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      Chris Stirewalt Defended Calling the Election for Biden. Fox News Fired Him.

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      When Chris Stirewalt watched rioters attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, he was a journalist for Fox News, which was trying to recover from a ratings slump in the weeks after President Donald J. Trump lost the election.Two months later, Mr. Stirewalt was fired by Fox, where he had been a regular on-air presence as the politics editor.The network gave no public reason for his dismissal. But Mr. Stirewalt, who before his ouster was one of the shrinking number of news journalists left at Fox News, was on the team that had decided to call Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. shortly before midnight on Election Day in 2020, effectively declaring the race over days before the results would be settled.On Monday morning, Mr. Stirewalt will testify before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. He is expected to discuss how he and the members of the Fox News Decision Desk relied on hard data to make that call, which deeply angered Mr. Trump and blunted his ability to falsely claim that he had won.In the days after the election, Mr. Stirewalt was one of the Fox personalities who went on the air to defend the call as Mr. Trump attacked the network and his supporters voted with their remotes, switching over to Fox rivals like Newsmax and the One America News Network.Mr. Stirewalt described the decision as the product of a cautious and rigorous internal process. “We are careful about making calls,” he said the day after the election. “That’s why we have those protocols in place so that we make good calls and that they stand up.”Since his ouster, Mr. Stirewalt has become an outspoken critic of his former employer and what he has described as an information bubble that is doing a disservice to Trump supporters. He has called the notion that fraud cost Mr. Trump the election a “lie” and said that the former president’s initial success was in part the result of the “informational malnourishment” of his supporters.In an opinion article for The Los Angeles Times that he wrote shortly after departing Fox, Mr. Stirewalt said he was hopeful that the truth would prevail. But he acknowledged that after watching what happened on Jan. 6, he had doubts as to whether that would “come quickly enough when outlets have the means to cater to every unhealthy craving of their consumers.” More

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      Trump Campaign Chief to Headline Jan. 6 Hearing on Election Lies

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      Bill Stepien is expected to appear alongside a fired Fox News editor who called Trump’s loss and a former U.S. attorney who resigned rather than go along with false claims of election fraud.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol plans to use the testimony of former President Donald J. Trump’s own campaign manager against him on Monday as it lays out evidence that Mr. Trump knowingly spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him in an attempt to overturn his defeat.The committee plans to call Bill Stepien, the final chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign, who is expected to be asked to detail what the campaign and the former president himself knew about his fictitious claims of widespread election fraud. Those claims will be the focus of the second in a series of hearings the panel is holding this month to reveal the findings of its sprawling investigation.After an explosive first hearing last week in prime time, leaders of the committee are aiming to keep up a steady stream of revelations about the magnitude of Mr. Trump’s plot to overturn the election and how it sowed the seeds of the violent siege of the Capitol by his supporters last year.On Monday, they plan to describe the origin and spread of Mr. Trump’s election lies, including the former president’s refusal to listen to advisers who told him that he had lost and that there was no evidence of widespread irregularities that could change the outcome. Then they plan on demonstrating the chaos those falsehoods caused throughout several states, ultimately resulting in the riot.A committee aide said the panel would focus in particular on Mr. Trump’s decision on election night to declare victory even though he had been told he did not have the numbers to win.A second panel of witnesses will include Byung J. Pak, a former U.S. attorney in Atlanta who resigned abruptly after refusing to say that widespread voter fraud had been found in Georgia.According to an internal memo made public as part of a court case, the Trump campaign knew as early as November that its outlandish fraud claims were false. Last week, the panel showed videotaped testimony of his top advisers and even the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, saying that they had told Mr. Trump and top White House officials as much.Mr. Stepien was present for key conversations about what the data showed about Mr. Trump’s chances of succeeding in an effort to win swing states, beginning on election night. He was part of a meeting with Mr. Trump on Nov. 7, 2020, just after the election had been called by television networks in favor of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in which he told Mr. Trump of the exceedingly low odds of success with his challenges.Mr. Trump, urged on by his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, wanted to press forward anyway.Mr. Stepien, who rarely speaks in public, is appearing under subpoena, raising questions about how willing a witness he will be against Mr. Trump.Mr. Stepien is currently serving as an adviser to Harriet Hageman, a Republican endorsed by Mr. Trump who is mounting a primary challenge to Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the panel’s vice chairwoman, setting up a potentially adversarial dynamic for his questioning on Monday.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.The Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Mr. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Liz Cheney: The vice chairwoman of the House committee has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.The Jan. 6 committee suggested in a letter sent to Mr. Stepien that it had evidence that he was aware that the campaign was raising money by making false claims about election fraud.“As manager of the Trump 2020 re-election campaign, you oversaw all aspects of the campaign,” the letter said. “You then supervised the conversion of the Trump presidential campaign to an effort focused on ‘Stop the Steal’ messaging and related fund-raising. That messaging included the promotion of certain false claims related to voting machines despite an internal campaign memo in which campaign staff determined that such claims were false.”Mr. Stepien will appear alongside Chris Stirewalt, the former political editor at Fox News who was fired after Fox correctly called the 2020 president election in Arizona for Mr. Biden, a move that angered Mr. Trump.U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak, who resigned after learning that Mr. Trump wanted to fire him for rejecting claims of rampant voter fraud in Georgia, in Atlanta in 2019.Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressThe second part of the hearing will turn to the reverberations of Mr. Trump’s false claims around the country, particularly in competitive states. Along with Mr. Pak, who resigned after learning that Mr. Trump wanted to fire him for rejecting claims of rampant voter fraud in Georgia, the panel is scheduled to hear from Al Schmidt, a Republican former city commissioner in Philadelphia who also stood up to Mr. Trump’s lies. Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer who served as the national counsel to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign and played a central role in the Florida recount of 2000, is also slated to appear.Monday’s lineup of witnesses suggests that the committee wants to chart the impact Mr. Trump’s lies had in conservative media and in various states, as well as contrasting the baseless nature of Mr. Trump’s claims with legitimate legal challenges from Republican campaigns of the past.A committee aide said the panel would present evidence during the hearing from witnesses who had investigated Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud and found them to be false.The panel also plans to show how Mr. Trump’s fiction of a stolen election was used as a fund-raising tool, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6. A fraudulent fund-raising effort could be grounds for a possible criminal referral to the Justice Department against Mr. Trump and his allies.And some on the committee have long believed that one way they could break through to Mr. Trump’s supporters would be to prove to them that they had been duped into donating their money to a bogus cause.Aides said the committee would also try on Monday to show how the rioters who stormed the Capitol had echoed back Mr. Trump’s words, and cited him as their motivation in storming the building in an attempt to stop Congress from formalizing his defeat.Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, is slated to play a key role presenting evidence at the hearing, aides said.Time and again, top Trump administration officials told Mr. Trump he had lost the 2020 election. But time and again, Mr. Trump pressed forward with his lies of widespread fraud.Shortly after the election, as ballots were still being counted, the top data expert in Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign told him bluntly that he was going to lose.In the weeks that followed, as Mr. Trump continued to insist that he had won, a senior Justice Department official told him repeatedly that his claims of widespread voting fraud were meritless, ultimately warning him that they would “hurt the country.”Those concerns were echoed by the top White House lawyer, who told the president that he would be entering into a “murder-suicide pact” if he continued to pursue extreme plans to try to invalidate the results of the 2020 election.Last week, the Jan. 6 panel played video of an interview showing Mr. Barr testifying that he knew the president’s claims were false, and told him so on three occasions.“I told the president it was bullshit,” Mr. Barr is heard telling the committee’s investigators. “I didn’t want to be a part of it.”Al Schmidt, a Philadelphia city commissioner, outside City Hall in Philadelphia in 2020.Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesCommittee members previewed some of the evidence they plan to present at Monday’s hearing during television news interviews Sunday.“Former President Trump was told by multiple people — it should have been abundantly clear — that there was no evidence that showed the election was stolen, and he ignored that,” Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the committee, said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, drew a contrast between those close to Mr. Trump who told him the truth and the “yes people” who encouraged his fantasy of a stolen election in order to please him.“If you truly believe the election was stolen, then if the president truly believed that, he’s not mentally capable to be president,” Mr. Kinzinger said on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” adding: “I think he didn’t believe it. I think the people around him didn’t believe it. This was all about keeping power against the will of the American people.”Michael S. Schmidt More

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      Trump Is Still a Threat

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      Donald Trump is a cancer on this country.Not only because of the way that he has behaved in it and at its helm, but because of the way that he has fundamentally changed it.On Thursday night, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection held the first of what will be a series of public hearings. The hearing was methodical and, at times, sensational. It underscored and buttressed the alarming, central thesis: Trump, as president of the United States, took aim at the democratic process of the United States by inciting a riot at the Capitol, among other things.Throw any adjective at it — brazen, shocking, outrageous, unprecedented — they are all insufficient to capture the enormity of what he did. A president with an autocratic fetish — one who assumed office with a welcome assist from the autocratic ruler of Russia — nearly hobbled the government of the most powerful country on the planet.Yet, with all of this, a poll published in February by the Pew Research Center found that fewer Americans believed that Trump bore responsibility for the Jan. 6 riot than they did in its immediate aftermath. Nearly six in 10 Republicans believed that he bore no responsibility at all for the rioting, compared to 46 percent the year before, and in June 2021, 66 percent of Republicans said that Trump “definitely” or “probably” won the 2020 election.The committee’s hearing may put a dent in those numbers, but if history is our guide, his cult will remain unflappable and intact.This is the legacy of Trump: the alteration of our political reality.As was made clear during Thursday’s hearing, multiple people told Trump that he had lost the election and that there was no widespread fraud. It appears that he wasn’t laboring under a delusion when he attempted to steal the election; he was raging his own lie about that election.Lying was a life skill for Donald Trump. But, before entering politics, he mostly used it as a tool to inflate his assets and his ego and to sell gold-plated aspiration to new-money social climbers. His entire brand was packaging garish people’s interpretations of glamour.In that world, he regularly skirted the rules. But when he entered politics, he found rules that were in some cases even more fungible than those covering finance. Many of the constraints on the president were customs and traditions. There were rules that no one had ever pushed to enforce, because previous presidents conformed to them.In some ways, the only thing constraining Trump as president was the unwillingness of other officials — many of whom he could appoint or replace at will — to break the rules.He was like a pirate landing among an Indigenous population. Instead of appreciating the elegance of the culture and history of its rites, he focused on its weaknesses, scheming ways to exploit it, and if need be, destroy it.Donald Trump didn’t create the modern American right, but he arrived in a moment when it was thirsty for unapologetic white nationalism, when it was terrified of white replacement and when it had flung open its arms in its willingness to embrace fiction.He quickly understood that these impulses, which