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    Special Counsel in Biden Documents Case Is Expected to Release Report Soon

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    Most of the work by Robert K. Hur appears to have wrapped up after President Biden sat down with investigators in October, according to people in Mr. Biden’s orbit.Robert K. Hur, the special counsel investigating President Biden’s mishandling of documents retained from his vice presidency, is expected to release his report soon, according to people with knowledge of the situation.The imminent release of the report suggests that Mr. Hur is nearing the end of an investigation that began just over a year ago.It is expected to criticize Mr. Biden and his aides for sloppy record-keeping and storage, according to people in Mr. Biden’s orbit, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. But those people have long believed he will not be charged with any crime, judging from the lines of inquiry prosecutors have pursued in their interviews with witnesses and the president’s cooperation with investigators.Most of Mr. Hur’s work was completed in the final days of 2023, and appears to have wrapped up after Mr. Biden sat down with investigators in October, those people said. He also conducted interviews with several longtime advisers in the Biden administration, including the former chief of staff Ron Klain, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and Steve Ricchetti, his counselor.Former President Donald J. Trump, who was charged over the summer with obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim classified materials at his resort in Florida, is likely to seize on the report to downplay his own legal woes — and to claim the Justice Department has targeted him politically while letting Mr. Biden escape punishment.But Mr. Hur’s investigation does not appear to be comparable in scope or seriousness to Mr. Trump’s retention of sensitive government documents.Mr. Biden’s lawyers immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration upon discovering a cache of classified documents in late 2022 when they were closing an office in Washington he occupied after leaving the vice presidency in 2017. They have since cooperated with the Justice Department, and gave the F.B.I. access to his house in Wilmington, Del., where they discovered more material.Mr. Trump, by contrast, repeatedly resisted requests from the National Archives, which is responsible for storing sensitive White House documents, initially turned over only a portion of what he had taken when he left office in January 2021. He failed to fully respond to a subpoena to return the rest and ultimately was subjected to a search of his home and office by F.B.I. agents with a warrant.Last January, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Mr. Hur, a veteran prosecutor who worked in the Trump administration, to examine “the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records discovered” after Mr. Biden left the Obama administration.With the exception of President Barack Obama, every occupant of the Oval Office since Watergate has confronted a special prosecutor scrutinizing him or members of his staff, sometimes for relatively narrow matters but at other times for issues that have mushroomed into the threat of impeachment. More

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      Prosecutors in Documents Case Reject Trump’s Claims of Bias

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      The office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, pushed back on the former president’s assertions that his prosecution was motivated by animosity toward him in intelligence agencies.Federal prosecutors pushed back on Friday against former President Donald J. Trump’s contention that his prosecution over the handling of classified documents was motivated by a longstanding bias against him among the intelligence agencies and other government officials.The pushback by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, came in a 67-page court filing. The filing was intended to argue against Mr. Trump’s requests for additional discovery materials in the classified documents case.When Mr. Trump’s lawyers made those requests for materials last month, they signaled that they planned to place accusations that the intelligence community and other members of the so-called deep state were biased against Mr. Trump at the heart of their defense.But Mr. Smith’s team said that the former president’s requests for additional information were “based on speculative, unsupported, and false theories of political bias and animus.”Some of Mr. Trump’s demands for discovery were so ambiguous “that it is difficult to decipher what they seek,” the prosecutors wrote, while others, they added, “reflect pure conjecture detached from the facts surrounding this prosecution.”Discovery disputes can be contentious in criminal cases as defense lawyers push for as much information as they can get and prosecutors seek to limit access to materials that they believe are irrelevant.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Material From Russia Investigation Went Missing as Trump Left Office

