Mar-a-Lago (Palm Beach, Fla)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Giuliani Repeatedly Sought Help With Legal Bills From Trump

      by

      As Rudolph Giuliani has neared a financial breaking point with a pile of legal bills, the former president has largely demurred, despite making a vague promise to pay up.Rudolph W. Giuliani is running out of money and looking to collect from a longtime client who has yet to pay: former President Donald J. Trump.To recover the millions of dollars he believes he is owed for his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power, Mr. Giuliani first deferred to his lawyer, who pressed anyone in Mr. Trump’s circle who would listen.When that fizzled out, Mr. Giuliani and his lawyer made personal appeals to the former president over a two-hour dinner in April at his Mar-a-Lago estate and in a private meeting at his golf club in West Palm Beach.When those entreaties largely failed as well, Mr. Giuliani’s son, Andrew, who has an independent relationship with the former president, visited Mr. Trump at his club in New Jersey this month, with what people briefed on the meeting said was the hope of getting his father’s huge legal bills covered.That appeared to help. Mr. Giuliani’s son asked that Mr. Trump attend two fund-raisers for the legal bills, and the former president agreed to do so, the people said.Still, for the better part of a year, as Mr. Giuliani has racked up the bills battling an array of criminal investigations, private lawsuits and legal disciplinary proceedings stemming from his bid to keep Mr. Trump in office after the 2020 election, his team has repeatedly sought a lifeline from the former president, according to several people close to him. And even as the bills have pushed Mr. Giuliani close to a financial breaking point, the former president has largely demurred, the people said, despite making a vague promise during their dinner at Mar-a-Lago to pay up.Mr. Giuliani, 79, who was criminally charged alongside Mr. Trump this week in the election conspiracy case in Georgia, is currently sitting on what one person familiar with his financial situation says is nearly $3 million in legal expenses. And that is before accounting for any money that Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, might be owed for his work conducted after Election Day on Mr. Trump’s behalf.Mr. Trump’s political action committee, which has doled out roughly $21 million on legal fees primarily for Mr. Trump but also for a number of people connected to investigations into him, has so far covered only $340,000 for Mr. Giuliani, a payment made in late May.A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment, nor did a spokesman for Mr. Giuliani.Mr. Giuliani, whose law license has been suspended because of his work to overturn the election, has few sources of income left, according to people close to him.He earns roughly $400,000 a year from his WABC radio show, according to a person familiar with the matter. He also gets some income from a podcast he hosts, and, according to another person familiar, a livestream broadcast. The three cash streams are nowhere near enough to cover his debts, people close to him say. A legal-defense fund set up by friends to raise $5 million for him in 2021 took down its website after raising less than $10,000.Those who remain close to Mr. Giuliani have expressed bafflement that Mr. Trump has given him little financial help after his work on behalf of the former president.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn the past, Mr. Trump has entered dangerous territory by not paying an associate’s legal bills when the case is connected to him, most notably with his former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who has become a chief antagonist and star witness against him. But people close to both Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani take it as an article of faith that the former mayor would never cooperate with investigators in any meaningful way against the former president. (Mr. Giuliani has said both he and his former client did nothing wrong.)Among those who remain close to Mr. Giuliani, there is bafflement, concern and frustration that the former mayor, who encouraged Mr. Trump to declare victory on election night before all the votes were counted, has received little financial help.Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner under Mr. Giuliani, who worked with the former mayor trying to identify evidence of fraud and who remains a supporter of Mr. Trump, puts the fault on people around the former president. Mr. Kerik was pardoned by Mr. Trump after pleading guilty to tax fraud and having lied to White House officials when President George W. Bush nominated him to be secretary of the Homeland Security Department.“I know the president is surrounded by a number of people that despised Giuliani even before the election, more so after the election, for his loyalty to the president and for their relationship,” Mr. Kerik said. “It’s always been a point of contention for a number of people who I personally think didn’t serve the president well in the first place.”Mr. Kerik added, “Where is everybody? Where’s the campaign?”But, even as Mr. Kerik and others have blamed Mr. Trump’s inner circle for the lack of payments, the decision, as several people familiar with the matter noted, was always the former president’s.Mr. Trump has never explicitly told Mr. Giuliani why he is effectively stiffing him, but the former president has pointed out that he lost the cases related to the election. That has been consistent with what Mr. Trump told aides shortly after Election Day, when an associate of Mr. Giuliani’s, Maria Ryan, asked the campaign in an email for $20,000 a day to pay for the former mayor’s work.People close to the former mayor argue he was not working strictly on lawsuits, but also on research and efforts to keep state legislatures from certifying results Mr. Giuliani insisted were false. But Mr. Trump told aides he didn’t want Mr. Giuliani to receive “a dime” unless he succeeded. Some of Mr. Giuliani’s expenses were eventually paid, but only after Mr. Trump personally approved the money.Andrew Giuliani appealed to Mr. Trump on behalf of his father.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesThe effort to collect legal fees from Mr. Trump began in earnest more than two years ago. Mr. Giuliani’s main lawyer, Robert J. Costello, started calling people in Mr. Trump’s orbit, making the case that the former president was on the hook for legal fees Mr. Giuliani incurred because of his work for Mr. Trump. Mr. Costello has contacted at least six lawyers close to Mr. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the discussions, and most appeared sympathetic to Mr. Giuliani’s situation.This spring, Mr. Giuliani reached out to Mr. Trump directly and asked to meet, the people said. Mr. Trump agreed, and in late April, they met at Mr. Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach.The meeting was pleasant, and lasted more than an hour, a person familiar with the meeting said. But Mr. Trump, who was accompanied by one of his Florida attorneys, was noncommittal.Yet he agreed to meet them again, two days later, at his private club, Mar-a-Lago, a meeting previously reported by CNN. Over a nearly two-hour dinner, Mr. Costello pressed Mr. Trump to cover not only Mr. Giuliani’s legal bills, but also to pay him for the work Mr. Giuliani provided Mr. Trump in the wake of the 2020 election.Mr. Trump resisted, noting that Mr. Giuliani did not win any of those cases. Mr. Costello, who did most of the talking for Mr. Giuliani, said that the money was not coming out of Mr. Trump’s own pocket, but rather the coffers of his PAC. By the end of the dinner, Mr. Trump agreed that Mr. Giuliani would be paid, one person said. But in the weeks that followed, neither he nor the PAC delivered. And Mr. Giuliani was growing more and more desperate.A federal judge was exasperated with Mr. Giuliani for failing to search for records as part of a defamation lawsuit that two Georgia election workers filed against him because he falsely accused them of stealing ballots. Mr. Giuliani said that he could not afford to pay for a vendor to do so.Mr. Costello pleaded with Mr. Trump’s aides to pay off Mr. Giuliani’s balance with the vendor, and the PAC made a $340,000 payment to that firm.Since then, however, the PAC has not covered any other bills for Mr. Giuliani.It has been a remarkable reversal of fortune for Mr. Giuliani, who was once worth tens of millions of dollars made partly on contracts he signed after leaving City Hall in New York, having become known as “America’s mayor” for his performance in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.A divorce from his third wife, Judith Nathan, cost him much of his wealth around the time he left his law firm to represent Mr. Trump, then the president, in the investigation brought by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III over whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russian officials in the 2016 election.From there, Mr. Giuliani engaged in campaign efforts to find damaging information about Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Ukraine, where Mr. Biden’s son had business dealings, efforts that helped lead to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.As part of an investigation into Mr. Giuliani’s work in Ukraine, the F.B.I. searched his apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in May 2021. That apartment is now on sale for $6.5 million. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      New Trump Charges Highlight Long-Running Questions About Obstruction

