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      The Biden Family Drama Is Far From Over

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      Gail Collins: Bret, I suspect our first big argument today will be about Hunter Biden. But I feel sorta obliged to start with Donald Trump. I mean, how often do you have a former president facing the threat of multiple indictments on alleged transgressions ranging from paying hush money over a sex scandal to prompting a riot that stormed the Capitol to trying to fix an election?Bret Stephens: While reportedly ordering an employee to delete potentially incriminating security camera footage in Mar-a-Lago. My preferred nickname for the 45th president, as you know, is Benito Milhous Caligula, but maybe we could switch that to G. Gordon Berlusconi.Gail: Said former president is, of course, the front-runner for the next Republican nomination.What’s your take on all this?Bret: Two thoughts. First, Trump belongs in prison, assuming Jack Smith, the special counsel in the documents matter, can prove his case in court. At a minimum, it looks to me like an open-and-shut case of obstruction of justice. Apparently, nobody told The Donald that the cover-up is usually worse than the crime.Gail: From your lips to God’s ears.Bret: Second, the more the legal system comes after Trump, the more the Republican rank-and-file will rally around him as both a truth-teller and a martyr. The hard right increasingly views the U.S. justice system in ways that the far left traditionally has: as a rigged, corrupt system in which sinister insiders use the levers of power to advance the interests of the elite at the expense of ordinary people.And of course, the Hunter Biden saga plays right into that narrative.Gail: Knew you’d be dying to go on to Hunter. I thought the plea deal was pretty reasonable. His crimes were tax evasion and lying when he bought a gun by failing to acknowledge he was a drug addict. I hate the idea of virtually anybody being able to obtain a gun. But even I do not expect drug addicts will voluntarily share that information when they attempt to buy one. So, definite criminal behavior but not a real shocker.Bret: If Hunter had been poor and Black, would the justice system have been as indulgent?Gail: A fair point. But in most places, a poor Black defendant from a responsible family who’s subsequently been living a sober, well-supervised life probably could have made this kind of deal. Or, OK, at least in some places.Bret: Hmmm.Maybe Hunter is a swell guy in private, and I have sympathy for anyone struggling with addiction. But what’s in the public record about him — from his obvious willingness to trade on the perception of access to make his living from dubious foreign sources to his reluctance to acknowledge paternity of one of his daughters to his career as a mediocre artist selling work at curiously astronomical prices to not paying taxes and then almost getting off with what seemed like a wrist slap — doesn’t exactly brighten the Biden family name. And while Republicans are jumping to conclusions without rock-solid evidence, I’m not entirely confident that Joe Biden really had no inkling of what his son was up to or that the larger Biden family didn’t benefit from Hunter’s shenanigans.Gail: Absolutely no evidence Joe Biden knew about Hunter’s lawbreaking. But one charge I’d bet on is that Hunter dropped dad’s name a lot when trying to do business with foreign honchos. Sort of hard to imagine him being saintly enough to avoid it. And the whole idea of his making deals with foreign honchos in the first place while his father was vice president is … bad.Bret: When it came to the Trump family’s finances — from his tax avoidance schemes to his foreign hotels to Jared Kushner’s sweetheart financing with Saudi Arabia — the news media left no stone unturned. It behooves journalists to be as aggressively curious about the Biden family’s finances. Especially since a federal judge wasn’t at all keen on Hunter’s plea deal, and I.R.S. agents are alleging political interference in the case.Gail: Absolutely. And news of Hunter’s unacknowledged daughter — brought to us by The Times’s great reporting — is a deeply depressing embarrassment for both father and grandfather. I was happy to see Joe Biden acknowledge her last Friday.But I still don’t believe anything on the Biden bad-behavior ledger compares to the way Trump built a personal real estate empire on smarmy-to-corrupt practices.Bret: Yeah — probably.Gail: And you know, as irritating as I find Donald Jr. and Eric making pots of money off their family name, I wouldn’t find that alone a major reason to violently oppose their father’s presidential ambitions.I think it’s the same with Hunter Biden — the House Republicans may be trying to make him a big campaign issue, but voters mostly don’t care.Bret: I bet plenty of voters would like to know how the extended Biden family raked in $17 million from foreign sources between 2014 and 2019, as a whistle-blowing I.R.S. agent testified. This was a period that seems to have coincided with Hunter’s crack binges. Just what expert services was he providing for that kind of income? Glassblowing?Gail: Well, we’re not gonna resolve every part of this today. Always enjoy having a Hunter fight with you, Bret, and we’ll undoubtedly turn back to this subject. But let’s move on to Congress. Lots to discuss there.Bret: Ad aspera per aspera, as some Roman must have said.Gail: Mitch McConnell seemed to go totally blank while talking with reporters last week. People are wondering if he’s developed serious aging problems that should make him step down from his job as Senate minority leader. What do you think?Bret: That one is between him and his physician, and he seemed to recover his faculties later during the press conference. But as with Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Grassley or, ahem, Joe Biden, elderly politicians do themselves no favors by trying to hang on to office for too long. Interesting question is who might replace him. Any free advice for the Senate Repubs?Gail: We both agreed long ago that we wished the president wasn’t intent on running for re-election in his 80s. As to McConnell, I’ll never forgive him for squatting on Barack Obama’s final nomination to the Supreme Court. Still, I have to admit he’s generally seemed at least non-crazy as minority leader.But proposing a successor is your territory. Any ideas?Bret: I don’t think McConnell will step down right away, but someone I know who knows things tells me that the likeliest replacements are either South Dakota’s John Thune, the current No. 2, or Texas’ John Cornyn. My own preference would be Cornyn: a smart and sober guy and a non-MAGA conservative. Whatever else you might say about Cornyn, he is to the junior senator from Texas what pumpkin pie is to a jack-o’-lantern.Gail: Love your Ted Cruz reference. Hehehehe.Bret: Can I switch the subject to cultural issues? First, Kevin Spacey’s acquittal in a London courtroom on nine charges of sexual assault.Gail: Bret, not having really kept up on the Spacey situation, I’m going to have to defer to you.Bret: This is Spacey’s second acquittal, following last year’s in a case brought in New York by the actor Anthony Rapp. What bothers me is that even now, Spacey