Presidential Election of 2020

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      Two Trump White House Lawyers Meet With Jan. 6 Investigators

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      Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel, and Patrick F. Philbin, who was his deputy, met separately with the panel after the former president authorized them to do so.Two of former President Donald J. Trump’s top White House lawyers met on Wednesday with the House committee investigating the Capitol attack, after Mr. Trump authorized them to engage with the panel, according to a person familiar with the matter.Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel, and Patrick F. Philbin, who was his deputy, met separately with the panel, two people familiar with the sessions said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the meetings.It was not immediately clear how much information Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Philbin had provided to the committee or what they said, but they were present for key moments in the buildup to the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including pivotal conversations and meetings in which Mr. Trump discussed using the powers of his office to try to overturn the election.Their cooperation, which was reported earlier by Politico, added to the more than two dozen White House officials who agreed to take the committee’s questions.The two were not under oath and their interviews were not transcribed, but the men could return for formal interviews or deposition later, one of the people said, describing it as a typical process as investigators determine who they want to question.The interviews came as the committee learned from the National Archives that lawmakers would receive additional documents from the Trump White House after President Biden declined to assert executive privilege over them.In a letter on Wednesday, David S. Ferriero, the national archivist, told Mr. Trump that he would turn over a new set of records to the committee within 15 days “unless prohibited by court order.” Mr. Trump wrote to the archives in February to say he asserted executive privilege over more than 1,000 documents in its possession.In recent days, the committee has questioned Mr. Trump’s elder daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, both former White House advisers. In transcribed interviews, they provided testimony that lawmakers described as “helpful.”Mr. Trump told The Washington Post that he had offered his daughter and son-in-law “privilege,” but they declined it. Courts have rejected Mr. Trump’s claims of executive privilege, and the Biden White House has declined to invoke it for material and witnesses sought by the Jan. 6 inquiry, including for Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner’s testimony.The panel has also heard from John McEntee, who served as Mr. Trump’s chief of presidential personnel; Anthony M. Ornato, the former White House chief of operations; and Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer. Another top adviser, Stephen Miller, was slated to testify on Thursday, according to another person familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.Mr. Miller was subpoenaed late last year and had lengthy negotiations to appear.Mr. Cipollone, who defended Mr. Trump during his first impeachment trial, pushed back against some of the most extreme plans the president considered for overturning the election. He participated in meetings with Trump allies who were pressing for the military to seize voting machines and in which Attorney General William P. Barr offered his resignation after making clear that the Justice Department had found no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Patrick F. Philbin, who was Mr. Cipollone’s deputy, also met with the House committee investigating the Capitol attack.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. Cipollone also tried to persuade Mr. Trump to stop pursuing baseless claims of fraud. He balked at pursuing a plan proposed by Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer, who had wanted to distribute official letters to multiple state legislatures falsely alerting them that the election might have been stolen and urging them to reconsider certified results.“That letter that this guy wants to send — that letter is a murder-suicide pact,” Mr. Cipollone told Mr. Trump, according to testimony the panel has received. “It’s going to damage everyone who touches it. And we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don’t ever want to see that letter again.”Mr. Philbin, who was a senior Justice Department lawyer under President George W. Bush, was also present for the meeting in which Mr. Barr offered his resignation.The Supreme Court has ordered the National Archives to turn over to the committee Mr. Philbin’s White House records, which include a memo about a potential lawsuit against several states that Mr. Biden won in the 2020 election. They also contain a series of emails from a state official regarding election-related issues and talking points on alleged election irregularities in a county in Michigan.And they include a plan pushed by Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, and the lawyer Sidney Powell to declare that there was foreign influence in the election, with the goal of allowing Mr. Trump to use the powers of the Defense Department to seize voting machines and have the votes recounted. More

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      Jan. 6 Suspect Blames Trump for Spurring Him to Capitol Riot

