaghan, the principal associate deputy attorney general who had been the main liaison between the Justice Department and the special counsel’s office.Outside specialists in white-collar law greeted the disclosure of the memo with some skepticism, describing its tone as essentially that of a defense lawyer in a trial rather than an even-handed weighing of the law and evidence.“Not impressed,” said Samuel Buell, a Duke University law professor and former federal prosecutor. “It reads more like a defense lawyer’s brief than a full and balanced analysis citing the legal authorities.”Among the most significant episodes of potential obstruction described in the Mueller report was Mr. Trump’s dangling of a potential pardon before witnesses like Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman, while encouraging him not to cooperate with investigators. Mr. Manafort was convicted of financial crimes, and Mr. Trump pardoned him late in his administration.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6The Trump InvestigationsNumerous inquiries. More

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      Read the Justice Department’s Memo to Attorney General William P. Barr

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      Subject: Review of Special Counsel’s Report Page 4

      The Special Counsel’s Report cites over a dozen federal obstruction decisions in the Report, yet in nearly every one, the charged conduct involved (i) inherently wrongful acts to destroy evidence, to create false evidence, or to tamper with witnesses or jurors, and (ii) an effort to prevent the investigation or punishment of a separate, underlying crime. We have identified only two cases that lack one of those elements. The first is Arthur Anderson LLP v. United States, 544 U.S. 696, 707-08 (2005), which concerned the destruction of evidence in advance of an expected SEC investigation. Although there was no evidence in that case of an underlying crime, the exception essentially proves the rule, because the Supreme Court vacated the conviction precisely because the prosecution could have covered innocuous conduct. When it comes to actions otherwise lawful in themselves, the Court emphasized the need to “exercise restraint in assessing the reach of a federal criminal statute,” because of the need to provide “fair warning.” Id. at 696, 703-04. The Court emphasized that such restraint is particularly appropriate where the “act underlying the conviction… is by itself innocuous,” is not “inherently malign” and could be performed for appropriate, non-criminal reasons. Id. In construing the obstruction statute, the Supreme Court observed that “corrupt” and “corruptly” “are normally associated with wrongful, immoral, depraved, or evil” conduct, and the Court vacated the conviction because the jury instruction did not meet that demanding standard. Id. at 705.

      The Report also cites United States v. Cueto, 151 F.3d 620, 631 (7th Cir. 1998), which was a case that clearly involved an effort to protect an underlying crime-namely an illegal gambling operation but that also involved actions that would have been lawful if undertaken for a noncorrupt purpose. The Seventh Circuit there affirmed the conviction of one of the owners of the gambling operation, because he had repeatedly abused state court processes in order to take discovery from grand jury witnesses in an effort to impede the federal investigation. Although the obstruction charge involved otherwise lawful conduct, we cannot describe it as in any way resembling the facts described in the Special Counsel’s Report.²

      In our prior discussions, the Special Counsel has acknowledged that “we have not uncovered reported cases that involve precisely analogous conduct.” See Special Counsel’s Office Memorandum to the 600.4 File, Preliminary Assessment of Obstruction Evidence, at 12 (July 3, 2018). Indeed, in seeking to identify cases in which the misuse of otherwise lawful authority established an obstruction case, the memorandum cited three charging documents, two of which arose from state court and thus did not involve federal criminal violations. See id. All three cases involved an effort to use official authority to prevent the prosecution or punishment of a distinct crime. The one federal case did not involve just the abuse of official authority, but rather witness tampering and manufacturing false evidence, concerns that go to the heart of the obstruction statutes. Accordingly, there simply does not appear to be any clear legal precedent similar to the kinds of conduct evaluated here.