will face an “uphill battle” to get major roles again, according to a report in The Times. He’s one of the greatest actors alive, the Laurence Olivier of our day. He’s spent the last six years as persona non grata. He’s been declared not guilty by two juries in two countries. I think his case, like that of Armie Hammer, will be remembered as another ugly instance of #MeToo opportunism. To borrow a line from Raymond J. Donovan, Ronald Reagan’s unjustly indicted labor secretary, to which office does he go to get his reputation back?Sorry, I had to rant. I hope some major Hollywood director has the guts and grace to give him a starring role.Gail: Rant away! And as I said, I’m following your lead on this one. Except for your #MeToo swipe. The whole #MeToo opportunism reference hurts me.On a far less somber note, I have to say I’m siding with the law-and-order crowd when it comes to the Biden family dog, Commander, who’s allegedly bitten Secret Service agents at least 10 times over the last few months.I’m sure Commander has his own side of the story, but he should be exiled to the countryside forever. No deal with the prosecutor where he pleads guilty and then gets nothing but probation.Bret: Maybe Commander got hold of that stash of white powder that was found in the White House? “Cocaine K-9” could make an interesting sequel to “Cocaine Bear.”The other subject I wanted to raise is Sinead O’Connor, the Irish singer who sadly passed away last week. She basically blew up her musical career in the United States when in 1992 she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live” in protest of the church’s cover-up of clerical sexual abuse. Your thoughts?Gail: I’d love to see Sinead O’Connor’s story enshrined with other celebrities who did something righteous and fell into career limbo as a result. Many celebrities have been outspoken with few repercussions. But messing with religious leaders will almost always get you in deep trouble. Even when they deserve it.Bret: O’Connor was calling attention to hideous facts about the church a decade before The Boston Globe’s Spotlight stories put it on the national agenda. She used her musical celebrity in exemplary fashion to call out monstrous evil. She went directly after one of the most beloved public figures of the time, now canonized, and she did so at heavy cost to her own career. It was an exemplary use of free speech and an extraordinary act of courage.Nothing compared 2 her. Rest in peace.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Taiwan Faces a #MeToo Wave, Set Off by a Netflix Hit

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      A torrent of sexual harassment accusations has prompted questions about the state of women’s rights on an island democracy that has long been one of Asia’s most progressive places.In the past few weeks, a wave of #MeToo allegations has raced to the very top of Taiwan’s political, judicial and arts scenes, forcing a new reckoning of the state of women’s rights on a democratic island that has long taken pride in being among Asia’s most progressive places.Nearly every day, fresh allegations emerge, setting off discussions on talk shows and on social media, with newspaper commentaries and activist groups calling for stronger protections for victims.In many ways, Taiwan stands out for the significant strides that women have made that helped elect the island’s first female president and bolster laws against rape and sexual assault, before #MeToo took off in the United States. But the flood of new sexual harassment accusations points to what activists and scholars say is entrenched sexism that leaves women vulnerable at work, and a culture that is quick to blame victims and cover up accusations against powerful men.President Tsai, in 2020, with other officials. Some of the earliest #MeToo allegations centered on senior members of her political party, posing risks to the party’s credibility with younger voters.Makoto Lin/Taiwan Presidential Office, via ReutersThe outpouring of complaints was set off by a popular Netflix drama about Taiwanese politics called “Wave Makers,” which featured a subplot about a female member of a political party telling her boss that she had been sexually harassed by a high-ranking party member. Her boss promises to help her report the harassment, and in an indication of how often such politically inconvenient complaints are ignored, says, “Let’s not just let this go this time.”That quote from the fictional supervisor became a clarion call, inspiring more than 100 accusers, mostly women, to speak out on social media, sharing their accounts of unwanted kisses, groping and in a few cases, attempted rape. They described the indignities endured at the workplace, including inappropriate touching and unwanted advances by male colleagues and bosses, as well as lewd comments. Some of their posts have been shared thousands of times.The stakes are particularly high for President Tsai Ing-wen’s governing Democratic Progressive Party. Senior party and government officials were among the first accused of harassment and of seeking to silence accusers, forcing Ms. Tsai to apologize twice for her party’s mishandling of internal complaints. The criticism runs counter to the party’s record as a champion of liberal values, which includes legalizing same-sex marriage in 2019 and granting gay couples the right to adopt earlier this year. And it poses risks to the party’s credibility with younger voters ahead of a presidential election next year.“The Democratic Progressive Party has regarded itself as the governing party that supports gender equality,” Fan Yun, a party legislator who is also a professor specializing in gender issues at National Taiwan University, said in a telephone interview. “The Netflix show was seen by others as a snapshot of what’s happening within the party, and it has brought about great impact.”A scene from Wave Makers. A line from the show about properly addressing a sexual harassment complaint, “Let’s not just let this go this time,” resonated in Taiwan.NetflixAmong the most senior figures accused of harassment is Yen Chih-fa, who denied the allegation but resigned from his post as an adviser to President Tsai. Taiwan’s highest legal body said it would investigate a complaint against a former chief justice, Lee Po-tao. Tsai Mu-lin, a high-level party official, has been accused of bullying a female party staff member into silence when she reported that a male colleague had tried to enter her hotel room.Mr. Tsai, who is not related to the president, has since stepped down.The woman who accused him, Chen Wen-hsuan, said she felt empowered to speak out publicly by the other women who had shared their experiences. “This movement has taught me that no injustice should be swallowed,” she said. “After all, we can’t just let it go.”Allegations have also been made against men from the main opposition party, the Kuomintang, as well as across Taiwan’s society more broadly, including in academia, journalism, and most recently, entertainment.Mickey Huang, a TV personality, apologized after being accused by a woman he met at work of kissing her without her consent and forcing her to be photographed nude. Aaron Yan, a pop star, apologized after an ex-boyfriend accused him of secretly shooting videos