Presidential Election of 2020

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      In Tense Election Year, Public Officials Face Climate of Intimidation

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      Colorado and Maine, which blocked former President Donald J. Trump from the ballot, have grappled with the harassment of officials.The caller had tipped off the authorities in Maine on Friday night: He told them that he had broken into the home of Shenna Bellows, the state’s top election official, a Democrat who one night earlier had disqualified former President Donald J. Trump from the primary ballot because of his actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.No one was home when officers arrived, according to Maine State Police, who labeled the false report as a “swatting” attempt, one intended to draw a heavily armed law enforcement response.In the days since, more bogus calls and threats have rolled in across the country. On Wednesday, state capitol buildings in Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi and Montana were evacuated or placed on lockdown after the authorities said they had received bomb threats that they described as false and nonspecific. The F.B.I. said it had no information to suggest any threats were credible.The incidents intensified a climate of intimidation and the harassment of public officials, including those responsible for overseeing ballot access and voting. Since 2020, election officials have confronted rising threats and difficult working conditions, aggravated by rampant conspiracy theories about fraud. The episodes suggested 2024 would be another heated election year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Biden’s 2024 Playbook

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      Mary Wilson and Rachel Quester and Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, Rowan Niemisto, Diane Wong and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicYesterday, we went inside Donald Trump’s campaign for president, to understand how he’s trying to turn a mountain of legal trouble into a political advantage. Today, we turn to the re-election campaign of President Biden.Reid Epstein, who covers politics for The Times, explains why what looks on paper like a record of accomplishment is proving to be difficult to campaign on.On today’s episodeReid J. Epstein, a politics correspondent for The New York Times.The president and his team have waved away Democrats’ worries about his bid for another term.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesBackground readingIn South Carolina, Democrats see a test of Biden’s appeal to Black voters.Political Memo: Should Biden really run again? He prolongs an awkward conversation.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Reid J. Epstein More

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      Trump da un paso más en su solicitud de ‘inmunidad absoluta’

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      Exfuncionarios del gobierno destacan que la postura de Trump tiene “consecuencias absurdas y de gran alcance”.Casi no hay nada en el texto de la Constitución de Estados Unidos que siquiera respalde de manera remota el más osado argumento de la defensa del expresidente estadounidense Donald Trump contra el cargo de conspiración para anular las elecciones de 2020: que tiene inmunidad absoluta contra cualquier acusación por las acciones realizadas mientras ocupaba el cargo.La próxima semana, un tribunal federal de apelaciones evaluará los fundamentos expuestos en los alegatos, y el panel considerará factores como la historia, los precedentes y la división de poderes. Sin embargo, como ha reconocido la Corte Suprema, la Constitución en sí misma no aborda de manera explícita el tema de la existencia o el alcance de la inmunidad presidencial.En su recurso de apelación, Trump señala que el análisis incluyó una disposición constitucional, aunque su argumento no tiene muchos fundamentos legales. Tal disposición, la cláusula relativa al caso de una sentencia por juicio político, estipula que los funcionarios sometidos a juicio político por la Cámara de Representantes y declarados culpables por el Senado todavía pueden quedar sujetos a un procedimiento penal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Trump Makes Another Pitch to Appeals Court on Immunity in Election Case