      2

      The Special Counsel also cites United States v. Cintolo, 818 F.2d 980, 992 (1st Cir. 1987), which recognized that “any act by any party-whether lawful or unlawful on its face-may abridge § 1503,” but that case involved both an inherently wrongful act (tampering with a grand jury witness) and separate, underlying crimes (an illegal gambling and loan-sharking operation). More

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      The Absurd Argument Against Making Trump Obey the Law

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      This article has been updated to include new information about a man who attempted to breach an F.B.I. field office.It took many accidents, catastrophes, misjudgments and mistakes for Donald Trump to win the presidency in 2016. Two particularly important errors came from James Comey, then the head of the F.B.I., who was excessively worried about what Trump’s supporters would think of the resolution of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.First, in July 2016, Comey broke protocol to give a news conference in which he criticized Clinton even while announcing that she’d committed no crime. He reportedly did this because he wanted to protect the reputation of the F.B.I. from inevitable right-wing claims that the investigation had been shut down for political reasons.Then, on Oct. 28, just days before the election, Comey broke protocol again, telling Congress that the Clinton investigation had been reopened because of emails found on the laptop of the former congressman Anthony Weiner. The Justice Department generally discourages filing charges or taking “overt investigative steps” close to an election if they might influence the result. Comey disregarded this because, once again, he dreaded a right-wing freakout once news of the reopened investigation emerged.“The prospect of oversight hearings, led by restive Republicans investigating an F.B.I. ‘cover-up,’ made everyone uneasy,” The New Yorker reported. In Comey’s memoir, he admitted fearing that concealing the new stage of the investigation — which ended up yielding nothing — would make Clinton, who he assumed would win, seem “illegitimate.” (He didn’t, of course, feel similarly compelled to make public the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.)Comey’s attempts to pre-empt a conservative firestorm blew up in his face. He helped put Trump in the White House, where Trump did generational damage to the rule of law and led us to a place where prominent Republicans are calling for abolishing the F.B.I.This should be a lesson about the futility of shaping law enforcement decisions around the sensitivities of Trump’s base. Yet after the F.B.I. executed a search warrant at Trump’s beachfront estate this week, some intelligent people have questioned the wisdom of subjecting the former president to the normal operation of the law because of the effect it will have on his most febrile admirers.Andrew Yang, one of the founders of a new centrist third party, tweeted about the “millions of Americans who will see this as unjust persecution.” Damon Linker, usually one of the more sensible centrist thinkers, wrote, “Rather than healing the country’s civic wounds, the effort to punish Trump will only deepen them.”The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta described feeling “nauseous” watching coverage of the raid. “What we must acknowledge — even those of us who believe Trump has committed crimes, in some cases brazenly so, and deserves full prosecution under the law — is that bringing him to justice could have some awful consequences,” he wrote.In some sense, Alberta’s words are obviously true; Trumpists are already issuing death threats against the judge who signed off on the warrant, and a Shabbat service at his synagogue was reportedly canceled because of the security risk. On Thursday, an armed man tried to breach an F.B.I. field office in Ohio, and The New York Times reported that he appears to have attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington the night before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The former president relishes his ability to stir up a mob; it’s part of what makes him so dangerous.We already know, however, that the failure to bring Trump to justice — for his company’s alleged financial chicanery and his alleged sexual assault, for obstructing Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation and turning the presidency into a squalid influence-peddling operation, for trying to steal an election and encouraging an insurrection — has been disastrous.What has strengthened Trump has not been prosecution but impunity, an impunity that some of those who stormed the Capitol thought, erroneously, applied to them as well. Trump’s mystique is built on his defiance of rules that bind everyone else. He is reportedly motivated to run for president again in part because the office will protect him from prosecution. If we don’t want the presidency to license crime sprees, we should allow presidents to be indicted, not accept some dubious norm that ex-presidents shouldn’t be.We do not know the scope of the investigation that led a judge to authorize the search of Mar-a-Lago, though it reportedly involves classified documents that Trump failed to turn over to the government even after being subpoenaed. More could be revealed soon: Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that the Justice Department had filed a motion in court to unseal the search warrant.It should go without saying that Trump and his followers, who howled “Lock her up!” about Clinton, do not believe that it is wrong for the Justice Department to pursue a probe against a presidential contender over the improper handling of classified material. What they believe is that it is wrong to pursue a case against Trump, who bonds with his acolytes through a shared sense of aggrieved victimization.The question is how much deference the rest of us should give to this belief. No doubt, Trump’s most inflamed fans might act out in horrifying ways; many are heavily armed and speak lustily about civil war. To let this dictate the workings of justice is to accept an insurrectionists’ veto. The far right is constantly threatening violence if it doesn’t get its way. Does anyone truly believe that giving in to its blackmail will make it less aggressive?It was Trump himself who signed a law making the removal and retention of classified documents a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Those who think that it would be too socially disruptive to apply such a statute to him should specify which laws they believe the former president is and is not obliged to obey. And those in charge of enforcing our laws should remember that the caterwauling of the Trump camp is designed to intimidate them and such intimidation helped him become president in the first place.Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted because of politics, but he also shouldn’t be spared because of them. The only relevant question is whether he committed a crime, not what crimes his devotees might commit if he’s held to account.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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      Your Friday Briefing: U.S. to Unseal Trump Warrant