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      Dustin Thompson, an unemployed exterminator from Ohio, was the first defendant tried in the Capitol attack to offer a Trump-made-me-do-it defense before a jury.WASHINGTON — Dustin Thompson’s trip down what he called “the rabbit hole” of election misinformation began eight months before a single vote was cast in 2020. It ended inside the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where he was part of the mob of Trump supporters that stormed inside during Congress’s counting of electoral votes in the worst attack on the building since the War of 1812.An exterminator from Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Thompson, 38, was laid off in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. Alone at home with his new wife, he began spending long days on the internet, steeping himself in conspiracy theories about the upcoming vote.As the election approached, he said, he fully believed that if Donald J. Trump ended up losing, it would only be because the voting had been rigged, as the president had been warning publicly for months. Even after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner, Mr. Thompson could not accept that it was true.All of this, he told a jury at his criminal trial on Wednesday, led him to Washington on Jan. 6 for a Stop the Steal rally, where he and a friend listened to Mr. Trump give an incendiary speech near the White House.In an hour on the witness stand, Mr. Thompson blamed Mr. Trump for what eventually occurred, saying that he had been answering the president’s call to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” when he joined the throng swarming into the building and made off with a bottle of bourbon and a coat rack.“If the president’s giving you almost an order to do something,” he said, “I felt obligated to do that.”Mr. Thompson’s story is not unusual. At several points during the Justice Department’s vast investigation of the Capitol attack, many people charged with crimes have sought to blame Mr. Trump in various ways for their actions, mostly at pretrial bail hearings or at sentencings after pleading guilty.But Mr. Thompson is the first defendant to attempt the argument at trial in front of a jury. In making his case, he offered a window into the toxic and relentless flood of conspiracy theories and lies, stoked by Mr. Trump, that helped give rise to the riot.The move comes with considerable risk, and its success or failure could determine not only Mr. Thompson’s fate, but that of other defendants accused of taking part in the violence of Jan. 6.Before the trial began, Mr. Thompson admitted to prosecutors that he had gone into the Capitol and stolen government property, agreeing in advance to nearly every element of the six charges he faces. His defense will rest almost entirely on the question of his state of mind during the riot.Mr. Thompson has claimed that he did not knowingly or corruptly break the law, but rather, as his lawyer said on Tuesday, was “so influenced — so used and abused” by Mr. Trump that he could not be held accountable for his behavior.The Trump-made-me-do-it defense has not fared well with judges. While it could work better on a jury, Mr. Thompson seemed to stumble on Wednesday during cross-examination, undercutting key elements of his argument.William Dreher, a prosecutor, got him to admit several times that Mr. Trump had not been at his side, offering him step-by-step instructions, when he walked into the Senate parliamentarian’s office and walked out with the whiskey and the coat rack. Mr. Thompson acknowledged that he was a married adult with a college degree who could make his own decisions.Mr. Thompson also conceded under questioning by Mr. Dreher that he had known it was unlawful to go into the Capitol on Jan. 6 while lawmakers were finalizing the results of the election. That appeared to contradict a central pillar of his own defense.While Mr. Thompson’s claims that he was under Mr. Trump’s spell do not carry any legal weight as evidence, they echo similar allegations the government has made in other cases connected to Jan. 6. In those cases, prosecutors have gone to great lengths to describe how rioters at the Capitol were motivated by Mr. Trump’s statements, including his speech at the Ellipse and a tweet he posted on Dec. 19, 2020 calling on his followers to attend a “wild” protest in Washington on Jan. 6.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Debating a criminal referral. More

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      Mark Meadows Is Taken Off North Carolina Voter Roll Amid Fraud Inquiry

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      The state is investigating whether Mr. Meadows cast a legal vote in 2020, after reports questioned if he lived at the address listed on his voter registration.Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff in the Trump White House, has been removed from the voter rolls in North Carolina as officials investigate whether he fraudulently registered to vote and cast a ballot in the state during the 2020 presidential election, according to a local election official.Mr. Meadows, who helped amplify former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, was “administratively removed” from the poll book by the Macon County Board of Elections on Monday “after documentation indicated he lived in Virginia and last voted in the 2021 election there,” Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina Board of Elections, said in a statement.Mr. Meadows represented North Carolina in Congress until March 2020, when he went to work in the White House. Months later, Mr. Meadows and his wife, Debra, registered to vote using the address of a modest, three-bedroom mobile home with a rusted roof in Scaly Mountain, N.C.On the voter registration application that Mr. Meadows submitted on Sept. 19, 2020, he stated that he intended to move into the home the following day.And in November, he voted absentee by mail from that address, according to state records.Last month, a report in The New Yorker cast doubt on whether Mr. Meadows had ever lived — or even spent the night — at the home.Mr. Meadows did not immediately respond to telephone and text messages on Wednesday afternoon. A spokesman for Mr. Meadows, Ben Williamson, declined to comment.In 2021, Mr. Meadows registered to vote in Virginia, where he and his wife own a condominium in the Washington suburbs, ahead of that state’s contentious election for governor. Property records show that Mr. and Ms. Meadows bought the unit in July 2017.The inquiry into Mr. Meadows’s voting activity in North Carolina remains open, according to Anjanette Grube, public information officer for the state’s Bureau of Investigation.Though documented cases of voter fraud are rare, Mr. Meadows and other Republicans have seized on the concept in order to claim, without evidence, that the results of last presidential election are illegitimate.During an August 2020 interview on CNN, Mr. Meadows warned of fraud in voting by mail. “Do you realize how inaccurate the voter rolls are, with just people just moving around, let alone the people that die off?” he told the host, Jake Tapper.When Mr. Tapper said there was no evidence of widespread vote fraud, Mr. Meadows replied, “There’s no evidence that there’s not, either. That’s the definition of fraud, Jake.”Reid J. Epstein More

