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      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Trump's Lawyers

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      The House committee issued six subpoenas to people who worked on legal aspects of the former president’s bid to invalidate the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Tuesday subpoenaed a half-dozen lawyers and other allies of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and worked to overturn his loss.Those who were sent subpoenas for documents and testimony participated in a range of attempts to invalidate Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, including filing lawsuits, pressuring local election officials to change the results and drafting proposed executive orders to seize voting machines.“The select committee is seeking information about attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of electoral votes and any efforts to corruptly change the outcome of the 2020 election,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. “The six individuals we’ve subpoenaed today all have knowledge related to those matters and will help the select committee better understand all the various strategies employed to potentially affect the outcome of the election.”More than 550 witnesses have testified before the committee, which is tasked with writing an authoritative report about the violence of a year ago that left more than 150 police officers injured and resulted in several deaths.The committee also intends to make recommendations to prevent such an episode from happening again, and is considering making criminal referrals should its investigators uncover any crimes not already charged by the Justice Department.The subpoenas issued on Tuesday direct the witnesses to sit for interviews in March.Among those summoned was Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who the panel said “promoted false claims of election fraud to members of Congress” and participated in a call in which Mr. Trump tried to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to “‘find’ enough votes to reverse his loss there.”Ms. Mitchell was also in contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 and the days before, the committee said it had learned.Kenneth Chesebro, another lawyer who was subpoenaed on Tuesday, promoted legal theories within the Trump campaign supporting the use of slates of bogus electors in states the former president lost. Mr. Chesebro told the Trump campaign his efforts would “‘bolster’ the argument for delaying the electoral certification” and make the public believe the election “‘was likely rigged, and stolen by Biden and Harris, who were not legitimately elected,’” the committee wrote in a letter accompanying Mr. Chesebro’s subpoena.The committee also issued a subpoena to Christina Bobb, who works for One America News Network and was reportedly involved in efforts to draft an executive order for Mr. Trump that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in numerous states. Ms. Bobb was present in the “war room” of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in the Willard Hotel on Jan. 6, the committee said.Ms. Bobb is said to be writing a book about Jan. 6 and interviewed Mr. Trump for the project, meaning she would most likely have notes that the committee could obtain through a subpoena.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3The first trial. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Lawyers Who Worked to Overturn Trump’s Loss

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      The House committee issued six subpoenas to people who worked on legal aspects of the former president’s bid to invalidate the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Tuesday subpoenaed a half-dozen lawyers and other allies of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and worked to overturn his loss.Those who were sent subpoenas for documents and testimony participated in a range of attempts to invalidate Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, including filing lawsuits, pressuring local election officials to change the results and drafting proposed executive orders to seize voting machines.“The select committee is seeking information about attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of electoral votes and any efforts to corruptly change the outcome of the 2020 election,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. “The six individuals we’ve subpoenaed today all have knowledge related to those matters and will help the select committee better understand all the various strategies employed to potentially affect the outcome of the election.”More than 550 witnesses have testified before the committee, which is tasked with writing an authoritative report about the violence of a year ago that left more than 150 police officers injured and resulted in several deaths.The committee also intends to make recommendations to prevent such an episode from happening again, and is considering making criminal referrals should its investigators uncover any crimes not already charged by the Justice Department.The subpoenas issued on Tuesday direct the witnesses to sit for interviews in March.Among those summoned was Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who the panel said promoted false claims of election fraud to members of Congress and participated in a call in which Mr. Trump tried to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to reverse his loss there.Ms. Mitchell was also in contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 and the days prior, the committee said it had learned.Kenneth Chesebro, another lawyer who was subpoenaed on Tuesday, promoted legal theories within the Trump campaign supporting the use of slates of bogus electors in states the former president lost. Mr. Chesebro told the Trump campaign his efforts would “‘bolster’ the argument for delaying the electoral certification” and make the public believe the election “‘was likely rigged, and stolen by Biden and Harris, who were not legitimately elected,’” the committee wrote in a letter accompanying Mr. Chesebro’s subpoena.The committee also issued a subpoena to Christina Bobb, who works for One America News Network and was reportedly involved in efforts to draft an executive order for Mr. Trump that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in numerous states. Ms. Bobb was present in the “war room” of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in the Willard Hotel on Jan. 6, the committee said.Ms. Bobb is said to be writing a book about Jan. 6 and interviewed Mr. Trump for the project, meaning she would most likely have notes that the committee could obtain through a subpoena.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3The first trial. More