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      A binder given to the Trump White House contained details that intelligence agencies believe could reveal secret sources and methods.Material from a binder with highly classified information connected to the investigation into Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election disappeared in the final days of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, two people familiar with the matter said.The disappearance of the material, known as the “Crossfire Hurricane” binder for the name given to the investigation by the F.B.I., vexed national security officials and set off concerns that sensitive information could be inappropriately shared, one of the people said.The material’s disappearance was reported earlier Friday by CNN. The matter was so concerning to officials that the Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed about it last year, a U.S. official said.The binder consists of a hodgepodge of materials related to the origins and early stages of the Russia investigation that were collected by Trump administration officials. They included copies of botched F.B.I. applications for national-security surveillance warrants to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser as well as text messages between two F.B.I. officials involved in the inquiry, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, expressing animus toward Mr. Trump.The substance of the material — a redacted version of which has since been made public under the Freedom of Information Act and is posted on the website of the F.B.I. — is not considered particularly sensitive, the official said.But the raw version in the binder contained details that intelligence agencies believe could reveal secret sources and methods. (The publicly available version contains numerous portions that were whited out as classified.)It is not clear if the missing material comprises the entire original binder of material provided to the White House for Mr. Trump’s team to review and declassify in part before leaving office. Among other murky details, it is not known how many copies were made at the White House or how the government knows one set is missing.The binder has been a source of recurring attention since January 2021, just before Mr. Trump left office. At the time, Mr. Trump’s aides prepared redactions to some of the material it contained because the president — who was obsessed with the Russia investigation and believed his political enemies had used it to damage his presidency — planned to declassify it and make it public.Officials made several copies of the version with the redactions, which some Trump aides planned to release publicly.Mr. Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had a copy of material from the binder given to at least one conservative writer, according to testimony and court filings.But when Justice Department officials expressed concerns that sharing some of the material would breach the Privacy Act at a time when the department was already being sued by Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page for having publicly released some of their texts, the copies were hastily retrieved, according to two people familiar with the matter.Mr. Trump was deeply focused on what was in the binder, a person close to him said. Even after leaving the White House, Mr. Trump still wanted to push information from the binder into the public eye. He suggested, during an April 2021 interview for a book about the Trump presidency, that Mr. Meadows still had the material.“I would let you look at them if you wanted,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “It’s a treasure trove.”Mr. Trump did not address a question about whether he himself had some of the material. But when a Trump aide present for the interview asked him, “Does Meadows have those?” Mr. Trump replied, “Meadows has them.”“We had pretty much won that battle,” Mr. Trump added, referring to questions about whether his 2016 campaign had worked with Russia. “There was no collusion. There was no nothing. And I think it was maybe past its prime. It would be sort of a cool book for you to look at.”George J. Terwilliger III, a lawyer for Mr. Meadows, said the former chief of staff was not responsible for any missing material. “Mark never took any copy of that binder home at any time,” he said.A person familiar with the matter said, shortly after the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 by F.B.I. agents looking for classified documents, that they had not found any Crossfire Hurricane material.Adding to the confusion about the material and who was in possession of it, a set of the Russia investigation documents that Mr. Trump believed he had declassified did not have their classification markings changed when they were given to the National Archives, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.At the time, Mr. Trump was in a standoff with the archives over the reams of presidential material he had taken with him upon leaving the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, and was resisting giving back. So Mr. Trump told advisers he would give back those boxes in exchange for the Russia-related documents.Aides never pursued his suggestion.In the run-up to the 2020 election, John Ratcliffe, then Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, declassified around 1,000 pages of intelligence materials related to the Russia investigation, which Trump allies used to try to discredit the inquiry.In 2022, Mr. Trump made John Solomon, a conservative writer who had been briefly given the binder before it was retrieved, one of his representatives to the National Archives. This allowed Mr. Solomon to see Trump White House records deposited with the agency. He later filed a lawsuit against the government asking a court to order the Justice Department to send the binder to the archives so that he could have access to it.A court filing he submitted in August described the binder as about 10 inches thick and containing about 2,700 pages. The publicly released version includes fewer than 600 pages, many heavily redacted; it is not clear what accounts for the discrepancy.The filing said Mr. Solomon had been allowed to thumb through a version of the binder at the White House on Jan. 19, 2021. The contents, it said, included a 2017 F.B.I. report about its interview of Christopher Steele, the author of a dossier of unverified claims about Trump-Russia ties; “tasking orders” related to an F.B.I. confidential human source; “lightly-redacted” copies of botched surveillance warrant applications; and text messages between the F.B.I. officials.The filing said Mr. Solomon or an aide had gone back to the White House that evening and had been given a copy of the materials in the binder in a paper bag, and that separately a Justice Department envelope containing some of the documents had been delivered to his office.But as Mr. Solomon’s office was scanning the larger set, the filing said, the White House requested that the documents be returned so certain private details could be removed. Mr. Meadows promised Mr. Solomon he would get back the revised binder, it said, but he never did.When Mr. Solomon later tried to see the binder within the Trump White House records at the National Archives, he said, the agency denied him access to a box of 2,700 pages “with varying types of classification and declassification markings” that it said it was obligated to treat as highly classified. The agency also told him it did not have the declassified version of the binder that Mr. Solomon had briefly possessed, because the Justice Department still has it. More