of them having sex, when the ex-boyfriend was 16, a minor. Local prosecutors said this week they would investigate the allegation.Mickey Huang, a TV personality, apologized after being accused by a woman of kissing her without her consent and forcing her to be photographed nude.Visual China Group, via Getty ImagesIn some ways, the #MeToo movement points to a generational shift in attitudes brought about by the hard-fought advances won by women’s rights activists in decades past. Taiwan’s younger generation started learning about gender equality in elementary school, as part of curriculum changes enacted in 2004, and have since come of age.But workplaces are struggling to keep pace.Taiwan’s younger generation has “a higher awareness of gender diversity and equality than the older generation,” said Wei-Ting Yen, an assistant professor of government at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. “However, the workplace that young people are entering is still dominated by the older generation.”Lawmakers have pledged to quickly pass changes to laws to make workplaces and schools safer by holding organizations accountable for protecting victims of harassment. The changes would require organizations to track complaints and provide independent, third-party review panels if needed. Women’s rights groups have called for Taiwan to extend the statute of limitations for sexual harassment complaints, currently at one year.But activists also say more needs to be done to address the culture of sexism that underlies the misconduct and deters many women from speaking out. A survey by Taiwan’s labor ministry last year showed that only a tiny percentage of female respondents who said they had encountered sexual harassment at work had filed complaints. Activists and scholars in Taiwan say that men in power, whether they are supervisors in workplaces or police officers or judges, are often seen as sympathetic toward other men in power, and likely to blame the victim.This month, Lai Yu-fen, 27, accused a Polish diplomat, Bartosz Rys, on her Facebook and Twitter accounts, of what Ms. Lai described as sexual assault last year. She said that when she filed a police report, investigators asked why she had apologized to the diplomat as she rejected his advances, and why she had not told her family about the encounter. She said a defense lawyer gossiped about her to mutual friends. “I want to take back my own story,” Ms. Lai said in an interview.The Polish Office in Taipei, Poland’s de facto embassy in Taiwan, confirmed that it cooperated with the authorities. Prosecutors decided not to charge Mr. Rys, whose posting ended last year and who later left Taiwan. He did not respond to an emailed request for comment, but said on his Twitter page that Ms. Lai had sought money in exchange for dropping the accusation. (She said the request for money was part of negotiating a legal settlement.)To those working in Taiwan’s civil society, perhaps the most concerning of allegations are those directed at activists seen as influential leaders in the rights community. Lee Yuan-chun, 29, an activist, this month publicly accused Wang Dan, a veteran Chinese pro-democracy dissident, of pressing him onto a bed and asking him for sex in 2014. He said he was suing Mr. Wang.Wang Dan, middle, a Chinese pro-democracy dissident, was accused this month by an activist of pressing him onto a bed and asking him for sex. Andres Kudacki/Associated PressIn a statement, Mr. Wang said he hoped that the public would reserve judgment until a court ruled on the lawsuit. “As a public figure, one’s private life will be subject to more stringent scrutiny,” he said. “Through this incident I will pay more attention to this in the future.” More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on consequences for Trump: this beginning took bravery | Editorial

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      A 79-year-old advice columnist – along with a handful of other brave women who testified in her case – has done what legal and political institutions have not yet managed: held the former president Donald Trump accountable in law for his actions, and for his lies.In finding that he sexually abused E Jean Carroll in the 1990s, and subsequently defamed her, albeit not finding him liable for rape, the jury in her civil suit laid down an important marker.Though it awarded $5m (£4m) to Ms Carroll, money cannot erase the initial attack, the intrusive memories she has endured or her continued avoidance of romantic or sexual relationships. Mr Trump compounded the damage when he attacked her as a “wack job” pursuing a “hoax” after she described what had happened.It required courage to take on a man who was one of the most powerful people in the world, who may be so again, and who attracts and encourages irrational and aggressive support. She has received death threats, and the judge advised jurors to remain anonymous “for a long time”. Asked if she regretted bringing the case, Ms Carroll replied: “About five times a day.”It is too easy to write off this hard-earned victory by focusing solely on the fact that its impact on voters is likely to be limited. No one imagines it will sink Mr Trump’s political fortunes. His ability to float past or even capitalise upon his worst acts, transmuting them into fundraising and campaigning capital, is both remarkable and depressing. His support has proved resilient through impeachment, indictment and general disgrace. But this verdict stands on its own merits, in curtailing the impunity he has enjoyed for too long.It would be wrong to imagine that any case could fix a broken political system, or, indeed, root out entrenched misogyny. It is a sign of just how bad things are that it is entirely likely that the Republicans will go into the 2024 presidential election with a candidate found by a court to be a sexual abuser – and that, if they do, he may well win.Mr Trump was elected in 2016 even after the emergence of the Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted that “When you’re a star, they let you do it … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” At that point, Republicans attacked him over his words. On Tuesday, most were silent about his deeds. Though the tally of women accusing him of assault has risen to at least 26, his share of the female vote actually rose in 2020, with an outright majority of white women backing him. Nonetheless, he did not want this trial, still less this outcome, and has said he will appeal, claiming the case to be part of “the greatest witch-hunt of all time”.This was a victory for Ms Carroll and, as she has said, for other women. It reflects the legacy of the #MeToo movement, sometimes written off as a blip due to the backlash against it. The journalist herself credited the flood of allegations about powerful, predatory men with persuading her to speak out. It also led to the New York law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on such allegations, making her case possible.Change does not always come in immediate, dramatic and decisive fashion. It may be slow, halting, partial and unsatisfactory, yet nonetheless real and significant. Mr Trump now faces mounting jeopardy on multiple legal fronts. Whatever the outcome of other cases, this one still counts.