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      Susan Collins: Reform the Electoral Count Act to Avoid Another January 6

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      Imagine my surprise when on Jan. 6, 2017, I found out that I had received one electoral vote to be vice president of the United States — an office for which I was not a candidate — from a “faithless elector” from the state of Washington.Four years later, on Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob overran the Capitol, I realized that my unearned vote in the Electoral College was not amusing. This seemingly innocuous vote was an indication that our system of counting and certifying votes for president and vice president had deep and serious structural problems.These unfortunate flaws are codified in the Electoral Count Act, which guides the implementation of part of the presidential election process included in the Constitution. This 1887 law, vaguely written in the inaccessible language of a different era, was intended to restrain Congress, but in practice it has had the unintended effect of creating ambiguities that could potentially be used to expand the role of Congress and the vice president in ways that are contrary to the Constitution.Despite its defects, the law was not an issue for more than a century because of the restraint of the people who exercised the serious, but limited, constitutional responsibility of counting the votes. Vice presidents and Congresses sustained the will of the people — even when they did not like the result.For example, we saw this in 1961 and again in 2001, when Vice Presidents Richard Nixon and Al Gore presided in a fair and dignified manner over the counting of the electoral votes despite having lost close elections for president. Vice President Gore even refused to hear Democratic objectors who were trying to make him president.Then came the election of 2020. President Donald Trump and his allies both exploited the weaknesses of the law and ignored the language of the Constitution. Mr. Trump argued that the vice president could overturn the election results. A violent mob temporarily halted the electoral count that would confirm President Biden’s victory.Vice President Mike Pence’s courage and integrity on that day cannot be overstated. He stood up to a determined president who relentlessly pressured him to swing the election his way. And he refused to be intimidated by rioters who assaulted police officers, swarmed the Capitol and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” As the dangerous mob neared the Senate chambers, the vice president and senators had to be whisked away.The House, too, was forced to evacuate, bringing the electoral count to a halt. How well I remember a sparse group of Capitol Police officers urging us to “Run! Run!” as we made our way to a secure location, while other members of the overwhelmed Capitol Police battled the mob. For hours, we watched on television as rioters broke into the Senate chamber and rummaged through our desks.Finally, senators were told it was safe enough for us to proceed back to the chamber, which all of us were determined to do so that we could resume the counting of the votes. The walk back that evening was very different. In contrast to the small number of police officers guiding our evacuation, F.B.I. tactical teams with riot gear, National Guard members and police officers lined our route. Vice President Pence and the Congress returned to the Capitol that night and completed the final, constitutionally mandated step before the inauguration of a new president — we counted the votes.That day reminded us that there is nothing more essential to the survival of a democracy than the orderly transfer of power, and there is nothing more essential to the orderly transfer of power than clear rules for effecting it. We should not depend on the fidelity and resolve of vice presidents to follow the intent of these rules; the law should be crystal clear on the parameters of the vice president’s powers and consistent with the very limited role set forth in the Constitution. Vice President Pence’s actions on Jan. 6 were heroic. But the peaceful transfer of power shouldn’t require heroes.Much debate has focused recently on the casting of ballots. Much more attention must be paid to the counting and certifying of votes. Our democracy depends on it. To prevent the subversion of the electoral process, Congress must reform the Electoral Count Act. A bipartisan group of 16 senators is working to do that.The ambiguously phrased Electoral Count Act must be amended to make absolutely clear that a vice president cannot manipulate or ignore electoral votes as he or she presides over this joint session of Congress. But other flaws in the law must also be remedied. For instance, the law’s threshold for triggering a challenge to the results of a state is far too low: Only one representative and one senator are required to object to a state’s electors. In the past, members on both sides of the aisle have challenged the vote without any real evidence of wrongdoing.Our group of senators shares a vision of drafting legislation to ensure the integrity of our elections and public confidence in the results. We want a bill that will be considered by committees, debated on the Senate floor, garner the support of the Senate’s two leaders and pass the Senate with 60 or more votes.The broader we cast our net, however, the more difficult it will be to achieve consensus. We have to be careful about expanding a reform bill to include provisions that go well beyond correcting the current law, strengthening election security and protecting poll workers from threats of violence. Relitigating bills that have already been rejected won’t get us to the finish line. Our primary focus must be on avoiding another Jan. 6 by reforming the Electoral Count Act. That is the vital goal in itself, our duty to perform and a worthy mission that should not be derailed by good-faith but ultimately partisan provisions.We do not know if we will succeed, but we are trying to fix a serious problem.  