      by

      The accusation that former President Donald J. Trump wanted security camera footage deleted at Mar-a-Lago added to a pattern of concerns about his attempts to stymie prosecutors.When Robert S. Mueller III, the first special counsel to investigate Donald J. Trump, concluded his investigation into the ties between Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, his report raised questions about whether Mr. Trump had obstructed his inquiry.Justice Department officials and legal experts were divided about whether there was enough evidence to show Mr. Trump broke the law, and his attorney general — chosen in part because he was skeptical of the investigation — cleared him of wrongdoing.Four years after Mr. Mueller’s report was released, Jack Smith, the second special counsel to investigate Mr. Trump, added new charges on Thursday to an indictment over his handling of classified documents, setting out evidence of a particularly blatant act of obstruction.The indictment says that just days after the Justice Department demanded security footage from Mar-a-Lago, his residence and private club in Florida, Mr. Trump told the property manager there that he wanted security camera footage deleted. If proved, it would be a clearer example of criminality than what Mr. Mueller found, according to Andrew Goldstein, the lead investigator on Mr. Mueller’s obstruction investigation.“Demanding that evidence be destroyed is the most basic form of obstruction and is easy for a jury to understand,” said Mr. Goldstein, who is now a white-collar defense lawyer at the firm Cooley.“It is more straightforwardly criminal than the obstructive acts we detailed in the Mueller report,” he said. “And if proven, it makes it easier to show that Trump had criminal intent for the rest of the conduct described in the indictment.”The accusation about Mr. Trump’s desire to have evidence destroyed adds another chapter to what observers of his career say is a long pattern of gamesmanship on his part with prosecutors, regulators and others who have the ability to impose penalties on his conduct.And it demonstrates how Mr. Trump viewed the conclusion of the Mueller investigation as a vindication of his behavior, which became increasingly emboldened — particularly in regards to the Justice Department — throughout the rest of his presidency, a pattern that appears to have continued despite having lost the protections of the office when he was defeated in the election.In his memoir of his years in the White House, John R. Bolton, who served as Mr. Trump’s third national security adviser, described Mr. Trump’s approach as “obstruction as a way of life.”In the hours after the new charges became public, Mr. Trump, whose advisers have been blunt that he must win the election to overcome his legal challenges, highlighted the stakes for him of the 2024 election.He suggested in an interview with a right-wing news site that if he is elected, he will use the powers of the presidency to insulate himself from legal accountability on the documents case and the other inquiry being conducted by Mr. Smith into Mr. Trump’s efforts to retain power after his 2020 election loss.Jack Smith, the second special counsel to investigate Mr. Trump, added new charges on Thursday.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“I wouldn’t keep him,” Mr. Trump told Breitbart, the news site, in response to a question about whether he would fire Mr. Smith. “Jack Smith? Why would I keep him?”The new charges show how even in the face of Justice Department scrutiny into whether he still had classified documents in his possession, Mr. Trump has continued to try to find ways to upend its investigation.In June of last year, in the midst of its efforts to retrieve classified material Mr. Trump had taken from the White House upon leaving office, the Justice Department served a grand jury subpoena on Mr. Trump’s organization for surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago that would show how boxes of the documents had been handled, especially around a storage room where many of them had been stashed.Shortly after the Trump Organization received the subpoena, the revised indictment said, the former president called Mar-a-Lago’s property manager and head of maintenance, Carlos De Oliveira. The two men spoke for 24 minutes, prosecutors say.Two days later, Mr. De Oliveira and another defendant in the case, Mr. Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, “went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors, walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the storage room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras.”Days later, Mr. De Oliveira had a private conversation with the Mar-a-Lago employee in charge of the surveillance footage. The conversation was supposed to “remain between the two of them,” according to the charging document.Mr. De Oliveira told the employee that “‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” the indictment said.The employee in charge of the footage said “that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that.”But Mr. De Oliveira continued to push, asking, “What are we going to do?” (The Trump Organization ultimately turned over security footage, but, as The New York Times reported in May, investigators became suspicious about whether someone in Mr. Trump’s orbit tried to limit the amount of footage given to the government.)The indictment says that after the Justice Department demanded security footage from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump told the property manager there that he wanted security camera footage deleted.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesThe updated indictment also demonstrates how Mr. Trump, in the aftermath of the search of Mar-a-Lago last August, turned to an issue that he obsessed about in the White House: loyalty.“Someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good,” the indictment quoted Mr. Nauta as saying about Mr. De Oliveira to another Trump employee.That employee told Mr. Nauta that Mr. De Oliveira was “loyal” and “would not do anything to affect his relationship with Mr. Trump.”Shortly after that exchange, Mr. Trump called Mr. De Oliveira and said that he would get him a lawyer, the indictment said. Legal fees for Mr. De Oliveira, Mr. Nauta and other Trump employees who have become witnesses or defendants in the documents case are being paid by a political action committee affiliated with Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump’s desire for loyalty echoed behavior that Mr. Mueller captured in his report, which laid out how Mr. Trump asked the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, for his loyalty just days after taking office. Mr. Comey continued to pursue an investigation into ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia and was fired in Mr. Trump’s fifth month in office. Mr. Mueller was appointed as special counsel in the aftermath of Mr. Comey’s dismissal.Mr. Mueller’s investigation ultimately identified nearly a dozen acts Mr. Trump took that could be seen as obstruction of justice. One of the most damning related to how Mr. Trump pressured his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, to create a fake document rebutting statements he gave to Mr. Mueller’s office. Mr. McGahn refused to go along with what Mr. Trump wanted.Another example related to Mr. Trump’s powers as president. During Mr. Mueller’s investigation, several of his allies and associates — including Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort — were indicted by the Justice Department in cases that could have produced damaging testimony about Mr. Trump and his campaign. As the prosecutions of the men went forward, Mr. Trump publicly dangled the idea of issuing pardons. In the final weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency, he pardoned them.The former special counsel Robert S. Mueller at a hearing in 2019. Mr. Mueller’s investigation identified nearly a dozen acts Mr. Trump took that could be seen as obstruction of justice.Doug Mills/The New York Times“There are all sorts of ways to obstruct an investigation, but not every one has an equal impact,” said Brandon Van Grack, a former prosecutor on Mr. Mueller’s team. “Hiding and lying are damaging, but prosecutors can often still get at the truth. Destruction is often looked at seriously because it’s permanent. It’s permanently deleting or destroying” evidence in the case.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, assailed the investigations into the former president’s conduct, saying “the weaponized justice system along with their Democrat allies have failed at every turn because they are on the wrong side of the facts. History will judge them harshly.”Over many decades before reaching the White House, Mr. Trump engaged in gamesmanship with prosecutors, regulators and officials who had authority in aspects of the industries in which he operated. He lived in a New York City where corruption touched aspects of the political and government establishments and the real-estate construction businesses, and he came to believe that everything could be worked out through some kind of deal, associates and former employees said.He courted officials who had prosecutorial jurisdiction in New York City, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, and Robert Morgenthau, the district attorney in Manhattan. Faced with massive amounts of civil litigation, his impulse, former employees said, was to find lawyers who knew the judge.In April 2018, an aspect of the Russian investigation spun off into a separate one into Michael D. Cohen, a lawyer for the Trump Organization who also served as a fixer for Mr. Trump and knew many of his secrets. After Mr. Cohen’s hotel, apartment and office were searched by the F.B.I. that month, Mr. Trump called Mr. Cohen with a message: stay strong.He then predicted on Twitter that Mr. Cohen would never “flip” on him. Mr. Cohen eventually did provide prosecutors with information about Mr. Trump’s hush-money payments before the 2016 election to a porn star who said she had a sexual liaison with him. He later said that Mr. Trump spoke in “code” to avoid plainly communicating his desires.Mr. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, wrote in his book, “The Room Where It Happened,” that Mr. Trump repeatedly sought to interfere with law enforcement and other official actions involving foreign leaders.During an investigation into Halkbank, a state-financed institution based in Turkey that was facing an investigation by U.S. officials for a scheme to evade sanctions on Iran, Mr. Trump told the country’s leader that he would “take care of things,” Mr. Bolton wrote.In a brief interview on Friday, Mr. Bolton pointed to a specific aspect of Mr. Trump’s view of how the rules apply to him: his use of government power for his personal and political benefit while in office.He cited Mr. Trump’s efforts to solicit damaging information about the Bidens from Ukraine as he withheld military aid to that country. “It shows as president he had fundamental difficulty distinguishing himself from the government,” Mr. Bolton said. “And it’s also why he couldn’t understand why government officials weren’t personally loyal to him.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Prosecutors Push Back on Trump’s Request to Delay Documents Trial