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      Mark Zuckerberg Ends Election Grants

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      Mark Zuckerberg, who donated nearly half a billion dollars to election offices across the nation in 2020 and drew criticism from conservatives suspicious of his influence on the presidential election, won’t be making additional grants this year, a spokesman for the Facebook founder confirmed on Tuesday.The spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said the donations by Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were never intended to be a stream of funding for the administration of elections.The couple gave $419 million to two nonprofit organizations that disbursed grants in 2020 to more than 2,500 election departments, which were grappling with a shortfall of government funding as they adopted new procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.The infusion of private donations helped to pay for new ballot-counting equipment, efforts to expand mail-in voting, personal protective equipment and the training of poll workers.It also sowed seeds of mistrust among supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. Critics referred to the grants as “Zuckerbucks” and some frequently claimed, without evidence, that the money was used to help secure Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Several states controlled by Republicans banned private donations to election offices in response.“As Mark and Priscilla made clear previously, their election infrastructure donation to help ensure that Americans could vote during the height of the pandemic was a one-time donation given the unprecedented nature of the crisis,” Mr. LaBolt said in an email on Tuesday. “They have no plans to repeat that donation.”The Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit group with liberal ties that became a vessel for $350 million of the contributions from Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan in 2020, announced on Monday that it was shifting to a different model for supporting the work of local election administrators.During an appearance on Monday at the TED2022 conference in Vancouver, Tiana Epps-Johnson, the center’s executive director, said that the organization would begin a five-year, $80 million program to help meet the needs of election departments across the country.Called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, the program will draw funding through the Audacious Project, a philanthropic collective housed at the TED organization, the center said. Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan are not involved in the new initiative, Mr. LaBolt said.At the event on Monday, Ms. Epps-Johnson said the grants distributed by the center in 2020 helped fill a substantial void of resources for those overseeing elections in the United States. One town in New England, she said without specifying, was able to replace voting equipment from the early 1900s that was held together with duct tape.“The United States election infrastructure is crumbling,” Ms. Epps-Johnson said.In addition to the Center for Technology and Civic Life, Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan gave $69.6 million to the Center for Election Innovation & Research in 2020. At the time, that nonprofit group said that the top election officials in 23 states had applied for grants.Republicans have been unrelenting in their criticism of the social media mogul and his donations.While campaigning for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday in Perrysburg, Ohio, J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author who has undergone a conversion to Trumpism, continued to accuse Mr. Zuckerberg of tipping the election in 2020 to Mr. Biden.Mr. Vance, a venture capitalist, hasn’t exactly sworn off help from big tech. He counts Peter Thiel, a departing board member of Mr. Zuckerberg’s company, Meta, and a major donor to Mr. Trump, as a top fund-raiser. Mr. Thiel has also supported Blake Masters, a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona.In an opinion piece for The New York Post last October, Mr. Vance and Mr. Masters called for Facebook’s influence to be curbed, writing that Mr. Zuckerberg had spent half a billion dollars to “buy the presidency for Joe Biden.”In Colorado, Tina Peters, the top vote-getter for secretary of state at the state Republican Party’s assembly last weekend, has been a fierce critic of Mr. Zuckerberg, even after her arrest this year on charges stemming from an election security breach. Ms. Peters, the Mesa County clerk, is facing several felonies amid accusations that she allowed an unauthorized person to copy voting machine hard drive information. More

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      In Call Before Jan. 6 Riot, a Plea to ‘Descend on the Capitol’

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      Days before Jan. 6, a onetime aide to Roger J. Stone Jr. told Trump backers to make lawmakers meeting to finalize the 2020 election results feel that “people are breathing down their necks.”One week before an angry mob stormed the Capitol, a communications expert named Jason Sullivan, a onetime aide to Roger J. Stone Jr., joined a conference call with a group of President Donald J. Trump’s supporters and made an urgent plea.After assuring his listeners that the 2020 election had been stolen, Mr. Sullivan told them that they had to go to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day that Congress was to meet to finalize the electoral count — and “descend on the Capitol,” according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.While Mr. Sullivan claimed that he was “not inciting violence or any kind of riots,” he urged those on the call to make their presence felt at the Capitol in a way that would intimidate members of Congress, telling the group that they had to ensure that lawmakers inside the building “understand that people are breathing down their necks.”He also pledged that Mr. Trump was going to take action on his own; the president, he said, was going to impose a form of martial law on Jan. 6 and would not be leaving office.