Presidential Election of 2016

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      Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s First Campaign Manager, Is Brought Back for G.O.P. Convention

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      Corey Lewandowski, former President Donald J. Trump’s first campaign manager, who was ousted from that campaign in 2016 and then from a pro-Trump super PAC in 2021, has been hired as an adviser for the Republican Party’s nominating convention in July, a person familiar with the decision said.Mr. Lewandowski, a longtime political adviser to Mr. Trump, was pushed out of a pro-Trump super PAC that he had helped lead — Make America Great Again Action — in 2021 after the wife of a donor accused him of making unwanted sexual advances. A spokesman for Mr. Trump said at the time that Mr. Lewandowski would “no longer be associated with Trump World.” His hiring for the Republican National Convention, which will be held in mid-July in Milwaukee, represents his return to Mr. Trump’s circle of political advisers.The hiring was first reported by National Review, and Chris LaCivita, a top official in the Trump campaign, told the conservative outlet that Mr. Lewandowski was “very helpful to me, and he’s helpful to the R.N.C., and he’s helpful to the president.”This month, Paul Manafort, who replaced Mr. Lewandowski as Mr. Trump’s campaign manager in 2016, stepped down from a similar role advising the nominating convention, saying that “the media wants to use me as a distraction to try and harm President Trump and his campaign.” Mr. Manafort was convicted of a range of financial crimes and conspiracy to obstruct justice and spent nearly two years in prison before Mr. Trump pardoned him in December 2020.Mr. Lewandowski was the campaign manager for Mr. Trump when he first jumped into the presidential race in June 2015. Mr. Trump fired him in June 2016 at the urging of allies and his adult children as Mr. Lewandowski faced negative headlines that had overshadowed his boss, including being arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery — a charge later dropped — after he was accused of grabbing a reporter as she approached Mr. Trump. The next year, a pop singer accused Mr. Lewandowski of slapping her twice on the buttocks at a party in Washington.A spokesman for the Democratic National Committee highlighted the allegations against Mr. Lewandowski and said the Trump campaign was “scraping the bottom of the MAGA barrel” by hiring him.Mr. Lewandowski had considered running for a Senate seat in 2020 in New Hampshire, but ultimately backed out of the race. More

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      Law Firm Defending Trump Seeks to Withdraw From a Long-Running Case

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      The firm, LaRocca Hornik, has represented Donald Trump’s political operation in numerous suits dating to his first presidential run, including a pregnancy discrimination case in New York.A law firm that has long defended Donald J. Trump’s campaign and businesses from employment lawsuits has abruptly asked to withdraw from a yearslong case over what it calls an “irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.”The firm — LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Rosen, Kittridge, Carlin and McPartland — has represented Mr. Trump’s political operation in numerous suits dating to his first presidential run, helping secure several settlements and dismissals and billing nearly $3 million in the process.But late on Friday, it asked a federal magistrate judge to allow it to withdraw from a suit filed by a former campaign surrogate, A.J. Delgado, who says she was sidelined by the campaign in 2016 after revealing she was pregnant. The timing of the motion was notable, just two days after the same federal court had ordered the campaign to turn over in discovery all complaints of sexual harassment and gender or pregnancy discrimination from the 2016 and 2020 campaigns — materials that the defendants have long resisted handing over.A.J. Delgado in 2016.via YouTubeIn the request, filed in federal court in Manhattan, the lead lawyer, Jared Blumetti, did not provide any details about the dispute, asking permission to “explain” the matter privately with the judge. Mr. Blumetti did not respond to a request for comment.The apparent rupture with a long-trusted firm comes at a busy time, legally speaking, for the former president.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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      As Trump Runs in 2024, His 2016 Tactics Are on Trial