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Scott Stringer Sues for Defamation Over Sexual Assault Claim

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      Mr. Stringer, the former New York City comptroller, said that a woman’s claims of sexual assault were lies and caused “irreparable harm” as he ran for mayor.Nearly 20 months after allegations of unwanted sexual advances derailed his campaign for New York City mayor, Scott M. Stringer sued one of his accusers for defamation on Monday, arguing that she smeared his reputation with falsehoods and misrepresentations.In a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Stringer said that the woman, Jean Kim, had done “irreparable harm to him and his political future” by portraying what he called an “on-and-off” consensual relationship as predatory. He demanded that Ms. Kim retract her accusations and pay damages.“These defamatory statements have caused Mr. Stringer emotional pain and suffering, as well as injury to his reputation, honor and dignity,” lawyers for Mr. Stinger, a longtime Democratic politician and former New York City comptroller, wrote in the 12-page complaint.The legal action appears to be a calculated risk for Mr. Stringer, 62. If successful, it could help clear up his public image as he contemplates a political comeback. But it also serves to resurface Ms. Kim’s decades-old claims of misconduct, while posing the risk of an embarrassing legal defeat and reopening scrutiny into an earlier chapter in his life.Defamation cases are notoriously hard to prove, especially for public figures. To even get his case heard in court, Mr. Stringer must get around New York’s statute of limitations for defamation, and his lawyers are relying on a relatively novel legal theory to do so.They wrote in the suit that the matter was reopened legally in August 2022, when they assert — with scant detail — that Ms. Kim caused Representative Carolyn Maloney to resurface her defamatory statement against Mr. Stringer.The factual and legal issues are particularly relevant at a moment when New York and the country are still grappling with balancing the claims of women propelled by the #MeToo movement against the right to due process, and appraising what should happen to public figures like Mr. Stringer who are accused of misconduct decades after the fact.Ms. Kim and a lawyer who had represented her during the mayoral campaign did not comment on Monday morning, after the suit was filed.In an interview on Friday, Mr. Stringer said that he decided to take legal action now, after a needed “cooling-off period” for his family, to salvage his reputation. He acknowledged that waiting so long after the initial statements may have constrained his options legally.“There are times you could just walk away,” Mr. Stringer said. “But it was a lie. It was just a total lie. And I can’t live with myself if I did not do everything in my power to expose it.”Ms. Kim came forward in April 2021, in the heat of the Democratic primary for mayor. At the time, Mr. Stringer, a liberal who had slowly risen through the ranks of city politics, was considered a top-tier candidate for the nomination, though he seldom led early public polls.In a news conference and media interviews, Ms. Kim said that Mr. Stringer sexually assaulted her in 2001 when she was working as an unpaid intern on his unsuccessful campaign for public advocate. She said Mr. Stringer, then a state assemblyman whom she viewed as an older mentor figure, repeatedly groped her without consent, put his hands down the back of her pants, pressured her to have sex — and then warned her not to tell anyone.“He constantly reminded me of his power by saying things like, ‘You want me to make a phone call for you to change your life,’ ‘You want me to make you the first Asian district leader,’” Ms. Kim later told The New York Times. Many prominent supporters quickly backed away from his campaign. Mr. Stringer stayed in the race, but ultimately finished fifth in a primary election won by Eric Adams, who went on to become mayor.Mr. Stringer disputed Ms. Kim’s account, saying they were peers and that their relationship had been consensual and public within the tight circles of Upper West Side Democratic politics. His campaign also presented documents that showed that Ms. Kim, who has worked as a political lobbyist, might have helped one of Mr. Stringer’s rivals, Andrew Yang, which she disputed.Monday’s lawsuit largely repeats the conflicting stories without new evidence, and seeks to highlight factual errors or inconsistencies in Ms. Kim’s claims.It remains unclear if Ms. Kim’s version of events can be independently corroborated; she has not provided any records, nor has she mentioned associates with whom she discussed the allegations at the time.Defamation, particularly cases involving public figures like Mr. Stringer, can be difficult to prove, and the contradictory claims by Ms. Kim and Mr. Stringer — involving shifting sexual and romantic mores, political power and few hard pieces of evidence — only add to that burden.Mr. Stringer appears to have even more pressing legal burdens, with Ms. Kim likely to argue for dismissal because her original statements fall outside New York’s statute of limitations.His argument that the timeline was restarted in August rests on photos on social media that apparently show Ms. Kim at a campaign event with Ms. Maloney, who was running in a primary contest against Representative Jerrold Nadler, a longtime mentor of Mr. Stringer’s.Two weeks later, the congresswoman attacked Mr. Nadler in The New York Post for supporting “a man accused of sexual assault.” The lawsuit argues that it should have been “reasonably foreseeable” for Ms. Kim that Ms. Maloney would “republish” her claims after their meeting.Some allies of Mr. Stringer, left, believe he should be considered a potential heir to his mentor, Representative Jerrold Nadler, right, if he decides to retire.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesLegal experts briefed on the issues raised by the case, though, said that the application of the theory known as “republication” would be ripe for challenge on multiple grounds. Though the suit insinuates that Ms. Kim somehow prompted Ms. Maloney’s statement, Mr. Stringer’s lawyers never actually state what, if anything, she told the congresswoman to encourage or direct her to reference Mr. Stringer. “If there’s no clear evidence that the defendant directed the third party to make the statement, it’s fairly likely the case would be dismissed,” said Lee Levine, a retired media lawyer with decades of experience litigating defamation cases, including some for The Times.Though The Times reviewed a draft of the complaint before it was filed, it agreed with Mr. Stringer not to share details of the case with Mr. Levine or anyone else ahead of time.Mr. Stringer and his lawyers were clearly aware of the statutory limits. The suit filed on Monday made no mention of a second woman, Teresa Logan, who followed Ms. Kim’s allegations by accusing Mr. Stringer of kissing and groping her at a bar he helped found in the 1990s. That instance, Mr. Stringer conceded, was clearly outside the statute of limitations.Mr. Stringer said in 2021 that he had “no memory” of the woman but added that if they had met, he was sorry to have made her uncomfortable.If the case proceeds, Mr. Stringer and his allies believe the discovery process will turn up new and relevant information related to Ms. Kim’s actions and whether she coordinated her public statements with any of his political rivals.Mr. Stringer is represented in the suit by Milton L. Williams Jr., a former federal prosecutor and white-collar criminal defense lawyer who currently serves as the chair of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board.After his loss, Mr. Stringer finished out his term as comptroller last December and began a consulting practice. But he almost immediately began discussing a political comeback.He went as far as to briefly campaign for a State Senate seat in Manhattan this spring, but he never actually entered the race. Allies still believe he should be considered a potential heir to Mr. Nadler should the congressman decide to retire.Still, the accusations of misconduct would almost certainly complicate any effort to return to public office.“Right now, I don’t have any plans to run for office. It’s something I’m not ruling out someday,” Mr. Stringer said. “This lawsuit is what’s in front of me at the moment.” More