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      The filing was the last step before an appeals court in Washington will hold a hearing on the crucial issue next week.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday made their final written request to a federal appeals court to grant Mr. Trump immunity to charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing the indictment should be tossed out because it arose from actions he took while in the White House.The 41-page filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the final step before the defense and prosecution debate the issue in front of a three-judge panel next Tuesday.The dispute over immunity is the single most important aspect of the election interference case, touching not only on new questions of law but also on consequential issues of timing. The case is scheduled to go to trial in Federal District Court in Washington in early March, but has been put on hold until Mr. Trump’s efforts to have the charges tossed on immunity grounds are resolved.In their filing to the appeals court, Mr. Trump’s lawyers repeated some of the arguments they had made in earlier submissions. They claimed, for instance, that a long history of presidents not being charged with crimes suggested that they all enjoyed immunity. They also said that prosecuting Mr. Trump now could unleash a chain reaction of other presidents being indicted.“The 234-year unbroken tradition of not prosecuting presidents for official acts, despite vociferous calls to do so from across the political spectrum, provides powerful evidence of it,” D. John Sauer, a lawyer who has handled Mr. Trump’s appeals, wrote of the idea of executive immunity.Mr. Sauer added: “The likelihood of mushrooming politically motivated prosecutions, and future cycles of recrimination, are far more menacing and crippling to the presidency than the threat of civil liability.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers raised another, even more audacious argument: that because he had been acquitted by the Senate during his second impeachment of inciting insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, he could not be tried in a criminal court in the election interference case.But both legal experts and some of the senators who acquitted Mr. Trump have disagreed with that position — not least because the federal charges he is facing are not analogous to those he faced during his impeachment.The issue of Mr. Trump’s immunity claims is legally significant because the question of whether former presidents can be criminally liable for things they did in office has not been tested in court. Mr. Trump is the first former president to have been charged with crimes.But the appeal of the immunity issue has revolved around more than the question of whether Mr. Trump should eventually stand trial on the election charges. It has also touched on the separate, but equally critical, question of when the trial should occur.Prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, have been trying for weeks to keep the trial on schedule, arguing that the public has an enormous interest in a speedy prosecution of Mr. Trump, the Republican Party’s leading candidate for the presidency.Mr. Trump’s lawyers, pulling in the opposite direction, have used every lever at their disposal to slow the case down, hoping to delay a trial until after the 2024 election is decided. If that happened and Mr. Trump won, he would have the power to simply order the charges against him dropped.The immunity challenge is being considered by Judge Karen L. Henderson, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and by Judges Florence Y. Pan and J. Michelle Childs, who were put on the bench by President Biden.On Tuesday, before Mr. Trump’s court papers were filed, the judges informed both sides in the case that they should be prepared at the hearing next week to discuss issues raised in several friend-of-the-court briefs that have been submitted.One of the briefs argued that the issue of immunity should never have been subject to an immediate appeal, but rather should have been raised only if Mr. Trump were convicted. Another maintained that Mr. Smith had been improperly appointed to the role of special counsel and lacked the “authority to conduct the underlying prosecution.”Last month, fearing that a prolonged appeal could delay the case from going in front of a jury, Mr. Smith made an unusual request to the Supreme Court: He asked the justices to step in front of the appeals court and consider the case first.Although the justices rejected his petition, they are likely to get the case again after the appeals court makes its decision. More

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      Tracking State Efforts to Remove Trump From the 2024 Ballot

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      States with challenges to Trump’s candidacy Trump disqualified, decision appealed Decision pending Challenge dismissed or rejected Alaska Ariz. Calif. Colo. Conn. Del. Fla. Idaho Kan. La. Maine Mass. Mich. Minn. Mont. Nev. N.H. N.J. N.M. N.Y. N.C. Okla. Ore. Pa. R.I. S.C. Texas Utah Vt. Va. W.Va. Wis. Wyo. Formal challenges to Donald J. Trump’s […] More

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      Trump’s Most Ambitious Argument in His Bid for ‘Absolute Immunity’