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      Donald J. Trump first ran for president nearly a decade ago.Now, as he runs again in a political climate that he helped create, his Manhattan criminal trial is partly a referendum on his tactics during that first campaign.The trial’s very premise is that prosecutors believe Mr. Trump orchestrated an election interference scheme. Faced with damaging stories that could have doomed his campaign — sex scandals involving a porn star and a Playboy model, for example — he concealed them, the prosecutors say.But in a development that will bolster their case, prosecutors on Monday secured permission from the judge to admit evidence connected to Mr. Trump’s overall political strategy in 2016. Much of it bears the former president’s imprint: aggressive tweets, false denials, coordination with a tabloid publisher and more.The judge’s ruling showed how the weapons that worked so well for Mr. Trump then are being turned against him in the courtroom now.The techniques prosecutors highlighted Monday were not invented by Mr. Trump for use in his campaign; they are behaviors he exhibited throughout his life as a businessman and a reality-television star. But in modern American political history, such raw tactics had rarely been seen at such a high level.One example is Mr. Trump’s relationship with The National Enquirer tabloid and its publisher, David Pecker, who is expected to appear as a witness.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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      Even if Nikki Haley Shocks Trump in New Hampshire, It Won’t Matter

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      Nikki Haley did well enough in the Iowa caucuses Monday night to keep her supporters’ hopes alive. But her third-place showing, on the heels of Ron DeSantis and a mile behind Donald Trump, was also just disappointing enough to raise doubts about her candidacy.Her plan coming out of Iowa is a classic underdog strategy: Use strong early results to upend expectations in the contests to come, reshaping the dynamic of the race one upset victory at a time. So, the thinking goes, her solid-enough performance in Iowa will propel her higher in New Hampshire, where she holds a strong second place in the polls.It’s possible. But even if Ms. Haley does well in New Hampshire, it won’t matter. That’s because Ms. Haley is starkly out of step with the evolution of her party over the past decade.The shape of today’s Republican electorate can be seen most clearly in national polling of Republican voters, where Mr. Trump has led by a substantial margin for months. Even in the unlikely event that all the voters who have told pollsters in recent weeks that they support Mr. DeSantis, Chris Christie and the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson switched over to Ms. Haley, she would reach only the high 20s, placing her more than 30 points behind Mr. Trump, who sits at around 60 percent. (The voters who have said they support Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped out of the race on Monday night, would likely switch to Mr. Trump.)Sure, Ms. Haley might peel off some of those Trump voters if she manages to puncture his air of inevitability by knocking him sideways in New Hampshire. But imagining that she could wrest the nomination from him ignores the fact that, if he were to suffer a humiliating setback in New Hampshire, Mr. Trump would be guaranteed to attack her with a viciousness he has so far reserved primarily for Mr. DeSantis. In December, as she climbed in the polls, MAGA loyalists like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon offered a preview of these sort of slashing attacks (referring to her as a “hologram” sent by donors or as potentially worse than “Judas Pence”).More important, though, the fulfillment of the Haley campaign’s hopes would require a wholesale shift in preferences among millions of Republican voters.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?  More

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      Proud Boys Member Who Threatened Police With Ax Handle on Jan. 6 Is Sentenced

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      William Chrestman of Olathe, Kan., a Proud Boys member, was sentenced to 55 months for breaching the U.S. Capitol and threatening officers, prosecutors said.A member of the Proud Boys extremist group who threatened police officers with an ax handle and breached the U.S. Capitol during the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced on Friday to nearly five years in prison, federal prosecutors said.Judge Timothy J. Kelly of U.S. District Court in Washington sentenced the man, William Chrestman, 51, of Olathe, Kan., to 55 months in prison. Mr. Chrestman pleaded guilty in October to felony charges of obstruction of an official proceeding and threatening a federal officer.The judge also ordered Mr. Chrestman to pay $2,000 in restitution, and his prison sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in a statement on Friday.Mr. Chrestman was sentenced to less time in prison than the 63 months that prosecutors had recommended in a sentencing memo. They argued that Mr. Chrestman had “played a significant role during the riot due to his presence and conduct at pivotal moments during the day.”Lawyers for Mr. Chrestman did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday. Prosecutors declined to comment.Mr. Chrestman has been in jail since he was arrested in February 2021, and he will get credit for time served, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.The Jan. 6 Riot Inquiry So Far: Three Years, Hundreds of Prison SentencesMore than 1,200 people have now been arrested in connection with the attack on the Capitol, and more than 450 sentenced to periods of incarceration. The investigation is far from over.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?  More

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      Christie’s Exit Should Give Haley a Chance in New Hampshire. Will It Be Enough?