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      As G.O.P. Candidates Face Accusations, Rivals Tread Carefully

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      In several states, Republican candidates are contending with allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault. Few of their primary rivals want to talk about it.WASHINGTON — When fresh allegations of domestic violence were lodged against former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens last month, one of his Republican rivals for the state’s open Senate seat, Representative Vicky Hartzler, stepped up and called for him to end his campaign.Then she moved on to an issue perhaps more resonant with Republican primary voters: transgender women in sports.“Eric Greitens is a toxic candidate unfit to hold office,” Michael Hafner, a spokesman for Ms. Hartzler’s Senate campaign, said, before declaring the central message of her campaign: “Missouri family values, freedom, and taking back our country.”In Missouri, Georgia, Ohio and now Nebraska, Republican men running for high office face significant allegations of domestic violence, stalking, even sexual assault — accusations that once would have derailed any run for office. But in an era of Republican politics when Donald J. Trump could survive and thrive amid accusations of sexual assault, opposing candidates are finding little traction in dwelling on the issues.Political scientists who have studied Republican voting since the rise of Trumpism are not surprised that accused candidates have soldiered on — and that their primary rivals have approached the accusations tepidly. In this fiercely partisan moment, concerns about personal behavior are dwarfed by the struggle between Republicans and Democrats, which Republican men and women see as life-or-death. Increasingly, Republicans cast accusations of sexual misconduct as an attempt by liberals to silence conservatives.The candidates who do speak of their opponents’ domestic violence and assault allegations often raise them not as disqualifications in looming Republican primaries, but as matters ripe for exploitation by Democrats in the fall.“It’s a horrible problem; he’ll never be elected, and that’s the educational process we’re going through right now,” Gary Black, Georgia’s agriculture commissioner, said of domestic violence and assault allegations leveled at Herschel Walker, his Trump-backed Republican rival to take on Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in November. “There’s a great desire for Republicans to get their seat back. Electability is going to be the issue over the next six weeks.”Herschel Walker, a Trump-backed Senate candidate in Georgia, has owned up to accusations of violence against his wife but has denied the accusations of violent threats against two other women.Audra Melton for The New York TimesEric Greitens resigned as Missouri’s governor after a sexual misconduct scandal, and is facing domestic violence allegations amid his current Senate campaign.Jeff Roberson/Associated PressDemocrats, including President Biden and Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, have weathered their own accusations of misconduct in the past — and where such charges have proven difficult to discount, the party has shown itself more willing to jettison its candidates.The accusations facing some Republican men are so stark that they raise the question: What would disqualify a candidate in a Republican primary? Mr. Greitens resigned as Missouri’s governor after a hairdresser testified under oath in 2018 that he had taped her hands to pull-up rings in his basement, blindfolded her, stripped her clothes off and taken a photo of her, which he threatened to release if she revealed their affair.Amid his current Senate campaign, Mr. Greitens was accused last month in a sworn affidavit from his former wife that he had violently abused her and had hit one of their sons as his governorship unraveled. Still, a poll taken after the accusations came to light showed Mr. Greitens neck and neck with Ms. Hartzler and Eric Schmitt, Missouri’s attorney general.Mr. Walker, a former college and pro football star who has the backing not only of Mr. Trump but also much of the Republican establishment, has been accused by his ex-wife of attacking her in bed, choking her and threatening to kill her. Mr. Walker doesn’t deny the assault and has said he was suffering from mental illness.Mallory Blount, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walker’s campaign, said he “emphatically denies” the “false claims” from another woman who said he had been her longtime boyfriend and that when she broke up with him, he had threatened to kill her and himself. Ms. Blount also said he has denied a violent stalking charge by a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.Mr. Walker “has owned up to his mistakes, sought forgiveness, gotten treatment, and dedicated his life to helping others who are struggling,” Ms. Blount said, condemning the media for surfacing past allegations.Max Miller, another Trump-backed candidate and a former White House aide running for an Ohio House seat, was accused by one of Mr. Trump’s press secretaries, Stephanie Grisham, of hitting her the day they broke up. Mr. Miller denied the allegation, then sued Ms. Grisham for defamation, accusing her of making “libelous and defamatory false statements.” His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.“It used to be that being accused of domestic violence was an automatic disqualifier, regardless of party,” Ms. Grisham’s lawyer, Adam VanHo, said. “And to turn around and sue to silence your accuser was even more abhorrent.”Max Miller, a Trump-backed candidate for an Ohio House seat, was accused by a former White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, above, of hitting her after they broke up. He then sued her for defamation.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Thursday, a Republican state senator in Nebraska, Julie Slama, accused a leading Republican candidate for governor in that state, Charles Herbster, of sexually assaulting her three years ago when she was 22, saying in a statement that she had “prayed I would never have to relive this trauma.” Mr. Herbster denied the charges, claiming he was being targeted by political rivals. He linked himself to others who have beaten back similar accusations.“They did it with Brett Kavanaugh. They certainly did it with Donald J. Trump and now they’re trying to do it with Charles W. Herbster,” he told a local radio station.In Missouri, Mr. Greitens’s defiance spurred Rene Artman, who chairs the Republican central committee of St. Louis County, to organize other Republican women to pressure the party chairman, Nick Myers, to demand Mr. Greitens withdraw.“We’ve heard not a thing, not a thing,” she said on Friday. “This is the breakdown of society. When you take morals and God out of country, this is what happens. I don’t think you can blame this on Trump whatsoever.”Republican candidates, by and large, have remained defiant. One exception is Sean Parnell, Mr. Trump’s pick for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, who suspended his campaign after his estranged wife testified that he had repeatedly abused her and their children.Political scientists are not surprised by Republicans’ tolerance for accusations. Charges of misogyny, sexual harassment and even domestic abuse have “become deeply partisan in terms of beliefs about what is acceptable and what is appropriate,” said Kelly Dittmar, a professor at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “And now it’s fallen into the talk of ‘cancel culture’ in the broader society.”It was widely believed that Mr. Trump’s own confession, caught on an infamous video recorded for “Access Hollywood,” that he routinely grabbed women by the genitals — and the plethora of accusations that followed — would drive away women voters.But in 2016, 88 percent of Republican women voted for Mr. Trump, just a percentage point below the share of Republican men who did. Even in 2018, when women were widely seen as having delivered the House to Democrats in response to the Trump presidency, Republican women were no more likely to vote for Democrats than they had been two years before, said Erin C. Cassese, a professor of political science at the University of Delaware who studies women’s voting patterns.The #MeToo movement and the current debate over transgender rights and education are only widening the gap between Republican women and women who identify as Democrats and independents, Prof. Cassese said. For female candidates, appeals to gender solidarity or attacks on misogyny do not seem to work in Republican primaries.