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

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      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

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

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      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

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      Biden Sticks to ‘Say Nothing’ Strategy on the Trump Indictment

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      President Biden and his advisers have concluded that commenting on the indictment would only feed into Republican accusations of a politically motivated prosecution.President Biden and his top aides in the West Wing, along with members of his administration and re-election campaign at all levels, are executing a carefully crafted strategy in response to the federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump: Say nothing.Mr. Biden has always insisted that he would never interfere with the independence of the Justice Department. But he and his aides also believe that commenting on the case will only feed into the accusations, from Mr. Trump and members of the Republican Party, of a politically motivated prosecution.It is a stance that will test a voluble president with a penchant for saying what is on his mind, even when it is not politically advantageous. With his predecessor and 2024 rival charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and mishandling classified documents, Mr. Biden and his aides are eager to keep themselves far away from the Trump political and legal spectacle as it migrates south to Miami.For Mr. Biden, keeping his distance also keeps the focus squarely on Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden ran for office in 2020 with a pledge of restoring a sense of pre-Trump normalcy to the White House; the White House is betting that avoiding substantive public comments on the investigations into Mr. Trump will remind voters of that contrast.“President Biden and his campaign won’t be distracted by Trump’s chaos,” said Cristóbal Alex, a veteran of Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign and White House. “The focus is on the American people and what the Biden administration accomplished in the first term.”Even a stray comment by the president during one of his scrums with reporters, could be seized on by Mr. Trump and his allies as evidence that Mr. Biden is exerting undue influence in the case against his predecessor.“This is a president who respects the rule of law, and he has said that since Day 1,” Olivia Dalton, the deputy White House press secretary, told reporters on Friday. “That’s precisely why we’re not commenting here.”Ms. Dalton went on to say “no comment” a half-dozen more times in the next 10 minutes. Mr. Biden explained his own silence to reporters on Thursday, just hours before the charges against Mr. Trump were unveiled.“Because you notice I have never once — not one single time — suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do, relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge,” Mr. Biden said. “I’m honest.”Asked again to weigh in on Friday, as he traveled to a community college in North Carolina, Mr. Biden was blunt: “I have no comment.”Mr. Biden’s determined self-censorship comes with a cost. It prevents the president from defending the government’s legal system against Mr. Trump’s relentless, yearslong attacks, which are now amplified and echoed by his Republican allies and some of his competitors for the party’s presidential nomination. In a social media post on Friday, Mr. Trump lashed out at “the ‘Thugs’ from the Department of Injustice.” It will fall to others to rebut those attacks. White House and Biden campaign aides on Friday declined to respond to the former president’s claims of being treated unfairly.Mr. Biden is himself is the subject of a special counsel’s investigation into handling of classified documents found at his home and an office he used before becoming president.The president’s attorneys have long stressed that the case differs from the one involving Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden and his aides have said they cooperated with Justice Department officials from the beginning of the inquiry. The indictment of Mr. Trump, which was unsealed on Friday, says that the former president conspired to conceal the documents and prevent their return to the National Archives.A person familiar with the investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of documents said there is no indication that Robert Hur, the special counsel in that case, is nearing any decision.Mr. Biden’s allies urged a sense of calm among Democrats and said the president’s campaign should continue to focus on promoting his accomplishments in office and warn voters about Republican efforts to restrict abortion rights — which has polled as the party’s best issue since the Supreme Court, with three Trump appointees, ended the constitutional right to an abortion last year.“We just need to stay focused on our message and not get caught up in the Trump circus,” said Representative Jennifer McClellan of Virginia, a Democrat who is a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board.On Friday, Mr. Biden put his strategy of avoidance into practice.At the same hour the special counsel unsealed the indictment against Mr. Trump, drawing the eyes of the nation to the multiple charges against him, Mr. Biden was in North Carolina, touring a work force training program at a community college.Later — not long after the special counsel in Mr. Trump’s case spoke to the nation about the indictment — Mr. Biden spoke at Fort Liberty about the need to help the spouses of military service members to find employment.The contrast could not have been clearer. And, at least for the moment, Mr. Biden remained good to his word. Asked on Friday afternoon whether he had talked to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland about the Trump case, Mr. Biden said he had not.“I have not spoken to him at all and I’m not going to speak with him,” the president said, adding for good measure: “And I have no comment on that.” More