      by

      The office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, said there “is no basis in law or fact” for granting a motion from former President Donald J. Trump that could push the start of the trial until after Election Day.Federal prosecutors on Thursday asked the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case to reject a motion by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to have his trial indefinitely postponed, a move that could serve to delay the proceeding until after the 2024 election.The filing by the prosecutors came three days after Mr. Trump’s legal team made an unusual request to the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, asking her to set aside the government’s initial suggestion to hold the trial in December and delay it until all “substantive motions” in the case were presented and resolved.The timing of a trial is crucial in all criminal matters. But it is especially important in this case, in which Mr. Trump has been charged with illegally holding on to 31 classified documents after leaving the White House and conspiring with one of his personal aides, Walt Nauta, to obstruct the government’s efforts to reclaim them.Mr. Trump is now both a federal criminal defendant and the Republican Party’s leading candidate in the presidential campaign. There could be untold complications if his trial seeps into the final stages of the race. Moreover, if the trial is pushed back until after the election and Mr. Trump wins, he could try to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general dismiss the matter entirely.Apparently recognizing these high stakes, prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, told Judge Cannon that she should not allow Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta to let the case drag on without a foreseeable ending.“There is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion,” they wrote, “and the defendants provide none.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers based their motion for a delay — which was filed on Monday in the Southern District of Florida — on several assertions.They said that as the case moved forward, they intended to make novel — and presumably time-consuming — arguments that the Presidential Records Act permitted Mr. Trump to take documents with him from the White House. That interpretation of the Watergate-era law is at odds with how legal experts interpret it.Prosecutors responded by saying this potential defense “borders on frivolous.” They also reminded Judge Cannon that it was not new at all, but in fact was central to an extended legal battle last year that she oversaw, in which an outside arbiter was put in place to review a trove of materials seized by the F.B.I. from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.Mr. Trump’s lawyers also complained that a first trove of discovery evidence provided by the government was expansive — including more than 800,000 pages of material — and would take a significant amount of time to sort through.Prosecutors shot back, saying about a third of those pages contained unimportant “email header and footer information” and that a set of “key” documents that would guide the defense toward the crucial sections of discovery was only about 4,500 pages.The prosecutors also told Judge Cannon that they intended to provide Mr. Trump’s lawyers with a second batch of unclassified discovery evidence as early as next week, including interviews conducted with witnesses as recently as June 23 — a few weeks after Mr. Trump was indicted. That suggests, as The New York Times has reported, that the investigation of the classified documents case continued even after charges were filed.As for the classified discovery evidence, prosecutors said they planned to take the bulk of the classified materials seized from Mar-a-Lago to a sensitive compartmented information facility inside Miami’s federal courthouse next week for review by Mr. Trump’s lawyers — even though some of them only have interim security clearances.Once the lawyers have their final security clearances, the prosecutors said, they will be able to look at the remaining classified records, including some “pertaining to the declassification of various materials during the Trump administration.”In asking for a delay, Mr. Trump’s lawyers had said that his campaign schedule “requires a tremendous amount of time and energy” and that these efforts would continue until the election. They argued that Mr. Nauta had a similar problem since his job requires him to accompany Mr. Trump on “most campaign trips around the country.”But prosecutors seemed to have no patience for this argument, saying the two men’s “professional schedules do not provide a basis to delay.”“Many indicted defendants have demanding jobs that require a considerable amount of their time and energy, or a significant amount of travel,” they wrote. “The Speedy Trial Act contemplates no such factor as a basis for a continuance, and the court should not indulge it here.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      What to Watch for as FBI Director Christopher Wray Testifies Before Congress