The senators working on this legislation have philosophical, regional and political differences. When we disagree, we attempt to persuade one another — we cajole, haggle and even argue — but we do so with an eye on a common goal. That is the way it is supposed to work in a democracy. Maybe we could refer to the process as “legitimate political discourse.”Susan Collins is a Republican senator from Maine. She is leading a bipartisan group of senators who are committed to reforming the Electoral Count Act.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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      The Conservative Case for Reforming the Electoral Count Act

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      The clear and present danger to our democracy now is that former President Donald Trump and his political allies appear prepared to exploit the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the law governing the counting of votes for president and vice president, to seize the presidency in 2024 if Mr. Trump or his anointed candidate is not elected by the American people.The convoluted language in the law gives Congress the power to determine the presidency if it concludes that Electoral College slates representing the winning candidate were not “lawfully certified” or “regularly given” — vague and undefined terms — regardless of whether there is proof of illegal vote tampering. After the 2020 election, Republican senators like Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri tried to capitalize on those ambiguities in the law to do Mr. Trump’s bidding, mounting a case for overturning the results in some Biden-won states on little more than a wish. Looking ahead to the next presidential election, Mr. Trump is once again counting on a sympathetic and malleable Congress and willing states to use the Electoral Count Act to his advantage.He confirmed as much in a twisted admission of both his past and future intent earlier this month, claiming that congressional efforts to reform the Electoral Count Act actually prove that Mike Pence had the power to overturn the 2020 presidential election because of the alleged “irregularities.” The former vice president pushed back forcefully, calling Mr. Trump “wrong.”The back-and-forth repudiations by Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence lay bare two very different visions for the Republican Party. Mr. Trump and his allies insist that the 2020 election was “stolen,” a product of fraudulent voting and certifications of electors who were not properly selected. Over a year after the election, they continue to cling to these disproved allegations, claiming that these “irregularities” were all the evidence Mr. Pence needed to overturn the results, and demanding that the rest of the G.O.P. embrace their lies. The balance of the Republican Party, mystifyingly stymied by Mr. Trump, rejects these lies, but, as if they have fallen through the rabbit hole into Alice’s Wonderland, they are confused as to exactly how to move on from the 2020 election when their putative leader remains bewilderingly intent on driving the wedge between the believers in his lies and the disbelievers.This political fissure in the Republican Party was bound to intensify sooner or later, and now it has, presenting an existential threat to the party in 2024. If these festering divisions cost the Republicans in the midterm elections and jeopardize their chances of reclaiming the presidency in 2024, which they well could, the believers and disbelievers alike will suffer.While the Republicans are transfixed by their own political predicaments, and the Democrats by theirs, the right course is for both parties to set aside their partisan interests and reform the Electoral Count Act, which ought not be a partisan undertaking.Democrats, for their part, should regard reform of the Electoral Count Act as a victory — essential to shore up our faltering democracy and to prevent another attack like the one at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. These are actually the worthiest of objectives.Republicans should want to reform the law for these same reasons, and more. Of course, some may never support reform of the Electoral Count Act simply because the former president has voiced his opposition to the efforts to revise it. But there are consequential reasons of constitutional and political principle for the large remainder of Republicans to favor reform in spite of the former president’s opposition.Republicans are proponents of limited federal government. They oppose aggregation of power in Washington and want it dispersed to the states. It should be anathema to them that Congress has the power to overturn the will of the American people in an election that, by constitutional prescription, is administered by the states, not Washington. If the Democrats are willing to divest themselves of the power to decide the presidency that the 49th Congress wrongly assumed 135 years ago, then it would be the height of political hypocrisy for the Republicans to refuse to divest theirs.Constitutional conservatives, especially, should want Electoral Count Act reform, because they should be the first to understand that the law is plainly unconstitutional. Nothing in the Constitution empowers Congress to decide the validity of the electoral slates submitted by the states. In fact, the Constitution gives Congress no role whatsoever in choosing the president, save in the circumstance where no presidential candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes cast.Trump acolytes like Mr. Cruz and Mr. Hawley should appreciate the need to reform this