“It’s very hard to make those appeals, even for women candidates appealing to women,” she said. “We don’t have any sense of what messages might work.”Jane Timken, the only woman in the Republican primary for a Senate seat in Ohio, chided her male rivals in an advertisement. Andrew Spear/Getty ImagesJane Timken, the only woman in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio, has injected gender into the race — though delicately. In February, she released an advertisement chiding her male rivals: “We all know guys who overcompensate for their inadequacies, and that description fits the guys in the Senate race to a T.”But in an interview on Friday, she explicitly dismissed the issue of gender. “They’re not bad male candidates. They’re just bad candidates,” she said of her opponents, adding that the mistreatment of women is “not an issue that I’m campaigning on. I’m campaigning on the Biden failed policies of border security, inflation and jobs.”In the Trump era, the men who are accused of wrongdoing have become adept at framing themselves as the victims of a broader conspiracy or an intolerant society. Mr. Greitens has blamed George W. Bush’s former political aide, Karl Rove; the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell; even the liberal philanthropist George Soros for the release of his ex-wife’s abuse allegations. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.Republicans running against those accused say they do see an opening, as long as it’s navigated carefully. Representative Billy Long, who is running in the Missouri Republican Senate primary, emphasized the “$400,000 or so in costs, fines and penalties” that state taxpayers have already shouldered for investigations into Mr. Greitens’s activities. Then there’s the ongoing child custody fight between Mr. Greitens and his ex-wife.“If domestic violence is proven true, he’s toast,” Mr. Long said.Jazmine Ulloa More

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      How Éric Zemmour Is Turning French Politics Upside Down

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      Éric Zemmour, an anti-immigrant writer and TV commentator, is surging in opinion polls before presidential elections next year — and he is not yet a candidate.PARIS — He is the anti-immigration son of parents from Algeria. He styles himself as the great defender of France’s Christian civilization, though he himself is Jewish. He channels Donald J. Trump in an anti-establishment campaign. And he is now scrambling the battle lines before France’s presidential election in April.The meteoric rise of Éric Zemmour, a far-right author and TV pundit, has turned France’spolitics upside down.Until a few weeks ago, most had expected France’s next presidential elections to be a predictable rematch between President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right Marine Le Pen that, polls showed, left voters who wanted alternatives deeply dissatisfied.Though still not a declared candidate, Mr. Zemmour, 63, shot to No. 2 in a poll of likely voters last week, disrupting campaign strategies across the board, even beyond those of Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen.“The French want to upset a political order that hasn’t won them over, and Éric Zemmour appears to be the bowling ball that’s going to knock down all the pins,” said Pascal Perrineau, a political scientist at Sciences Po University specializing in elections and the right.Mr. Perrineau warned that voters were not seriously focused yet on the elections and that polls could be volatile.Yet candidates are not taking any chances.Mr. Macron’s campaign has focused on winning support on the right and forcing a showdown with Ms. Le Pen, in the belief that the French would reject her party in the second round of voting, as they have for decades.Now it is far less clear whom he would meet in a runoff: A strong showing in the first round could propel Mr. Zemmour into the second one, or it could split the far-right electorate to allow a center-right candidate to qualify for the finals.After weeks of ignoring Mr. Zemmour, Mr. Macron is now criticizing him, though not by name, while government ministers and other Macron allies have unleashed a barrage of attacks.Mr. Zemmour is the author of several books, and a star on the right-wing CNews network. Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Zemmour’s rise has been most unsettling for Ms. Le Pen, who is plummeting in the polls — so much so that her own father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party founder, said that he would support Mr. Zemmour if the writer were in a stronger position.Ms. Le Pen has for years tried to broaden her base with a so-called un-demonizing strategy of moving her nationalist, anti-immigrant party from the most extreme xenophobic positions that it was known for under her father. Now she finds herself in the unusual position of being outflanked on the right.Mr. Zemmour became one of France’s best-selling authors in the past decade by writing books on the nation’s decline — fueled, he said, by the loss of traditional French and Christian values, the immigration of Muslim Africans bent on a reverse colonization of France, the rise of feminism and the loss of virility, and a “great replacement” of white people, a conspiracy theory that has been cited by gunmen in multiple mass shootings.As the child of Algerians who settled in metropolitan France, he has presented himself as the embodiment of France’s successful system of assimilation. He has said that the failure to integrate recent generations of Muslim immigrants lies with the new arrivals, who hate France, and not with a system that others say has not kept up with the times.Mr. Zemmour’s influence rose to an entirely new level in the past two years after he became the star of CNews, a new Fox-style news network that gave him a platform to expound on his views every evening.His supporters include voters most deeply shaken by the social forces that have roiled French society more recently and that they now lump into “wokisme” — a #MeToo movement that has led to the fall of powerful men; a racial awakening challenging France’s image of itself as a colorblind society; the emergence of a new generation questioning the principles of the French Republic; and the perceived growing threat of an American-inspired vision of society.“In its history, France has always had a strong cultural identity, but now there’s deep anxiety about that identity,” Mr. Perrineau said. “People feel that their culture, their way of life and their political system, all is being changed. It’s enough.”Mr. Zemmour at a book promotion event in Nice last month.Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Éric Zemmour plays on that very well, on this nostalgia for the past, and this fear of no longer being a great power, of dissolving in a conglomerate that we don’t understand, whether it’s Europe or globalization or the Americanization of culture,” he added.In the 2017 election, Mr. Macron was the new face who overturned the existing political order. But during his presidency, “the new world of Emmanuel Macron has come to look a lot like the old world,” disillusioning voters, Mr. Perrineau said.Philippe Olivier, a close aide to Ms. Le Pen and a member of the European Parliament, said that French voters seek a larger-than-life figure in their president.