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      Mark Meadows Testified to Grand Jury in Trump Special Counsel Investigation

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      Mr. Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, is seen as a potentially key witness in the documents and Jan. 6 inquiries.Mark Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under President Donald J. Trump and a potentially key figure in inquiries related to Mr. Trump, has testified before a federal grand jury hearing evidence in the investigations being led by the special counsel’s office, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Meadows is a figure in both of the two distinct lines of inquiry being pursued by the special counsel appointed to oversee the Justice Department’s scrutiny of Mr. Trump, Jack Smith.One inquiry is focused on Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, culminating in the attack by a pro-Trump mob on the Capitol during congressional certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021. The other is an investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of hundreds of classified documents after he left office and whether he obstructed efforts to retrieve them.It is not clear precisely when Mr. Meadows testified or if investigators questioned him about one or both of the cases.For months, people in Mr. Trump’s orbit have been puzzled by and wary about the low profile kept by Mr. Meadows in the investigations. As reports surfaced of one witness after another going into the grand jury or to be interviewed by federal investigators, Mr. Meadows has kept largely out of sight, and some of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he could be a significant witness in the inquiries.Mr. Trump himself has at times asked aides questions about how Mr. Meadows is doing, according to a person familiar with the remarks.Asked about the grand jury testimony, a lawyer for Mr. Meadows, George Terwilliger, said, “Without commenting on whether or not Mr. Meadows has testified before the grand jury or in any other proceeding, Mr. Meadows has maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has a legal obligation to do so.”Mr. Meadows was a polarizing figure at the White House among some of Mr. Trump’s aides, who saw him as a loose gatekeeper at best during a final year in which the former president moved aggressively to mold the government in his image.Mr. Meadows was around for pivotal moments leading up to and after the 2020 election, as Mr. Trump plotted to try to stay in office and thwart Joseph R. Biden Jr. from being sworn in to succeed him. Some of them were described in hundreds of text messages that Mr. Meadows turned over to the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol before he decided to stop cooperating. Those texts served as a road map for House investigators.But Mr. Meadows also has insight into efforts by the National Archives to retrieve roughly two dozen boxes of presidential material that officials had been told Mr. Trump took with him when he left the White House in January 2021. Mr. Meadows was one of Mr. Trump’s representatives to the archives, and he had some role in trying to discuss the matter with Mr. Trump, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Meadows is also now connected tangentially to a potentially vital piece of evidence that investigators uncovered in recent months: an audio recording of an interview that Mr. Trump gave to two people assisting Mr. Meadows in writing a memoir of his White House years.Mr. Meadows did not attend the meeting, which took place in July 2021 at Mr. Trump’s club at Bedminster, N.J. During the meeting, Mr. Trump referred to a document he appeared to have in front of him and suggested that he should have declassified it but that he no longer could, since he was out of office.That recording could undercut Mr. Trump’s claim that he believed he had declassified all material still held at his properties for months after he left office. More

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      Dissecting Charges That Could Arise From the Trump Investigations