unconstitutional law. They are also politically smart enough to understand that however likely it is that the Republican presidential candidate will lose in 2024, it is just as likely that he or she will win. Attempts to time reform based on handicapping the quadrennial presidential election are futile, and no Republican should want to be an accessory to any successful attempt to overturn the next election — including an effort by Democrats to exploit the law.If the Republicans want to prevent the Electoral Count Act from being exploited in 2024, several fundamental reforms are needed. First, Congress should formally give the federal courts, up to and including the Supreme Court, the power to resolve disputes over state electors and to ensure compliance with the established procedures for selecting presidential electors — and require the judiciary’s expeditious resolution of these disputes. Congress should then require itself to count the votes of electors that the federal courts have determined to be properly certified under state law.Congress should also increase the number of members required both to voice an objection and to sustain one to as high a number as politically palatable. At the moment, only one member of each chamber is necessary to send an objection to the Senate and House for debate and resolution — an exceedingly low threshold that proved a deadly disservice to the country and the American people during the last election.Currently, Congress has the power under Article II and the Necessary and Proper Clause to prevent states from changing the manner by which their electors are appointed after the election, but it has not clearly exercised that authority to prevent such postelection changes. It should do so.Finally, the vice president’s important, but largely ministerial, role in the joint session where the electoral votes are counted should once and for all be clarified.It is hardly overstatement to say that the future of our democracy depends on reform of the Electoral Count Act. Republicans and Democrats need to put aside their partisan differences long enough to fix this law before it enables the political equivalent of a civil war three years hence. The law is offensive to Republicans in constitutional and political principle, officiously aggrandizing unto Congress the constitutional prerogatives of the states. It is offensive to Democrats because it legislatively epitomizes a profound threat in waiting to America’s democracy. The needed changes, which would meet the political objections of both parties, should command broad bipartisan support in any responsible Congress. For Republicans in particular, these changes are idiomatic sleeves off their vests.Come to think of it, the only members in Congress who might not want to reform this menacing law are those planning its imminent exploitation to overturn the next presidential election.J. Michael Luttig (@judgeluttig) was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006.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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      Giuliani in Talks to Testify to House Jan. 6 Panel

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      It is not clear how much assistance he might provide in the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power.Rudolph W. Giuliani, who as former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyer helped lead the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, is in discussions with the House Jan. 6 committee about responding to its questions, according to three people familiar with the matter.The extent of any assistance that Mr. Giuliani might provide remains unclear and the negotiations could easily fall apart, especially as Mr. Trump continues to publicly rail against the investigation.But Mr. Giuliani, through his lawyer, has signaled to the committee that he plans to take a less confrontational stance toward its requests than some other members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle who are fighting the committee’s subpoenas or have otherwise refused to cooperate.Mr. Giuliani’s discussions with committee officials suggest that he may be seeking to avoid a potentially costly legal fight over a subpoena that was issued to him last month. By engaging with the committee, Mr. Giuliani could also make it more difficult for the House to issue a criminal referral of him to the Justice Department for contempt of Congress if he in the end does not comply with the subpoena.Should Mr. Giuliani ultimately provide the committee with substantive cooperation, it would be a major breakthrough for the investigation and a breach in the relationship between Mr. Trump and one of his closest if most problematic advisers. Mr. Giuliani was instrumental not only in the post-Election Day effort to keep Mr. Trump in power but also in the pressure campaign on Ukraine that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.One person familiar with the matter said that Mr. Giuliani was still negotiating over whether to give investigators an informal interview or a formal deposition, and that he had not yet determined how much information he might seek to shield from the committee by invoking executive privilege or attorney-client privilege with Mr. Trump.A committee aide said that the panel would not comment on negotiations with its witnesses. But the aide said that the committee had allowed Mr. Giuliani, who was scheduled to appear for a deposition before the panel last Tuesday, to reschedule it at “his request.” The aide said the committee was pressing Mr. Giuliani to “cooperate fully.”However preliminary, the conversations suggest that Mr. Giuliani is considering taking a vastly different approach than those taken by other close Trump allies.Mr. Trump’s onetime chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has been referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal charges after refusing an interview with the committee. Another former aide, Stephen K. Bannon, was indicted in November after refusing to provide information to congressional investigators.As a key figure in some of Mr. Trump’s attempts to stave off electoral