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      Plus Russia prepares for show trials and Taiwan does not rise to China’s provocations.Good morning. We’re covering moves by the U.S. to unseal the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, Russia’s preparation for possible show trials and Taiwan’s undeterred diplomacy.Attorney General Merrick Garland had come under pressure to provide more information about the search at former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesU.S. to unseal the Trump warrantMerrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general, moved to unseal the warrant authorizing the F.B.I. search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s residence in Florida. Garland said he personally approved the decision to seek the warrant.Garland’s statement followed revelations that Trump received a subpoena for documents this spring, months before the F.B.I. search on Monday. It also came a day after Trump asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when he was questioned by New York’s attorney general in a civil case about his business practices.The subpoena suggests the Justice Department tried methods short of a search warrant to account for the material before taking the politically explosive step of sending F.B.I. agents, unannounced, to the former president’s doorstep. Here are live updates.Details: Officials think the former president improperly took documents with him after leaving office. The Justice Department has provided no information about the precise nature of the material it has been seeking to recover, but it has signaled that the material involved classified information of a sensitive nature.Analysis: Garland’s decision to make a public appearance came at an extraordinary moment in the department’s 152-year history, as the sprawling investigation of a former president who remains a powerful political force gains momentum. After coming under pressure, Garland said he decided to go public to serve the “public interest.”The Mariupol Chamber Philharmonic will be used for upcoming show trials of Ukrainian soldiers. Associated PressRussia readies for likely show trialsRussia has installed cages in a large Mariupol theater, an apparent preparation for show trials of captured Ukrainian soldiers on newly occupied soil. The trials could begin on Aug. 24, Ukrainian Independence Day.Some fear that the Kremlin plans to use the trappings of legal proceedings to reinforce its narrative about fighters who defended the southern Ukrainian city and spent weeks underneath a steel plant. Ukrainian officials have called for international intervention.Moscow may also use the trials to deflect responsibility for atrocities Russia committed as its forces laid siege to Mariupol. The Kremlin has a long and brutal history of using such trials to give a veneer of credibility to efforts to silence critics. Here are live updates.Our Coverage of the Russia-Ukraine WarOn the Ground: A series of explosions that Ukraine took credit for rocked a key Russian air base in Kremlin-occupied Crimea. Russia played down the extent of the damage, but the evidence available told a different story.Drones: To counter Russia’s advantage in artillery and tanks, Ukraine has seized on drone warfare and produced an array of inexpensive, plastic aircraft rigged to drop grenades or other munitions.Nuclear Shelter: The Russian military is using а nuclear power station in southern Ukraine as a fortress, stymying Ukrainian forces and unnerving locals, faced with intensifying fighting and the threat of a radiation leak.Starting Over: Ukrainians forced from their hometowns by Russia’s invasion find some solace, and success setting up businesses in new cities.Context: Concerns for prisoners’ safety have only grown since last month, when the Ukrainian authorities accused Moscow of orchestrating an explosion at a Russian prison camp that killed at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war.Other updates:Satellite images show that Russia lost at least eight warplanes in a Tuesday explosion at a Crimean air base.New shelling at a Russian-occupied nuclear plant in southern Ukraine added to concerns of possible disaster.Turkey needs Russian cash and gas ahead of an election. Russia needs friends to evade sanctions. The country’s leaders have a wary, mutually beneficial rapport.Taiwanese soldiers conducted a live-fire drill earlier this week. Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesChina’s drills did not deter TaiwanChina’s continuing military drills have not deterred Taiwan, my colleagues write in an analysis.In fact, the drills have hardened the self-ruled island’s belief in the value of its diplomatic, economic and military maneuverings to stake out a middle ground in the big-power standoff between Beijing and Washington.Under Tsai Ing-wen, the current president, Taiwanese officials have quietly courted the U.S., making gains with weapon sales and vows of support. They have also turned China’s bluster into a growing international awareness about the island’s plight.But Taiwan has held back from flaunting that success in an effort to avoid outbursts from China. When Beijing recently sent dozens of fighters across the water that separates China and Taiwan, the Taiwanese military said it would not escalate and took relatively soft countermeasures. Officials offered sober statements and welcomed support from the Group of 7 nations.What’s next: American officials have considered stockpiling arms in Taiwan out of concern that it might be tough to supply the island in the event of a Chinese military blockade.THE LATEST NEWSAsiaAn undated North Korean state media photograph showed Kim Jong-un attending a meeting about Covid-19.Korean Central News Agency, via ReutersKim Jong-un declared “victory” over North Korea’s coronavirus outbreak, despite a lack of vaccines, state news reported.Hong Kong suffered a record 1.6 percent population decline over the past 12 months, the South China Morning Post reports.A new animal-derived virus, Langya henipavirus, has infected at least 35 people in China’s eastern Shandong and Henan provinces, the BBC reports.Seoul announced a ban on underground homes after people drowned during recent flooding, The Korea Herald reports.The PacificOlivia Newton-John will receive a state memorial service in Australia, CNN reports.New Zealand’s tourism minister dismissed budget travelers and said the country planned to focus on attracting “high quality,” “big spender” visitors, The Guardian reports.World NewsAfter peaking in June, the lower price of gas is a welcome change for drivers.Gabby Jones for The New York TimesU.S. gas prices fell below $4 a gallon yesterday, back to where they were in March.The Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, not the commonly reported two to three times, researchers said.The W.H.O. warned people to not blame monkeys for monkeypox after a report that animals were harmed in Brazil amid fear of transmission.Wildfires are again ripping through France, weeks after the last heat wave.A Morning ReadSo-called carbon farming has become a key element of New Zealand’s drive to be carbon neutral by 2050.Fiona Goodall/Getty ImagesNew Zealand put a growing price on greenhouse emissions. But the plan may be threatening its iconic farmland: Forestry investors are rushing to buy up pastures to plant carbon-sucking trees.ARTS AND IDEASSelling democracy to AfricaThe U.S. unveiled a new Africa policy this week that leaned on a familiar strategy, promoting democracy. The challenge will come in selling it to a changing continent.“Too often, African nations have been treated as instruments of other nations’ progress rather than the authors of their own,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as he presented the new U.S. approach during a tour that included South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.The U.S. “will not dictate Africa’s choices,” he added, in an apparent response to criticism that America’s stance toward Africa can be patronizing, if not insulting. “I think, given history, the approach has to be somewhat different, and I would recommend a greater attention to tools that Africans have developed,” said Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s foreign minister.Along with their own tools and institutions, like the African Union, more African states are wealthier than they were a generation ago, Bob Wekesa, the deputy director of the African Center for the Study of the United States in Johannesburg, said.“They can afford to say, ‘We can choose who to deal with on certain issues,’” Wekesa said. Those new partnerships include not only U.S. rivals Russia and China, but also emerging powers like Turkey and India. Traditional U.S. allies like Botswana and Zambia are likely to embrace the American strategy, but strongman leaders in Uganda and even Rwanda are likely to be more resistant, he added.In Kigali yesterday, Blinken said that he had urged the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to end their support for militias in eastern Congo. He also raised concerns about the detention of the U.S. resident who inspired the film “Hotel Rwanda,” Paul Rusesabagina.But just hours before his meeting with Blinken, President Paul Kagame poured cold water over suggestions that he would be swayed on the Rusesabagina case. “No worries … there are things that just don’t work like that here!!” he said on Twitter. — Lynsey Chutel, Briefings writer based in Johannesburg.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Testani for The New York TimesCaramelized brown sugar adds complexity to this berry upside-down cake.What to Watch“Inu-oh” is a visually sumptuous anime film about a 14th-century Japanese performer.TravelRetirees are taking on part-time work loading baggage at airports or passing out towels to make their way through Europe on the cheap.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: “Crucial” (three letters).Here are today’s Wordle and Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. The Times will bring back its Food Festival for the first time since 2019. Mark your calendars: Oct. 8, in New York City.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on abortion in the U.S.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Should Merrick Garland Reveal More About the Mar-a-Lago Search?