establishment Republicans had told their base to suppress and only whisper, were the things the base wanted to hear shouted, things the base wanted to cheer.Now, millions of Americans have fallen for a lie and follow a liar.This means that our politics still exist in Trump’s shadow. Republican politicians, afraid to buck him and afraid of the mob he controls, toe the line for him and parrot his lies. The conservative media echo chamber, hermetically sealed and resistant to reality, ensures that Trump propaganda is repeated until it is accepted without examination.The Democrats also exist in Trump’s shadow. A large part of the reason Joe Biden was selected as the Democratic nominee was not because he had the most exciting set of policies, but because Democrats desperately wanted to beat Trump, and saw Biden as the safest bet to do so.Now that he has been elected, many factions of his winning coalition feel like constituencies held hostage. Any critique of Biden, even mild and legitimate, must be tempered so as not to give ammunition to the Mar-a-Lago Menace who looks poised to attempt another run for the White House.If he does, this country could well tear itself apart. And I make that statement with absolutely no hyperbolic intent. Indeed, it is not clear to me that this country can survive him calling the shots from the sidelines now.The political system has proved too compromised by Trump’s own influence to hold Trump accountable in a way that ends this nightmare. Now, the legal system is all we have left, and Trump has been harder to pinch than flesh slathered in tanning oil.We must now wait to see if the committee has the goods not to change the minds of voters, which feels increasingly like a lost cause, but to change the minds — or quicken the spirits — of prosecutors at the Department of Justice.Trump has changed America, but we can still prevent him from destroying it.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Pence Aide Warned Against Blocking Electoral College Count, Memo Shows

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      Shortly before Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief counsel wrote that holding up the certification of the election results would violate federal law.Former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief counsel laid out in a memo the day before Jan. 6, 2021, that the vice president would violate federal law if he bowed to pressure from President Donald J. Trump to interfere with the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.The three-page memo, obtained by Politico and confirmed as authentic by The New York Times, included arguments from the chief counsel, Greg Jacob, that Mr. Pence could find himself in a legally precarious situation if he decided to block the certification of the Electoral College results either unilaterally or by calling for a 10-day delay in the proceedings.A lawyer advising Mr. Trump, John Eastman, had insisted that Mr. Pence had the power to take both of those actions, emphasizing the 10-day delay as Jan. 6 grew closer. Mr. Eastman pressed his claims in a meeting with Mr. Pence and Mr. Jacob in the Oval Office on Jan. 4.But Mr. Pence, who in the weeks after the election told Mr. Trump that he did not believe he had such power but would continue researching the matter, was given concrete guidance by his own aides.An image of Greg Jacob, the chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence, was shown at a hearing on Thursday held by the House committee investigating the Capitol attack.Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Jacob wrote in the memo that Mr. Pence would most likely be overruled by the courts if he made such a move.“In a best-case scenario in which the courts refused to get involved, the vice president would likely find himself in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress, as well as most or all of the applicable state legislatures, with no neutral arbiter available to break the impasse,” Mr. Jacob wrote in the memo.A spokesman for Mr. Pence declined to comment.Following its prime-time hearing this past week, the House committee investigating the Capitol riot is scheduled to hold three more hearings in the coming week, including one on Thursday at which Mr. Jacob is set to be a key witness.That session is slated to focus on the pressure campaign on Mr. Pence to insert himself into the certification of the Electoral College vote, a proceeding that is usually routine.Mr. Jacob has told the committee that he wrote the memo after the meeting with Mr. Eastman, Politico reported.Mr. Eastman’s conduct has been a focal point of the House investigation into the events that took place leading up to the riot. In March, in a civil case stemming from Mr. Eastman’s efforts to keep the committee from accessing a tranche of emails related to his advice to Mr. Trump, a federal judge said that he and Mr. Trump “more likely than not” committed crimes as they sought to overturn the results of the election.The memo from Mr. Jacob was one in a series that he wrote related to the pressure on Mr. Pence following the 2020 election. One came at the beginning of December, after Mr. Pence asked Mr. Jacob to explore what his authority was in relation to the Jan. 6 certification.Another memo, also obtained by Politico, was written on Jan. 1. It evaluated the various allegations of widespread fraud that Mr. Trump’s advisers had pointed to, including in Georgia, where Mr. Trump repeatedly made claims that officials said were baseless.The memo detailed claims from six key states — the ones for which Mr. Pence’s advisers anticipated that House lawmakers would try to challenge the certification, potentially with support from senators from those states. More

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      Jan. 6 Committee Appears to Lay Out Road Map for Prosecuting Trump

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      The first prime-time hearing into the Jan. 6 attack confronted the fundamental question that has haunted Donald J. Trump since he left office: Should he be prosecuted in a criminal court?He had means, motive and opportunity. But did Donald J. Trump commit a crime?A House committee explicitly declared that he did by conspiring to overturn an election. The attorney general, however, has not weighed in. And a jury of his peers may never hear the case.The first prime-time hearing into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol this past week confronted the fundamental question that has haunted Mr. Trump, the 45th president, ever since he left office: Should he be prosecuted in a criminal court for his relentless efforts to defy the will of the voters and hang on to power?For two hours on Thursday night, the House committee investigating the Capitol attack detailed what it called Mr. Trump’s “illegal” and “unconstitutional” seven-part plan to prevent the transfer of power. The panel invoked the Justice Department, citing charges of seditious conspiracy filed against some of the attackers, and seemed to be laying out a road map for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to their central target.Several former prosecutors and veteran lawyers said afterward that the hearing offered the makings of a credible criminal case for conspiracy to commit fraud or obstruction of the work of Congress.In presenting her summary of the evidence, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman, demonstrated that Mr. Trump was told repeatedly by his own advisers that he had lost the election yet repeatedly lied to the country by claiming it had been stolen. He pressured state and federal officials, members of Congress and even his own vice president to disregard vote tallies in key states. And he encouraged the mob led by extremist groups like the Proud Boys while making no serious effort to stop the attack once it began.