“In the United States, a president could be a movie actor like Reagan or a carnival performer like Trump,” said Mr. Olivier, who is also Ms. Le Pen’s brother-in-law. “In France, we elect the king.”But the two-round system compels much of the electorate to vote in the runoffs against candidates — and not for someone of their liking.“In the second round, the point is who is more repulsive,” Mr. Olivier said. “I believe Macron would be more rejected than Marine, but Zemmour would be much more rejected than Macron.”As France has grown more conservative in recent years, Mr. Macron has tacked right on many issues to try to grab a bigger electoral slice, especially among voters in the traditional center-right Republicans party.The Republicans, who have yet to select their presidential candidate, are now facing a new threat themselves, because Mr. Zemmour draws support from them as well as from the far right.In their own bid to attract far-right voters, many leaders on the traditional right have flirted with Mr. Zemmour in recent years, excusing or overlooking the fact that the writer has been sanctioned for inciting racial hatred.“The traditional right made a serious mistake that is now exploding in their face,” said Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of Radical Politics. “Because it’s long been in competition against the far right on issues like national identity, immigration and sovereignty, it kept winking at Zemmour.”A fan taking a photo with Mr. Zemmour at a book signing in Toulon last month.Eric Gaillard/ReutersNow the traditional right is looking for ways to distance itself from the TV star without alienating his supporters.Patrick Stefanini, a Republican who ran President Jacques Chirac’s successful 1995 campaign, said Mr. Zemmour was benefiting from divisions within the traditional right on issues like immigration.“Mr. Zemmour has turned immigration into the single key to understanding the difficulties facing French society,” said Mr. Stefanini, who is now leading the presidential bid of Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Paris region. “The Republicans are having a little trouble positioning themselves because the tendencies aren’t the same within the Republicans.”Mr. Stefanini attributed Mr. Zemmour’s rise partly to the traditional right’s failure to quickly decide on a candidate, and said he felt confident that the TV star’s ratings would peter out.But for now, many voters appear to be taking a look at Mr. Zemmour, who has been attracting huge crowds at campaign-like events across France as he promotes his latest book, “France Has Not Said Its Last Word Yet.”Last week, three residents of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a wealthy suburb of Paris, came together to attend an event with Mr. Zemmour in the capital.Françoise Torneberg, who said she was in her 70s, said she liked Mr. Zemmour because “he gives a kick in the anthill,” she said.Her friend Andrée Chalmandrier, 69, said, “We love France but not the France of today.”“We’re not at home,” Ms. Chalmandrier said, adding that often when she shops in her suburb, “I’m the only French representative. There are four or five veiled women around me, who furthermore are extremely arrogant.”“And yet it’s a good neighborhood,” Ms. Torneberg said. “It’s not at all a working-class neighborhood.”Léontine Gallois contributed reporting. More

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      A Tabloid Ally of Trump and Weinstein Reboots Himself

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      Dylan Howard, known for the “catch and kill” deals during the #MeToo reckoning, teams up with an Italian publisher for a publication aimed at the Hamptons crowd.In late May, the luxury brand Ferragamo threw a launch party to celebrate the Grazia Gazette: The Hamptons — the latest free publication in one of the country’s wealthiest enclaves.Most guests did not know that they were also celebrating a comeback.Grazia’s American operation, Grazia USA, is run by Dylan Howard, the disgraced National Enquirer editor who played a key role in suppressing stories about Donald Trump’s affairs during his presidential campaign, helped Harvey Weinstein dig up dirt on his accusers and, in Jeff Bezos’s telling, threatened the Amazon owner with blackmail.At the party for Mr. Howard’s new venture, young stars and social media influencers mingled while sipping a custom rosé. Some sang along to Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License.”They knew the lyrics, but not much about the man behind the event.“I have never heard of him,” said Isaac Hindin-Miller, the DJ, in a phone call afterward.“I was more there as a guest of Ferragamo,” said Jenné Lombardo, a marketing consultant who went with her husband, Harvey Newton-Haydon, a model.“I don’t know Howard or anything about him,” Julia Moshy, one of the “Rich Kids of Instagram,” wrote in an email.A Dylan Howard primer: During his time as the top editor of The Enquirer, a job he held for more than five years, Mr. Howard used his position to help suppress coverage of Mr. Trump’s reported extramarital affairs, including buying one woman’s story and then burying it in a journalistic maneuver known as “catch and kill.” The company later admitted that the payment amounted to an illegal campaign contribution, and Mr. Howard emerged unscathed after cooperating with federal prosecutors.Mr. Howard also dispatched a reporter to help collect hostile information on the actress Rose McGowan, who had made veiled references to misconduct by Mr. Weinstein. (Ms. McGowan later said the producer had raped her in a hotel room in 1997 — Mr. Weinstein has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex.)Soon after leaving American Media last year, Mr. Howard started a new company, Pantheon Media Group. Pantheon later struck a licensing agreement with the Mondadori Group, the biggest publisher in Italy and the backer of the Grazia fashion magazine franchise, to publish Grazia in the United States. The Grazia Gazette: The Hamptons is among the first projects.Madelyn Cline on the cover of the first issue of Grazia Gazette: The Hamptons.Grazia GazetteThe model Ambra Battilana, who had been invited to the party, was aware of Mr. Howard’s background. She said she was relieved she had not attended.Ms. Battilana has accused Mr. Weinstein of sexually assaulting her during a meeting in his TriBeCa office. The next day she recorded Mr. Weinstein apologizing to her. The Enquirer unsuccessfully tried to buy Ms. Battilana’s story at the time. (Mr. Weinstein was found guilty of sex crimes against two women last year and sentenced to 23 years in prison.)Given all that, Mr. Howard’s involvement in the Surf Lodge party did not sit well with Ms. Battilana, who spends most summer weekends in the Hamptons and goes to the Surf Lodge frequently. (Mr. Howard also has a home in Springs, a hamlet in the Hamptons, which he bought for $1.1 million at the end of 2017, according to public records.)“I think this is completely horrendous,” she said. “I will be asking who is connected, because I really want to get to the bottom of understanding who was the person who would allow such a person to get in.”In a statement, a spokeswoman for Ferragamo said: “Salvatore Ferragamo has a longstanding relationship with Grazia titles globally and recently expanded that to partner on the launch issue of the Gazette with a dinner co-hosted by editor in chief David Thielebeule and cover star Madelyn Cline, not Dylan Howard.” (Ms. Cline is an actress and one of the stars of Netflix’s “Outer Banks.”Grazia Gazette: The Hamptons is just one part of Mr. Howard’s reinvention plan. He is trying to raise money to “buy the entire Grazia brand worldwide,” according to a copy of his financing proposal reviewed by The New York Times, with whom Mr. Howard did not wish to discuss his new business ventures. He initially agreed to clarify his future plans over lunch, only to cancel through a publicist, Howard Bragman, several days later.