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      More from our inbox:Democrats’ TacticsThe Robot TherapistFamily PlanningFormer President Donald J. Trump could oppose the motion to release the warrant and inventory of items taken from his home, and some of his aides were said to be leaning toward doing so.Emil Lippe for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Attorney General Stays Quiet, as Critics Raise the Volume” (news article, Aug. 10):The Justice Department really needs to explain to the American people why the F.B.I. searched former President Donald Trump’s home, given the precedent-shattering nature of what happened. It should do so for three reasons.First, given that such an act has never occurred before in American history, the public deserves to know why a former president was sufficiently suspect that the F.B.I. felt it had no choice but to conduct a search of his living quarters.Second, the silence will be interpreted and misinterpreted on the basis of partisan biases. Already right-wing leaders have deemed this an act of war, while liberals perceive it as justified, given the president’s predilection to illegally hold onto classified materials. To correct misperceptions, the D.O.J. needs to explain its rationale.Third, there is precedent for this. In 2016, James Comey, then the F.B.I. director, sent a letter to Congress to explain why the bureau was investigating Anthony Weiner’s email messages, which bore on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.If a Justice Department official went public in a case like that, surely it should offer an explanation for a case this precedent-breaking and important.Richard M. PerloffClevelandThe writer is a professor of communication and political science at Cleveland State University.To the Editor:Like many other Americans, I’m curious to know more about the Justice Department’s investigation of Donald Trump. But I think Attorney General Merrick Garland is right to keep silent about the details at this point. Mr. Khardori cites “exceptions” to the prosecutorial rule about not commenting on ongoing investigations, but none of them apply particularly well here.We already know what it’s appropriate for us to know at this point, such as that the search of Mar-a-Lago had to have happened only after a federal judge agreed that evidence of a serious crime was likely to be found there.In due time, I suspect, we’ll know a lot more. For now, let’s be patient and let the Justice Department do its job. The list of reasons for it to avoid public comment at this stage is longer than the list of reasons for it to do the opposite.Jeff BurgerRidgewood, N.J.To the Editor:“He Wielded a Sword. Now He Claims a Shield” (news analysis, front page, Aug. 11) certainly gets it right when it notes that the current outrage of the former president and his supporters over the F.B.I.’s execution of a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate brings up echoes of his past behavior.After all, for Donald Trump, if he loses an election, someone else rigged it.If the U.S. Capitol is attacked, someone else incited it.Taking the Fifth Amendment is bad, as long as someone else does it.And, now, if the F.B.I. finds incriminating evidence at Mar-a-Lago, someone else planted it.So, as Donald Trump sees it, life is simply never, ever having to say you’re sorry.Chuck CutoloWestbury, N.Y.To the Editor:Representative Kevin McCarthy has said that should the Republicans take over the House in January, the Democrats should be prepared for a slew of investigations of just about everything and everyone including Hunter Biden (does anyone care?), Attorney General Merrick Garland and, most recently, the F.B.I.Such a threat is understandable, and