“I think the committee, especially Liz Cheney, outlined a powerful criminal case against the former president,” said Neal K. Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama.“A crime requires two things — a bad act and criminal intent,” Mr. Katyal said. By citing testimony by Mr. Trump’s own attorney general, a lawyer for his campaign and others who told him that he had lost and then documenting his failure to act once supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Katyal said, the panel addressed both of those requirements.At the hearing, Representative Liz Cheney demonstrated that Mr. Trump was told repeatedly by his own advisers that he had lost the election.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA congressional hearing, however, is not a court of law, and because there was no one there to defend Mr. Trump, witnesses were not cross-examined and evidence was not tested. The committee offered just a selection of the more than 1,000 interviews it has conducted and the more than 140,000 documents it has collected. But it remains to be seen what contrary or mitigating information may be contained in the vast research it has not released yet.Mr. Trump’s allies have dismissed the hearings as a partisan effort to damage him before the 2024 election when he may run for president again. And legal defenders argued that the facts presented by the panel did not support the conclusions that it drew.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsThe Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the House panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Former president Donald J. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Liz Cheney: The vice chairwoman of the House committee has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.“Unless there’s more evidence to come that we don’t know about, I don’t see a criminal case against the former president,” said Robert W. Ray, a former independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton and later served as a defense lawyer for Mr. Trump at his first Senate impeachment trial.“Whatever the Proud Boys had in mind when they stormed the Capitol, I don’t see how you’d be able to prove that Trump knew that that was the purpose of the conspiracy,” Mr. Ray added. “Whether or not he ‘lit the fuse’ that caused that to happen, the government would have to prove he knowingly joined that conspiracy with that objective.”Beyond the legal requirements of making a criminal case, the prospect of prosecuting a former president also would entail far deeper considerations and broader consequences. Criminal charges against Mr. Trump brought by the administration of the man who defeated him would further inflame an already polarized country. It would consume national attention for months or longer and potentially set a precedent for less meritorious cases against future presidents by successors of the opposite party.“That’s a hill that no federal prosecutor has tried to climb, prosecuting a former president,” said John Q. Barrett, a former associate independent counsel in the Iran-contra investigation. “It’s very fraught,” he said. “It’s a massive undertaking as an investigation, as a trial, as a national saga and trauma.” But he added that accountability was important and that “the threat to the continuity of our government is about as grave as it gets.”All of which is almost certainly going through the mind of Mr. Garland, a mild-mannered, highly deliberative former federal appeals court judge who has largely kept mum about his thinking. A Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Garland watched the hearing but would not elaborate.Democrats have attacked the attorney general for not already prosecuting Mr. Trump, even though a federal judge opined in March in a related civil case that the former president and a lawyer who advised him had most likely broken the law by trying to overturn the election. Mr. Garland has resisted the pressure. While he has called the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack the most urgent work in the history of his department, he has refused to forecast where the inquiry will go as investigators continue evaluating evidence.“We are not avoiding cases that are political or cases that are controversial or sensitive,” he told NPR in March. “What we are avoiding is making decisions on a political basis, on a partisan basis.”Democrats have attacked Attorney General Merrick B. Garland for not already prosecuting Mr. Trump, deeming it a miscarriage of justice.Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesMany officials and rank-and-file prosecutors scattered throughout the 115,000-person Justice Department have long believed that Mr. Trump acted corruptly, particularly in pressuring their own department to parrot his baseless claims of election fraud, according to several people involved in such conversations who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.But some career employees expressed fear that as the hearings continued, they would raise expectations for a prosecution that may not be met.The committee “was good at making the case that Donald Trump’s actions were completely horrific and that he deserves to be held accountable for them,” said Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman during the Obama administration. “But an open-and-shut case on television is different from proving someone violated a criminal statute.”With public attention fixated on Mr. Trump, the Justice Department’s work has proceeded along three tracks: charge the people who attacked the Capitol; piece together larger conspiracies, including sedition, involving some of the assailants; and identify possible crimes that took place before the assault.In the 17 months since the attack, more than 840 defendants from nearly all 50 states have been arrested. Of those, about 250 have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding the police, and members of two far-right groups have been charged with seditious conspiracy, a rare accusation that represents the most serious criminal charges brought in the department’s sprawling investigation.Prosecutors are scrutinizing the plan by Mr. Trump’s allies to create alternate slates of pro-Trump electors to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in key swing states, with a federal grand jury issuing subpoenas to people involved. That investigation brings federal prosecutors closer to Mr. Trump’s inner circle than any other inquiry. Mr. Trump also faces the threat of prosecution by a local Georgia prosecutor investigating his efforts to overturn the state’s vote.No sitting or former president has ever been put on trial. Aaron Burr was charged with treason after leaving office as vice president in a highly politicized case directed from the White House by President Thomas Jefferson, but he was acquitted after a sensational trial. Ulysses S. Grant, while president, was arrested for speeding in his horse and buggy. Spiro T. Agnew resigned as vice president as part of a plea bargain in