“Biden will never be in that White House,” Mr. Sullivan declared. “That’s my promise to each and every one of you.”Before Riot, Operative Urged Trump Supporters to ‘Descend on the Capitol’ on Jan. 6In a conference call days before the Jan. 6 attack, Jason Sullivan, a onetime aide to Roger J. Stone Jr., exhorted supporters of President Donald J. Trump to go to the Capitol that day and pressure lawmakers meeting to finalize the 2020 election results.The recording of the call, which took place on Dec. 30, 2020, emerged as the Justice Department has expanded its criminal investigation of the Capitol attack. It offers a glimpse of the planning that went on in the run-up to the storming of the Capitol and the mind-set of some of those who zeroed in on Jan. 6 as a kind of last stand for keeping Mr. Trump in office.It also reflects the complexities that federal prosecutors are likely to face as they begin the task of figuring out how much — or even whether — people involved in the political rallies that preceded the assault can be held accountable for the violence that erupted.After more than a year of focusing exclusively on rioters who took part in the storming of the Capitol, prosecutors have widened their gaze in recent weeks and have started to question whether those involved in encouraging protests — like the one that Mr. Sullivan was describing — can be held culpable for disrupting the work of Congress.Mr. Sullivan’s remarks during the call appeared to be an effort to motivate a group of people aggrieved by the election to take direct action against members of Congress on Jan. 6, presaging what Mr. Trump himself would say in a speech that day. While it remains unclear whether anyone on Mr. Sullivan’s call went on to join the mob that breached the Capitol, he seemed to be exhorting his listeners to apply unusual pressure on lawmakers just as they were overseeing the final count of Electoral College votes.In a statement provided by his lawyer, Mr. Sullivan played down the nature of the call, saying he had merely “shared some encouragement” with what he described as “people who all felt their votes had been disenfranchised in the 2020 elections.” Mr. Sullivan said he had been asked to participate in the call by a group of anti-vaccine activists — or what he called “health freedom advocate moms” — who were hosting “a small, permitted event” at the Capitol on Jan. 6.“I only promoted peaceful solutions where Americans could raise their voices and be heard as expressed in our First Amendment,” Mr. Sullivan said in the statement. “I in no way condone the violence of any protesters.”Still, in the recording of the call, Mr. Sullivan can be heard telling his listeners that the lawmakers inside the Capitol “need to feel pressure.”“If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” he said. “We have to put that pressure there.”As the Justice Department widens its inquiry, federal prosecutors are using a grand jury in Washington to gather information on political organizers, speakers and so-called V.I.P.s connected to a series of pro-Trump rallies after the 2020 election. One prominent planner of those rallies, Ali Alexander, received a subpoena from the grand jury and said last week that he intended to comply with its requests.In the run-up to Jan. 6, Mr. Alexander publicly discussed a pressure campaign against lawmakers that was meant to stop the final electoral count, saying he was working with Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama and Representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, all Republicans.“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Mr. Alexander said in a since-deleted video on Periscope. The plan, he said, was to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside.”It is unclear if the Justice Department is aware of Mr. Sullivan’s conference call; the department declined to comment. The House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 was provided with a copy of the recording some months ago by the woman who made it, Staci Burk, a law student and Republican activist from Arizona.Shortly after the election, Ms. Burk became convinced that phony ballots had been flown in bulk into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. She eventually submitted an anonymous affidavit concerning the ballots in an election fraud case filed in Federal District Court in Phoenix by the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Debating a criminal referral. More

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      Is Trump the Democrats’ Secret Weapon?

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I was moved by Ketanji Brown Jackson’s remarks last week after her Senate confirmation: “In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court.” What a ringing affirmation of what’s possible in the United States. And how depressing that only three Republican senators could bring themselves to vote for her, if only on the principle that every president deserves to get qualified nominees confirmed. Whatever happened to acknowledging the possibility that we can respect and admire people with whom we also disagree?Gail Collins: Bret, every time we converse, I get to experience that.Bret: Ditto.Gail: But you know what our politics have become. There are a lot of people to blame for the death of bipartisanship in judicial selection, but I’ll never forget Mitch McConnell refusing to bring multiple Barack Obama nominees up for a vote.Bret: I’ll resist the urge to dwell on Harry Reid’s filibustering of George W. Bush’s nominees. The larger question is how we go forward. I don’t think we can endure as a republic if no president of either party can even appoint judges or staff the executive branch unless he has a Senate majority, too. Your thoughts?Gail: I tend to resist the we-can’t-survive-this predictions — we’ve survived a heck of a lot, after all.Bret: Fair point. We defeated Germany twice. What’s one Ted Cruz, more or less?Gail: But this kind of perpetual partisanship certainly isn’t good for the country. I guess the world will be looking toward Alaska to see how the regular public is reacting — of the three Senate Republicans who voted to confirm Judge Jackson, Lisa Murkowski is the only one up for re-election this year.Bret: Murkowski also faces a primary challenge from a Donald Trump-endorsed Republican opponent, meaning that she showed real political courage in voting for Jackson. More than can be said for a bunch of G.O.P. senators who are retiring at the end of the year and could have usefully demonstrated some principle and independence.Gail: Murkowski aside, I suspect the Republican candidates this fall are going to be running on a generally Trumpist line, which will make things worse. Do you disagree?Bret: Not clear yet. Our news-side colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Martin reported last month that some of the primary candidates Trump originally preferred — like the Senate candidate Mo Brooks in Alabama and the gubernatorial candidate David Perdue in Georgia — aren’t doing well in the polls. Trump is also getting crosswise with Republican incumbents in the governor’s office like Doug Ducey in Arizona and Pete Ricketts in Nebraska by opposing their favored candidates, or at least favoring ones they don’t like. If anything, Trump may turn out to be the Democrats’ secret weapon this fall by dividing the party or backing candidates who can’t win in the general election. That’s how Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were able to win their Georgia Senate races the last time around.Gail: I noticed Trump went ahead and withdrew his support for Brooks, claiming he was outraged that Brooks said it was time to stop obsessing about the 2020 election and move on.Bret: Trump is like John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty character from “Fawlty Towers,” except in reverse: You must mention the war. Or at least the “stolen election.”Gail: Still, I bet Trump could have managed to overlook it if Brooks wasn’t also running way behind in the polls.Bret: We’ll see. Right now, the generic polling leans Republican, but it could change if the Supreme Court votes to overturn Roe v. Wade. It could change even further if Ukraine manages to defeat Russia with American help. What else do the Democrats need?Gail: The Democrats need to run on ways to make the country better. One is reducing health care costs, which would include cracking down on waste and government funding for expensive drugs like insulin. Another is reducing the deficit with a tax on the very rich.Bret: The administration seems to be taking your advice on both points, though I’m not sure it will help them all that much by November. I’d like to see them get ahead of a couple of looming surges that will play into G.O.P. hands: the expected migrant surge at the border; the big cost-of-living surge; and the next Covid surge. The last one is actually tied to the first: The administration can help moderate Democrats by extending something called Title 42 to expedite migrant expulsions as a health-emergency measure. As for inflation, how about a sales-tax holiday for necessities and other basic goods for the next 12 months?Gail: Here’s a proposed deal: a sales tax holiday for basics combined with a tax increase for the rich.Bret: I always oppose tax hikes, but that isn’t the worst bargain. How about the immigration issue? The administration doesn’t seem to know its own mind, according to a fascinating piece last weekend in The Times.Gail: Well, another way to think about it is that the administration knows there’s no good answer. Any immigration policy is going to be unpopular with one side or the other — except Biden’s very, very much appreciated halt to building that stupid Trump wall.Bret: A wall I have reluctantly come around to concluding should be built, even as we do more to increase legal immigration.Gail: Oh wow, Bret, you’ve gone over to the wall! Better than going over the wall, I guess, but still …Bret: Bet some of our readers are thinking, “Both things are possible.”A wall won’t stop people from coming here legally and then overstaying their visas. But it will save some of the most vulnerable migrants from taking terrible risks to cross the border while denying right-wing nativists one of their most potent political issues.Gail: And serve as a great symbol to the rest of the world that the days we celebrated our country as a nation of immigrants are long gone. Sigh.Bret: We are and should remain a nation of immigrants. Just lawfully arrived.Gail: It’s certainly important not to encourage illegal immigration. But it’s equally important — actually more important — to raise the number of immigrants we’re bringing into the country. Given the very low birthrate in America, we’ve got to attract all the willing workers we can.Bret: Totally agree on this. Countries that stagnate demographically will eventually stagnate economically. Our Hispanic population is incredibly talented, energetic and diverse, we’ve got plenty of room to grow, and we’re blessed to have Mexico — the country where I grew up — as a neighbor. Anyone who doubts me on this score should consider what it’s like for Ukraine to have Russia as a neighbor.The case I’d make to the administration is to set out three principles for immigration: that it should be lawful, that it should be safe and that it should be compassionate. They need to take care of the first point to guarantee the other two.Gail: No problem there, but there’s a long leap from a commitment to lawful, compassionate immigration and — oh, Lord, that wall. Sorry, still flummoxed. Let’s move on.Bret: The other big domestic story last week was the failure of the Justice Department to win its case against four men accused of conspiring to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. What do you make of it?Gail: Basically you’ve got a bunch of dopey right-wing guys venting about Governor Whitmer’s Covid restrictions and talking about kidnapping her. And some genuine question as to whether they’d have done anything more than posture over lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings if an F.B.I. informant hadn’t become one of their leaders.Bret: It’s a thin line between, um, entrapment and hate, to adapt an old lyric.Gail: This kind of case always poses the question of how far our investigators can go in exposing anti-government nut jobs. Imagine what it’s like to spend months — sometimes years! — pretending to be best pals with paranoid idiots.Bret: My wife and kids know the feeling.Gail: Sooner or later you may be tempted to push things along — and then maybe create a crime that would never have happened otherwise.I’m not an expert in this case, but I do appreciate how very careful the country needs to be in overseeing law enforcement.Any final thoughts on your end?Bret: Given how high-profile this case was, it’s a real black eye for the government and particularly the F.B.I. Bamboozling foolish people into potentially criminal behavior and then prosecuting them for it in a highly politicized way is the sort of thing that fuels precisely the kind of conspiracy thinking that these people were prey to in the first place.Gail: Meanwhile, I’ve been sort of obsessing about what would happen if Russian psycho-hackers managed to figure out a way to take our power grid offline. Imagining what that’d be like gives me the kind of chills I got as a kid in Catholic school when the nuns would spend hours warning us that the end of the world could arrive any day. Then we were supposed to go home and practice hiding in the basement with our parents.Bret: The good news is the Russians haven’t even been able to manage taking out the power grid in Ukraine, so they might have a harder time against us. Perhaps the end of the world isn’t nigh, after all?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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      Gosar, Far-Right Incumbent, Faces G.O.P. Challengers in Arizona