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      The former president says his acquittal by the Senate in his second impeachment trial, for inciting insurrection, bars any prosecution on similar grounds.There is almost nothing in the words of the Constitution that even begins to support former President Donald J. Trump’s boldest defense against charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election: that he is absolutely immune from prosecution for actions he took while in office.A federal appeals court will hear arguments on the question next week, and the panel will consider factors including history, precedent and the separation of powers. But, as the Supreme Court has acknowledged, the Constitution itself does not explicitly address the existence or scope of presidential immunity.In his appellate brief, Mr. Trump said there was one constitutional provision that figured in the analysis, though his argument is a legal long shot. The provision, the impeachment judgment clause, says that officials impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate are still subject to criminal prosecution.The provision says: “Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: But the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”All the clause says in so many words, then, is that “the party convicted” in the Senate can still face criminal prosecution. But Mr. Trump said the clause implied something more.The clause “presupposes that a president who is not convicted may not be subject to criminal prosecution,” Mr. Trump’s brief said.A friend-of the-court brief from former government officials said Mr. Trump’s position had “sweeping and absurd consequences,” noting that a great many officials are subject to impeachment.“Under defendant’s interpretation,” the brief said, “the executive would lack power to prosecute all current and former civil officers for acts taken in office unless Congress first impeached and convicted them. That would permit countless officials to evade criminal liability.”Mr. Trump also made a slightly narrower but still audacious argument: “A president who is acquitted by the Senate cannot be prosecuted for the acquitted conduct.”Mr. Trump was, of course, acquitted at his second impeachment trial, on charges that he incited insurrection, when 57 senators voted against him, 10 shy of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.The idea that the impeachment acquittal conferred immunity from prosecution may come as a surprise to some of those who did the acquitting.Take Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, who voted for acquittal. Shortly afterward, in a fiery speech on the Senate floor, he said the legal system could still hold Mr. Trump to account.“We have a criminal justice system in this country,” Mr. McConnell said. “We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”That suggests that Mr. Trump’s reading of the clause is far from obvious, but the Justice Department has said that it is not wholly implausible. In 2000, its Office of Legal Counsel issued a 46-page memorandum devoted to just this question. It was called “Whether a Former President May Be Indicted and Tried for the Same Offenses for Which He was Impeached by the House and Acquitted by the Senate.”The argument that such prosecutions run afoul of the Constitution “has some force,” according to the memo, which was prepared by Randolph D. Moss, now a federal judge. But, it went on, “despite its initial plausibility, we find this interpretation of the impeachment judgment clause ultimately unconvincing.”It added: “We are unaware of any evidence suggesting that the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution chose the phrase ‘the party convicted’ with a negative implication in mind.”More fundamentally, the memo said, “impeachment and criminal prosecution serve entirely distinct goals.” Impeachment trials involve political judgments. Criminal trials involve legal ones.In a brief filed on Saturday, Jack Smith, the special counsel, wrote that “acquittal in a Senate impeachment trial may reflect a technical or procedural determination rather than a factual conclusion.” The brief noted that at least 31 of the 43 senators who voted to acquit Mr. Trump at the impeachment trial said they did so at least in part because he was no longer in office and thus not subject to the Senate’s jurisdiction.Mr. Trump’s reading of the provision “would produce implausibly perverse results,” Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing his trial in Federal District Court in Washington, wrote in a decision last month rejecting Mr. Trump’s claim of absolute immunity.She noted that the Constitution permits impeachment for a narrow array of offenses — “treason, bribery or other high crimes or misdemeanors.”Under Mr. Trump’s reading, Judge Chutkan wrote, “if a president commits a crime that does not fall within that limited category, and so could not be impeached and convicted, the president could never be prosecuted for that crime.”“Alternatively,” she went on, “if Congress does not have the opportunity to impeach or convict a sitting president — perhaps because the crime occurred near the end of their term, or is covered up until after the president has left office — the former president similarly could not be prosecuted.”She added that President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon of former President Richard M. Nixon, who resigned as calls to impeach him for his role in the Watergate scandal grew, would have been unnecessary under Mr. Trump’s reading. More

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      Maine Law ‘Required That I Act’ to Disqualify Trump, Secretary of State Says