a corruption case.The closest a former president came to indictment was after Richard M. Nixon resigned in the Watergate scandal in 1974, but his successor, Gerald R. Ford, short-circuited the investigation by preemptively pardoning him, reasoning that the country had to move on. Mr. Clinton, to avoid perjury charges after leaving office, agreed on his last full day in the White House to a deal with Mr. Ray in which he admitted giving false testimony under oath about his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky, temporarily surrendered his law license and paid a $25,000 fine.Should the Justice Department indict Mr. Trump, a trial would be vastly different from House hearings in ways that affect the scope and pace of any inquiry. Investigators would have to scour thousands of hours of video footage and the full contents of devices and online accounts they have accessed for evidence bolstering their case, as well as anything that a defense lawyer could use to knock it down. Federal prosecutors would probably also have to convince appeals court judges and a majority of Supreme Court justices of the validity of their case.For all of the pressure that the House committee has put on the Justice Department to act, it has resisted sharing information. In April, the department asked the committee for transcripts of witness interviews, but the panel has not agreed to turn over the documents because its work is continuing.Although critics have faulted Mr. Garland, attorneys general do not generally drive the day-to-day work of investigations. Mr. Garland is briefed nearly every day on the inquiry’s progress, but it is being led by Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney in Washington, who is working with national security and criminal division officials. Lisa O. Monaco, the deputy attorney general, broadly oversees the investigation.“Whether fair or not, Garland’s tenure will be defined by whether or not he indicts Trump,” Mr. Miller said. “The Justice Department may not indict Trump. Prosecutors may not believe they have the evidence to secure a conviction. But that will now be interpreted as a choice by Garland, not as a reality that was forced upon him by the facts of the investigation.” More

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      Donald Trump, American Monster

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      WASHINGTON — Monsters are not what they used to be.I’m reading “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley for school and the monster is magnificent. He starts out with an elegance of mind and sweetness of temperament, reading Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and gathering firewood for a poor family. But his creator, Victor Frankenstein, abandons him and refuses him a mate to calm his loneliness. The creature finds no one who does not recoil in fear and disgust from his stitched-together appearance, his yellow skin and eyes, and black lips. Embittered, he seeks revenge on his creator and the world.“Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded,” he laments. “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.”Before he disappears into the Arctic at the end of the book, he muses that once he had “high thoughts of honour,” until his “frightful catalogue” of malignant deeds piled up.Shelley’s monster, unlike ours, has self-awareness, and a reason to wreak havoc. He knows how to feel guilty and when to leave the stage. Our monster’s malignity stems from pure narcissistic psychopathy — and he refuses to leave the stage or cease his vile mendacity.It never for a moment crossed Donald Trump’s mind that an American president committing sedition would be a debilitating, corrosive thing for the country. It was just another way for the Emperor of Chaos to burnish his title.We listened Thursday night to the frightful catalogue of Trump’s deeds. They are so beyond the pale, so hard to fathom, that in some ways, it’s all still sinking in.The House Jan. 6 committee’s prime-time hearing was not about Trump as a bloviating buffoon who stumbled into the presidency. It was about Trump as a callous monster, and many will come away convinced that he should be criminally charged and put in jail. Lock him up!The hearing drove home the fact that Trump was deadly serious about overthrowing the government. If his onetime lap dog Mike Pence was strung up on the gallows outside the Capitol for refusing to help Trump hold onto his office illegitimately, Trump said, so be it. “Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” he remarked that day, chillingly, noting that his vice president “deserves it.”Liz Cheney cleverly used the words of former Trump aides to show that, despite his malevolent bleating, Trump knew there was no fraud on a level that would have changed the election results.“I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit,” William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, said.Breaking from her father, Ivanka Trump — in a taped deposition — said she embraced Barr’s version of reality: “I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying.”(Her husband, Jared Kushner, won the prize for gall in his deposition: He was too busy arranging pardons for sleazeballs to pay attention to whether Trump aides were threatening to quit over the sleazeball in the Oval.)Trump’s data experts told him bluntly that he had lost. “So there’s no there there,” Mark Meadows commented.Trump just couldn’t stand being labeled a loser — his father’s bête noire. He maniacally subverted the election out of pure selfishness and wickedness, knowing it is easy to manipulate people on social media with the Big Lie.It was fine with him if his followers broke the law and attacked the police and went to jail, while he praised their “love” from afar. It’s amazing that no lawmakers were killed.Everywhere you look, there’s something that makes your blood run cold. The monster in “Frankenstein” is not the only one who has forsaken “thoughts of honour.”Russia, also in the grip of a monster, is invading and destroying a neighboring democracy for no reason, except Vladimir Putin’s delusions of grandeur.In Uvalde, the unfathomable story unspools about how the police delayed rescuing schoolchildren for an hour because a commander was worried about the officers’ safety.Greedy golf icons joined a tour underwritten by the Saudis, even though the Saudi crown prince ordered a journalist dismembered. (Kushner is under investigation about whether he traded on his government position to secure a $2 billion investment from the Saudis for his new private equity firm.)As Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the committee, noted, when the Capitol was attacked in 1814, it was by the British. This time it was by an enemy within, egged on by the man at the heart of the democracy he swore to protect.“They did so at the encouragement of the president of the United States,” Thompson said of the mob, “trying to stop the transfer of power, a precedent that had stood for 220 years.”It’s mind-boggling that so many people still embrace Trump when it’s so plain that he cares only about himself. He was quick to throw Ivanka off the sled on Friday, indicating her opinion did not count since she “was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results. She had long since checked out.”Let some conservatives dismiss the hearings as “A Snooze Fest.” Let Fox News churlishly refuse to run them.The hearing was mesmerizing, describing a horror story with predatory Proud Boys and a monster at its center that even Mary Shelley could have appreciated. The ratings were boffo, with nearly 20 million viewers.Caroline Edwards, the tough Capitol Police officer who suffered a concussion, was sprayed in her eyes and got back up to return to the fight, described a hellscape.“I was slipping in people’s blood,” she recalled. “You know, I — I was catching people as they fell. I — you know, I was — it was carnage.”In his dystopian Inaugural speech, Trump promised to end “American carnage.” Instead, he delivered it. Now he needs to be held accountable for his attempted coup — and not just in the court of public opinion.Trump supporters trying to break through a police barrier at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.John Minchillo/Associated PressThe 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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      El comité sobre el ataque al Capitolio muestra a Trump como un aspirante a autócrata