      by

      Stoked by former President Donald J. Trump, congressional Republicans have been trying to undermine the F.B.I.’s legitimacy with the public.Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, confronted an extraordinary political storm on Wednesday in testifying before Congress, with Republicans who once defended the bureau now denouncing it as a weapon wielded against former President Donald J. Trump and his supporters.Mr. Wray, who is appearing for the first time before the House Judiciary Committee since Republicans won the House, is most likely girding for the worst. The committee, led by Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, has said it “will examine the politicization” of the F.B.I. under Mr. Wray and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.In his opening statement, Mr. Jordan accused the bureau of a litany of abuses. He urged Democratic lawmakers to join Republicans in blocking the reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program known as Section 702 and raised questions about funding for the bureau’s new headquarters.“I hope they will work with us in the appropriations process to stop the weaponization of the government against the American people and end this double standard that exists now in our justice system,” he said.Anticipating the questioning to come, the top Democrat on the committee, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, described the hearing as “little more than performance art.” He countered that Republicans had initiated an array of “baseless investigations” in a bid to “protect Donald Trump from the consequences of his actions.”Stoked by the former president, congressional Republicans have adopted an increasingly caustic tone in their criticism of the country’s premier law enforcement agency, trying to damage its legitimacy and to undermine its standing with the public.That criticism was once trained on the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election. It is now focused on other flash points: Mr. Trump’s indictment in an inquiry into his handling of classified documents; the F.B.I.’s role in the search of his estate in Florida in August, as part of that inquiry; unfounded claims of a “two-tiered” system of justice favoring Democrats; and the Justice Department’s plea agreement with President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.So far, Republicans have not provided evidence that the F.B.I. and Mr. Wray are partisan, but they will try to catch him off balance and seed doubt about his motives.Here is what to look for:How will Mr. Wray respond?Mr. Wray infuriated Mr. Trump, who viewed the director’s declaration of independence as disloyalty. But Mr. Wray has previously testified before Congress, steadfastly defending the F.B.I. as nonpartisan and taking fire on Twitter from Mr. Trump, while he was president.Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Wray in 2017 after he fired James B. Comey, who as F.B.I. director had opened the Russia investigation. Since then, Mr. Wray has been under constant pressure from Republicans, who have simultaneously decried lawlessness in cities run by Democrats while attacking the F.B.I.’s role in political investigations.In the past, Mr. Wray has responded to attacks by parsing his words carefully. In his opening statement, he forcibly defended the F.B.I. and declined to discuss open investigations, which is the policy of the Justice Department.“I want to talk about the sheer breadth and impact of the work the F.B.I.’s 38,000 employees are doing, each and every day,” he said, citing the bureau’s work in addressing violent crime, fentanyl trafficking and efforts by China to steal trade secrets. “Because the work the men and women of the F.B.I. do to protect the American people goes way beyond the one or two investigations that seem to capture all the headlines.”Republicans are going to war.Mr. Trump and his supporters — as well as a vocal group of former F.B.I. officials who have aligned themselves with Republicans in Congress — believe the government is trying to silence and punish conservatives and see the bureau as a dangerous extension of that effort.Case in point: In January, House Republicans voted to investigate law enforcement, creating the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.Republicans have claimed that the F.B.I. prodded Twitter to discriminate against their party as well as conservative or right-wing protesters at school board meetings and abortion clinics. Those issues have proved to be powerful drivers of voter turnout in the party’s pro-Trump base.The subcommittee is led by Mr. Jordan, a close ally of Mr. Trump’s.Last month, House Republicans on the Oversight Committee moved to hold Mr. Wray in contempt of Congress. But they called off a planned vote days later after the bureau said it would make available a document at the center of their dispute, involving an unverified allegation of bribery against Mr. Biden when he was vice president.Mr. Trump and his supporters have promoted the idea that the Mar-a-Lago search was intended to neutralize his electoral chances.Mr. Trump and his allies have raged at his indictment and the search of Mar-a-Lago in August, when F.B.I. agents descended on his residence and uncovered hundreds of classified documents.The former president and his supporters have said that Mr. Trump declassified the records, meaning there was no misconduct to start, and that the search was an example of an uneven application of justice.But so far no evidence has emerged that the documents were declassified or that the search, which was approved by a federal judge, was improper or politically motivated. In fact, the search unfolded after Mr. Trump repeatedly resisted the government’s requests that he return the material.In recent weeks, Steven D’Antuono, the former top F.B.I. agent overseeing the documents case, testified behind closed doors before Mr. Jordan.Asked if “anyone was motivated by animus” in the documents investigation, Mr. D’Antuono said no, according to a transcript of his testimony.Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Wray in 2017 after he fired James B. Comey.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesHunter Biden reached a plea deal. Republicans hate it.Under the deal with the Justice Department, Mr. Biden agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time and to be sentenced to probation. The department also said it would not prosecute him for buying a handgun in 2018 during a period when he was using drugs.Republicans have assailed the deal, calling it too lenient, even though years of investigation by a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney found evidence to charge Mr. Biden only on the narrow tax and gun issues, rather than the wide-ranging international conspiracies peddled by Mr. Trump and his allies.That U.S. attorney, David C. Weiss, who signed off on the agreement, has also come under fire. On Monday, Mr. Weiss rebutted a key element of testimony to Congress by an Internal Revenue Service official who said that Mr. Weiss had complained about being blocked from pursuing more serious charges.Republicans will claim the Durham investigation showed that the F.B.I. was politically motivated in pursuing its Russia inquiry.A final report by John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel, looked at the origins of the F.B.I.’s investigation into any ties Mr. Trump’s campaign had with Russia but found no evidence of politically motivated misconduct.Still, Mr. Durham’s report has continued to fuel Republican claims of bias, with some accusing the F.B.I. of making moves motivated by political favoritism.That charge almost immediately resurfaced during Mr. Wray’s hearing. Mr. Durham’s “ lengthy report reluctantly concluded that the F.B.I. quote, failed uphold its mission of strict fidelity to the law,” Representative Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, said shortly after Mr. Wray’s testimony began.Even as Mr. Trump and his loyalists had long insisted that Mr. Durham’s investigation would unearth a “deep state” conspiracy intended to damage him politically, Mr. Durham never charged high-level government officials.Instead, Mr. Durham developed only two peripheral cases involving accusations of making false statements, both of which ended in acquittals, while using his report to cite flaws in the F.B.I.’s early investigative steps that he attributed to confirmation bias.Will Americans trust the F.B.I.?Republicans have claimed the Justice Department is “weaponized” against conservatives, but the allegations that were brought forth by aggrieved former F.B.I. officials have foundered.Instead, Democratic investigators have uncovered that those former F.B.I. officials have trafficked in right-wing conspiracy theories, including about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, and have received financial support from a top ally of Mr. Trump’s.In a heated exchange, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, said the American public trusted the F.B.I. more under J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau’s first director, than under the leadership of Mr. Wray. Mr. Wray countered that the number of F.B.I. applicants had surged in Mr. Gaetz’s home state. Mr. Gaetz said he was “deeply proud” of these people and “they deserve better than you.”Still, the back-and-forth is having an impact. Mr. D’Antuono, in his testimony, rebuffed allegations of political bias and rejected calls to defund the bureau — but expressed concern about the future.“In my opinion,” he said, “the more the American people hear about not trusting the F.B.I., it’s not a good day for this country.” More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Investigation of Trump Documents Case Continues After His Indictment

