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      Garland Becomes Trump’s Target After F.B.I.’s Mar-a-Lago Search

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      The F.B.I. had scarcely decamped from Mar-a-Lago when former President Donald J. Trump’s allies, led by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, began a bombardment of vitriol and threats against the man they see as a foe and foil: Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.Mr. Garland, a bookish former judge who during his unsuccessful Supreme Court nomination in 2016 told senators that he did not have “a political bone” in his body, responded, as he so often does, by not responding.The Justice Department would not acknowledge the execution of a search warrant at Mr. Trump’s home on Monday, nor would Mr. Garland’s aides confirm his involvement in the decision or even whether he knew about the search before it was conducted. They declined to comment on every fact brought to their attention. Mr. Garland’s schedule this week is devoid of any public events where he could be questioned by reporters.Like a captain trying to keep from drifting out of the eye and into the hurricane, Mr. Garland is hoping to navigate the sprawling and multifaceted investigation into the actions of Mr. Trump and his supporters after the 2020 election without compromising the integrity of the prosecution or wrecking his legacy.Toward that end, the attorney general is operating with a maximum of stealth and a minimum of public comment, a course similar to the one charted by Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel, during his two-year investigation of Mr. Trump’s connections to Russia.That tight-lipped approach may avoid the pitfalls of the comparatively more public-facing investigations into Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election by James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director at the time. But it comes with its own peril — ceding control of the public narrative to Mr. Trump and his allies, who are not constrained by law, or even fact, in fighting back.“Garland has said that he wants his investigation to be apolitical, but nothing he does will stop Trump from distorting the perception of the investigation, given the asymmetrical rules,” said Andrew Weissmann, who was one of Mr. Mueller’s top aides in the special counsel’s office.“Under Justice Department policy, we were not allowed to take on those criticisms,” Mr. Weissmann added. “Playing by the Justice Department rules sadly but necessarily leaves the playing field open to this abuse.”Mr. Mueller’s refusal to engage with his critics, or even to defend himself against obvious smears and lies, allowed Mr. Trump to fill the political void with reckless accusations of a witch hunt while the special counsel confined his public statements to dense legal jargon. Mr. Trump’s broadsides helped define the Russia investigation as a partisan attack, despite the fact that Mr. Mueller was a Republican.Some of the most senior Justice Department officials making the decisions now have deep connections to Mr. Mueller and view Mr. Comey’s willingness to openly discuss his 2016 investigations related to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump as a gross violation of the Justice Manual, the department’s procedural guidebook.The Mar-a-Lago search warrant was requested by the Justice Department’s national security division, whose head, Matthew G. Olsen, served under Mr. Mueller when he was the F.B.I. director. In 2019, Mr. Olsen expressed astonishment that the publicity-shy Mr. Mueller was even willing to appear at a news conference announcing his decision to lay out Mr. Trump’s conduct but not recommend that he be prosecuted or held accountable for interfering in the Russia investigation.But people close to Mr. Garland say that while his team respects Mr. Mueller, they have learned from his mistakes. Mr. Garland, despite his silence this week, has made a point of talking publicly about the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on many occasions — even if it has only been to explain why he cannot talk publicly about the investigation.“I understand that this may not be the answer some are looking for,” he said during a speech marking the first anniversary of the Capitol attack. “But we will and we must speak through our work. Anything else jeopardizes the viability of our investigations and the civil liberties of our citizens.” More

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      John Eastman Proposed Challenging Georgia Senate Elections in Search of Fraud

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      On the day of President Biden’s inauguration, John Eastman suggested looking for voting irregularities in Georgia — and asked for help in getting paid the $270,000 he had billed the Trump campaign.John Eastman, the conservative lawyer whose plan to block congressional certification of the 2020 election failed in spectacular fashion on Jan. 6, 2021, sent an email two weeks later arguing that pro-Trump forces should sue to keep searching for the supposed election fraud he acknowledged they had failed to find.On Jan. 20, 2021, hours after President Biden’s inauguration, Mr. Eastman emailed Rudolph W. Giuliani, former President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, proposing that they challenge the outcome of the runoff elections in Georgia for two Senate seats that had been won on Jan. 5 by Democrats.