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      A group of moderate voters is now available, but it may not put her over the top against Trump.Chris Christie and Nikki Haley on a debate stage last month.Gerald Herbert/Associated PressEight years ago, Chris Christie gave Donald J. Trump the biggest political assist of the 2016 campaign.He eviscerated a surging Marco Rubio on the debate stage just days before the New Hampshire primary. In doing so, he ensured that the Republican mainstream would be divided and allowed Mr. Trump to regain his footing with a win after a loss in Iowa.Mr. Trump won’t be getting the same favor again.On Wednesday, Mr. Christie withdrew from the race. Whatever his intent, by bowing out he has effectively done what he didn’t do eight years ago: step out of the way of a mainstream conservative with moderate appeal, in this case Nikki Haley, who is surging heading into the New Hampshire primary.In the most recent polls, she reached about 30 percent of the vote in New Hampshire. It was a tally that put her within striking distance of Mr. Trump and even made a victory imaginable. But she still trailed by about 12 percentage points, and her path to victory remained quite narrow.With Mr. Christie out of the race, those 12 points don’t look so hard anymore. Mr. Christie has held around 10 percent of the vote in New Hampshire for months, and Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump would essentially be tied in New Hampshire if her support were hypothetically combined with Mr. Christie’s.According to FiveThirtyEight on Wednesday night, Ms. Haley and Mr. Christie’s support added up to 41.5 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, to 42.4 percent for Mr. Trump.Of course, not every one of Mr. Christie’s voters will back Ms. Haley. But in this particular case, there’s good reason to think the preponderance of his voters really will coalesce behind her.Mr. Christie is the only vocal anti-Trump candidate and, not surprisingly, his supporters are the likeliest to be anti-Trump. In a CNN/UNH poll this week, 65 percent of Mr. Christie’s supporters said Ms. Haley was their second choice. In a CBS/YouGov poll last month, 75 percent of Mr. Christie’s supporters in New Hampshire said they would consider Ms. Haley. Just 9 percent said they would consider Mr. Trump.With these numbers, Ms. Haley’s path to victory isn’t like hitting an inside straight — it is fairly straightforward. No, the Christie vote, alone, will probably not be enough. But she has been steadily gaining in the polls and, historically, there’s a lot of precedent for surging candidates to keep gaining — especially over a contest’s final days. With Mr. Trump at just 42 percent of the vote, there’s no reason to think her path is closed off.Of course, a Haley win in New Hampshire would not mean that Mr. Trump’s path to the nomination was in jeopardy. Not even Mr. Christie seems optimistic about her chances; he was heard on a hot mic Wednesday saying “she’s going to get smoked,” presumably referring to Ms. Haley, and he did not endorse her.Her appeal is concentrated among highly educated and moderate voters, who represent an outsize share of the electorate in New Hampshire. She also depends on the support of registered independents — in some other key primary contests, they are not eligible to vote. Back in 2016, moderate candidates who went nowhere nationally — John Kasich, Mr. Christie and Jeb Bush — added up to 34 percent of the vote in New Hampshire. If you add the 11 percent held by Mr. Rubio, a mainstream conservative, that’s 45 percent of the vote that went for establishment candidates. In other words, this state is not representative of the Republican electorate.But this time, the voters who backed those moderate Republicans will have a chance to coalesce behind a single candidate and, in doing so, deal a blow to Mr. Trump. The consequences may mostly prove to be symbolic: a rare Republican rebuke of Mr. Trump and a reminder that the old mainstream of the Republican Party remains to be reckoned with.But there is a chance, albeit a small one, that a Haley win in New Hampshire would prove to be more important. Mr. Trump may face criminal trials in the months ahead. While it seems exceedingly unlikely today, an erosion of his aura of dominance might make him ever so slightly more vulnerable if a trial gets underway. More