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      Prosecutors in New York, Georgia and the Justice Department face complex choices about what crimes to charge if they decide to indict Donald Trump.WASHINGTON — Prosecutors like to say that they investigate crimes, not people. The looming decision by the Manhattan district attorney about whether to indict former President Donald J. Trump on charges related to an alleged hush money payment to a porn actress is highlighting the complexity of the legal calculations being made by prosecutors in New York, Georgia and the Justice Department as they examine Mr. Trump’s conduct on a number of fronts.The investigations — which also focus on Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents after leaving office — are confronting prosecutors with tough choices. They must decide whether and how to charge not just Mr. Trump, but also associates who could face jeopardy for actions to which he was not a direct party, like mail or wire fraud for communications that he did not participate in.The publicly known understanding of the evidence is incomplete. It is not clear, for example, in several instances what facts investigators have been able to gather about Mr. Trump’s personal knowledge, directions and intentions related to several of the matters.Here is a look at some of the criminal laws that different prosecutors appear to be weighing and how they might apply to Mr. Trump’s actions.Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000.Markus Schreiber/Associated PressThe Stormy Daniels Hush Money PaymentOverviewAlvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, appears to be nearing a decision about whether to charge Mr. Trump with a crime related to his $130,000 hush money payment just before the 2016 election to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who has said they had an extramarital affair. Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, sent the money to Ms. Daniels, and the Trump Organization reimbursed him over the course of 2017, according to a 2018 federal court filing in Mr. Cohen’s case. Mr. Trump’s business concealed the true purpose of the payments, the filing said, by recording them as having been for a legal retainer that did not exist.Potential charge: Bookkeeping fraudThe New York Times has reported that the case may include a potential charge of falsifying business records under Article 175 of the New York Penal Law. A conviction for a felony version of bookkeeping fraud carries a sentence of up to four years.To prove that Mr. Trump committed that offense, prosecutors would seemingly need evidence showing that he had knowingly caused subordinates to make a false entry in his company’s records “with intent to defraud.” For the action to be a felony rather than a misdemeanor, prosecutors would also need to show that Mr. Trump falsified the business records with the intention of committing, aiding or concealing a second crime.The public understanding of Mr. Bragg’s theory of the case remains murky and incomplete. The district attorney’s office has reportedly weighed invoking alleged campaign-finance violations as that intended second crime, which could raise complications. Among other things, presidential elections are governed by federal law, and it is not clear whether Mr. Bragg has found a theory by which a state campaign law covered Mr. Trump’s actions, or if a state prosecutor can cite a law over which he lacks jurisdiction. It remains possible that Mr. Bragg has obtained nonpublic evidence of some other intended offense, like if there was any initial intention to deduct the payments as a business expense on state tax returns.Bookkeeping fraud has a two-year statute of limitations as a misdemeanor and a five-year one as a felony, both of which would normally have expired for payments made to Mr. Cohen in 2017. But New York law extends those limits to cover periods when a defendant was continuously out of state, as when Mr. Trump was while living in the White House or at his home in Florida. In addition, during the pandemic, New York’s statute of limitations was extended by more than a year.Mr. Trump has claimed — without evidence — that he declassified all the files taken to Mar-a-Lago.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesThe Mar-a-Lago DocumentsOverviewJack Smith, a special counsel for the federal Justice Department, is investigating matters related to Mr. Trump’s handling of several hundred documents marked as classified that he kept at his Florida club and home, Mar-a-Lago, after leaving office, and how Mr. Trump resisted efforts by the government to retrieve all of those files. After the Justice Department obtained a subpoena for all remaining files marked as classified, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, M. Evan Corcoran, turned over some while helping to draft a statement falsely saying those were all that remained. In August, the F.B.I. executed a search warrant and found 103 more, including in Mr. Trump’s desk.Prosecutors last week persuaded a federal judge that Mr. Corcoran should be compelled to answer more questions from a grand jury investigating the documents matter, notwithstanding attorney-client privilege. That means the judge agreed with prosecutors that the situation met the threshold for an exception for lawyer communications or work that apparently helped further a crime.Potential charge: Unauthorized retention of national security documentsOne of the charges the F.B.I. listed in its affidavit for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was Section 793(e) of Title 18, a provision of the Espionage Act. Prosecutors would have to show that Mr. Trump knew he was still in possession of the documents after leaving the White House and failed to comply when the government asked him to return them and then subpoenaed him. The theoretical penalty is up to 10 years per such document.Prosecutors would also have to show that the documents related to the national defense, that they were closely held and that their disclosure could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary. Although Mr. Trump has claimed — without evidence — that he declassified all the files taken to Mar-a-Lago, prosecutors would not need to prove that they were still classified because the Espionage Act predates the classification system and does not refer to it as an element..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Potential charge: ObstructionAnother charge in the F.B.I. affidavit was Section 1519 of Title 18, which makes it a crime to conceal records to obstruct an official effort. Prosecutors would need to show that Mr. Trump knew he still had files that were responsive to the National Archives’ efforts to take custody of presidential records and the Justice Department’s subpoena for files marked as classified, and that he intentionally caused his subordinates to fail to turn them all over while leading officials to believe they had complied. The penalty is up to 20 years per offense.Potential charge: Mishandling official documentsA third charge in the affidavit was Section 2071 of Title 18, which criminalizes the concealment or destruction of official documents, whether or not they were related to national security. Among other things, former aides to Mr. Trump have recounted how he sometimes ripped up official documents, and the National Archives has said that some of the Trump White House paper records transferred to it had been torn up — some of which were taped back together and some of which were not reconstructed. The penalty is up to three years per offense plus a ban on holding federal office, although the latter is most likely unconstitutional, legal experts say.Potential charge: Contempt of courtSection 402 of Title 18 makes it a crime to willfully disobey a court order, like the grand jury subpoena Mr. Trump received in May 2022 requiring him to turn over all documents with classification markings remaining in his possession. It carries a penalty of a fine of up to $1,000 and up to six months in prison. To bring this charge, prosecutors would need evidence showing he knew that he was still holding onto other files with classification markings during and after his representatives purported to comply with the subpoena.Potential charge: Conspiracy to make a false statementSection 1001 of Title 18 makes it a crime to make a false statement to a law enforcement officer about a fact material to the officer’s investigation, and Section 371 makes it a crime to conspire with another person to break that or any other law. It carries a penalty of up to five years. Prosecutors would need to be able to show that Mr. Trump and Mr. Corcoran knew and agreed that the lawyer should lie to the Justice Department about there being no further documents responsive to the subpoena.Ballots being recounted in Atlanta, which is part of Fulton County, in 2020.