“A lot of us have now staked our reputations on the claims of election fraud, and this would be a way to gather proof,” Mr. Eastman wrote in the previously undisclosed email, which also went to others, including a top Trump campaign adviser. “If we get proof of fraud on Jan. 5, it will likely also demonstrate the fraud on Nov. 3, thereby vindicating President Trump’s claims and serving as a strong bulwark against Senate impeachment trial.”The email, which was reviewed by The New York Times and authenticated by people who worked on the Trump campaign at the time, is the latest evidence that even some of Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporters knew they had not proven their baseless claims of widespread voting fraud — but wanted to continue their efforts to delegitimize the outcome even after Mr. Biden had taken office.Mr. Eastman’s message also underscored that he had not taken on the work of keeping Mr. Trump in office just out of conviction: He asked for Mr. Giuliani’s help in collecting on a $270,000 invoice he had sent the Trump campaign the previous day for his legal services.The charges included $10,000 a day for eight days of work in January 2021, including the two days before Jan. 6 when Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump, during meetings in the Oval Office, sought unsuccessfully to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to go along with the plan to block congressional certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6. (Mr. Eastman appears never to have been paid.)A lawyer for Mr. Eastman did not respond to a request for comment.Disclosure of the email comes at a time when the Justice Department is intensifying its criminal investigation of the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Patrick F. Philbin, who was a deputy White House counsel under Mr. Trump, has received a grand jury subpoena in the case, a person familiar with the situation said.Mr. Philbin is the latest high-ranking former White House official known to be called to testify before the grand jury. Others include his former boss, Pat A. Cipollone, who as White House counsel argued, along with other White House lawyers, against some of the more extreme steps proposed by Mr. Trump and his advisers as they sought to hold onto power.Earlier subpoenas to a number of people had sought information about outside lawyers, including Mr. Eastman and Mr. Giuliani, who were advising Mr. Trump and promoting his efforts to overturn the results.In June, federal agents armed with a search warrant seized Mr. Eastman’s phone, stopping him as he was leaving a restaurant in New Mexico.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      Russian National Charged With Spreading Propaganda Through U.S. Groups

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      Federal authorities say the man recruited several American political groups and used them to sow discord and interfere with elections.MIAMI — The Russian man with a trim beard and patterned T-shirt appeared in a Florida political group’s YouTube livestream in March, less than three weeks after his country had invaded Ukraine, and falsely claimed that what had happened was not an invasion.“I would like to address the free people around the world to tell you that Western propaganda is lying when they say that Russia invaded Ukraine,” he said through an interpreter.His name was Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, and he described himself as a “human rights activist.”But federal authorities say he was working for the Russian government, orchestrating a yearslong influence campaign to use American political groups to spread Russian propaganda and interfere with U.S. elections. On Friday, the Justice Department revealed that it had charged Mr. Ionov with conspiring to have American citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government.Mr. Ionov, 32, who lives in Moscow and is not in custody, is accused of recruiting three political groups in Florida, Georgia and California from December 2014 through March, providing them with financial support and directing them to publish Russian propaganda. On Friday, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions against him.David Walker, the top agent in the F.B.I.’s Tampa field office, called the allegations “some of the most egregious and blatant violations we’ve seen by the Russian government in order to destabilize and undermine trust in American democracy.”In 2017 and 2019, Mr. Ionov supported the campaigns of two candidates for local office in St. Petersburg, Fla., where one of the American political groups was based, according to a 24-page indictment. He wrote to a Russian official in 2019 that he had been “consulting every week” on one of the campaigns, the indictment said.“Our election campaign is kind of unique,” a Russian intelligence officer wrote to Mr. Ionov, adding, “Are we the first in history?” Mr. Ionov later referred to the candidate, who was not named in the indictment, as the one “whom we supervise.”In 2016, according to the indictment, Mr. Ionov paid for the St. Petersburg group to conduct a four-city protest tour supporting a “Petition on Crime of Genocide Against African People in the United States,” which the group had previously submitted to the United Nations at his direction.