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      Casting themselves as alternatives to a polarizing lawmaker, these candidates could reveal a window into the Republican electorate.KINGMAN, Ariz. — Inside a flag-covered roadside pizzeria, Robert Hall slings dough with a handgun on his hip and his politics on his sleeve. He says the Southern border is overrun and the 2020 election was stolen — views that would normally make a voter like him a lock to re-elect his staunchly conservative congressman, Representative Paul Gosar.But in this election year, as Republicans seek to capitalize on the sour national mood to win control of Congress, there are also seeds of anti-incumbent rebellion sprouting in some heavily Republican districts. After voting for Mr. Gosar in previous elections, Mr. Hall is now supporting Adam Morgan, a former Army captain and political novice trying to oust Mr. Gosar in Arizona’s Republican primary.“I need a change,” Mr. Hall said one afternoon as he dished out slices. “We need somebody who can just go in and do something different.”Mr. Morgan is one of three Republican challengers on the ballot against Mr. Gosar, a six-term incumbent, in this deeply conservative swath of western Arizona.The insurgent campaigns offer a test of the Republican electorate’s appetite for candidates not as far to the right as Mr. Gosar. Mr. Morgan, who said he has seen no evidence the vote was stolen, wants to shift the focus to more traditional conservative fare like border security and small government.Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, center, listening to former President Donald J. Trump speak at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, also faces a primary challenge. Pete Marovich for The New York Times“I understand people are upset about 2020, but there’s nothing in replaying the past,” Mr. Morgan said. “We’ve got to move on.”That message may resonate in a state like Arizona, full of newcomers, liberal and conservative. Logan Marsh, a Republican, and his husband moved from Washington State to an empty patch of desert in Mohave County three years ago, joining an exodus of conservatives fleeing what they called high costs and onerous local government regulations on the liberal coasts.“We’re looking for somebody who’s new, who’s fresh, who has our voice,” Mr. Marsh said.President Biden’s win here and a fast-growing, closely divided electorate have made Arizona one of the most competitive 2022 battlegrounds in the country, with Democrats defending a Senate seat and both parties eyeing an open governor’s seat.But the sprawling western Arizona district where Mr. Gosar and his rivals are running is still solidly Republican terrain, and the primaries may be the only competitive race. Democrats do not even have a congressional candidate on the ballot for the general election.The insurgents in Arizona are part of a crop of long-shot primary challengers trying to oust some of the most polarizing far-right members of Congress, arguing that their opponents’ embrace of conspiracy theories, lies about election fraud and headline-grabbing provocations are poisoning America’s politics.Outside Arizona, challengers are also running against Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia, Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina and Lauren Boebert in Colorado.These challenger campaigns are largely quixotic, run by veterans, political newcomers and local elected leaders who can muster barely a fraction of the money, organization and news media attention as their incumbent opponents.They also lack endorsements from former President Donald J. Trump, a critical weakness for Republican voters still loyal to him.Still, there is precedent for upset wins against powerful incumbents. Just two years ago, Ms. Boebert was a restaurant owner with no elected experience when she ousted a Republican incumbent by running a savvy pro-Trump campaign.Mr. Morgan, right, visiting with Robert and Kat Hall, owners of the Great America Pizza restaurant. “We need somebody who can just go in and do something different,” he said about his candidacy.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesThe latest upstarts are trying to tap into something different: a sense of voter exasperation with fringe views and the unending cycles of provocation and outrage that feel tailor-made to maximize social-media clicks and donor response.Mr. Morgan, who works in cybersecurity and moved to Arizona only a year ago, said the idea to run came after Mr. Gosar was censured and stripped of his congressional committees last November for posting an animated video of himself killing a Democratic congresswoman.Mr. Morgan had no money, no organization, no political experience. But he said he was fed up and wanted a change, so he started calling local Republican groups and began driving around to car dealerships, salons and gun shops to gather the 1,450 signatures needed to get on Arizona’s primary ballot.Mr. Morgan describes himself as an earnest outsider — a former soldier who opposes abortion and wants to finish Mr. Trump’s border wall. He said he would be conservative but not combative, adding that Mr. Gosar’s ties to white nationalists and censure have tarnished voters and cost the district clout.“I think people are ready to get along again, to come back together,” he said, sounding almost Bidenesque at times in his appeal to comity.The message is resonating with at least some Republican and independent voters who count themselves among the nearly 80 percent of Americans who say they disapprove of Congress and want to register their disgust of both parties by voting out any incumbent.