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      As Impeachment Ends, Federal Inquiry Looms as Reminder of Trump’s Role in Riot

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentTrial HighlightsKey Takeaways From Day 5How Senators VotedTrump AcquittedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAs Impeachment Ends, Federal Inquiry Looms as Reminder of Trump’s Role in RiotThe investigation is in its beginning stages, and it may ultimately provide a clear portrait of the former president’s part in the Capitol attack.Several supporters of former President Donald J. Trump who were arrested in connection with the Capitol riot have said they were answering his call on Jan. 6.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesAlan Feuer and Feb. 13, 2021Updated 3:51 p.m. ETThe acquittal of former President Donald J. Trump at his second impeachment trial will hardly be the last or decisive word on his level of culpability in the assault on the Capitol last month.While the Justice Department officials examining the rash of crimes committed during the riot have signaled that they do not plan to make Mr. Trump a focus of the investigation, the volumes of evidence they are compiling may eventually give a clearer — and possibly more damning — picture of his role in the attack.Case files in the investigation have offered signs that many of the rioters believed, as impeachment managers have said, that they were answering Mr. Trump’s call on Jan. 6. The inquiry has also offered evidence that some pro-Trump extremist groups, concerned about fraud in the election, may have conspired together to plan the insurrection.“If this was a conspiracy, Trump was the leader,” said Jonathan Zucker, the lawyer for Dominic Pezzola, a member of the far-right Proud Boys group who has been charged with obstructing police officers guarding the Capitol. “He was the one calling the shots.”As the sprawling investigation goes on — quite likely for months or even years — and newly unearthed evidence brings continual reminders of the riot, Mr. Trump may suffer further harm to his battered reputation, complicating any post-presidential ventures. Already, about a dozen suspects have explicitly blamed him for their part in the rampage — a number that will most likely rise as more arrests are made and legal strategies develop.Some defendants, court papers show, said they went to Washington because Mr. Trump encouraged them to do so, while others said they stormed the Capitol largely because of Mr. Trump’s appeal to “fight like hell” to overturn the election. One man — charged with assaulting the police — accused the former president of being his accomplice: In recent court papers, he described Mr. Trump as “a de facto unindicted co-conspirator” in his case.This week, prosecutors said that Jessica M. Watkins, a member of the Oath Keepers militia group, had been “awaiting direction” from Mr. Trump about how to handle the results of the election, only days after votes were cast. In court papers, the prosecutors quoted a text message the defendant, Ms. Watkins, sent to an associate on Nov. 9, saying that Mr. Trump had “the right to activate units.”“If Trump asks me to come,” Ms. Watkins cryptically wrote, “I will.”Legal scholars have questioned the viability of faulting Mr. Trump in cases connected to the Capitol attack, noting that defendants would have to prove not only that they believed he authorized their actions, but also that such a belief was reasonable.But even if trying to offload responsibility onto Mr. Trump may prove ineffective at a trial, legal experts have acknowledged it might ultimately help mitigate the punishment for some people convicted of a crime at the Capitol.More than 200 people altogether have been charged with federal crimes in the attack, most on relatively minor counts like disorderly conduct and unlawful entry. The one place where Mr. Trump might face charges connected to the election is Fulton County, Ga., where the local district attorney has announced an investigation into whether he interfered with state officials in charge of counting votes.The “Trump made me do it” defense made a cameo appearance in a remarkable split-screen moment on Wednesday: As House impeachment managers were describing Mr. Pezzola’s role in the Capitol attack (noting that he had used a plastic riot shield to smash a window at the building), at the exact same time, Mr. Pezzola himself was in court asking a judge to release him pending trial — in part because he had been following Mr. Trump’s orders.Mr. Pezzola, a former Marine, did not consider himself a violent criminal, but instead a “patriot” who responded to “the entreaties of the-then commander in chief, President Trump,” his lawyer, Mr. Zucker, had written in a court filing that morning. When Mr. Trump made baseless claims that the election had been stolen, Mr. Pezzola felt a duty to help, Mr. Zucker wrote, adding that his client thus became “one of millions of Americans who were misled by the president’s deceptions.”Dominic Pezzola, center right, responded to “the entreaties” of former President Donald Trump, according to his lawyer.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. Trump’s impeachment lawyers argued in the Senate this week that his fiery speech before the riot was protected by the First Amendment, and was not an incitement to violence. And while Mr. Pezzola’s claims that he was acting “out of conscience” in storming the Capitol may be true, they are also — for a man facing serious time in prison — slightly self-serving.Still, other rioters charged in the Capitol attack have made similar claims in trying to stay out of jail, arguing, for example, that they cannot be considered a danger to the community given that Mr. Trump is out of office and thus, they say, unable to incite them further.A lawyer for Jorge Riley, who shared dozens of Facebook posts as he stormed into the Capitol, said at a hearing last month that his client had flown from his home in Sacramento, Calif., to join the mob in Washington — or, as he put it, people who were “called to a rally by the president of the United States.”Prosecutors have accused Mr. Riley, a former leader of the California Republican Assembly, a political activist group, of trying to find and harass Speaker Nancy Pelosi.“The person for whom it was done — the person who egged it on and encouraged it — is no longer in power and does not have a voice, so that is not likely to recur,” his lawyer, Timothy Zindel, said of Mr. Trump in court.In a separate case, a lawyer for Patrick McCaughey, accused of assaulting two police officers, wrote in a court filing this month that Mr. Trump was “somewhat of a de facto unindicted co-conspirator.”Mr. McCaughey, whose story was featured at the impeachment trial this week, pushed his way to the front of a mob fighting to break through police lines at the Capitol and pinned one officer against a door, nearly choking him, prosecutors have said.But his lawyer, Lindy R. Urso, argued in a court filing that Mr. McCaughey would, like others in the crowd, have protested peacefully had Mr. Trump not incited them to violence.The efforts to blame Mr. Trump are, of course, a calculated legal defense and may not work to exonerate them of crimes committed at the Capitol, even if they were inspired by Mr. Trump’s words.Ethan Nordean, a leader of the Proud Boys in Seattle, was “egged on” by Mr. Trump into believing the election was stolen, his lawyer wrote in a court filing this month. But prosecutors have said that Mr. Nordean’s online posts suggest that he and other Proud Boys were planning before Jan. 6 to breach police barricades at the Capitol.On Dec. 27, for instance, Mr. Nordean posted on the social media site Parler asking for donations to buy protective gear and communications equipment, according to a criminal complaint. Shortly before the riot, prosecutors said, he also spoke on a podcast about the Proud Boys’ plan to appear in Washington in disguise, not in their typical black-and-yellow colors.In a similar fashion, prosecutors have said there is evidence that Ms. Watkins and two other Oath Keepers charged with her, Thomas E. Caldwell and Donovan Crowl, premeditated the attack.Mr. Caldwell, 66, a former Navy officer, advised his fellow militia members to stay at a particular Comfort Inn in the Washington suburbs, noting that it offered a good base to “hunt at night” — an apparent reference to chasing left-wing activists. Ms. Watkins, 38, set up a communications system for use in the assault on the chatting app Zello, prosecutors said.In text messages obtained by the F.B.I., the three Oath Keepers appear to anticipate — even welcome — conflict in the postelection period. In one message, from Nov. 16, Mr. Crowl tells Mr. Caldwell, “War is on the horizon.” In another, just days later, Mr. Caldwell tells Ms. Watkins that he is “worried about the future of our country.” Then, court papers say, he adds, “I believe we will have to get violent to stop this.”On Dec. 29, Ms. Watkins wrote to Mr. Crowl about the Jan. 6 event in Washington.“Trump wants all able bodied Patriots to come,” she said, adding, “If Trump activates the Insurrection Act, I’d hate to miss it.”As for Mr. Pezzola, his lawyer said he felt betrayed.“He went to Washington because Trump asked him to save the country,” Mr. Zucker said. “Then he got arrested and Trump went to play golf.”Adam Goldman More