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe Georgia Election Law InvestigationOverviewFani T. Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Ga., is investigating events related to Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn President Biden’s narrow victory in that state in the 2020 election. Among other things, in a phone call that was recorded and leaked, Mr. Trump called Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and pressured him to “find” enough additional votes for him to flip the outcome.Ms. Willis is also investigating Trump associates’ efforts to get 16 of his supporters to falsely declare themselves to be an alternative slate of electors from Georgia, which helped lay the groundwork for Mr. Trump’s push to get Vice President Mike Pence to reject the true results when Congress met to certify the election on Jan. 6, 2021.Potential charges: Election code violationsMost elections offenses in Georgia’s code are misdemeanors, but there are several felony charges that Ms. Willis may be considering, based on the same basic set of facts. These include Section 21-2-603, which makes it a crime to conspire with another person to violate a provision of the election code, and Section 21-2-604, which makes it a crime to solicit another person to commit election fraud.To bring such a charge against Mr. Trump, prosecutors would need to cite another election law whose violation was his alleged goal. It is possible, for example, that they might be considering contending that Mr. Trump’s pushing Mr. Raffensperger to “find” additional votes amounted to implicitly asking him to violate a provision that makes it a felony for the secretary of state to alter official election records, but Mr. Trump’s language was not explicit.Potential charge: RacketeeringMs. Willis has indicated that she is considering bringing charges under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. So-called RICO laws are tools that were developed to make it easier to go after organized criminal enterprises, and can be used against members of any group that engaged in a pattern of criminal activities with a common purpose. A conviction would carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.To convict Mr. Trump under Georgia’s RICO law, Section 16-14-4, prosecutors would need to show that as part of his efforts with associates to overturn Georgia’s election results, he conspired with others or engaged in two or more offenses from a list of several dozen offenses, most of which are violent crimes but which include things like solicitation, forgery and making materially false statements to state officials.The House Jan. 6 committee made a criminal referral of Mr. Trump and others to the Justice Department.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe 2020 Election and Jan. 6OverviewMr. Smith, the special counsel, is also conducting a broader federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and the events of Jan. 6. The House committee that carried out the investigation into the riot last year made a criminal referral of Mr. Trump and others to the Justice Department. While that was of largely symbolic value — the department already had an investigation open and Congress has no authority to prosecute — the analysis in the panel’s final report sets out possible charges that Mr. Smith could also consider.Potential charge: Obstruction of an official proceedingOne criminal accusation the Jan. 6 committee leveled against Mr. Trump was the attempted corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, under Section 1512(c) of Title 18. It is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors have used this law to charge about 300 ordinary Jan. 6 defendants — people who rioted — and an appeals court is currently weighing whether that charge has been appropriately applied in those cases. But even if the judiciary upholds use of the charge, such a case against Mr. Trump would be very different since he did not physically participate in the riot.The Jan. 6 committee argued that he could be charged with it based on two sets of actions. First, it argued that his summoning of supporters to Washington and urging them to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” violated that law. Mr. Trump’s defense team would surely seek to raise doubt about whether he intended for his supporters to riot, including because he also told them to protest “peacefully.”Second, the committee portrayed as criminal obstruction the scheme to recruit so-called fake electors from various states and pressuring Mr. Pence to cite their existence as a basis to delay certifying the election. The panel stressed how Mr. Trump had been told that there was no truth to his claims of a stolen election, which it said proved his intentions were corrupt. Among other things, Mr. Trump’s defense team would surely argue that because a lawyer, John Eastman, advised him to take those steps, there is no proof he understood that doing so was illegal.Potential charge: Conspiracy to defraud the United StatesA second criminal accusation leveled by the Jan. 6 committee was Section 371 of Title 18, which makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to conspire with another person to defraud the government. The panel cited an array of evidence about Mr. Trump’s interactions with various lawyers and aides in pursuit of his effort to prevent the certification of Mr. Biden’s electoral victory. The committee also argued that prosecutors could prove Mr. Trump intended to be deceitful via evidence that he was repeatedly told that his allegations of widespread voter fraud were baseless.Potential charge: Conspiracy to make a false statementThe Jan. 6 committee highlighted the efforts to submit slates of fake electors to Congress and to the National Archives. As with other such potential charges, a key challenge for prosecutors would be proving Mr. Trump’s intentions and understanding beyond a reasonable doubt.Potential charge: InsurrectionThe committee also pointed to Section 2383 of Title 18, which makes it a crime to incite, assist or “aid and comfort” an insurrection against the authority and laws of the federal government. The panel emphasized in particular how Mr. Trump refused for hours to take steps to call off the rioters despite being implored by aides to do so, and an inflammatory tweet he sent about Mr. Pence in the midst of the violence.While the committee said the events of Jan. 6 met the standard for an insurrection, it is notable that prosecutors have not accused any of the Jan. 6 defendants to date of that offense — even those they charged with seditious conspiracy. More