“Mr. Howard would of course like to grow his business, including his successful collaboration with Grazia,” Mr. Bragman said in an email. In a separate email, Mr. Howard’s lawyer, Mitchell Schuster, called The Times’s characterization of Mr. Howard’s fund-raising efforts “not correct as stated and misleading.”Maer Roshan, the editor of Los Angeles Magazine and the former editor of Radar, which Mr. Howard took over in 2009 and transformed into something more akin to the gossip site TMZ, was among those in the media who were incredulous at Mr. Howard’s attempted comeback.How “does this dude come back with this glossy magazine and roster of A-list advertisers?” he wondered.Since leaving American Media when his contract expired on March 31, 2020, Mr. Howard has acquired the website for OK Magazine, as well as Radar Online. Both were formerly owned by American Media.Mr. Howard has also continued a sideline he started in 2018 as an author of true-crime books for Skyhorse, which is distributed by Simon & Schuster. Working in collaboration with other authors, but with his name receiving top billing, he has come out with more than half a dozen books, including, “Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” “Covid-19: The Greatest Cover-Up in History” and “Diana: Case Solved.”In an email, Tony Lyons, Skyhorse’s president and publisher, called Mr. Howard a “dogged investigator and a talented storyteller.”There is also podcasting. This month, PodcastOne, the producer of “The Adam Carolla Show,” “The Dan Abrams Podcast” and more than 200 other audio series, announced that it had reached a deal with Mr. Howard’s Empire Media to create six limited series and eight weekly programs.One company that won’t do business with Mr. Howard is the dating app Bumble, which removed his profile earlier this year after a woman complained about his work for Mr. Weinstein, according to two people with knowledge of the matter (Mr. Schuster, the lawyer, said Mr. Howard chose to remove his profile for “unrelated reasons” and said he did not “work for” Mr. Weinstein).Mr. Howard grew up in Geelong, Australia, a city southwest of Melbourne, and started his career at a local paper. From there he became a sports reporter for Channel 7 in Melbourne before coming to the United States in 2009.After a stint as a producer at Reuters in New York, he joined American Media, which owned a number of celebrity gossip sites and publications, including the supermarket tabloid Star and RadarOnline. Under Mr. Howard, RadarOnline turned into a celebrity scoop machine, posting audio recordings of Mel Gibson’s vitriolic tirades and other Hollywood dirt.In 2011, he tied for entertainment Journalist of the Year at the annual Los Angeles Press Club awards. “In the world of celebrity and entertainment news, even mainstream media couldn’t ignore exclusive stories broken under Dylan Howard’s tenure as senior executive editor of RadarOnline,” the judges wrote.Mr. Howard left American Media in 2012. The Associated Press reported that his departure came after an external investigation into his workplace behavior. (The company said he was cleared of any wrongdoing.) The next year he returned to American Media, whose chief executive was David Pecker, a friend of Donald J. Trump, and he soon became the company’s chief content officer. That job gave him oversight of The Enquirer as well as Us Weekly, Globe and OK!, among other publications.Mr. Howard in 2014, when he was the editor in chief of Radar Online.Ilya S. Savenok/Getty ImagesDuring the 2016 presidential campaign, headlines in The Enquirer lionized Mr. Trump and belittled his political rivals. In addition, as The Wall Street Journal was first to report, American Media made a $150,000 payment to the former Playboy model Karen McDougal in return for the rights to her story of an affair with Mr. Trump. The Enquirer never ran that story.Mr. Howard also worked with Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, on a deal that silenced another woman, Stormy Daniels, who also said she had sex with Mr. Trump, who has denied having sex with either woman.In an email, Mr. Bragman added that Mr. Howard had been “ORDERED BY MANAGEMENT” to help suppress coverage of Mr. Trump’s affairs. But in a follow-up email, Mr. Schuster, Mr. Howard’s lawyer, said that Mr. Bragman’s comment was not authorized by Mr. Howard.“Please disregard Mr. Bragman’s comment and confirm that it will not be included in your article,” he wrote. “Thank you.”American Media ultimately admitted that its payment to Ms. McDougal violated campaign finance law. Mr. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison. Mr. Howard, along with Mr. Pecker, entered into a nonprosecution agreement with the government and cooperated with its investigation.The agreement remained in effect only if American Media did nothing to break the law for three years. In 2019, Mr. Bezos, the Amazon founder, accused the company of blackmail after it had published an 11-page exposé of his extramarital affair with the former TV personality Lauren Sanchez headlined “Bezos’ Divorce! The Cheating Photos That Ended His Marriage.”The story led to a public spat in which Mr. Bezos accused the tabloid’s leaders of “extortion and blackmail” in a lengthy post on Medium. The multibillionaire quoted from a letter sent to him by Mr. Howard. In the letter, as quoted by Mr. Bezos, Mr. Howard described the supposedly compromising photographs The Enquirer had in its possession, including a “below-the-belt selfie.”No one was charged in the matter. Mr. Schuster called Mr. Bezos’ post on Medium “self-serving and inaccurate,” and said that Mr. Howard’s reporting was “fair and accurate.”Now, a little more than a year since Mr. Howard made his exit from American Media, Grazia Gazette: The Hamptons appeared in stacks along Main Street in East Hampton. Distributed free, it has a lot of competition in a place where there is no shortage of gratis publications aimed at wealthy readers, a boomlet fueled by ad dollars from real estate agencies promoting multimillion-dollar listings.“Most of them are thrown in the garbage,” said the author Steven Gaines, a resident of East Hampton who has written extensively on the area’s history. “Some people pick them up and look at them, but there’s really nothing interesting.”The lucky ones have a rack under an awning, or a place on an indoor windowsill. The unlucky ones get tossed on doorsteps, rained on and thrown away.Lynn A. Scotti, a president and group publisher at Modern Luxury Media, which publishes Hamptons Magazine, is aware of the new entrant in the field. She said she had seen the Grazia Gazette “out wet,” adding: “We welcome healthy competition and I wish him the best.”The editor and publisher Dan Rattiner, who has run Dan’s Papers, a Hamptons local news publication, for more than 60 years, said of the free glossies: “They come and go. There are so many of them, it’s hard to tell one from another.”Mr. Roshan, the editor, expressed surprise that luxury advertisers would sign on with a publication run by Mr. Howard at a time when “people have been canceled and cast out for far less.”But Joseph Montag, the managing director of the Topping Rose House, a hotel and restaurant and a not infrequent filming location for “The Real Housewives of New York City,” suggested that people in the Hamptons were not likely to be bothered by Mr. Howard’s efforts to bury the accounts of the women who had accused Mr. Weinstein of sexual assault or told of their affairs with Mr. Trump.“People out here are used to those sorts of things,” Mr. Montag said, adding that Matt Lauer, the former NBC anchor who was fired by the network after accusations of sexual assault, was still out and about in the Hamptons.Mr. Gaines, the Hamptons chronicler, seemed to be of two minds.“If he wants to reinvent himself, he should go to Miami,” he said. “They forgive everything down there.”But then again, the Hamptons-specific media market is crowded.“If he took his bad-boy reputation out here and he used that, he exploited that, to make a different type of magazine,” Mr. Gaines continued, “I think people would read that.”Jim Rutenberg, Lauren Hirsch and Michael Rothfeld contributed reporting. Susan Beachy contributed research. More