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      Justice Dept. to Keep Special Counsel Investigating Russia Inquiry

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJustice Dept. to Keep Special Counsel Investigating Russia InquiryJohn H. Durham will remain as special counsel even as the Biden administration requests a mass resignation of U.S. attorneys. The prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden’s taxes will also remain.The Justice Department will begin to ask dozens of remaining Trump-era U.S. attorneys to resign on Tuesday.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesFeb. 9, 2021Updated 8:03 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Justice Department will allow John H. Durham to remain in the role of special counsel appointed to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia inquiry, even after he relinquishes his role as the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut, according to a senior Justice Department official.Mr. Durham is expected to step down as the U.S. attorney in Connecticut as early as Tuesday, when the Biden administration will begin to ask dozens of Trump-era U.S. attorneys who have not already quit to submit their resignations, the official said Monday.All of the remaining U.S. attorneys appointed by President Donald J. Trump and confirmed by the Senate will be asked to tender their resignations except for David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware who is overseeing the tax fraud investigation into President Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson called Mr. Weiss on Monday evening and asked him to remain in office, according to the official.It is common for new presidents to replace U.S. attorneys en masse, and the request for resignations has long been expected. But Mr. Durham’s and Mr. Weiss’s investigations had created delicate situations for the Biden administration, which is seeking to restore the Justice Department’s image of impartiality.It is not clear exactly when the resignations, 56 in all, will take effect, or when their replacements can be confirmed by the Senate. The resignations were reported earlier by CNN.The confirmation hearing for Judge Merrick B. Garland, Mr. Biden’s nominee for attorney general, is not expected to begin for two weeks, according to a person briefed on the matter. The process has been slowed by the tumultuous transition from the Trump administration and by the second impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, which begins on Tuesday.Since the spring of 2019, Mr. Durham has been investigating whether any Obama administration officials broke the law when they examined the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.The New WashingtonLive UpdatesUpdated Feb. 9, 2021, 9:53 a.m. ETBiden will spend the day focused on the stimulus package and his push to increase the minimum wage to $15.Conservative media, the apparatus that fed Trump’s power, is facing a test, too.Trump’s trial is expected to be brief but may have lasting political repercussions.Both Mr. Trump and the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, had publicly said they were certain that Mr. Durham would uncover grave offenses, if not outright criminal behavior, that supported the idea that the Russia investigation was a plot created to sabotage Mr. Trump.But Mr. Durham never lived up to their expectations. The only criminal case Mr. Durham has brought was against Kevin E. Clinesmith, a former lower-level F.B.I. lawyer, who falsified information in an email from the C.I.A. that the bureau used to renew a wiretap order that targeted Carter Page, a onetime Trump campaign aide. In the weeks before the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his supporters expressed outrage that the Durham inquiry had not produced anything useful to Mr. Trump’s campaign efforts.In October, Mr. Barr secretly appointed Mr. Durham to serve as special counsel to continue his work. The move gave Mr. Durham independence from a possible Biden administration and made it very difficult for a new attorney general to end his investigation, all but ensuring the Durham inquiry would live on after Mr. Trump left office.“In advance of the presidential election, I decided to appoint Mr. Durham as a special counsel to provide him and his team with the assurance that they could complete their work, without regard to the outcome of the election,” Mr. Barr wrote in a letter that he submitted to Congress in December.Dozens of Mr. Trump’s U.S. attorneys have already resigned, in the weeks before and after the election, leaving those offices in the hands of acting officials. While Mr. Durham and several more U.S. attorneys are expected to join them this week, that cohort will not include the leaders of the largest, most prominent federal prosecutor’s offices: Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, who was appointed to her position by the courts, and Michael R. Sherwin, the U.S. attorney in Washington, who is an acting official and was not confirmed by the Senate.Both Ms. Strauss and Mr. Sherwin were elevated to their roles amid upheaval and controversy that stemmed from Mr. Barr’s handling of politically delicate cases involving Mr. Trump.Ms. Strauss was made the acting U.S. attorney after her boss, Geoffrey S. Berman, angered the White House with his handling of cases against Mr. Trump’s associates and ultimately refused to leave when Mr. Barr tried to replace him. The standoff between the two men ended when Mr. Barr allowed Ms. Strauss, a registered Democrat, to lead the office. Federal judges in her district, exercising a rarely used power, formally appointed her to the position in December.Mr. Sherwin was tapped to lead the Washington office after his predecessor was removed amid a contentious decision by Mr. Barr to force prosecutors to lower a sentencing recommendation for one of Mr. Trump’s allies, Roger J. Stone Jr. Mr. Sherwin has since emerged as the face of the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation into the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.Mr. Sherwin could remain at the department to work on the Capitol riots investigation, even after the administration nominates a new U.S. attorney, according to a person with knowledge of the deliberations.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Biden Administration Urged to Drop Julian Assange Case

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCivil-Liberties Groups Ask Biden Justice Dept. to Drop Julian Assange CaseA Friday deadline in the London extradition case may force the Biden administration to decide whether to keep pursuing a Trump-era policy.The Trump administration had sought to have the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange extradited to the United States to face a trial on potentially precedent-setting Espionage Act charges.Credit…Matt Dunham/Associated PressFeb. 8, 2021Updated 3:58 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — A coalition of civil liberties and human rights groups urged the Biden administration on Monday to drop efforts to extradite the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain and prosecute him, calling the Trump-era case against him “a grave threat to press freedom.”The coalition sent a letter urging a change in course before a Friday deadline for the Justice Department to file a brief in a London court. American prosecutors are due to explain in detail their decision — formally lodged on Jan. 19, the last full day of the Trump administration — to appeal a ruling blocking their request to extradite Mr. Assange.The litigation deadline may force the new administration to confront a decision: whether to press on with the Trump-era approach to Mr. Assange, or to instead drop the matter.Democrats like the new Biden team are no fan of Mr. Assange, whose publication in 2016 of Democratic emails stolen by Russia aided Donald J. Trump’s narrow victory over Hillary Clinton. But the charges center instead on his 2010 publication of American military and diplomatic documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, and they raise profound First Amendment issues.“The indictment of Mr. Assange threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely — and that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do,” the letter said, adding: “News organizations frequently and necessarily publish classified information in order to inform the public of matters of profound public significance.”The Freedom of the Press Foundation organized the letter. Other signers — about two dozen groups — included the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Demand Progress, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Project on Government Oversight and Reporters Without Borders.