“The goal is to heighten grievances,” Peter Strzok, a former top F.B.I. counterintelligence official, said of the sort of behavior Mr. Ionov is accused of carrying out. “They just want to fund opposing forces. It’s a means to encourage social division at a low cost. The goal is to create strife and division.”Members of the Uhuru Movement spoke to reporters in Florida on Friday. Martha Asencio-Rhine/Tampa Bay Times, via Associated PressThe Russian government has a long history of trying to sow division in the U.S., in particular during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Strzok said the Russians were known to plant stories with fringe groups in an effort to introduce disinformation into the media ecosystem.Federal investigators described Mr. Ionov as the founder and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia and said it was funded by the Russian government. They said he worked with at least three Russian officials and in conjunction with the F.S.B., a Russian intelligence agency.The indictment issued on Friday did not name the U.S. political groups, their leaders or the St. Petersburg candidates, who were identified only as Unindicted Co-conspirator 3 and Unindicted Co-conspirator 4. And Mr. Ionov is the only person who has been charged in the case.But leaders of the Uhuru Movement, which is based in St. Petersburg and part of the African People’s Socialist Party, said that their office and chairman’s home had been raided by federal agents on Friday morning as part of the investigation.“They handcuffed me and my wife,” the chairman, Omali Yeshitela, said on Facebook Live from outside the group’s new headquarters in St. Louis. He said he did not take Russian government money but would not be “morally opposed” to accepting funds from Russians or “anyone else who wants to support the struggles for Black people.”The indictment said that Mr. Ionov paid for the founder and chairman of the St. Petersburg group — identified as Unindicted Co-conspirator 1 — to travel to Moscow in 2015. Upon his return, the indictment said, the chairman said in emails with other group leaders that Mr. Ionov wanted the group to be “an instrument” of the Russian government, which did not “disturb us.”“Yes, I have been to Russia,” Mr. Yeshitela said in his Facebook Live appearance on Friday, without addressing when he went and who paid for his trip. He added that he has also been to other countries, including South Africa and Nicaragua.In St. Petersburg, Akilé Anai of the Uhuru Movement said in a news conference that federal authorities had seized her car and other personal property.She called the investigation an attack on the Uhuru Movement, which has long been a presence in St. Petersburg but has had little success in local politics.“We can have relationships with whoever we want to,” she said, adding that the Uhuru Movement has made no secret of backing Russia in the war in Ukraine. “We are in support of Russia.”Ms. Anai ran for the City Council in 2017 and 2019 as Eritha “Akilé” Cainion. She received about 18 percent of vote in the 2019 runoff election.Mr. Ionov is also accused of directing an unidentified political group in Sacramento that pushed for California’s secession from the United States. The indictment said that he helped fund a 2018 protest in the State Capitol and encouraged the group’s leader to try to get into the governor’s office.And Mr. Ionov is accused of directing an unidentified political group in Atlanta, paying for its members to travel to San Francisco this year to protest at the headquarters of a social media company that restricted pro-Russian posts about the invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Ionov even provided designs for protest signs, according to the indictment.After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the indictment said that Mr. Ionov told his Russian intelligence associates that he had asked the St. Petersburg group to support Russia in the “information war unleashed” by the West.Adam Goldman More

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      The Fake Electors Scheme, Explained

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      The plan to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election by creating slates of electors pledged to Donald Trump in states he had lost was expansive, long-running and often confusing.The brazen plan to create false slates of electors pledged to former President Donald J. Trump in seven swing states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. was arguably the longest-running and most expansive of the multiple efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.It was also one of the most confusing, involving a sprawling cast of pro-Trump lawyers, state Republican officials and White House aides in an effort that began before some states had even finished counting their ballots. It culminated in the campaign to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use the false slates to subvert congressional certification of the outcome on Jan. 6, 2021 — and in the violent attack on the Capitol that unfolded as he refused to do so.The scheme had a vague historical precedent and was rooted, at least in theory, in a post-Reconstruction Era law designed to address how to handle disputed elections. But it was deemed illegal by Mr. Trump’s own White House Counsel’s Office. Even some of the lawyers who helped come up with the idea referred to it as fake and acknowledged that it was of dubious legality, according to a cache of email messages brought to light by The New York Times.The fake electors tactic caught the attention of state law enforcement officials around the beginning of this year, and soon became a focus of the inquiry being conducted by the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6.The plan has also figured prominently in an investigation that an Atlanta-area prosecutor is conducting into Mr. Trump’s alleged election meddling. And it is at the