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      Justice Dept. Offers Immunity to Kash Patel for Testimony in Documents Case

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      The adviser, Kash Patel, had previously declined to answer questions from prosecutors in front of a federal grand jury, citing his Fifth Amendment rights.The Justice Department offered on Wednesday to allow Kash Patel, a close adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, to testify to a federal grand jury under a grant of immunity about Mr. Trump’s handling of highly sensitive presidential records, two people familiar with the matter said.The offer of immunity came about a month after Mr. Patel invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in front of the grand jury and refused to answer questions from prosecutors investigating whether Mr. Trump improperly took national security documents with him when he left the White House and subsequently obstructed attempts by the government to retrieve them.During Mr. Patel’s initial grand jury appearance, one of the people familiar with the matter said, Judge Beryl A. Howell of Federal District Court in Washington acknowledged Mr. Patel’s Fifth Amendment claims and said the only way he could be forced to testify was if the government offered him immunity.The decision by the Justice Department to grant immunity in the case, the person said, effectively cleared the way for the grand jury to hear Mr. Patel’s testimony.A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment.The disclosure that Mr. Patel has received immunity for his testimony comes as prosecutors have increased their pressure on recalcitrant witnesses who have declined to answer investigators’ questions or have provided them with potentially misleading accounts about Mr. Trump’s handling of documents.What to Know About the Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More