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      Según el comité que investiga el ataque al Capitolio del 6 de enero, Donald Trump llevó a cabo una conspiración en siete partes para anular una elección democrática libre y justa.Es muy probable que en los 246 años de historia de Estados Unidos nunca se haya hecho una acusación más comprometedora contra un presidente estadounidense que la presentada el jueves por la noche en una sala de audiencias cavernosa del Congreso, donde el futuro de la democracia parecía estar en juego.A otros mandatarios se les ha acusado de actuar mal, incluso de cometer delitos e infracciones, pero el caso en contra de Donald Trump formulado por la comisión bipartidista de la Cámara de Representantes que investiga el ataque al Capitolio del 6 de enero de 2021 no solo describe a un presidente deshonesto, sino a un aspirante a autócrata dispuesto a violar la Constitución para aferrarse al poder a toda costa.Como lo describió la comisión durante su audiencia televisada, a la hora de mayor audiencia, Trump ejecutó una conspiración en siete partes para anular una elección democrática libre y justa. Según el panel, le mintió al pueblo estadounidense, ignoró todas las pruebas que refutaban sus falsas denuncias de fraude, presionó a los funcionarios estatales y federales para que anularan los resultados de las elecciones que favorecían a su contrincante, alentó a una turba violenta a atacar el Capitolio e incluso señaló su apoyo a la ejecución de su propio vicepresidente.“El 6 de enero fue la culminación de un intento de golpe de Estado, un intento descarado, como dijo uno de los alborotadores poco después del 6 de enero, de derrocar al gobierno”, dijo el representante demócrata por Misisipi, Bennie Thompson, presidente de la comisión especial. “La violencia no fue un accidente. Representa la última oportunidad de Trump, la más desesperada, para detener la transferencia de poder”.Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, led the first hearing on the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which included testimony from a Capitol police officer and a documentary filmmaker.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesLas palabras de los propios asesores y personajes nombrados por Trump fueron las más incriminatorias. Se proyectaron en video en una pantalla gigante sobre el estrado de la comisión y se transmitieron a una audiencia de televisión nacional. Se pudo ver cómo su propio fiscal general le dijo a Trump que sus denuncias de una elección falsa eran “patrañas”. Su abogado de campaña testificó que no había suficientes pruebas de fraude para cambiar el resultado. Hasta su propia hija, Ivanka Trump, reconoció haber aceptado la conclusión de que la elección no fue robada, como su padre seguía afirmando.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsThe Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the House panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Former president Donald J. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Liz Cheney: The vice chairwoman of the House committee has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.Buena parte de las pruebas fueron presentadas por la principal figura republicana en la comisión, la representante por Wyoming Liz Cheney, quien ha sido condenada al ostracismo por Trump y por buena parte de su partido por condenar una y otra vez las acciones del entonces presidente después de la elección. Cheney planteó con firmeza el caso y luego se dirigió a sus compañeros republicanos que han optado por apoyar a su derrotado expresidente y justificar sus acciones.“A mis colegas republicanos que defienden lo indefendible les digo: llegará el día en el que Donald Trump se haya ido, pero el deshonor de ustedes permanecerá”, declaró.Muchos de los detalles ya se habían dado a conocer y muchas interrogantes sobre las acciones de Trump quedaron sin respuesta por ahora, pero Cheney resumió los hallazgos de la comisión de una forma implacable y acusadora.Un grupo de personas en Washington que se reunió para ver la audiencia, escuchaba a la representante Liz Cheney, republicana por Wyoming.Shuran Huang para The New York TimesAlgunas de las nuevas revelaciones y las confirmaciones de las noticias recientes fueron suficientes para provocar exclamaciones de asombro en el recinto y, tal vez, en las salas de todo el país. Se informó que luego de que se le dijo que la multitud del 6 de enero coreaba “Cuelguen a Mike Pence”, el vicepresidente que desafió las presiones del presidente para bloquear la transferencia de poder, Trump respondió: “Quizá nuestros seguidores tengan la idea correcta”. Mike Pence, agregó, “se lo merece”.Cheney, vicepresidenta del panel, informó que en la víspera del ataque del 6 de enero, miembros del propio gabinete de Trump hablaron de invocar la Vigésima Quinta Enmienda para destituir al entonces presidente del cargo. Reveló que el representante por Pensilvania Scott Perry y “otros congresistas republicanos” que habían participado en el intento de anular la elección buscaron obtener indultos de Trump durante sus últimos días en el cargo.Cheney reprodujo un video en el que se veía a Jared Kushner, yerno del exmandatario y asesor principal que después de la elección se ausentó en lugar de enfrentar a los teóricos de la conspiración que incitaban a Trump, desechar con displicencia las amenazas de Pat A. Cipollone, consejero de la Casa Blanca, y otros abogados de presentar su renuncia en señal de protesta. “Me pareció que solo eran lloriqueos, para ser sincero”, declaró Kushner.También la vicepresidenta del comité señaló que mientras Pence tomó medidas reiteradas para buscar asistencia y detener a la turba el 6 de enero, el presidente no hizo tal esfuerzo. En cambio, su jefe de gabinete de la Casa Blanca, Mark Meadows, trató de convencer al general Mark A. Milley, presidente del Estado Mayor Conjunto, de fingir que Trump estaba activamente involucrado.