defeat, Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, would be in a position to tell investigators how much the former president knew about a series of extraordinary measures that were proposed to him last fall and winter in a bid to maintain his grip on power.Among those efforts was a scheme to disrupt the normal workings of the Electoral College by persuading lawmakers in contested swing states to draw up alternate slates of electors showing Mr. Trump was victorious in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Giuliani was also instrumental in vetting a plan to use the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines in order to examine the data housed inside them for supposed evidence of fraud. At Mr. Trump’s direction, Mr. Giuliani asked a top homeland security official if the department could legally take control of the machines — a notion that the official shot down. Mr. Giuliani later opposed an even more explosive proposal to have the military seize the machines.Mr. Giuliani was subpoenaed with other members of a legal team that billed itself as “an elite strike force” and pursued a set of conspiracy-filled lawsuits on behalf of Mr. Trump in which they made unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the election. They were initially scheduled to testify this week, but were granted delays through discussions with their lawyers.The subpoena sought all documents that Mr. Giuliani had detailing the pressure campaign that he and other Trump allies initiated targeting state officials; the seizure of voting machines; contact with members of Congress; any evidence to support the bizarre conspiracy theories he pushed; and any arrangements for his fees.On Jan. 6, speaking to a crowd of Trump supporters before the attack on the Capitol, Mr. Giuliani called for “trial by combat.” Later, after the building was under siege, both he and Mr. Trump called lawmakers in an attempt to delay the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.Key Developments in the Jan. 6 InvestigationCard 1 of 3White House phone records. More

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      Will Trump's Election Lies Become a Litmus Test for Republicans?

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      Upcoming primaries will test whether embracing Donald J. Trump’s election falsehoods is a litmus test for Republican voters.WASHINGTON — More than a year after the 2020 election, Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud remain a destabilizing force for the Republican Party, dividing an activist base galvanized by a lie from elites in Washington who are hoping to hold the party together long enough to win back power in Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.The tension flared this week as Republicans were forced to either explain or denounce a party resolution characterizing the deadly events of Jan. 6 as “legitimate political discourse.” But the episode was a only a preview of the battles ahead, with a series of upcoming primary contests pitting candidates loyal to Mr. Trump against those who, to varying degrees, resist his distortions about the election.Those races, in Alaska, Georgia, North Carolina, Wyoming and elsewhere, promise to amplify calls for election audits, claims of fraud and a recasting of events surrounding the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. That debate will test the extent to which embracing Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election — and attempts to downplay the violence that followed — has become a new litmus test for Republican voters.“It still is a burning ember of passion for the base,” said Matt Batzel, the national executive director of American Majority, an organization that trains conservative grass-roots activists. “If those in Washington try to move on, there is going to be even a greater disconnect and greater frustration with their leadership, resulting in more tension and arguments within the party.”That prospect is alarming for some Republicans who worry about the long-term consequences of embedding Mr. Trump’s false claims into the foundation of the party. Far more Republicans, however, expressed concern this week about the near-term consequences: With President Biden’s approval ratings falling well below half of voters, many Republicans fear that debate will be a distraction ahead of a 2022 midterm election in which they are otherwise well positioned to take back power.“The more we talk about Jan. 6, the less we talk about how Biden hasn’t been successful,” said Steven Frias, a Republican committeeman from Rhode Island.Mr. Frias was among the estimated two dozen of 168 Republican National Committee members who voted last week against the party’s resolution to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the two Republicans working with congressional Democrats to investigate the Jan. 6 riot.Barriers around the Capitol have remained in place since the Jan. 6 riots in 2021.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesMr. Frias said he did not think the party should censure a member “unless that Republican has engaged in some kind of criminal or unethical conduct.” He also lamented the resolution’s “unforced error” declaring that Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger were participating in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, quickly tried to clarify the phrase, saying that the party did not intend to include the rioters in that description — though such a distinction was not in the adopted text.That explanation did not prevent a rare public fight between Republican elected officials in Washington and the leaders of their party apparatus. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, and other Republicans at the Capitol publicly denounced the censure. “We saw it happen,” Mr. McConnell said of the Jan. 6 riot. “It was a violent insurrection.”The Trump era has shown repeatedly how Republican leaders, including Mr. McConnell, will briefly confront the Trump wing of the party, before ultimately realigning themselves with their voters, especially as elections near. Those who do not — such as former Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee — typically exit elected politics.