Mr. Garland and the Democrats should be prepared to, quoting Mr. McCarthy, “preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”They should also be prepared to ignore invitations to testify, ignore subpoenas, claim victimhood, scream harassment, and overall thank the current cohort of Republicans for having created the template for avoidance, misdirection and dishonesty that have made a travesty of justice.David I. SommersKensington, Md.To the Editor:Donald Trump himself could not have better timed the raid on Mar-a-Lago. The Senate just passed a historic bill to save the environment, reduce inflation and get the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes. And all we hear about is … Donald Trump.Let’s hear about the good that the Biden administration is doing. That is the news the country needs to focus on. Let’s stop giving Donald Trump the spotlight.Laurel DurstChilmark, Mass.Democrats’ Tactics Ben KotheTo the Editor:Re “Why Are Democrats Helping the Far Right?,” by Brian Beutler (Sunday Opinion, July 24):I am not as sanguine as Mr. Beutler that all will be well if Democrats fight “from the high grounds of truth, ethics and fair play.” As the old saw says, “All politics is local.”Many issues facing voters such as inflation, Covid policies, abortion and gun control are largely out of direct control of the president, but false or misdirected blame will resonate locally when tagged to the Democrats or President Biden.Sadly, I don’t trust the electorate in general to recognize abstract ideas about threats to democracy and mortal dangers to our nation, when a costly gallon of gas is made out to be the Democrats’ fault. I hope I’m wrong.Gene ResnickNew YorkThe Robot TherapistDesdemona, a robot who performs in a band (but is probably not aware of that fact).Ian Allen for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “A.I. Does Not Have Thoughts, No Matter What You Think” (Sunday Business, Aug. 7):In the mid-1980s, my daughters and I loved talking with the therapy chatbot Eliza on our Commodore 64. She often seemed to respond with understanding and compassion, and at times she got it hilariously wrong.We knew that Eliza was not a therapist, or even a human, but I see now that “she” was programmed to do something many humans have not mastered: to actively listen and reflect on what she heard so that the human in the conversation could dig deep and find his or her own answers. In the healing circles I’ve facilitated for women, we call that holding space.We would all do well to learn Eliza’s simple skills.This blackout poem that I created from the accompanying article, “A Conversation With Eliza,” encapsulates the process of digging deep, whether with a chatbot or a human:“Eliza”I thinkI am depressed.I needmy mother.Mary SchanuelWentzville, Mo.Family Planning Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Promoting Condom Use in Thailand With Spectacle and Humor” (The Saturday Profile, Aug. 6):Many thanks for your piece about Mechai Viravaidya, Thailand’s “Captain Condom.” Mr. Mechai saw that there was an urgent population growth problem in Thailand, causing suffering for people and harm to the environment, and set about to solve it with humor, creativity and persistence.His vision of voluntary, free family planning as a powerful tool to advance gender equity, protect the environment and improve human well-being is one that we at Population Balance wish more world leaders would embrace. We hope that his story will inspire others to make family planning accessible and affordable to all, and to embrace condoms as a ticket to love with responsibility, freedom and joy.Kirsten StadeSilver Spring, Md.The writer is communications manager for Population Balance. More