“Most of the charges against Assange concern activities that are no different from those used by investigative journalists around the world every day,” Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a separate statement. “President Biden should avoid setting a terrible precedent by criminalizing key tools of independent journalism that are essential for a healthy democracy.”For now, the Justice Department remains committed to appealing the denial of its request to extradite Mr. Assange, said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for its National Security Division.The deadline to either continue working to extradite Mr. Assange by filing the brief or drop the matter reflects a common legal policy dilemma when a new administration takes over and confronts matters inherited from its predecessor. Newly installed officials face too many issues to make careful decisions on all at once, so some get punted.But litigation calendars can force early decisions about whether to proceed or shift direction in some cases. It is often easier to stay the course, based on an argument that the issue can be revisited later when there is more time. But once the new administration has started down that path, it owns the policy as a matter of political and bureaucratic reality and so can effectively get locked in.Complicating matters for making any decision to keep or jettison the Trump-era policy to go after Mr. Assange with criminal charges, the Biden administration’s intended leadership team is not yet in place at the Justice Department. The Senate has yet to confirm Mr. Biden’s nominee to be attorney general, Judge Merrick B. Garland.In the meantime, the department is being temporarily led by a caretaker career official, Monty Wilkinson, the acting attorney general to whom the letter was addressed.After Mr. Assange published the documents provided by Ms. Manning in 2010, the Obama administration engaged in extensive deliberations under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. over whether to prosecute Mr. Assange but never charged him with a crime.By contrast, Ms. Manning, a low-level Army intelligence analyst who downloaded the archives of documents and sent them to WikiLeaks, was convicted at a court-martial trial in 2013 of leaking the documents and sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Barack Obama commuted most of the remainder of her sentence in 2017.But law enforcement officials under Mr. Obama shied away from bringing charges against Mr. Assange. They feared that there was no legally meaningful way to distinguish his actions from those of conventional investigative national-security journalism as practiced by mainstream news organizations like The New York Times. The Obama team did not want to create a precedent that could chill or cripple traditional journalism, according to people familiar with its deliberations.In March 2018, however, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Trump Justice Department obtained a grand jury indictment against Mr. Assange. It initially sidestepped press freedom issues by narrowly accusing him of participating in a hacking-related criminal conspiracy with Ms. Manning, rather than focusing on his publication of government secrets.That indictment was unsealed in April 2019, when Mr. Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and arrested. (He had taken refuge there in 2012, initially to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questions about sexual assault accusations, which he has denied. Sweden had rescinded its arrest warrant for Mr. Assange in 2017.)The Justice Department — by then under Attorney General William P. Barr — then obtained a superseding indictment expanding the charges against Mr. Assange to include allegations that his journalistic-style activities violated the Espionage Act. A second superseding indictment later added more allegations related to the notion of a hacking conspiracy.Notably, there is some overlap in personnel from earlier internal debates about the dilemma raised by Mr. Assange. The top national security official in the Trump Justice Department, John C. Demers, remains in place atop its National Security Division for now; the Biden transition asked him to temporarily stay on for continuity purposes even as most other Trump political appointees resigned.Mr. Demers’s predecessor from 2013 to 2016, John Carlin, has returned to the Justice Department and is currently serving as the acting deputy attorney general. Mr. Carlin’s predecessor, Lisa O. Monaco, who ran the National Security Division from 2011 to 2013, is Mr. Biden’s nominee to be deputy attorney general but has not yet been confirmed.The letter from the rights groups portrayed the Trump-era Justice Department’s decision to proceed against Mr. Assange as jeopardizing journalism “that is crucial to democracy” more broadly, and noted that the Trump administration had “positioned itself as an antagonist to the institution of a free and unfettered press in numerous ways.”They added: “We are deeply concerned about the way that a precedent created by prosecuting Assange could be leveraged — perhaps by a future administration — against publishers and journalists of all stripes.”Since the original indictment was unsealed, lawyers for Mr. Assange have fought the extradition request, arguing that the United States was prosecuting him for political reasons.A British judge in January largely rejected those arguments, holding that he had been charged “in good faith.” But she denied his extradition anyway — citing harsh conditions for security-related prisoners in American jails and the risk that Mr. Assange might be driven to commit suicide. It is that rationale that the brief due on Friday would appeal.Elian Peltier More

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      How Trump’s Focus on Antifa Distracted Attention From the Far-Right Threat

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutVisual TimelineInside the SiegeTracking the Oath KeepersNotable ArrestsThe Global Far RightAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Trump’s Focus on Antifa Distracted Attention From the Far-Right ThreatFederal law enforcement shifted resources last year in response to Donald Trump’s insistence that the radical left endangered the country. Meanwhile, right-wing extremism was building ominously.The outrage that President Donald J. Trump spent months stoking would later culminate in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 by loyalist supporters and right-wing extremists.Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York TimesAdam Goldman, Katie Benner and Jan. 30, 2021Updated 4:52 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — As racial justice protests erupted nationwide last year, President Donald J. Trump, struggling to find a winning campaign theme, hit on a message that he stressed over and over: The real domestic threat to the United States emanated from the radical left, even though law enforcement authorities had long since concluded it came from the far right.It was a message that was quickly embraced and amplified by his attorney general and his top homeland security officials, who translated it into a shift in criminal justice and national security priorities even as Mr. Trump was beginning to openly stoke the outrage that months later would culminate in the storming of the Capitol by right-wing extremists.Mr. Trump’s efforts to focus his administration on the antifa movement and leftist groups did not stop the Justice Department and the F.B.I. from pursuing cases of right-wing extremism. They broke up a kidnapping plot, for example, targeting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat.But the effect of his direction was nonetheless substantial, according to interviews with current and former officials, diverting key portions of the federal law enforcement and domestic security agencies at a time when the threat from the far right was building ominously.In late spring and early summer, as the racial justice demonstrations intensified, Justice Department officials began shifting federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents from investigations into violent white supremacists to focus on cases involving rioters or anarchists, including those who might be associated with the antifa movement. One Justice Department prosecutor was sufficiently concerned about an excessive focus on antifa that the official went to the department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, telling his office that politics might have played a part.Federal prosecutors and agents felt pressure to uncover a left-wing extremist criminal conspiracy that never materialized, according to two people who worked on Justice Department efforts to counter domestic terrorism. They were told to do so even though the F.B.I., in particular, had increasingly expressed concern about the threat from white supremacists, long the top domestic terrorism threat, and well-organized far-right extremist groups that had allied themselves with the president.White House and Justice Department officials stifled internal efforts to publicly promote concerns about the far-right