“Mitch McConnell does not speak for the Republican Party, and does not represent the views of the vast majority of its voters,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Wednesday.More than 70 percent of Republicans believe the 2020 election was illegitimate, according to a Washington Post poll last month. And the Pew Research Center found in a poll released Tuesday that 57 percent of Republicans believe Mr. Trump bears no responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — a number 11 points higher than a year ago.Protesters demanding a forensic audit of the 2020 presidential election in front of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Mich., on Tuesday.Emily Elconin/ReutersFalse beliefs about the 2020 election were most intense among those who consume conservative media, according to a Public Religion Research Institute survey conducted in the fall. The poll found that 82 percent of Fox News viewers and 97 percent of those who consume far-right channels such as OAN and Newsmax believe the election was stolen.In Washington, party strategists and senators have mostly been loath to discuss the growing election denialism in the party’s ranks, either hoping it would fade with time or not wanting to challenge their voters. Now, as midterm elections near, Republican leaders close to the activists, volunteers and local leaders who power the party say that this sentiment is impossible to ignore.“Some people are very supportive of what happened on Jan. 6 and angry at the government’s response. Some people are offended by what happened on Jan. 6,” said Jane Brady, the chairwoman of the state Republican Party in Delaware, who voted in favor of the censure resolution. “I’ve got to rally those individuals on both sides to vote for our local candidates.”Some of the strongest condemnations of the censure resolution came from senators who are farthest from needing to face the voters.“The Republican Party started this year with a decided advantage on the issues that will determine the outcome of the fall elections,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. “But every moment that is spent re-litigating a lost election or defending those who have been convicted of criminal behavior moves us further away from the goal of victory this fall.”Ms. Collins, like Mr. McConnell, won re-election in 2020 and will not be on the ballot again until 2026.Key Developments in the Jan. 6 InvestigationCard 1 of 3White House phone records. More

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      Jan. 6 Inquiry Subpoenas Navarro, Who Worked to Overturn Election

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      Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, has written and spoken about his work on a plan to get Congress to reject the results of the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued a subpoena on Wednesday to Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to former President Donald J. Trump who was involved in what he called an “operation” to keep Mr. Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election.The subpoena was the committee’s latest attempt to obtain information about efforts underway in Mr. Trump’s White House to invalidate the election. In his book, titled “In Trump Time,” and in interviews with The New York Times and other outlets, Mr. Navarro has said that he worked with Stephen K. Bannon and other allies of Mr. Trump to develop and carry out a plan to delay Congress’s formal count of the 2020 presidential election results to buy time to change the outcome.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, highlighted how openly and proudly Mr. Navarro has discussed those machinations, saying he “hasn’t been shy about his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and has even discussed the former president’s support for those plans.”Mr. Navarro has insisted that the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was not part of his plans, which he said included having Vice President Mike Pence reject electors for Joseph R. Biden Jr. when Congress met in a joint session to formally count them.“To pull off an operation Bannon has dubbed the Green Bay Sweep — and thereby keep President Trump in the White House for a second term — we must have only peace and calm,” Mr. Navarro wrote in his book.On Wednesday, he said he would not comply with the committee’s subpoena, citing Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege.“It is not my privilege to waive,” Mr. Navarro said. He also berated Mr. Pence for failing to go along with Mr. Trump’s demands that he unilaterally throw out electoral votes for Mr. Biden. And he insulted Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s former top aide who has cooperated with the panel; Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; and the two Republicans on the committee, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.“Pence betrayed Trump. Marc Short is a Koch Network dog. Meadows is a fool and a coward. Cheney and Kinzinger are useful idiots for Nancy Pelosi and the woke Left,” Mr. Navarro wrote in an email.In his book, Mr. Navarro wrote that the idea was for Mr. Pence to be the “quarterback” of the plan and “put certification of the election on ice for at least another several weeks while Congress and the various state legislatures involved investigate all of the fraud and election irregularities.”There has been no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in the 2020 election, though Mr. Trump continues to claim that it was “stolen” from him.Mr. Navarro also wrote a 36-page report alleging election fraud as part of what he called an “Immaculate Deception.” In an interview with The Times, he said he relied on “thousands of affidavits” from Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner, to help produce the report, which claimed there “may well have been a coordinated strategy to effectively stack the election deck against the Trump-Pence ticket.”The Jan. 6 committee described the claims in Mr. Navarro’s report as having been “discredited in public reporting, by state officials and courts.”Mr. Navarro said that he made sure Republican members of Congress received a copy of his report and that more than 100 members of Congress had signed onto the plans. (Ultimately, 147 Republican members of Congress objected to certifying at least one state for Mr. Biden.)Latest DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3A G.O.P. resolution. More