      by

      A grand jury has issued more subpoenas to people involved in the case after the unveiling of a 38-count indictment this month against the former president and an aide.Three weeks after former President Donald J. Trump was indicted on charges of illegally retaining national security records and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them, a federal grand jury in Miami is still investigating aspects of the case, according to people familiar with the matter.In recent days, the grand jury has issued subpoenas to a handful of people who are connected to the inquiry, those familiar with it said. While it remains unclear who received the subpoenas and the kind of information prosecutors were seeking to obtain, it is clear that the grand jury has stayed active and that investigators are digging even after a 38-count indictment was issued this month against Mr. Trump and a co-defendant, Walt Nauta, one of his personal aides.Prosecutors often continue investigating strands of a criminal case after charges have been brought, and sometimes their efforts go nowhere. But post-indictment investigations can result in additional charges against people who have already been accused of crimes in the case. The investigations can also be used to bring charges against new defendants.When the office of the special counsel Jack Smith filed the charges against Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta in the Southern District of Florida, the 49-page indictment offered an unusually detailed picture of the former president holding on to 31 highly sensitive government documents at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in West Palm Beach, Fla. Among the documents were some that concerned U.S. nuclear programs and others that detailed the nation’s potential vulnerabilities to attack.The indictment was strewn with vivid photographs of government records stored in boxes throughout Mar-a-Lago in a haphazard manner. Some of the boxes were piled up in a storage room, others in a bathroom and on a ballroom stage.Several of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers appeared in the indictment, identified only as Trump Employee 1 or similar descriptions. In one episode, the indictment recounted how Mr. Trump displayed a classified map to someone described as “a representative of his political action committee” during a meeting in August or September 2021 at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.The representative of the PAC was Susie Wiles, one of the top advisers for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, according to two people briefed on the matter. A Trump spokesman declined to comment.Ms. Wiles’s appearance in the indictment was reported earlier by ABC News.The fact that Ms. Wiles could become a prosecution witness should Mr. Trump’s case go to trial, even as she is helping run his third bid for office, underscores the complexities that the former president now faces as he deals with both a presidential campaign and a criminal defense with an overlapping cast of characters.During the meeting with Ms. Wiles, the indictment says, Mr. Trump commented that “an ongoing military operation” in an unnamed country was not going well. He then showed Ms. Wiles, who did not have proper security clearance, a classified map of that country, the indictment says, even while acknowledging that he should not be displaying the map and warning Ms. Wiles “to not get too close.”Many of Mr. Trump’s aides and employees at Mar-a-Lago were questioned as part of the investigation that resulted in his indictment, and Mr. Trump has been barred from discussing the facts of the case with them even though many work in close contact with him. Mr. Trump has made defending himself against the charges a central part of his political and fund-raising messages, adding to the level of overlap that exists between his legal and political worlds.Other aides who have been close to Mr. Trump are featured in the indictment, such as “Trump Employee 2,” who has been identified as Molly Michael, an assistant to Mr. Trump in the White House and his post-presidential office. The portion of the indictment describing the transcript of an audio recording in which Mr. Trump described what he said was a plan to attack Iran given to him by the Pentagon lists someone as a “staffer,” whom three people identified as Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump.Some Trump aides and employees who had initially caught the attention of investigators were mentioned in the indictment only in passing.At one point, for example, prosecutors under Mr. Smith appeared to be focused on Mr. Nauta’s dealings with a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago, Carlos Deoliveira, who helped him move boxes into a storage room at the compound. The movement of those boxes — at Mr. Trump’s request, prosecutors say — ultimately lay at the heart of a conspiracy charge in the indictment accusing Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta of obstructing the government’s attempt to retrieve all of the classified materials in Mr. Trump’s possession.In a previously unreported detail, prosecutors obtained a warrant to seize Mr. Deoliveira’s phone as part of their investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter.Records from the phone eventually showed that Mr. Deoliveira called an I.T. specialist who worked for Mar-a-Lago last summer around the time that prosecutors issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, demanding footage from a surveillance camera near the storage room where the boxes of documents were kept.But Mr. Deoliveira is referenced as “an employee of the Mar-a-Lago Club” in only a single paragraph in the indictment. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Verificación de la defensa de Trump en el caso de los documentos clasificados