threat, with aides to Mr. Trump seeking to suppress the phrase “domestic terrorism” in internal discussions, according to a former official at the Department of Homeland Security.Requests for funding to bolster the number of analysts who search social media posts for warnings of potential violent extremism were denied by top homeland security officials, limiting the department’s ability to spot developing threats like the post-Election Day anger among far-right groups over Mr. Trump’s loss.The scale and intensity of the threat developing on the right became stunningly clear on Jan. 6, when news broadcasts and social media were flooded with images of far-right militias, followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement and white supremacists storming the Capitol.Militias and other dangerous elements of the far right saw “an ally in the White House,” said Mary McCord, a former Justice Department official who teaches at Georgetown University and focuses on domestic terrorism. “That has, I think, allowed them to grow and recruit and try to mainstream their opinions, which is why I think you end up seeing what we saw” at the Capitol.Far-right and far-left groups clashing in Portland, Ore., in August. Dozens of F.B.I. employees and senior managers were sent on temporary assignments there, according to current and former law enforcement officials. Credit…David Ryder for The New York TimesA Focus on ‘Anarchists and Thugs’Mr. Trump’s focus on what he portrayed as a major threat from antifa was embraced in particular by Attorney General William P. Barr.Mr. Barr had long harbored concerns about protests and violence from the left. Soon after taking office in early 2019, he began a weekly national security briefing by asking the F.B.I. what it was doing to combat antifa, according to two people briefed on the meetings. Officials viewed his sense of the threat as exaggerated. They explained that it was not a terrorist organization, but rather a loose movement without an organization or hierarchy, and tried to correct what they described as misperceptions, according to one of the people.Still, in meetings last year with political appointees in Washington, department investigators felt pressured to find evidence that antifa adherents were conspiring to conduct coordinated terrorist attacks.When F.B.I. intelligence continued to deem white nationalists the leading domestic terrorism threats — part of what the bureau describes as racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists — prosecutors were asked to also consider information from the Department of Homeland Security that antifa and radical leftist anarchists were instead the leading threats, according to a person involved in the conversations.Mr. Barr said in a statement that “there was no ‘prioritization’” of the leftist threat, and that all violence should be condemned.“The F.B.I. already had a robust program to combat violence driven by white supremacy and nationalism,” Mr. Barr said. “I wanted there to be a comparable one for antifa and antifalike groups.”The pressure from Mr. Trump was unrelenting. After Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, testified to Congress in September that antifa was “more of an ideology or a movement than an organization,” Mr. Trump lashed out at him on Twitter, saying that the F.B.I. protected such “anarchists and thugs” and allowed them “to get away with ‘murder.’”Investigators at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security moved quickly and forcefully to address the violence that erupted amid the summer’s racial justice protests.The demonstrations gave way to looting and rioting, including serious injuries and shootings. Over several chaotic nights in Minneapolis, rioters burned down a corridor of largely immigrant-owned businesses and set a police precinct on fire. Similar scenes played out in other cities.In late August, Michael Reinoehl, a self-professed antifa supporter, shot and killed a pro-Trump protester in Portland, Ore. The president cheered his death at the hands of the federal officers who later tried to apprehend him. “We got him,” he said.But while Mr. Trump and others saw the developments as evidence of a major assault from the left, the picture was actually more complicated.The shooting by Mr. Reinoehl, as the F.B.I. pointed out this month in an internal memo, was the first killing in more than 20 years by what the bureau classifies as an “anarchist violent extremist,” the type of threat Mr. Trump had emphasized.Over the late spring and summer, the F.B.I. opened more than 400 domestic terrorism investigations, including about 40 cases into possible antifa adherents and 40 into the boogaloo, a right-wing movement seeking to start a civil war, along with investigations into white supremacists suspected of menacing protesters, according to F.B.I. data and a former Justice Department official. Even among those movements, career prosecutors saw the boogaloo as the gravest threat.A group affiliated with the boogaloo, a loosely organized far-right movement preparing for a civil war, in Lansing, Mich., in October.Credit…Seth Herald/Getty ImagesMembers of violent militias began to go to protests as self-appointed police forces, sometimes saying that they had heeded Mr. Trump’s call. They attended Republican events as self-described security forces. Still, Justice Department leadership was adamant that terrorism investigators focus on antifa as the demonstrations spread, according to an official who worked on the inquiries.The small cadre of intelligence analysts inside the department’s counterterrorism section were pulled into the effort, writing twice daily reports. National security prosecutors staffed command posts at the F.B.I. to deal with the protests and associated violence and property crimes, and to help protect statues and monuments seen as potential targets.All of this was a strain on the counterterrorism section, which has only a few dozen prosecutors and like other parts of the department was reeling from the coronavirus. A top F.B.I. domestic terrorism chief also expressed concern to Justice Department officials over the summer about the diversion of resources.The counterterrorism section at the time was working with prosecutors and agents around the country on cases involving people affiliated with the Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, other militia members and violent white supremacists. In some parts of the country, agents who had been investigating violent white supremacists pivoted to investigate anarchists and others involved in the rioting, struggling in certain cases to find any conspiracy or other federal charges to bring against them.Around the same time, the F.B.I. was tracking worrisome threats emanating from the far right. Agents in Michigan monitoring members of a violent antigovernment militia called Wolverine Watchmen received intelligence in June that the men planned to recruit more members and kidnap state governors, according to court documents.After six members of the group were charged in October with plotting to abduct Ms. Whitmer, one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal opponents, the president insulted her and reiterated that the left posed the true threat. “She calls me a White Supremacist — while Biden and Democrats refuse to condemn Antifa, Anarchists, Looters and Mobs that burn down Democrat run cities,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter.Dozens of F.B.I. employees and senior managers were sent on temporary assignments to Portland — including the head of the Tampa field office, who was an expert in Islamic terrorism, according to current and former law enforcement officials — where left-leaning protests had intensified since tactical federal teams arrived. Some F.B.I. agents and Justice Department officials expressed concern that the Portland work was a drain on the bureau’s effort to combat what they viewed as the more lethal strains of domestic extremism. The bureau had about 1,000 domestic terrorism cases under investigation at the time, and only several hundred agents in the field assigned to them. The Homeland Security Department even sent agents to Portland who were usually assigned to investigate drug cartels at the border.Mr. Barr also formed a task force run by trusted U.S. attorneys in Texas and New Jersey to prosecute antigovernment extremists. Terrorism prosecutors working on the investigations arising from the summer’s violence were not told beforehand of Mr. Barr’s decision. They questioned the rationale behind the task force because it seemed to duplicate their work and could create confusion, according to two people familiar with their pushback.Ultimately, the federal response to last year’s protests elicited a mixed bag. Federal prosecutors nationwide charged more than 200 people with crimes, including some who self-identified with antifa.But the F.B.I. also charged adherents of the boogaloo, including an Air Force sergeant suspected of murdering a federal officer and trying to kill another in California. The sergeant had previously been charged with the shooting death of a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz County during a gun battle on June 6 that led to his arrest.As attorney general, William P. Barr played up the threat from antifa, a loose collection of leftist agitators, even as Justice Department and F.B.I. officials saw a greater threat from the far right.Credit…for The New York TimesThe Homeland ThreatDomestic terrorism has long been a politically sensitive issue for the Department of Homeland Security.A warning in a 2009 homeland security report that military veterans returning from combat could be vulnerable for recruitment by terrorist groups or extremists prompted backlash from conservatives, forcing the homeland security secretary at the time, Janet Napolitano, to apologize and retract the report. An edited version was eventually issued, but the lesson about the political risks of highlighting far-right extremism lingered inside the department.