“The Republican Party stinks, too,” said Dale Kelley, a real-estate agent in Bullhead City, Ariz., who signed Mr. Morgan’s petition largely because he was an outsider and veteran untethered to Washington.Some Republican voters said they had grown embarrassed by members of Congress who promoted QAnon conspiracy theories, jeered at President Biden’s State of the Union address or talked of cocaine-fueled orgies.Coylynn Colbaugh, who runs a turquoise mine with her husband outside Kingman, said the antics “give us a bad name.” She is planning to vote for Mr. Morgan in the primary.Some also disapproved of a handful of far-right Republicans who voted against measures such as sending American aid to Ukraine, economically punishing Russia or investigating it for war crimes. In Georgia, Jennifer Strahan, a health care consultant who is challenging Ms. Taylor Greene in the Republican primary, has sharply criticized the congresswoman’s rhetoric on Ukraine.“Our congresswoman is serving as a megaphone for Putin and communist Russia, parroting Putin talking points and belittling Ukrainian freedom fighters,” Ms. Strahan said.Mr. Gosar and other Republicans being challenged did not return multiple email and telephone messages.Representative Paul Gosar riding the subway to the Capitol in November before a House vote to censure him.Al Drago for The New York TimesRory McShane, a political consultant who works for Mr. Gosar, said Mr. Morgan and another primary challenger were not serious political threats. He pointed out that Mr. Morgan, who moved to Arizona just over a year ago, had never voted in an election here.Jeanne Kentch, the chairwoman of the Mohave County Republican central committee, said that most conservative voters in the area were still devoted to Mr. Gosar. Yes, people are worried about inflation and housing scarcity and looming water shortages from climate change and uncontrolled groundwater drilling. But she said his hard-right conservative views were the most important factor in earning her vote.“He’s the only one who would guarantee America first,” Ms. Kentch said.Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona political analyst, said that challengers like Mr. Morgan were not just fighting Mr. Gosar but going against the DNA of most Republican primary voters. He said the challenger campaigns were likely to fail.“Those Republican primary voters believe the election was stolen,” Mr. Coughlin said. “The more extreme the candidate is, you’re rewarded for that behavior. Because that’s the constituency that votes.”Still, Mr. Gosar recently sought to distance himself from white nationalists who have become his allies and supporters. After he gave a video speech to a conference organized by a white nationalist, he blamed his staff for a “miscommunication,” telling Politico that the video had gone to the wrong group. Mr. Gosar spoke in person to the same group a year earlier.The question of whether Arizona’s Republicans choose Mr. Gosar or a more mainline Republican reflects broader tensions about which faction will prevail as Republican standard-bearers as the party tries to hold control of the Arizona governorship and unseat one of the Senate’s more vulnerable Democrats.Gov. Doug Ducey, a conservative Republican, recently signed laws banning abortions after 15 weeks, prohibiting surgeries for transgender minors and requiring that voters provide proof of citizenship. Nevertheless, he still received the ire of the state’s Republican Party for affirming President Biden’s narrow win and for defending how Arizona had run its elections.Kari Lake, a former television anchor and a leading Republican contender to succeed Mr. Ducey, has promoted falsehoods that the election was stolen. One of the Republican candidates for Senate, Jim Lamon, falsely claimed to be an elector able to cast Arizona’s electoral votes for Mr. Trump.Some of the Republican voters in western Arizona who signed the petition to put Mr. Morgan on the ballot said they just want to get past all of that. Ray Vazquez, a car salesman, said he is working 12-hour shifts five or six days a week but spending larger chunks of his paycheck on gas and basics. Diaper prices for his 15-month-old have soared. And he was tired of feeling unserved by combative politicians that he felt did not care about his family’s life.“Stuff just needs to get back to normal,” he said, adding that he was planning to cast a vote against “a lot of negativity. Everyone just needs to come together.” More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Has Evidence for Criminal Referral of Trump, but Splits on Sending

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      Despite concluding that it has enough evidence, the committee is concerned that making a referral to the Justice Department would backfire by politicizing the investigation into the Capitol riot.WASHINGTON — The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack have grown divided over whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department of former President Donald J. Trump, even though they have concluded that they have enough evidence to do so, people involved in the discussions said.The debate centers on whether making a referral — a largely symbolic act — would backfire by politically tainting the Justice Department’s expanding investigation into the Jan. 6 assault and what led up to it.Since last summer, a team of former federal prosecutors working for the committee has focused on documenting the attack and the preceding efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election. The panel plans to issue a detailed report on its findings, but in recent months it has regularly signaled that it was also weighing a criminal referral that would pressure Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to open a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump.But now, with the Justice Department appearing to ramp up a wide-ranging investigation, some Democrats are questioning whether there is any need to make a referral — and whether doing so would saddle a criminal case with further partisan baggage at a time when Mr. Trump is openly flirting with running again in 2024.A federal judge found that it was “more likely than not” that President Donald J. Trump had committed crimes in his efforts to derail the certification of the 2020 election.