      by

      El expresidente hizo comparaciones inexactas con otros políticos, tergiversó el proceso de clasificación y lanzó ataques con imprecisiones contra funcionarios.Horas después de declararse no culpable ante un tribunal federal en Miami por los cargos relacionados con su manejo de documentos clasificados, el expresidente Donald Trump defendió su conducta el 13 de junio con una serie de falsedades ya conocidas.En su club de golf en Bedminster, Nueva Jersey, Trump hizo comparaciones engañosas con otros personajes políticos, malinterpretó el proceso de clasificación y lanzó ataques con imprecisiones contra funcionarios.Aquí ofrecemos una verificación de datos de los argumentos de Trump sobre la investigación.Lo que dijo Trump“Amenazarme con 400 años en la cárcel por tener en mi poder mis propios documentos presidenciales, que es lo que prácticamente todos los presidentes han hecho, es una de las teorías legales más ofensivas y agresivas presentadas en la historia ante un tribunal estadounidense”.Falso. La Ley de Registros Presidenciales de 1978, que rige la conservación y retención de registros oficiales de los expresidentes, le da a la Administración Nacional de Archivos y Registros (NARA, por su sigla en inglés) total propiedad y control sobre los registros presidenciales. La legislación, que hace una distinción clara entre registros oficiales y documentos personales, se ha aplicado a todos los presidentes desde Ronald Reagan.La agencia señaló que “asumió la custodia física y legal de los registros presidenciales de las gestiones de Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush y Ronald Reagan cuando esos presidentes abandonaron el cargo”.De manera independiente, después de que Trump en repetidas ocasiones y engañosamente comparó su manejo de registros con el de su predecesor inmediato, la Administración Nacional de Archivos indicó en un comunicado que Barack Obama entregó sus documentos, tanto los clasificados como los que no lo estaban, de conformidad con la ley. La agencia también afirmó no estar al tanto de que se haya perdido alguna caja de registros presidenciales del gobierno de Obama.Lo que dijo Trump“El presidente toma la decisión de separar materiales personales de los registros presidenciales durante su mandato, y bajo su entera discreción”.Falso. La Ley de Registros Presidenciales distingue qué constituye material personal (como diarios o documentos de campañas políticas) y qué se clasifica como registros oficiales. No le da al presidente “discrecionalidad” para determinar qué es un registro personal y qué no lo es. Según la ley, el presidente saliente debe separar los documentos personales de los registros oficiales antes de abandonar el cargo.Agentes del FBI realizaron una búsqueda en el inmueble de Mar-a-Lago de Trump en agosto, más de un año después de que el abogado general de la NARA solicitó que se recuperaran materiales y tras meses de reiteradas consultas de funcionarios de la agencia y el Departamento de Justicia.Lo que dijo Trump“Se suponía que debía negociar con la NARA, que es exactamente lo que estaba haciendo hasta la redada en Mar-a-Lago organizada por agentes armados del FBI”.Falso. La Ley de Registros Presidenciales no establece un proceso de negociación entre el presidente y la NARA. La búsqueda realizada en la residencia de Trump en Florida, autorizada por los tribunales, ocurrió después de que se opuso en repetidas ocasiones a responder a las solicitudes del gobierno para que devolviera el material, incluso después de recibir una citación.Lo que dijo Trump“Biden envió 1850 cajas a la Universidad de Delaware, lo que dificultó la búsqueda, independientemente de quién la realizara. Se niega a entregarlas y se niega a permitir siquiera que alguien las vea, y luego dicen que se comporta con gran amabilidad”.Esta afirmación es engañosa. En 2012, Joe Biden le donó a la Universidad de Delaware 1850 cajas de documentos de la época en que fungió como senador del estado desde 1973 hasta 2009. A diferencia de los documentos presidenciales, que deben entregarse a la NARA al término del mandato del presidente, los documentos de los miembros del Congreso no están cubiertos por la Ley de Registros Presidenciales. Es común que los senadores y representantes les donen esos artículos a universidades, institutos de investigación o instalaciones históricas.La Universidad de Delaware convino en no darle acceso al público a los documentos de la época de Biden como senador hasta dos años después de su retiro de la vida pública. Pero el FBI sí revisó la colección en febrero como parte de una investigación independiente sobre el manejo de Biden de los documentos de gobierno y en colaboración con su equipo legal. The New York Times informó, en su momento, que continuaba el análisis del material y que todo parecía indicar que no contenía documentos clasificados.Lo que dijo Trump“Cuando la descubrieron, Hillary borró y ‘lavó con ácido’. Nadie hace eso, por los costos involucrados, pero es muy concluyente. Treinta y tres mil correos electrónicos en desafío a una citación del Congreso que ya se había emitido. La citación estaba ahí y ella decidió borrar, lavar con ácido y luego aplastar y destruir sus teléfonos celulares con un martillo. Y luego dicen que yo participé en una obstrucción”.Este es un argumento engañoso. Existen varias diferencias clave entre el caso de Trump y el uso por parte de Hillary Clinton de un servidor de correo electrónico privado cuando era secretaria de Estado, que Trump también describió de manera imprecisa.Una diferencia crucial es que varias investigaciones oficiales han concluido que Clinton no manejó indebidamente material clasificado de manera sistemática o deliberada, además de que un informe preparado en 2018 por el inspector general respaldó la decisión del FBI de no presentar cargos contra Clinton.En cambio, a Trump se le acusa de haber manejado indebidamente documentos clasificados y obstruir varias acciones del gobierno con el propósito de recuperarlos, así como de hacer declaraciones falsas ante algunos funcionarios. La acusación formal permitió tener acceso la semana pasada a fotografías de documentos guardados, en algunos casos, de manera veleidosa, como cajas apiladas en una regadera y otras en el escenario de un salón de baile frecuentado por visitantes.Según la investigación del FBI sobre el asunto, los abogados de Clinton le proporcionaron al Departamento de Estado en 2014 alrededor de 30.000 correos electrónicos relacionados con el trabajo y le ordenaron a un empleado que borrara todos los correos electrónicos personales de más de 60 días de antigüedad. En 2015, después de que el Times dio la noticia de que Clinton había usado una cuenta personal de correo electrónico, el comité de la Cámara de Representantes liderado por republicanos que estaba a cargo de la investigación de los ataques de 2012 contra puestos de avanzada estadounidenses en Bengasi, Libia, envió una citación en la que solicitaba todos los correos electrónicos de esa cuenta relacionados con Libia.Ese mismo mes, un empleado de la empresa que administraba el servidor de Clinton se percató de que en realidad no había borrado los correos electrónicos personales como se le pidió en 2014. Entonces procedió a aplicar un programa de software gratuito llamado BleachBit —no ácido real ni ningún otro compuesto químico— para borrar alrededor de 30.000 correos electrónicos personales.El FBI encontró miles de correos electrónicos adicionales relacionados con el trabajo que Clinton no le entregó al Departamento de Estado, pero James Comey, quien era director de la agencia en ese momento, declaró que no había “evidencia de que los correos electrónicos adicionales relacionados con el trabajo se hubieran borrado intencionalmente con el fin de ocultarlos”.Lo más seguro es que Clinton esté en desacuerdo con la aseveración de Trump de que el FBI y el Departamento de Justicia la “protegieron”, pues ha dicho que las acciones de Comey, junto con la interferencia rusa, le costaron las elecciones de 2016.Lo que dijo Trump“Por supuesto que exoneró a Mike Pence. Me da gusto. Mike no hizo nada malo, aunque tenía documentos clasificados en su casa. Pero lo exoneraron. Y el caso de Biden es otra cosa”.Esta afirmación es engañosa. Se encontraron documentos clasificados tanto en la casa del exvicepresidente Mike Pence en Indiana, en enero, como en la antigua oficina de Biden en un centro de investigación en Washington en noviembre y en su residencia de Delaware en enero. El Departamento de Justicia decidió no presentar cargos contra Pence; en cuanto a Biden, la investigación sobre su manejo de materiales está en proceso.Pero las diferencias entre esos casos y el de Trump son significativas, en particular en lo que respecta al volumen de documentos encontrados y la respuesta de Biden y de Pence.En la casa de Pence se encontró aproximadamente una decena de documentos marcados como clasificados. El FBI inspeccionó su casa en febrero, con su consentimiento, y encontró un documento clasificado más. No está claro cuántos documentos clasificados tenía en su posesión Biden, pero sus abogados han dicho que se encontró “un pequeño número” en su antigua oficina y alrededor de media docena en su casa de Delaware.En contraste, Trump tenía “cientos” de documentos clasificados, según la acusación formal del Departamento de Justicia, en la que se indica que algunos de los registros contenían información sobre los programas nucleares del país y “posibles vulnerabilidades de Estados Unidos y sus aliados a ataques militares”. En total, el gobierno ha recuperado más de 300 archivos con marcas de clasificado de su casa y su club privado de Florida.Otra diferencia es que representantes de Pence y Biden han dicho que no se percataron de que habían conservado esos documentos y no tardaron en informar a la NARA cuando lo descubrieron. Además, ambos cooperaron con funcionarios del gobierno para devolver los documentos y, al parecer, cumplieron voluntariamente con la realización de búsquedas en sus propiedades.En contraste, Trump se opuso en repetidas ocasiones, durante meses, a las solicitudes de devolver materiales y, según se lee en la acusación formal, desempeñó un papel activo para ocultarles a los investigadores documentos clasificados. La NARA le informó a Trump en mayo de 2021 que faltaban ciertos documentos presidenciales. Algunos agentes recuperaron 15 cajas de Mar-a-Lago en enero de 2022, pero sospechaban que todavía faltaban registros. Siete meses después, agentes del FBI registraron el inmueble de Florida y recuperaron más documentos.Lo que dijo Trump“A diferencia de mí, que contaba con total autoridad de desclasificación en mi carácter de presidente, Joe Biden, quien era vicepresidente, no tenía facultades para desclasificar y tampoco el derecho de tener en su posesión los documentos. No tenía ese derecho”.Esta afirmación es engañosa. Los vicepresidentes sí cuentan con facultades para desclasificar ciertos materiales, aunque el alcance de esas facultades no se ha cuestionado explícitamente ante los tribunales.Trump ha insistido en otras ocasiones en que contaba con facultades para desclasificar materiales sin necesidad de informarle a nadie. Existen procedimientos formales para levantar el secreto oficial de la información, pero el debate legal sobre si los presidentes deben cumplirlos no se ha resuelto, según el Colegio de Abogados de Estados Unidos y el Servicio de Investigación del Congreso, un organismo sin afiliación partidista. Un tribunal federal de apelaciones decidió en 2020 que “levantar el secreto oficial de materiales, incluso si lo hace el presidente, debe someterse a procedimientos establecidos”. No obstante, la Corte Suprema no ha emitido ningún fallo al respecto.De cualquier forma, cabe señalar que Trump siguió estos procedimientos con respecto a algunos documentos; por ejemplo, emitió un memorando el día previo al final de su mandato con el que desclasificó información relativa a la investigación del FBI sobre las relaciones de su campaña de 2016 con Rusia.Por otra parte, expertos legales han señalado que la clasificación de información sobre armas nucleares o “datos restringidos” se rige conforme a un marco legal totalmente distinto, la Ley de Energía Atómica. Esa ley no le otorga facultades explícitas al presidente para tomar la decisión unilateral de desclasificar secretos nucleares y establece un proceso estricto de desclasificación en el que participan varias agencias. No está claro si los documentos guardados en Mar-a-Lago incluían “datos restringidos”.Chris Cameron More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Here Are the Likely Next Steps in the Trump Documents Case