“They overhype the threat of the far left at the expense of far-right extremism,” said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst at the department who wrote the 2009 report.Like Mr. Barr, Mr. Trump’s acting homeland security secretary, Chad F. Wolf, took his lead from the White House and emphasized the threat from antifa. At one point, Mr. Wolf formed a task force that deployed tactical agents to protect statues and monuments.Mr. Wolf denied that the administration’s response to the violence at racial justice protests came at the cost of efforts to combat far-right violence, noting that the agency affirmed the rising threat of white supremacy in an assessment in 2019..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.“You could argue the reverse. The fact we were focused on white supremacist extremists in late 2019, early ’20, we missed the antifa stuff coming up,” Mr. Wolf said. “One could always go back and say, ‘You focused on this at the expense of that.’ I would say we focused on things happening in real time.”Mr. Trump said in May that he intended to designate antifa a domestic terrorist organization. National Security Council staff members, including Andrew Veprek, an ally of Stephen Miller who is now at the State Department, asked homeland security officials for evidence to justify such a designation. They sought information about possible ties between antifa and foreign entities; federal law defines domestic terrorism but the statute does not carry any criminal penalties, and designations of terrorist organizations are limited to foreign groups.In fact, the F.B.I. had seen troubling evidence of white supremacists in the United States with foreign ties, including one group that agents believe was being directed by an American living in Russia. The group, called the Base, was such a severe threat that the F.B.I. briefed Mr. Barr about it.Homeland security officials balked at helping designate antifa as a terrorist organization, and the effort failed.Officials in the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis also expressed concern after Mr. Wolf questioned one of their reports that labeled the boogaloo as “far right” in describing the shooting death of the federal officer in which the suspect, an Air Force sergeant, was linked to the movement. Asked about his response, Mr. Wolf said he was only trying to gain information, not alter reports.Under the Trump administration, analysts in the intelligence and analysis office had even more incentive to produce reports on threats outside of right-wing extremism, said Elizabeth Neumann, the former assistant homeland security secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention under Mr. Trump.Many viewed their performance reviews as tied to whether they produced reports that aligned with the Trump administration’s priorities, including Mexican cartel organizations, foreign terrorism and antifa, rather than reports on militias and white supremacists. The number of warnings about all types of extremists in the second half of last year eventually dwindled, according to current and former officials.“You can read the tea leaves and say domestic terrorism isn’t going to be our priority,” Ms. Neumann said.“The culture absorbs those messages they hear the president speak or tweet,” she said, adding that some White House officials even cautioned against using the phrase “domestic terrorism.”Last spring, Brian Murphy, then the homeland security intelligence chief, requested $14 million to bolster training and increase staff to analyze social media for extremist threats, given that online forums had become a prime recruiting and organizing ground. Mr. Wolf’s deputy, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, rejected the request, as well as an appeal for $8 million, officials said.Mr. Cuccinelli said in a statement that requests for additional funding would have come at the expense of other parts of the agency. He added that he had been working to shift resources from other parts of the department to expand training for the intelligence branch.Mr. Murphy had filed a whistle-blower complaint in September that prompted an outcry. He accused department leaders of ordering him to modify intelligence assessments to make the threat of white supremacy “appear less severe” and include information on violent “left-wing” groups and antifa. Mr. Wolf and Mr. Cuccinelli have denied the allegations, and after congressional backlash, they eventually released a report in October identifying white supremacy as the “most persistent and lethal threat” in the United States.As he campaigned for re-election, Mr. Trump focused relentlessly on antifa, which at one point he sought to designate as a terrorist organization.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesAntifa Until the EndCampaigning for re-election, Mr. Trump spent the summer blaming rioting and violence on Democratic governors and mayors and warning about a “left-wing cultural revolution.”Armed far-right militia groups started appearing at racial justice protests and demonstrations about the outcome of the election. Extremists groups like the Proud Boys marched in Washington in December, clashing with anti-Trump protesters in altercations that included stabbings. The Homeland Security Department’s intelligence branch issued an assessment on Dec. 30 highlighting the potential for white supremacists to carry out “mass casualty” attacks, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times.But there was no specific mention of armed groups targeting the Capitol, despite plenty of indicators online. The acting chief of the Capitol Police, Yogananda D. Pittman, later said that the department knew militias and white supremacists would be coming and “that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target.”In the days before Jan. 6, the Secret Service was told by homeland security officials to expect only an “elevated threat environment,” according to people familiar with the meeting.The doors to the House chamber after the attack on the Capitol. Trump administration officials did not foresee the extent of the threat from the far right.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe Trump administration, however, continued to play up the threat of antifa. The night before the assault on the Capitol, the White House issued a memo seeking to bar any foreigners affiliated with antifa from entering the country and, once again, try to determine if the movement could be classified as a terrorist organization.When the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, some shouted explicit chants against antifa. Others were captured on video yelling, “We were invited by the president of the United States.”Mike Baker and John Eligon contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Kevin Clinesmith, Ex-F.B.I. Lawyer, Is Sentenced to Probation