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      Barring former President Donald J. Trump from the primary ballot was a hard but necessary call, Shenna Bellows said in an interview.Before she decided to bar former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s primary ballot, Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state, was not known for courting controversy.She began her career in public office as a state senator in 2016, winning in a politically mixed district. She prided herself on finding common ground with Republicans, an approach she said was shaped by growing up in a politically diverse family.As the former head of the state’s American Civil Liberties Union, Ms. Bellows did not shy away from divisive issues. But her ballot decision on Thursday was perhaps the weightiest and most politically fraught that she had faced — and it sparked loud rebukes from Republicans in Maine and beyond.In an interview on Friday, Ms. Bellows defended her decision, arguing that Mr. Trump’s incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol made it necessary to exclude him from the ballot next year.“This is not a decision I made lightly,” Ms. Bellows, 48, said. “The United States Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and Maine election law required that I act in response.”Ms. Bellows, a Democrat, is among many election officials around the country who have considered legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s latest bid for the White House based on an obscure clause of the 14th Amendment that bars government officials who have engaged in “insurrection” from serving in the U.S. government.After holding a hearing this month in which she considered arguments from both Mr. Trump’s lawyers and his critics, Ms. Bellows explained her decision in a 34-page order issued on Thursday night.The ban, which is being appealed in the courts, made Maine the second state to disqualify Mr. Trump from the primary ballot next year. Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled last week that his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election were disqualifying. Opponents of Mr. Trump are pursuing similar challenges in several other states.Lawyers on both sides of the dispute are calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to promptly issue a ruling on how election officials should interpret the insurrectionist clause of the 14th Amendment, which was adopted to bar Confederate officials from serving in the U.S. government after the Civil War.Mr. Trump’s campaign and Maine Republicans have called Ms. Bellows’s decision an overreach. The Maine Republican Party issued a fund-raising appeal that called Ms. Bellows “a biased Democrat Party hack unworthy of the high office she holds.”Maine’s two senators, Susan Collins, a Republican, and Angus King, an independent who generally votes with Democrats, also took issue with the ban, with Mr. King saying that “the decision as to whether or not Mr. Trump should again be considered for the presidency should rest with the people as expressed in free and fair elections.”Ms. Bellows said it was not uncommon for secretaries of state to bar candidates from the ballot if they did not meet eligibility requirements, and noted that she refused to allow Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, to appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot after he failed to get enough signatures.Ms. Bellows, who became a powerful figure in a politically divided state, said she had managed to work collaboratively with Republicans. Though in interviews, longtime colleagues of Ms. Bellows said they were not surprised by her willingness to take a politically risky stance.“Secretary Bellows has a well-earned reputation for being an extremely hard worker who is willing to follow her conscience,” said Zach Heiden, the chief counsel at the A.C.L.U. in Maine who reported to Ms. Bellows when she led the organization from 2005 to 2013.At the A.C.L.U., Ms. Bellows championed same-sex marriage and expanding voting rights, and fought provisions of the Patriot Act and certain government surveillance programs after the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2014, after leaving the organization, Ms. Bellows launched an unsuccessful bid to unseat Ms. Collins, who has been in the Senate since 1997.“At first the Democratic establishment did not take her seriously,” said John Brautigam, a former Maine lawmaker. “But Shenna won the nomination and conducted a credible and issue-focused campaign.”In 2016, Ms. Bellows won a State Senate seat that included her hometown, Manchester. The district is politically mixed: It favored Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and Mr. Trump in 2016.While her politics have been decidedly liberal, Ms. Bellows said she had never seen herself as an extreme partisan. Shortly after becoming a state senator, Ms. Bellows said she found common ground with Republicans on several initiatives, including a bill making it easier to license medical professionals in the state.That approach to politics, she said, was shaped by growing up in a family that was politically split.“The key to my success in working across the aisle has always been the willingness to listen and hear both sides and to be open to what people have to say,” she said.In 2020, Ms. Bellows put herself forward as a candidate for secretary of state, a role that is chosen by the Legislature in Maine. Ms. Bellows said she sought the position because she saw it as an opportunity to safeguard democratic principles, key among them the right to vote.“As a kid, I had a copy of the Bill of Rights on my bedroom wall,” she said. These days, she said, she often carries a copy of the U.S. Constitution in her purse.The aftermath of the 2020 election deeply disturbed Ms. Bellows, who condemned Mr. Trump in posts on social media after an effort to impeach him failed.“He should have been impeached,” she wrote in February 2021. “But history will not treat him or those who voted against impeachment lightly.”Republicans have said that those remarks call into question her objectivity. But Ms. Bellows said her decision to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot was based solely on the facts and the law. She said a motto from her time at the A.C.L.U. had long guided her actions.“We had a saying: There are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, just permanent principles,” she said. “That is a philosophy that I try to live my life by.” More

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      Prosecutors Ask Judge to Keep Trump From Making ‘Baseless Political Claims’ in Trial

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      The special counsel, Jack Smith, is seeking to shape the evidence the jury in the federal election interference case will hear.Federal prosecutors asked a judge on Wednesday to keep former President Donald J. Trump and his lawyers from claiming to the jury in his upcoming election interference trial that the case had been brought against him as a partisan attack by the Biden administration.The move by the prosecutors was designed to keep Mr. Trump from overtly politicizing his trial and from distracting the jury with unfounded political arguments that he has often made on both the campaign trail and in court papers related to the case.Ever since Mr. Trump was charged this summer with plotting to overturn the 2020 election, he and his lawyers have sought to frame the indictment as a retaliatory strike against him by President Biden. Mr. Trump has also placed such claims at the heart of his presidential campaign even though the charges were initially returned by a federal grand jury and are being overseen by an independent special counsel, Jack Smith.Molly Gaston, one of Mr. Smith’s senior assistants, asked Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is handling the election case in Federal District Court in Washington, to keep Mr. Trump’s political attacks as far away from the jury as possible.“The court should not permit the defendant to turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation,” Ms. Gaston wrote, “and should reject his attempt to inject politics into this proceeding.”The 20-page motion was filed two weeks after Judge Chutkan effectively froze the case in place as an appeals court considers Mr. Trump’s broad claims that he is immune from prosecution. Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear the question of the immunity immediately, although the justices are likely to take up the issue after the appeals court completes its highly accelerated review.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More