heart of the Justice Department’s own wide-ranging Jan. 6 inquiry.Here is a look at the plan: where it came from; how it was meant to work; the various inquiries it has now become a part of; and the ways in which it could serve to implicate Mr. Trump in criminal activity.Vice President Richard M. Nixon campaigned in Hilo, Hawaii, during the presidential race of 1960. A dispute over the outcome there was cited by Trump allies in developing slates of so-called alternate electors after the 2020 race.Associated PressHawaii, 1960, Provided the Template In one of the first legal memos laying out the details of the fake elector scheme, a pro-Trump lawyer named Kenneth Chesebro justified the plan by pointing to an odd episode in American history: a quarrel that took place in Hawaii during the 1960 presidential race between Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon.The results of the vote count in Hawaii remained in dispute — by about 100 ballots — even as a crucial deadline for the Electoral College to meet and cast its votes drew near. A recount was underway but it did not appear as though it would be completed by the time the Electoral College was expected to convene, on Dec. 19, 1960.(The winner of the popular vote in nearly all of the states is allocated all of that state’s electors, which are apportioned based on population. Maine and Nebraska are the exceptions; they allocate their electors based on the winners in congressional districts. To win the presidency, a candidate has to win a majority of the 538 total electoral votes.)Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      Justice Dept. Asking Witnesses About Trump in Its Jan. 6 Investigation

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      Federal prosecutors sought information about the former president’s role in the efforts to overturn the election as the inquiry accelerates.Federal prosecutors have directly asked witnesses in recent days about former President Donald J. Trump’s involvement in efforts to reverse his election loss, a person familiar with the testimony said on Tuesday, suggesting that the Justice Department’s criminal investigation has moved into a more aggressive and politically fraught phase.Mr. Trump’s personal role in elements of the push to overturn his loss in 2020 to Joseph R. Biden Jr. has long been established, both through his public actions and statements and evidence gathered by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.But the Justice Department has been largely silent about how and even whether it would weigh pursuing potential charges against Mr. Trump, and reluctant even to concede that his role was discussed in senior leadership meetings at the department.Asking questions about Mr. Trump in connection with the electors plot or the attack on the Capitol does not mean the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into him, a decision that would have immense political and legal ramifications.The department’s investigation into a central element of the push to keep Mr. Trump in office — the plan to name slates of electors pledged to Mr. Trump in battleground states won by Mr. Biden — now appears to be accelerating as prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington ask witnesses about Mr. Trump and members of his inner circle, including the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the person familiar with the testimony said.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      Marc Short Testifies to Grand Jury in Jan. 6 Investigation

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      Marc Short, who was chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, and Greg Jacob, a lawyer for Mr. Pence, were subpoenaed in the Justice Department’s expanding criminal inquiry.Two top aides to former Vice President Mike Pence testified last week to a federal grand jury in Washington investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the highest-ranking officials of the Trump administration so far known to have cooperated with the Justice Department’s widening inquiry into the events leading up to the assault.The appearances before the grand jury of the men — Marc Short, who was Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, and Greg Jacob, who was his counsel — were the latest indication that the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the events surrounding and preceding the riot is intensifying after weeks of growing questions about the urgency the department has put on examining former President Donald J. Trump’s potential criminal liability.The testimony of the two Pence aides marked the first time it has become publicly known that figures with firsthand knowledge of what took place inside the White House in the tumultuous days before the attack have cooperated with federal prosecutors.Both Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob played important roles in describing to a House select committee conducting a parallel investigation of the Capitol attack how Mr. Trump, working with allies like the lawyer John Eastman, mounted a campaign to pressure Mr. Pence into disrupting the normal counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021, as part of an effort to keep Mr. Trump in office.Mr. Short’s testimony was confirmed by two people familiar with it, as was Mr. Jacob’s.The Justice Department has at times appeared to be lagging behind the House select committee, which has spoken to more than 1,000 witnesses, including some from inside the Trump White House. Much of that testimony has been highlighted at a series of public hearings over the past two months.It remains unclear precisely what Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob told the grand jury or what questions prosecutors may have asked them. But both previously gave recorded and transcribed interviews to the House committee, and Mr. Jacob served as a live witness at one of the panel’s public hearings that focused on the effort to strong-arm Mr. Pence.Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob were present in the Oval Office for a meeting on Jan. 4, 2021, at which Mr. Trump had Mr. Eastman try to persuade Mr. Pence that he could delay or block congressional certification of Mr. Trump’s Electoral College defeat.Mr. Eastman’s plan relied on Mr. Pence being willing to accept, as he presided over a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, that there were disputes over the validity of electors whose votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. had already been certified by the states — a baseless assertion that had been promoted by a number of Trump allies in the previous weeks as a last-ditch way to help keep Mr. Trump in office.Mr. Pence ultimately rejected Mr. Trump’s pressure on him to go along. But the so-called fake electors proposal has been one of the primary lines of inquiry to have become public in the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation.Mr. Short also provided the House committee with testimony that highlighted the sense of threat that built from Mr. Trump’s efforts to derail the congressional proceedings on Jan. 6.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      Sharp Contrasts With Other Jan. 6 Inquiries Increase Pressure on Garland

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      The continued revelations from the House select committee and the rapid pace of the Georgia investigation have left the Justice Department on the defensive.In the last week, local prosecutors in Atlanta barreled ahead with their criminal investigation into the effort by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, targeting fake electors, issuing a subpoena to a member of Congress and winning a court battle forcing Rudolph W. Giuliani to testify to a grand jury.In Washington, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack unfurled its latest batch of damning disclosures about Mr. Trump at a prime-time hearing, and directly suggested that Mr. Trump needs to be prosecuted before he destroys the country’s democracy.But at the Justice Department, where the gears of justice always seem to move the slowest, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was forced to rely on generalities about the American legal system, saying “no person is above the law in this country” as he fended off increasing questions about why there has been so little public action to hold Mr. Trump and his allies accountable.“There is a lot of speculation about what the Justice Department is doing, what’s it not doing, what our theories are and what our theories aren’t, and there will continue to be that speculation,” Mr. Garland said at a briefing with reporters on Wednesday as he appeared to grow slightly irritated. “That’s because a central tenet of the way in which the Justice Department investigates and a central tenet of the rule of law is that we do not do our investigations in public.”The contrast between the public urgency and aggressiveness of the investigations being carried out by the Georgia prosecutors and the congressional committee on the one hand and the quiet, and apparently plodding and methodical approach being taken by the Justice Department on the other is so striking that it has become an issue for Mr. Garland — and is only growing more pronounced by the week.The House committee has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, with more still coming in, and has selectively picked evidence from what it has learned to set out a seamless narrative implicating Mr. Trump. The Georgia prosecutor, Fani T. Willis, appears to be assembling a wide-ranging case that some experts say could lead to conspiracy or racketeering charges.Exactly what is going on inside the Justice Department remains largely obscured, beyond what it prioritized in the months after the attack: its prosecution of hundreds of the rioters who stormed the Capitol and its sedition cases against the extremist groups who were present.But through subpoenas and search warrants, the department has made clear that it is pursuing at least two related lines of inquiry that could lead to Mr. Trump.One centers on the so-called fake electors. In that line of inquiry, prosecutors have issued subpoenas to some people who had signed up to be on the list of those purporting to be electors that pro-Trump forces wanted to use to help block certification of the Electoral College results by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.Investigation of the fake electors scheme has fallen under Thomas Windom, a prosecutor brought in by the Justice Department last year to help bolster its efforts. Mr. Windom’s team has also issued subpoenas to a wide range of characters connected to the Jan. 6 attacks, seeking information about lawyers who worked closely with Mr. Trump, including Mr. Giuliani and John Eastman, the little-known conservative lawyer who tried to help Mr. Trump find a way to block congressional certification of the election results.Thomas Windom is a prosecutor brought in by the Justice Department last year to investigate the so-called fake electors scheme.Julio Cortez/Associated PressEarlier rounds of subpoenas from Mr. Windom sought information about members of the executive and legislative branches who had been involved in the “planning or execution of any rally or any attempt to obstruct, influence, impede or delay” the certification of the 2020 election.The other line of Justice Department inquiry centers on the effort by a Trump-era Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, to pressure Georgia officials not to certify the state’s election results by sending a letter falsely suggesting that the department had found evidence of election fraud there.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      We Can’t Afford Not to Prosecute Trump