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEx-F.B.I. Lawyer Who Altered Email in Russia Case Is Sentenced to ProbationA judge rebuffed a request by prosecutors to impose a prison sentence on Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted doctoring an email used to help authorize a wiretap on a former Trump campaign aide.The F.B.I. headquarters in Washington. The judge overseeing the case against a former F.B.I. lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, said the destruction of his career had already provided significant punishment.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesJan. 29, 2021Updated 6:45 p.m. ETA former F.B.I. lawyer who has admitted doctoring an email during preparations to seek renewed court permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign aide during the Russia investigation was sentenced on Friday to one year of probation and 400 hours of community service — but no prison time.Prosecutors led by John H. Durham, a special counsel scrutinizing the government’s actions in the Russia investigation, had asked the judge overseeing the high-profile case against the former F.B.I. lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, to impose several months of prison time.But the judge, James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, said the destruction of Mr. Clinesmith’s career — and being vilified in a “media hurricane” — had already provided significant punishment and sent a deterrent message.“Anybody who has watched what Mr. Clinesmith has suffered is not someone who will readily act in that fashion,” Judge Boasberg said. “Weighing all of these factors together — both in terms of the damages he caused and what he has suffered and the positives in his own life — I believe a probationary sentence is appropriate here and will therefore impose it.”The surveillance of the former aide, Carter Page, in 2016 and 2017 was a minor part of the overall Russia investigation. But it has become a political flash point because the Justice Department’s inspector general uncovered numerous errors and omissions in its four court applications, flaws that President Donald J. Trump and his allies used as fodder in portraying the Russia inquiry as a plot by the so-called deep state.Mr. Clinesmith’s misdeed was the most egregious of the problems uncovered by the inspector general. In June 2017, as the F.B.I. was preparing to seek the final renewal of the order, an F.B.I. official who was going to sign a sworn description of the facts asked Mr. Clinesmith to seek clarity from the C.I.A. about whether Mr. Page was a source for the agency, as he had claimed.In fact, Mr. Page had spoken to the C.I.A. in the past about his interactions with Russian intelligence agents — a material fact that all four wiretap applications omitted, and that might have made him look less suspicious had the court been told about it. But Mr. Clinesmith inserted the words “and not a ‘source’” into a C.I.A. email and showed it to his colleague, which satisfied him and prevented the problem from coming to light internally.The inspector general referred Mr. Clinesmith for a criminal investigation, and the matter was assigned to Mr. Durham, a United States attorney from Connecticut whom the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, had assigned to investigate the Russia investigation. The Clinesmith case is the only criminal prosecution Mr. Durham’s team has brought.When Mr. Clinesmith pleaded guilty last year to making a false statement, he acknowledged that he had intentionally altered the email and created a false record. But he also claimed that he did not intentionally mislead his colleague because at the time he believed the words he inserted were accurate. He had separately told his colleague by text that Mr. Page was not a C.I.A. source, but rather a subsource of someone else who had talked to the agency.In arguing for prison time on Friday, prosecutors suggested that Mr. Clinesmith’s explanation made no sense and that he must also have known he was misleading his colleagues, pointing to evidence that he wanted to avoid the F.B.I. having to explain to the court why it had omitted that fact of Mr. Page’s help to the C.I.A. from all the applications.But Judge Boasberg said that based on the record, he believed Mr. Clinesmith’s version.Judge Boasberg is also the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handled the disputed wiretaps of Mr. Page, although he did not personally sign off on any of them. After the disclosures, Judge Boasberg ordered the F.B.I. to review all other wiretap cases Mr. Clinesmith had been involved with and the bureau adopted more stringent rules for its national security wiretap applications.Mr. Page spoke at the hearing, which was conducted by video and teleconference because of the pandemic. Mr. Page said he had been harmed by the invasion of his privacy and public knowledge that he was under scrutiny as part of the Russia investigation, including losing friendships and receiving death threats.Mr. Page emphasized that it became publicly known that he was being investigated as part of the inquiry into whether Trump associates had conspired with Russia in its 2016 election interference — which Mr. Page termed a “manufactured scandal.”Judge Boasberg later suggested that the intelligence court may well have approved the last wiretap extension even if it had been told about the C.I.A. issue, citing the numerous other flaws in the applications.Notably, Mr. Page did not ask Judge Boasberg to impose prison time on Mr. Clinesmith. He also volunteered to serve as a “friend of the court” in future surveillance court matters, citing his own civil liberties experiences as a target of surveillance since deemed improper. (The Justice Department has said it no longer believes the full range of evidence available to it by the final two extensions met legal standards to invade Mr. Page’s privacy.)Mr. Clinesmith also spoke, expressing contrition for what he portrayed as a failure of judgment and talking about the effect of losing his job and reputation. His list of apologies included one to his wife — who is pregnant with their first child — for the stress and loss of his $150,000 income, and one to the F.B.I. for bringing public opprobrium upon it and for the extra work colleagues had to do in remedial actions.“I apologize to everyone,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump and the Foiled Plot at the Justice Dept.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storylettersTrump and the Foiled Plot at the Justice Dept.Readers are shocked by what one calls “the most stunning episode” in the former president’s efforts to overturn the election.Jan. 26, 2021, 1:14 p.m. ETColleagues said they had seen Jeffrey Clark, who was the head of the Justice Department’s civil division, as an establishment lawyer who was not particularly Trumpist.Credit…Pool photo by Yuri GripasTo the Editor:Re “Mutiny Halted Trump Scheme in Justice Dept.” (front page, Jan. 23):The revelation of the plot hatched by Jeffrey Clark to use the Justice Department to bolster President Donald Trump’s false claims of the election being stolen shows how perilously close this country came to a true constitutional crisis.It was only the willingness of department officials to put their own careers on the line to halt this anti-democratic scheme that prevented the replacement of Jeffrey Rosen by this Trump loyalist, one with a penchant for conspiracy theories.Mr. Clark’s name can now be added to the list of politicians like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy and sadly many others for whom personal ambition and a cynical disregard for the truth supersede any commitment to their oaths of office and any genuine concern for the welfare of the United States.Michael EsterowitzBrooklynTo the Editor:Americans must draw the right lesson from this farce. The right lesson is not that democracy worked after all. Nor is it that Donald Trump is an anomaly that will never recur.If Donald Trump and his minions had been as disciplined and organized as they were contemptuous of democracy, or if the election had been closer, their last-ditch efforts to carry out a coup might have succeeded.The right lesson is that the president must have absolutely no power over judicial matters: the Justice Department and the federal courts. The Justice Department must operate independently from the White House. Federal judges and the attorney general must be named by a process that excludes the president from participation.If the fox is allowed to continue to guard the chicken coop, then next time — if he is shrewder and more determined, and has done a better job of installing loyal lackeys to do his bidding — he might really get away with eating the chickens.Ben SilvermanRosarito Beach, MexicoTo the Editor:Because the story on Donald Trump’s attempt to use the Justice Department to overturn election results in Georgia has such strong echoes of Watergate’s Saturday Night Massacre, and because Katie Benner’s excellent reporting paints a portrait of just how desperate and seemingly delusional Donald Trump was, it struck me as the most stunning episode in his never-ending battle to overturn the election.Since the election we have learned of Mr. Trump’s court challenges to the results, his phone calls to pressure election and other officials in the swing states, and his media campaign that pushed a lie about voter fraud. But his machinations at the Justice Department somehow add a note of desperation that is deeply shocking, even taking into account all we knew of him.Kay OppenheimerAiken, S.C.The writer is a retired attorney.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Watchdog to Examine Whether Justice Dept. Helped Trump Effort to Overturn Election