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesThe shift in the committee’s perspective on making a referral was prompted in part by a ruling two weeks ago by Judge David O. Carter of the Federal District Court for Central California. Deciding a civil case in which the committee had sought access to more than 100 emails written by John C. Eastman, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump on efforts to derail certification of the Electoral College outcome, Judge Carter found that it was “more likely than not” that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had committed federal crimes.The ruling led some committee and staff members to argue that even though they felt they had amassed enough evidence to justify calling for a prosecution for obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiring to defraud the American people, the judge’s decision would carry far greater weight with Mr. Garland than any referral letter they could write, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.The members and aides who were reluctant to support a referral contended that making one would create the appearance that Mr. Garland was investigating Mr. Trump at the behest of a Democratic Congress and that if the committee could avoid that perception it should, the people said.Even if the final report does not include a specific referral letter to Mr. Garland, the findings would still provide federal prosecutors with the evidence the committee uncovered — including some that has not yet become public — that could be used as a road map for any prosecution, the people said.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has given no public indication of the Justice Department’s intentions other than to say that it will follow the facts and the law. Yuri Gripas for The New York Times“If you read his decision, I think it’s quite telling,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a member of the committee said of Judge Carter’s ruling. “He and we have reviewed a huge amount of documents, and he reached a conclusion that he outlined in very stark terms.”Ms. Lofgren is among those who believe a referral letter to the Justice Department is superfluous, since it would carry no legal weight.“Maybe we will, maybe we won’t,” she said of a referral. “It doesn’t have a legal impact.”But the question about whether to send the referral has, for one of the first times since the committee was formed in July, exposed differences among members about the panel’s mission.Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the panel, said that the committee should still send a referral for any crimes it uncovers.Representatives Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Elaine Luria of Virginia, Democratic members of the Jan. 6 committee, at the Capitol last month. Ms. Luria said that the committee should send a referral for any crimes it uncovers.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press“I would say that I don’t agree with what some of my colleagues have said about this,” Ms. Luria said on MSNBC this month. “I think it’s a lot more important to do what’s right than it is to worry about the political ramifications. This committee, our purpose is legislative and oversight, but if in the course of our investigation we find that criminal activity has occurred, I think it’s our responsibility to refer that to the Department of Justice.”Although staff members have been in discussions about a referral, and some have debated the matter publicly, the committee members have not sat down together to discuss whether to proceed with a referral, several lawmakers said.Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California, said the committee was likely to hold off on making a final determination until investigators finished their work. He said the panel was “finishing up” its investigative phase and shifting to a more “public-facing” one in which the panel will present its findings.“The members haven’t had those conversations,” Mr. Aguilar said of a meeting to discuss a potential referral. “Right now, we’re gathering the material that we need. As the investigative phase winds down, we’ll have more conversations about what the report looks like. But we’re not presupposing where that’s going to go before we get a little further with the interviews.”Although the committee has the ability to subpoena testimony and documents and make referrals to the Justice Department for prosecutions, it has no criminal prosecution powers.The committee’s vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, singled out Mr. Trump’s conduct at a public hearing in December, reading from the criminal code and laying out how she believed he had obstructed Congress. In early March, the committee in effect road-tested whether the evidence it had gathered could support a prosecution, laying out in a filing in the civil case before Judge Carter its position that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had obstructed Congress and defrauded the American public.In validating the committee’s position, legal experts said, the judge made it difficult for the Justice Department to avoid an investigation. Mr. Garland has given no public indication of the department’s intentions other than to say that it will follow the facts and the law. But subpoenas issued by a federal grand jury indicate that prosecutors are gathering information about a wide array of issues, including about efforts to obstruct the election certification by people in the Trump White House and in Congress.Investigators from the House committee and the Justice Department have not been sharing information, except to avoid conflicts around the scheduling of certain witnesses.Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California, has said that the committee is “finishing up” its investigative phase.Oliver Contreras for The New York Times“We want them to move faster, but we respect their work,” Mr. Aguilar said, adding that the committee has a different goal the Justice Department’s inquiry: to fully investigate what led to the riot, which injured more than 150 police officers, and take legislative steps to prevent a repeat. “It’s an insult to the lives of the Capitol Police officers if we don’t pursue what happened and take meaningful and concrete steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 6A Trump ally agrees to cooperate. More