      by

      The federal prosecution of the former president should play out much like any other criminal proceeding, but against the backdrop of the political calendar.Now that former President Donald J. Trump has entered a plea of not guilty at his arraignment in Miami, the criminal case against him will, barring an unforeseen event, settle into a traditional trajectory.The case against Mr. Trump, accusing him of illegally retaining national defense documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, is the first time that federal charges have been filed against a former president. But the case’s passage through the legal system should, with any luck, proceed like other criminal matters, if against the backdrop of the political calendar.The only date set so far for a further step is a hearing on June 27 at which Mr. Trump’s co-defendant and personal aide, Walt Nauta, will enter his plea. A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, said he was unsure whether Mr. Nauta and Mr. Trump have a joint defense agreement.The parties will begin a slow but steady rhythm of status conferences, meeting every couple of months in court as the government starts to provide evidence to the defense through what is known as the discovery process. That evidence will help Mr. Trump’s lawyers decide what motions they plan to file in attacking the charges against him.Mr. Trump will also have to finalize the members of his legal team. To that end, he met privately with a handful of Florida-based lawyers at his club in Miami, Doral, on Monday night, according to a person close to him who was not authorized to speak publicly about the efforts to remake his legal team. Mr. Trump found himself needing additional lawyers after the two who had taken lead on the documents case, James Trusty and John Rowley, resigned the day after the charges were filed.The meetings were said to have gone well, but it remained unclear whether any of the lawyers he interviewed would be hired. Mr. Trump’s advisers are hoping to avoid rushing into a situation of quickly hiring someone who may not gel with the client and with his other lawyers. Nearly a half-dozen lawyers were interviewed, according to one person familiar with the discussions.For now, Mr. Trump will lean heavily on the New York lawyer who appeared with him at the arraignment, Todd Blanche. Mr. Blanche is also defending Mr. Trump against criminal charges in state court in Manhattan stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star.It is unclear what role another lawyer who stood beside him, Christopher M. Kise, will have as the case goes forward. Mr. Kise was initially hired to handle a legal fight over imposing an outside arbiter to review reams of government records seized last summer during an F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.In a brief interview after the court appearance, Mr. Kise, a former Florida solicitor general, rejected reports that Mr. Trump had struggled to find lawyers interested in working on the case.“Contrary to the recent reporting, President Trump has a number of very good options that he’s considering and will take his time to make an informed decision,” Mr. Kise said. “There are a number of excellent lawyers that are not only willing, but very interested in working with him on this case.”Mr. Kise said his own job was “to provide advice and counsel to my client.”The one unusual aspect of Mr. Trump’s case will be its pacing.Prosecutors working for the special counsel Jack Smith will most likely seek to drive the case forward quickly, all too aware that the prosecution is playing out as Mr. Trump pursues his presidential campaign. Mr. Trump’s lawyers will surely try to slow the case down, perhaps with an eye toward dragging it out until after the 2024 election. That has been Mr. Trump’s M.O. in nearly every legal case he has faced over the years, and this one is not likely to be an exception.Mr. Trump is expected to continue with a fairly steady stream of political events in the coming months, although the needs of the court calendar in the Florida case will in some ways dictate his actions. Unlike when Mr. Trump chose to opt out of personally appearing at the civil rape and defamation trial brought against him in New York by the writer E. Jean Carroll, he is unlikely to be permitted the same flexibility by the federal judge who hears his criminal case in Florida.At this point, it remains unclear whether Mr. Trump will attend the first Republican primary debate, which is scheduled for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.But if he does show up, he will almost certainly be pressed about his indictments — not only by the moderators but also by the other candidates. Mr. Trump is also facing the prospect of charges concerning election interference from the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., and from Mr. Smith concerning similar efforts to thwart the transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Fact Check: Trump’s Misleading Defenses in Classified Documents Case