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWatchdog to Examine Whether Justice Dept. Helped Trump Effort to Overturn ElectionThe inquiry was announced after revelations about a plot between Donald Trump and a top former department official to promote false claims of voter fraud by replacing the acting attorney general.Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, said he would investigate whether officials aided President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesJan. 25, 2021, 7:28 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Justice Department watchdog announced Monday that he had opened an investigation into whether any of the department’s officials tried to undo the results of the presidential election, as scrutiny of former President Donald J. Trump and his associates builds ahead of his impeachment trial.The investigation by the department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, followed efforts by Mr. Trump and a top federal law enforcement official, Jeffrey Clark, to push other Justice Department leaders to falsely assert that continuing fraud investigations cast doubt on the election results. As detailed by The New York Times in recent days, Mr. Trump was said to have considered installing Mr. Clark as acting attorney general to carry out the scheme.“The inspector general is initiating an investigation into whether any former or current D.O.J. official engaged in an improper attempt to have D.O.J. seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” Mr. Horowitz said in a statement, adding that he was announcing the inquiry to reassure the public that the matter was being examined.The inquiry adds to the increasing scrutiny on Mr. Trump’s attempts to wield the power of the Justice Department to advance his false claims about the election in the final weeks of his presidency. It follows another inspector general investigation into whether a federal prosecutor in Georgia was improperly pushed to help and a broader Democratic-led Senate inquiry into pressure on the department to aid Mr. Trump’s cause.Mr. Trump sought repeatedly to compel the Justice Department to back his baseless claims of election irregularities, ultimately prompting the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, to publicly state early last month that the department had found no voting fraud on a scale that would affect the election results. Mr. Barr fell out of favor with Mr. Trump over the issue and left his post within weeks.A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.The investigation underscores fears among Senate Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, that if they do not distance themselves from Mr. Trump and undo his grip on the party, a steady drip of negative revelations paired with his own erratic behavior could damage their political fortunes.“If Trump loses credibility because it appears he’s acted in a way that no one can justify, the leverage that he might have over the Republican Party could be diffused,” said William Marshall, a professor at the University of North Carolina who teaches and writes on presidential power. “The more that indicates he behaved improperly makes it less easy to defend him and less easy to stand by him.”Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, had urged Mr. Horowitz over the weekend to open an investigation, saying that it was “unconscionable that a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people’s will.”The inspector general also noted that his inquiry would be limited to the Justice Department because other agencies did not fall within his purview, a nod to the array of people who sought during Mr. Trump’s final weeks in office to find a way to stop the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.This month, Mr. Horowitz opened an investigation into whether Trump administration officials pressured Byung J. Pak, at the time the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, who abruptly resigned after it became clear to Mr. Trump that he would not take actions to cast doubt on or undo the results of the election, according to a person briefed on the inquiry.Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee said this weekend that it had initiated its own oversight inquiry into officials including Mr. Clark, who was the head of the Justice Department’s environmental and natural resources division and the acting head of its civil division.Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, sent a letter to the Justice Department saying that he would investigate efforts by Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark to use the agency “to further Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.”Jeffrey Clark pushed Justice Department leaders to falsely assert that continuing voter fraud investigations cast doubt on the election results.Credit…Susan Walsh/Associated PressMr. Durbin asked the acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, to preserve documents, emails and messages related to meetings between top Justice Department officials under Mr. Trump, the White House and Mr. Trump, as well as any communications related to Mr. Pak’s resignation.Mr. Biden’s win was deemed valid after recounts in Wisconsin and Georgia declared him the victor and after the Trump campaign team was unable to prove widespread fraud in court cases in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Dozens of F.B.I. investigations uncovered no voter fraud on a scale that would have changed the results of the election, according to Justice Department officials briefed on the cases.Dozens of Republicans in Congress were among those who backed Mr. Trump’s false claims, including Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania. On Monday, he confirmed a Times report that he had introduced Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark, giving the president access to the sole top Justice Department official willing to entertain the idea that Mr. Biden had not won the election.Mr. Perry, a member of the pro-Trump, hard-line Freedom Caucus, said in a statement to a Pennsylvania public radio affiliate that he spoke with Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark about election fraud claims.“Throughout the past four years, I worked with Assistant Attorney General Clark on various legislative matters,” Mr. Perry said. “When President Trump asked if I would make an introduction, I obliged.”Allies of Mr. Clark have characterized the conversations as simply laying out the legal options available to Mr. Trump. But Mr. Clark’s former colleagues have said there were no more legal remedies that Mr. Trump could have pursued through the department.Still, their assessment did not stop Mr. Trump from pressuring the Justice Department to fight harder to find a way to help him. When Mr. Barr declined to appoint special counsels to examine voting irregularities or take other measures that would have helped to throw the election results into doubt, he and Mr. Trump agreed that he should leave the department, according to three people familiar with their conversation. Mr. Barr stipulated that the deputy attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, replace him, the people said.Mr. Trump began to push Mr. Rosen to promote baseless suspicions about voting fraud the day after announcing that Mr. Barr would leave and kept up the pressure through the last weeks of December, pushing him to open investigations and to challenge Mr. Biden’s win before the Supreme Court.But as the department’s top officials pushed back, Mr. Trump separately opened a line of communication with Mr. Clark, who seemed more amenable to his theory that he had won the election, according to five people familiar with the matter, asking him to publicize inquiries that could cast doubt on the election.Mr. Trump’s deliberations over whether to replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark also set off a crisis among other senior Justice Department officials, who pledged to quit should Mr. Rosen be fired. The vow was said to have helped persuade Mr. Trump not to act.Mr. Clark has said that this account is inaccurate without specifying further and has said that all of his conduct was legal.While the machinations between Mr. Trump, Mr. Clark and Mr. Perry will not be the focus of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial — which accuses him of inciting the riot at the Capitol — Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, suggested the matter would be presented to senators.“This is powerful motive evidence,” Mr. Swalwell said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jeffrey Clark Was Considered Unassuming. Then He Plotted With Trump.