“Dijo: ‘Tenemos que eliminar el relato de que el vicepresidente está tomando todas las decisiones’”, dijo el general Milley en un testimonio grabado en video. “‘Necesitamos imponer la versión de que el presidente todavía está a cargo, y que las cosas están firmes o estables’, o palabras en ese sentido. Inmediatamente interpreté eso como política, política, política”.Trump no tuvo aliados en la comisión de nueve integrantes de la Cámara de Representantes y él y sus seguidores rechazaron el trabajo del panel con el argumento de que es un intento partidista para desprestigiarlo. En Fox News, que optó por no transmitir la audiencia, Sean Hannity se esmeraba por cambiar el tema y atacó a la comisión por no centrarse en las violaciones de seguridad del Capitolio, de las que culpa principalmente a la presidenta de la Cámara de Representantes, Nancy Pelosi, aunque el senador por Kentucky Mitch McConnell, entonces líder de la mayoría republicana, compartía con ella el control del edificio en ese momento.Antes de la audiencia, Trump trató una vez más de reescribir la historia al presentar el ataque al Capitolio como una manifestación legítima de agravio público contra unas elecciones robadas. “El 6 de enero no fue solo una protesta, sino que representó el mayor movimiento en la historia de nuestro país para hacer a Estados Unidos grandioso de nuevo”, escribió en su nuevo sitio de redes sociales.El panel reprodujo un video de Ivanka Trump, la hija de Trump y exasesora de la Casa Blanca, testificando a puerta cerrada.Kenny Holston para The New York TimesTrump no es el primer presidente que ha sido señalado por mala conducta, infracción de la ley o incluso violación de la Constitución. Andrew Johnson y Bill Clinton fueron acusados ​​por la Cámara de Representantes, aunque absueltos por el Senado. John Tyler se puso del lado de la Confederación durante la Guerra de Secesión. Richard M. Nixon renunció bajo amenaza de juicio político por abusar de su poder para encubrir actividades corruptas de campaña. Warren G. Harding tuvo el escándalo del Teapot Dome y Ronald Reagan el caso Irán-Contras.Pero los delitos alegados en la mayoría de esos casos palidecen en comparación con las acusaciones contra Trump, y aunque Tyler se puso en contra del país que una vez dirigió, murió antes de que pudiera rendir cuentas. Nixon enfrentó audiencias durante Watergate no muy diferentes a las que comenzaron el jueves por la noche y estuvo involucrado en otros escándalos más allá del robo que finalmente derivó en su salida. Pero la deshonestidad flagrante y la incitación a la violencia expuestas el jueves eclipsaron incluso sus fechorías, según diversos académicos.Trump, por supuesto, ya fue impugnado en dos ocasiones y absuelto otras dos, la segunda por su involucramiento en el ataque del 6 de enero. Pero, aun así, el caso en su contra ahora es mucho más amplio y expansivo, después de que la comisión llevó a cabo unas 1000 entrevistas y obtuvo más de 100.000 páginas de documentos.Lo que el comité intentaba demostrar era que no se trataba de un presidente con preocupaciones razonables sobre el fraude o una protesta que se salió de control. En cambio, el panel estaba tratando de obtener las pruebas de que Trump formó parte de una conspiración criminal contra la democracia; que sabía que no había un fraude generalizado porque su propio entorno se lo dijo, que, de manera intencional, convocó a una turba para que detuviera la entrega del poder a Joseph R. Biden Jr. y se quedó cruzado de brazos sin hacer casi nada cuando el ataque comenzó.Aún no sabemos si el panel puede cambiar las opiniones públicas sobre esos acontecimientos, pero muchos estrategas y analistas políticos piensan que es poco probable. Con medios más fragmentados y una sociedad más polarizada, la mayoría de los estadounidenses ya tienen una opinión sobre el 6 de enero y solo escuchan a quienes la comparten.Sin embargo, había otro espectador de las audiencias, el fiscal general Merrick B. Garland. Si la comisión estaba exponiendo lo que consideraba una acusación formal contra el expresidente, parecía estar invitando al Departamento de Justicia a seguir el caso de verdad con un gran jurado y en un tribunal de justicia.Al adelantar la historia que se contará en las próximas semanas, Cheney casi le escribió el guion a Garland. La representante dijo: “Van a escuchar sobre complots para cometer conspiración sediciosa el 6 de enero, un delito definido en nuestras leyes como conspirar para derrocar, destituir o destruir por la fuerza el gobierno de Estados Unidos u oponerse por la fuerza a la autoridad del mismo”.Pero si Garland no está de acuerdo y las audiencias de este mes resultan ser el único juicio al que se enfrente Trump por sus esfuerzos para anular las elecciones, Cheney y sus compañeros de la comisión estaban decididos a asegurarse de que, al menos, sea condenado por el jurado de la historia.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe de la Casa Blanca y ha cubierto a los últimos cinco presidentes para el Times y The Washington Post. También es autor de seis libros, el más reciente The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III. @peterbakernyt • Facebook More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Puts Focus on Cabinet Discussions About Removing Trump

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      Other reports verify Representative Liz Cheney’s assertion that cabinet members considered using the 25th Amendment to oust Donald Trump after the assault on the Capitol.When Representative Liz Cheney asserted at the House Jan. 6 hearing on Thursday that Trump administration cabinet members weighed invoking the constitutional process to remove President Donald J. Trump from office after the attack on the Capitol by his supporters, she did not immediately provide details or evidence.But as the federal government convulsed in the hours and days after the deadly riot, a range of cabinet officials weighed their options, and consulted one another about how to steady the administration and ensure a peaceful transition to a new presidency.Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state at the time, and Steven Mnuchin, then the Treasury secretary, discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would have required the vice president and the majority of the cabinet to agree that the president could no longer fulfill his duties to begin a complex process of removal from office.Their discussion was reported by Jonathan Karl of ABC News in his book “Betrayal,” and described to The New York Times by a person briefed on the discussion. Mr. Pompeo has denied the exchange took place, and Mr. Mnuchin has declined to comment.Betsy DeVos, Mr. Trump’s education secretary, told USA Today this week that she raised with Vice President Mike Pence whether the cabinet should consider the 25th Amendment. But Mr. Pence, she said, “made it very clear that he was not going to go in that direction.”She decided to resign. So did Matt Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser.Eugene Scalia, then the labor secretary, discussed with colleagues right after the attack the need to steady the administration, according to three people familiar with the conversations.Mr. Scalia called an aide to Mr. Pence, they said, to say that he was uncomfortable with Mr. Trump having the level of power that he did and that there needed to be more involvement from the cabinet. Mr. Pence’s team did not want to make such a move.Mr. Scalia also had a conversation with Mr. Pompeo, which Mr. Pompeo shared with multiple people, in which Mr. Scalia suggested that someone should talk to Mr. Trump about the need do something to restore confidence in the government and a peaceful transition of power. In Mr. Pompeo’s rendering of that conversation, disputed by others, Mr. Scalia also suggested that someone should talk to Mr. Trump about resigning.Mr. Pompeo replied sarcastically by asking how Mr. Scalia imagined that conversation with Mr. Trump would go.Eugene Scalia, the labor secretary, and Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, at the White House in 2020. Both questioned President Donald J. Trump’s fitness for office after the Jan. 6 attack.