      by

      The former president drew misleading comparisons to others, misconstrued the classification process and leveled inaccurate attacks at officials.Hours after pleading not guilty in a federal court in Miami to charges related to his handling of classified documents, former President Donald J. Trump defended his conduct on Tuesday with a string of familiar falsehoods.Appearing at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump drew misleading comparisons to other political figures, misconstrued the classification process and leveled inaccurate attacks at officials.Here’s a fact check of claims Mr. Trump made related to the inquiry.What Mr. Trump Said“Threatening me with 400 years in prison for possessing my own presidential papers, which just about every other president has done, is one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law.”False. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 governs the preservation and retention of official records of former presidents, and gives the National Archives and Records Administration complete ownership and control of presidential records. The law makes a distinction between official records and personal documents, and has applied to every president since Ronald Reagan.The agency has said that “it assumed physical and legal custody of the presidential records from the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, when those presidents left office.”Separately, after Mr. Trump repeatedly and misleadingly compared his handling of records to that of his immediate predecessor, the National Archives said in a statement that former President Barack Obama turned over his documents, classified and unclassified, as required by law. The agency has also said it is not aware of any missing boxes of presidential records from the Obama administration.What Mr. Trump Said“The decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president’s term and in the president’s sole discretion.”False. The Presidential Records Act defines what constitutes personal materials — such as diaries or political campaign documents — from official records. It does not give the president “sole discretion” in determining what is and is not a personal record. Under the law, a departing president is required to separate personal documents from official records before leaving office.F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August, more than a year after the general counsel of the National Archives requested the recovery of the materials and after months of repeated inquiries from officials at the agency and at the Justice Department.What Mr. Trump Said“I was supposed to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was raided by gun-toting F.B.I. agents.”False. The Presidential Records Act does not establish a process of negotiation between the president and the archives. The court-approved search of Mr. Trump’s Florida residence unfolded after he repeatedly resisted the government’s requests that he return the material, even after being subpoenaed.What Mr. Trump Said“Biden sent 1,850 boxes to the University of Delaware, making the search very, very difficult for anybody. And he refuses to give them up and he refuses to let people even look at them, and then they say how he’s behaving so nicely.”This is misleading. Joseph R. Biden Jr. donated 1,850 boxes of documents to the University of Delaware in 2012 from his tenure as a senator representing the state from 1973 to 2009. Unlike presidential documents, which must be released to the archives once a president leaves office, documents from members of Congress are not covered by the Presidential Records Act. It is not uncommon for senators and representatives to give such items to colleges, research institutions or historical facilities.The University of Delaware agreed not to give the public access to Mr. Biden’s documents from his time as senator until two years after he retired from public life. But the F.B.I. did search the collection in February as part of a separate special counsel investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of government documents and in cooperation with his legal team. The New York Times reported at the time that the material was still being analyzed but did not appear to contain any classified documents.What Mr. Trump Said“When caught, Hillary then deleted and acid-washed. Nobody does that because of the expense, but it’s pretty conclusive. Thirty-three thousand emails in defiance of a congressional subpoena already launched. The subpoena was there and she decided to delete, acid-wash and then smash and destroy her cellphones with a hammer. And then they say I participated in obstruction.”This is misleading. There are several key differences between Mr. Trump’s case and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state — which Mr. Trump also described inaccurately.Crucially, several official investigations have concluded that Mrs. Clinton did not systematically or deliberately mishandle classified material, and a 2018 inspector general report supported the F.B.I.’s decision not to charge Mrs. Clinton.In contrast, Mr. Trump is accused of mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to recover them and making false statements to officials. The indictment unsealed last week featured photographs of documents stored in sometimes haphazard ways, including boxes stacked in a shower and others piled on the stage of a ballroom that guests frequented.According to the F.B.I.’s inquiry into the matter, Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers provided about 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department in 2014 and instructed an employee to remove all personal emails older than 60 days. In 2015, after The Times reported Mrs. Clinton’s use of a personal email account, a Republican-led House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on American outposts in Benghazi, Libya, sent a subpoena requesting all emails she had in that account related to Libya.That same month, an employee working for the company that managed Mrs. Clinton’s server realized he did not actually delete the personal emails as instructed in 2014. He then used a free software program called BleachBit — not actual acid or chemical compounds — to delete about 30,000 personal emails.The F.B.I. found thousands of additional work-related emails that Mrs. Clinton did not turn over to the State Department, but the director of the bureau at the time, James B. Comey, said it found “no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.”Mrs. Clinton would almost certainly disagree with Mr. Trump’s assertion that the F.B.I. and the Justice Department “protected” her, and has said that Mr. Comey’s actions as well as Russian interference cost her the 2016 election.What Mr. Trump Said“He totally exonerated Mike Pence. I’m happy about that. Mike did nothing wrong, but he happened to have classified documents in his house. But they exonerated him. And Biden is a different story.”This is misleading. Classified documents were found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s home in Indiana in January and President Biden’s former office at a Washington think tank in November and his Delaware residence in January. The Justice Department declined to pursue charges against Mr. Pence, and the investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of materials is continuing.But those cases differ in several significant ways from Mr. Trump’s, particularly in the volume of documents found and in Mr. Pence’s and Mr. Biden’s response.About a dozen documents with classified markings were found at Mr. Pence’s home. The F.B.I. searched his home in February with his agreement and found one additional classified document. It is unclear how many classified documents were found in Mr. Biden’s possession, but his lawyers have said “a small number” were discovered at his former office and about a half-dozen at his Delaware home.In contrast, Mr. Trump stored “hundreds” of classified documents, according to the Justice Department’s indictment, which said some records included information about the country’s nuclear programs as well as “potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack.” In total, the government has retrieved more than 300 files with classified markings from his Florida home and private club.Representatives for Mr. Pence and Mr. Biden have said that they inadvertently kept those documents and quickly alerted the National Archives once they were discovered. Both men also cooperated with government officials in turning over the documents and appeared to have voluntarily complied with searches of their properties.In contrast, Mr. Trump repeatedly defied requests to return materials for months and, according to the indictment, played an active role in concealing classified documents from investigators. The archives alerted Mr. Trump in May 2021 that presidential documents were missing. Officials retrieved 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January 2022 but suspected that other records remained missing. Seven months later, F.B.I. agents searched the Florida property and recovered additional documents.What Mr. Trump Said“Unlike me, who had absolute declassification authority as president, Joe Biden as vice president had no authority to declassify and no right to possess the documents. He had no right.”This is misleading. Vice presidents do have the power to declassify certain material, though the scope of their declassification powers has not been explicitly tested in courts.Mr. Trump has previously insisted that he had the power to declassify material without needing to inform anyone. There are formal procedures for declassifying information, but whether presidents must abide by them is an unsettled legal issue, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service and the American Bar Association. A federal appeals court ruled in 2020 that “declassification, even by the president, must follow established procedures.” But the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on the matter.It is worth noting, though, that Mr. Trump followed these procedures for certain documents, like issuing a memorandum on the day before leaving office declassifying information related to the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia.Separately, legal experts have noted that the classification of information related to nuclear weapons or “restricted data” is governed by a separate legal framework entirely, the Atomic Energy Act. That law does not explicitly give the president the authority to declassify nuclear secrets unilaterally and establishes a strict process for declassification that involves several agencies. It is unclear whether documents stored at Mar-a-Lago included “restricted data.”Chris Cameron More