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJeffrey Clark Was Considered Unassuming. Then He Plotted With Trump.Justice Department colleagues said they were shocked by Mr. Clark’s embrace of the president’s falsehoods and plan to oust the acting attorney general in an effort to overturn Georgia’s election results.Colleagues said they had seen Jeffrey Clark, who was the head of the Justice Department’s civil division, as an establishment lawyer who was not particularly Trumpist.Credit…Pool photo by Yuri GripasKatie Benner and Jan. 24, 2021, 9:58 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — It was New Year’s Eve, but the Justice Department’s top leaders had little to celebrate as they admonished Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the civil division, for repeatedly pushing them to help President Donald J. Trump undo his electoral loss.Huddled in the department’s headquarters, they rebuked him for secretly meeting with Mr. Trump, even as the department had rebuffed the president’s outlandish requests for court filings and special counsels, according to six people with knowledge of the meeting. No official would host a news conference to say that federal fraud investigations cast the results in doubt, they told him. No one would send a letter making such claims to Georgia lawmakers.When the meeting ended not long before midnight, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen thought the matter had been settled, never suspecting that his subordinate would secretly discuss the plan for the letter with Mr. Trump, and very nearly take Mr. Rosen’s job, as part of a plot with the president to wield the department’s power to try to alter the Georgia election outcome.It was clear that night, though, that Mr. Clark — with his willingness to entertain conspiracy theories about voting booth hacks and election fraud — was not the establishment lawyer they thought him to be. Some senior department leaders had considered him quiet, hard-working and detail-oriented. Others said they knew nothing about him, so low was his profile. He struck neither his fans in the department nor his detractors as being part of the Trumpist faction of the party, according to interviews.The department’s senior leaders were shocked when Mr. Clark’s machinations came to light. They have spent recent weeks debating how he came to betray Mr. Rosen, his biggest champion at the department, and what blend of ambition and conviction led him to reject the results of the election and embrace Mr. Trump’s claims, despite all evidence to the contrary, including inside the department itself.The plot devised by Mr. Clark and Mr. Trump would have ousted Mr. Rosen and used the Justice Department to pressure lawmakers in Georgia to overturn the state’s election results. But Mr. Trump ultimately decided against firing Mr. Rosen after top department leaders pledged to resign en masse.Mr. Clark declined to comment for this report, but he reiterated his assertion that The New York Times’s account of his conversations with Mr. Trump, first reported on Friday, and his colleagues was inaccurate. He said he could not detail those inaccuracies because of legal privilege issues. And he said all of his official communications “were consistent with law.”“The story kind of shocked me because this is not the Jeff that I know,” said Theodore H. Frank, a friend and former colleague. Credit…Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesSome of his friends said that those who told the press about his final days at the Justice Department painted a picture of a man they do not recognize. “The story kind of shocked me because this is not the Jeff that I know,” said Theodore H. Frank, a friend and former colleague. “I know Jeff as a guy who really cares about the rule of law and, you know, just a rumpled, thoughtful lawyer who is an intellectual — not a Machiavellian backstabber.”Mr. Clark had spent two years leading the Justice Department’s environmental division, where he was seen as a standard Republican lawyer political appointee — a member of the conservative Federalist Society with a skepticism of rules that cut into corporate profits.But now, Mr. Clark, 53, has become notorious. A person who has worked closely with Kirkland & Ellis, where Mr. Clark spent most of his career outside two stints in the George W. Bush and Trump Justice Departments, said there appeared to be scant chance that the law firm would rehire him.Friends and critics alike reject the notion that Mr. Clark is an operator, describing him as “nerdy” and “thoughtful.”Mr. Frank, who met Mr. Clark when both worked at Kirkland & Ellis in the 1990s and described himself as a Federalist Society member who voted for President Biden, said he was reserving judgment about the incident. Others were more direct.“This is the first wave of character assassination, of people going after the most effective lawyers in the Trump administration,” said Mandy Gunasekara, who worked with Mr. Clark when she worked at the Environmental Protection Agency in the clean air division and as chief of staff to Andrew R. Wheeler when he was the agency’s administrator. She was struck by the fact that Mr. Clark’s colleagues were so upset and fixated on an event that ultimately did not happen. Mr. Trump, after all, did not replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark or have the Justice Department contact Georgia lawmakers.She said Mr. Clark was most likely discussing with his colleagues and the president “a range of options,” just as he was known for doing in his work advising her agency.Some of Mr. Clark’s associates said he could be pedantic. As a manager, he made no effort to hide when he had little respect for his career subordinates’ opinions.He is not known for being understated on the topic of himself. Where the typical biography on the Justice Department website runs a few paragraphs, Mr. Clark’s includes the elementary school he attended in Philadelphia, a topic he debated in college and that he worked for his college newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.After graduating from Harvard in 1989, Mr. Clark earned a master’s degree in urban affairs and public policy from the Biden School of Public Policy at the University of Delaware in 1993 and a law degree from Georgetown University in 1995. He clerked for an appeals court judge, Danny Boggs, who was known for giving prospective clerks quizzes that tested not just their knowledge of the law, but also a range of esoteric trivia.Mr. Clark then worked for Kirkland & Ellis from 1996 to 2001, followed by a stint in the Justice Department’s environmental and natural resources division during the Bush administration, before returning to Kirkland in 2005 as a partner, but not one with an equity stake in the firm, according to a person who worked closely with him at the law firm.He held the title of “non-equity partner,” which meant that he did not share in the firm’s profits or make leadership decisions.When Mr. Clark returned to the Justice Department as the head of the environmental division in 2018, he flew under the radar. Like other Republican officials, he narrowly interpreted the division’s legal authority and had a typically tense relationship with career lawyers when it came to enforcing anti-pollution laws.In one instance, Mr. Clark held up Clean Water Act enforcement cases because of a pending matter before the Supreme Court that career lawyers felt did not directly relate to their work, according to a lawyer with knowledge of those cases. The Supreme Court was hearing a matter that involved discharges that flowed through groundwater before reaching waters regulated by the federal government, and the department was working on a case that involved flows over land.His employees believed that Mr. Clark hoped the court would curtail the law’s reach in a way that would apply to overland spills, too, but by a 6-to-3 ruling, it did not.In a different case, he disagreed with a recommendation that the civil division made to the Office of the Solicitor General, and ultimately got his way after asking the general counsels of other agencies to also push back on the recommendation. Civil division employees said he did not tell them that he would do this, and felt that had circumvented the proper process.Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen had admonished Mr. Clark over his push to help President Donald J. Trump overturn the election.Credit…Ting Shen for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Clark oversaw environmental cases, sometimes working late into the night and personally reviewing briefs, the department’s civil division was in turmoil. Its leader, Jody Hunt, sometimes clashed with the White House Counsel’s Office and, later on, with Attorney General William P. Barr, over how best to defend the administration.Mr. Hunt resigned with no warning in July, leaving his deputy to run the division while Mr. Barr and Mr. Rosen searched for an acting leader among the department’s thinned-out ranks. Mr. Clark wanted the job, which was a considerable step up in stature, and Mr. Rosen supported the idea even though he was already a division head, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.After he took the helm of the civil division in September, colleagues began seeing flashes of unusual behavior. Mr. Clark’s name appeared on eyebrow-raising briefs, including what would turn out to be an unsuccessful effort to inject the government into a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump by a woman who has said he raped her more than two decades ago. He also signed onto an attempt to use the Justice Department to sue a former friend of the first lady at the time, Melania Trump, for writing a tell-all memoir.He made clear to lawyers who produced draft briefs that they must spell out his name in full, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, according to a former official.Others said he mounted an idiosyncratic push to remove the word “acting” from his official title — acting assistant attorney general of the civil division — citing an old department legal opinion from the 1980s. Officials denied his request.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More