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesMr. Scalia and Mr. Pompeo, through an aide, declined to comment.The reference by Ms. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and the vice chairwoman of the House Jan. 6 committee, to the 25th Amendment being under consideration by cabinet members was one of the most striking assertions in the panel’s two-hour hearing. In the first of six planned public hearings, the committee presented a detailed case against Mr. Trump and the rioters who stormed the Capitol and delayed the congressional certification of the Electoral College results.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsThe Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the House panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Former president Donald J. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump: In videos shown during the hearing, Mr.Trump’s daughter and son-in-law were stripped of their carefully managed images.The panel has signaled that it plans to use the discussions about the 25th Amendment to show not only the chaos that Mr. Trump set off by helping stoke the riot but how little confidence those around him had in his ability to be president.“You will hear about members of the Trump cabinet discussing the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment, and replacing the president of the United States,” Ms. Cheney said as she read her opening statement at the hearing. “Multiple members of President Trump’s own cabinet resigned immediately after Jan. 6.”In addition to Ms. DeVos, the transportation secretary, Elaine Chao — the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader — also resigned.At the hearing on Thursday, Ms. Cheney also asserted that Republican lawmakers who had been involved in helping Mr. Trump overturn the election sought pardons from the White House in the final days of the administration. The committee plans to use the pardon requests as evidence of how those who helped Mr. Trump had a consciousness of guilt about what they had done.Ms. Cheney did not provide any evidence to substantiate her assertion, and she named only one lawmaker, Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, as a pardon seeker.In an email, Jay Ostrich, a spokesman for Mr. Perry, called the assertion “a ludicrous and soulless lie.”Ms. Cheney promised that she would reveal supporting evidence at upcoming hearings, and a person familiar with the committee’s investigation said the panel had received testimony about the pardon requests.Mr. Perry coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general, who was resisting Mr. Trump’s attempts to investigate baseless election-fraud reports, with a more compliant official. Mr. Perry also endorsed the idea of encouraging Mr. Trump’s supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6.The committee’s next hearing is scheduled for Monday, where the panel plans to lay out how Mr. Trump and his allies stoked the “Big Lie” that the election had been stolen. Two more hearings are scheduled for next week — one on Wednesday about the attempt at the Justice Department to oust the acting attorney general, and another on Thursday about the pressure campaign on Mr. Pence to block or delay certification of the electoral vote count.Three former Justice Department officials have agreed to testify at the Wednesday hearing, according to a letter sent to the committee on Friday.The three witnesses — Jeffrey A. Rosen, who was the acting attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general, and Steven A. Engel, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel — all participated in a tense meeting just before the Jan. 6 attack, where Mr. Trump considered firing Mr. Rosen and installing a loyalist in his place.Even before Jan. 6, government officials under Mr. Trump had discussed invoking the 25th Amendment.In the spring of 2017, after Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, rattled by Mr. Trump’s handling of the dismissal, raised the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment in a meeting with senior Justice Department and F.B.I. officials.The acting F.B.I. director, Andrew G. McCabe, had opened a counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia and was pressing Mr. Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel. Mr. Rosenstein agreed that Mr. Trump’s possible ties to Russia should be investigated but said that if an inquiry uncovered troubling evidence of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, the only remedy would be to invoke the 25th Amendment.Mr. Rosenstein then said that he had done the math and believed there were at least six cabinet officials who would go along with invoking it, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly. Despite raising the possibility, the idea went nowhere and Mr. Rosenstein appointed Robert S. Mueller III to be the special counsel.In the years that followed, there were several disclosures about others who had discussed the possibility of invoking the amendment. In 2019, a book by an anonymous administration official recounted that senior White House officials believed that Mr. Pence would go along with invoking the amendment to oust Mr. Trump. Mr. Pence denied that claim.A veteran CBS News producer named Ira Rosen wrote in his 2021 book about his time working in the news business that Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist until August 2017, had spoken with him about the 25th Amendment.And Mark T. Esper, Mr. Trump’s final Senate-confirmed defense secretary, wrote in his recent book, “A Sacred Oath,” about the aftermath of an incident when Mr. Trump delivered a diatribe against the military during a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the second half of his term.Mark T. Esper, the former defense secretary, wrote in his book that a military officer had told him of his concerns about Mr. Trump’s fitness for office and had researched the process of removing him.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“Months later, one of the officers present told me in a phone call that he went home that evening deeply concerned about what he had seen in his commander in chief,” Mr. Esper recounted, without identifying the person in question.“The next morning, he said in a very sober tone, he started reading up on the 25th Amendment and the role of the cabinet as a check on the president,” Mr. Esper said. “He wanted to understand ‘what the cabinet needed to consider’ and what the process was.”Mr. Esper said that in his own view, Mr. Trump’s behavior never rose to the standard required for invoking the 25th Amendment. But that was before the postelection period, by which time Mr. Esper had been fired by Mr. Trump.Two days after the Capitol riot, Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke to Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.“This is bad, but who knows what he might do?” Ms. Pelosi said, according to the book “Peril,” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. “He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time. So don’t say you don’t know what his state of mind is.”“Madam Speaker,” General Milley replied, “I agree with you on everything.”Luke Broadwater More