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      Overhaul of Electoral Count Act Will Pass, Manchin Says

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      Senators working to overhaul the law said recent revelations about former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election made their work even more crucial.WASHINGTON — Two senators working on an overhaul of the little-known law that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election pledged on Sunday that their legislation would pass the Senate, saying that recent revelations about the plot made their work even more important.In a joint interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Senators Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said their efforts to rewrite the Electoral Count Act of 1887 were gaining broader support in the Senate, with as many as 20 senators taking part in the discussions.“Absolutely, it will pass,” Mr. Manchin said of an overhaul of the law, which dictates how Congress formalizes elections.He said efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to exploit “ambiguity” in the law were “what caused the insurrection” — the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. That misreading of the statute led to a plan by Mr. Trump and his allies to amass a crowd outside the Capitol to try to pressure Congress and Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over Congress’s official count of electoral votes, to overturn the results of the election.Ms. Murkowski said the rewrite could be expanded to include other protections for democracy, such as a crackdown on threats and harassment against election workers.“We want to make sure that if you are going to be an election worker,” Ms. Murkowski said, “you don’t feel intimidated or threatened or harassed.”A bipartisan group of at least 15 senators — which includes Mr. Manchin and Ms. Murkowski and is led by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine — recently began discussions with another group that features top Democrats who have studied the issue for months. That group includes Senator Angus King, independent of Maine; Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota; and Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.Mr. King’s group last week released draft legislative text for a rewrite of the Electoral Count Act that would address deficiencies exposed by Mr. Trump’s plan. The bill would clarify that the vice president has no power to reject a state’s electors and ensure that state legislatures cannot appoint electors after Election Day in an effort to overturn their state’s election results.It would also give states additional time to complete legitimate recounts and litigation; provide limited judicial review to ensure that the electors appointed by a state reflect the popular vote results in the state; enumerate specific and narrow grounds for objections to electors or electoral votes; raise the thresholds for Congress to consider objections; and make it harder to sustain objections without broad support by both chambers of Congress.In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. King called his group’s draft “very nonpartisan” and said it included the input of conservative and liberal legal scholars.“Hopefully we can join forces and get a good bill,” Mr. King said of Ms. Collins’s group.The latest push to clarify the law follows a series of revelations about a campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to try to overturn the 2020 election, including the surfacing of memos that show the roots of the attempts to use so-called alternate electors to keep Mr. Trump in power and the former president’s exploration of proposals to seize voting machines.On Friday, Mr. Pence offered his most forceful rebuke of Mr. Trump’s plan, saying the former president was “wrong” to insist that Mr. Pence had the legal authority to overturn the results of the election. Those comments came on the same day the Republican National Committee voted to censure two members of the party, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, in a resolution that described the events of Jan. 6 as “legitimate political discourse.”Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger are the only Republican members of the special House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, which left more than 150 police officers injured and resulted in several deaths.The resolution drew criticism from some congressional Republicans on Sunday.Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said on ABC’s “This Week” that he did “not agree with that statement — if it’s applying to those who committed criminal offenses and violence to overtake our shrine of democracy.”In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s former chief of staff, said that “from my front-row seat, I did not see a lot of legitimate political discourse.”Mr. Short blamed Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election on “many bad advisers who were basically snake-oil salesmen, giving him really random and novel ideas as to what the vice president could do.”He described being taken to a secure room in the Capitol with Mr. Pence on Jan. 6 as rioters stormed the building, some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence.” He said Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence did not talk that day.Mr. Short and another top Pence aide, Greg Jacob, recently testified before the committee, a step Mr. Pence’s advisers have hoped would stop the committee from issuing a subpoena for Mr. Pence. Representatives of Mr. Pence have been negotiating with the committee’s lawyers for months.“That would be a pretty unprecedented step for the committee to take,” Mr. Short said of a subpoena for the former vice president, adding that it would be “very difficult for me to see that scenario unfolding.”Emily Cochrane More