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      We all learn from failure.Our mistakes become the bridge to our successes, teaching us what works and what doesn’t, so that the next time we muster the will to try, we’ll succeed.But nefarious actors can also learn from failure. And that, unfortunately, is where we find ourselves with Donald Trump. His entire foray into politics has been one of testing the fences for weaknesses. Every time a fence has failed, he has been encouraged. He has become a better political predator.With the conclusion of this series of hearings about the Jan. 6 insurrection, it has become ever clearer to me that Trump should be charged with multiple crimes. But I’m not a prosecutor. I’m not part of the Department of Justice. That agency will make the final decision on federal charges.The questions before the Justice Department are not only whether there is convincing evidence that Trump committed the crimes he is accused of but also whether the country could sustain the stain of a criminal prosecution of a former president.I would turn the latter question around completely: Can the country afford not to prosecute Trump? I believe the answer is no.He has learned from his failures and is now more dangerous than ever.He has learned that the political system is incapable of holding him accountable. He can try to extort a foreign nation for political gain and not be removed from office. He can attempt a coup and not be removed from office.He has learned that many of his supporters have almost complete contempt for women. It doesn’t matter how many women accuse you of sexual misconduct; your base, including some of your female supporters, will brush it away. You can even be caught on tape boasting about sexually assaulting women, and your followers will discount it.He has learned that the presidency is the greatest grift of his life. For decades, he has sold gilded glamour to suckers — hawking hotels and golf courses, steaks and vodka — but with the presidency, he needed to sell them only lies that affirmed their white nationalism and justified their white fragility, and they would happily give him millions of dollars. Why erect a building when you could simply erect a myth? Trump will never willingly walk away from this.Now with the investigation into his involvement in the insurrection and his attempts to steal the election, he is learning once again from his failures. He is learning that his loyalty tests have to be even more severe. He is learning that his attempts to grab power must come at the beginning of his presidency, not the end. He is learning that it is possible to break the political system.Not only does Trump apparently want to run again for president; The New York Times reported that he might announce as soon as this month, partly to shield himself “from a stream of damaging revelations emerging from investigations into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.”Trump isn’t articulating any fully fleshed-out policy objectives he hopes to accomplish for the country, but that should come as no surprise. His desire to regain power has nothing to do with the well-being of the country. His quest is brazenly self-interested. He wants to retake the presidency because its power is a shield against accountability and a mechanism through which to funnel money.Should his re-election bid prove successful, Trump’s second term will likely be far worse than the first.He would tighten his grip on all those near him. Mike Pence was a loyalist but in the end wouldn’t fully kowtow to him. The same can be said of Bill Barr. Trump will not again make the mistake of surrounding himself with people who would question his authority.Some of the people who demonstrated more loyalty to the country than they did to Trump during these investigations were lower-level staff members. For the former president, they, too, present an obstacle. But he might have a fix for that as well.Axios reported on Friday that “Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his ‘America First’ ideology.”According to Axios, this strategy appears to revolve around his reimposing an executive order that would reassign tens of thousands of federal employees with “some influence over policy” to Schedule F, which would strip them of their employee protections so that Trump could fire them without recourse to appeal.Perhaps most dangerous, though, is that Trump will have learned that while presidents aren’t too big to fail, they are too big to jail. If a president can operate with impunity, the presidency invites corruption, and it defies the ideals of this democracy.A Trump free of prosecution is a Trump free to rampage.Some could argue that prosecuting a former president would forever alter presidential politics. But I would counter that not prosecuting him threatens the collapse of the entire political ecosystem and therefore the country.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More