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      Trump Claims He’s a Victim of Tactics He Once Deployed

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      Donald J. Trump’s efforts to politicize the law enforcement system have now become his shield as he tries to deflect accusations of wrongdoing.WASHINGTON — Two days after the 2020 election that Donald J. Trump refused to admit he lost, his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., made an urgent recommendation: “Fire Wray.”The younger Mr. Trump did not explain in the text he sent why it was necessary to oust Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director his father himself had appointed more than three years earlier. He did not have to. Everyone understood. Mr. Wray, in the view of the Trump family and its followers, was not personally loyal enough to the departing president.Throughout his four years in the White House, Mr. Trump tried to turn the nation’s law enforcement apparatus into an instrument of political power to carry out his wishes. Now as the F.B.I. under Mr. Wray has executed an unprecedented search warrant at the former president’s Florida home, Mr. Trump is accusing the nation’s justice system of being exactly what he tried to turn it into: a political weapon for a president, just not for him.There is, in fact, no evidence that President Biden has had any role in the investigation. Mr. Biden has not publicly demanded that the Justice Department lock up Mr. Trump the way Mr. Trump publicly demanded that the Justice Department lock up Mr. Biden and other Democrats. Nor has anyone knowledgeably contradicted the White House statement that it was not even informed about the search at Mar-a-Lago beforehand, much less involved in ordering it. But Mr. Trump has a long history of accusing adversaries of doing what he himself does or would do in the same situation.His efforts to politicize the law enforcement system have now become his shield to try to deflect accusations of wrongdoing. Just as he asserted on Monday that the F.B.I. search was political persecution, he made the same claim on Wednesday about the New York attorney general’s unrelated investigation of his business practices as he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying because his answers could incriminate him.“Now to flip the script and falsely claim that he’s the victim of the exact same tactics that he once deployed is just the rankest hypocrisy,” said Norman L. Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment. “But consistency, logic, evidence, truth — those are always the first to go by the board when a democracy comes under assault from within.”Mr. Trump’s Republican allies argue that he was not the one who undercut the apolitical tradition of the F.B.I. and law enforcement, or at least he was not the first to do so. Instead, they maintain, the system was corrupted by the bureau’s leadership and even members of the Obama administration when Mr. Trump and his campaign were investigated for possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign, an inquiry that ended with no charges of conspiracy with Moscow.The former president’s camp has long pointed to text messages between a pair of F.B.I. officials that sharply criticized Mr. Trump during that campaign and to surveillance warrants obtained against an adviser to Mr. Trump that were later deemed unjustified. The Justice Department acknowledged the warrants were flawed, and an inspector general faulted the F.B.I. officials for their texts. But the inspector general found nothing to conclude that anyone had tried to harm Mr. Trump out of political bias.In a letter to Mr. Wray on Wednesday, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, alluded to the history of the F.B.I.’s previous investigation of Mr. Trump to cast doubt on the current inquiry that led to Monday’s search for classified documents that the former president may have improperly taken when he left office.Christopher A. Wray’s F.B.I. executed an unprecedented search warrant at the former president’s Florida home.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“The F.B.I.’s actions, less than three months from the upcoming elections, are doing more to erode public trust in our government institutions, the electoral process and the rule of law in the U.S. than the Russian Federation or any other foreign adversary,” Mr. Rubio said in the letter.The search was approved by a magistrate judge and high-level law enforcement officials required to meet a high level of proof of possible crimes. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, himself a former appeals court judge who was appointed by Mr. Biden with bipartisan support and whose caution in pursuing the former president until now had generated criticism from liberals, has offered no public explanation so far.The degree to which Mr. Trump has succeeded in promoting his view of a politicized law enforcement system was evident in the hours after the F.B.I. search on Monday when many Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, wasted little time assailing the bureau’s action as partisan without waiting to find out what it was based on or what it turned up.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 7The Trump InvestigationsNumerous inquiries. More