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      FBI Investigating Spy Ring’s Political Contributions

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      Prosecutors are scrutinizing a series of campaign contributions made by right-wing operatives who were part of a political spying operation based in Wyoming.Federal prosecutors are investigating possible campaign finance violations in connection with an undercover operation based in Wyoming that aimed to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns and the offices of elected representatives before the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter and documents related to the case.As part of the operation, revealed in 2021 by The New York Times, participants used large campaign donations and cover stories to gain access to their targets and gather dirt to sabotage the reputations of people and organizations considered threats to the agenda of President Donald J. Trump.In recent days, prosecutors have issued subpoenas for at least two of the people The Times identified as being part of the operation, including Richard Seddon, a former British spy, and Susan Gore, a Wyoming heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, the people said. The subpoenas were reported earlier by CNN.According to one of the subpoenas reviewed by The Times, prosecutors and F.B.I. agents in Washington are seeking a trove of information related to the political spying operation, including documents related to Mr. Seddon’s firm, Branch Six Consulting International, along with at least two other entities registered in his name.Prosecutors also sought communications, documents or financial records tied to Erik Prince, the international security consultant, as well as former operatives who worked for the conservative group Project Veritas and its founder. Mr. Prince and Mr. Seddon are longtime associates.The operatives working for Mr. Seddon made several large political donations — including $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee, which gained them entree to a Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas in 2020. They also made donations to the election campaigns of Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona; Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold; as well as to the Wyoming Democratic Party.Drew Godinich, a spokesman for Ms. Griswold, said she returned that donation.Mr. Seddon used money from Ms. Gore to fund the operation. Ms. Gore has said publicly that she was not aware her money was being used for sabotage operations. Robert Driscoll, a lawyer for Mr. Seddon, declined to comment. Nicholas Gravante, a Manhattan lawyer for Ms. Gore who represents many high-profile clients, also declined to comment.It is not clear if the operatives who made the donations — Beau Maier and Sofia LaRocca — did it at someone’s behest and were reimbursed. Both were named in the subpoena reviewed by The Times. It is also unclear whether the couple had been subpoenaed or were cooperating with federal authorities.The F.B.I. declined to comment.Mr. Seddon closely managed the two operatives, who filed weekly intelligence reports to him about their activities and targets, according to a person with direct knowledge of the operation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the secret details.Under federal law, it is illegal to make campaign donations at the behest of another person and be reimbursed for them. So-called straw donations have been central to several federal investigations.According to interviews and documents obtained by The Times, the operation began in 2018, when Mr. Seddon persuaded several former employees of Project Veritas — the conservative group that conducts undercover sting operations — to move to Wyoming and participate in his new venture.Mr. Seddon, who at the time was working for Ms. Gore, wanted to set up espionage operations in which undercover agents would infiltrate progressive groups and the offices of elected officials, and potentially recruit others to help collect information.It is unclear how much information Mr. Seddon’s operatives gathered, or what else the operation achieved. But its use of professional intelligence-gathering techniques to try to manipulate the politics of several states showed a greater sophistication than more traditional political “dirty tricks” operations.It also showed a level of paranoia in some ultraconservative Republican circles that the electoral map in the United States might be changing to their disadvantage. Specifically, there was a concern that even a bedrock Republican state like Wyoming could gradually turn toward the Democrats, as nearby Colorado and Arizona had.Republicans have sought to install allies in various positions at the state level to gain an advantage on the electoral map. Secretaries of state, for example, play a crucial role in certifying election results every two years, and some became targets of Mr. Trump and his allies in their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.One target of the spying ring was Karlee Provenza, a police reform advocate who won a seat in the Wyoming Legislature representing one of a few Democratic districts in the state. Ms. Provenza said she was heartened that federal authorities had not ignored the episode, while Wyoming officials have not acted.“I am glad to see that the Justice Department is investigating efforts to try to dismantle democracy in Wyoming,” she said. “The actions of Susan Gore and the people she supports have been unchecked since this spying operation was revealed.”In 2017, Mr. Seddon was recruited to join Project Veritas by Mr. Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide and brother of Betsy DeVos, who was Mr. Trump’s education secretary at the time. According to people with knowledge of Mr. Prince’s role, he believed Mr. Seddon could turn Project Veritas into a more professional intelligence-gathering operation.Soon afterward, Mr. Seddon was engineering an effort to discredit perceived enemies of Mr. Trump inside the U.S. government, including a planned sting operation in 2018 against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster. He also helped set up operations to secretly record F.B.I. employees and other government officials. More

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      Here Are Some of the Charges Trump Faces in Classified Documents Case

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      A grand jury has charged former President Donald J. Trump with a total of seven counts, according to two people familiar with the indictment.While the precise details of all the charges are not yet clear, the people familiar with the matter said the charges include willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.Here is a closer look.Unauthorized retention of national security documentsIt is a crime to retain national security documents without authorization and to fail to deliver them to a government official entitled to take custody of them.To win a conviction, prosecutors would have to show that Mr. Trump knew he was still in possession of the documents after leaving the White House and failed to comply when the government asked him to return them and then subpoenaed him.Each such charged document would be a separate offense, so it is possible that prosecutors have brought as many as five counts of this offense by citing five different records. A conviction would be theoretically subject to 10 years in prison for each count, although defendants in other Espionage Act cases have received significantly less than the maximum.To obtain a conviction, prosecutors would also have to prove to the jury that the documents related to the national defense, that they were closely held and that their disclosure could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.Although Mr. Trump has claimed — without evidence — that he declassified all the files he took to Mar-a-Lago, prosecutors would not technically need to prove that they were still classified because the Espionage Act predates the classification system and does not refer to it as an element.Conspiracy ChargesIt is a crime to agree with another person to break a law. Prosecutors would need to show that Mr. Trump and some other person had a meeting of the minds about committing a specific crime and that one of them took some step toward that goal. The penalty can be up to five years.ObstructionIt is a crime to conceal records to obstruct an official effort. Prosecutors would need to show several things, including that Mr. Trump knew he still had files that were subject to the efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration to take custody of presidential records. They would also need to be able to demonstrate that he willfully defied the Justice Department’s subpoena for files marked as classified, and that he intentionally caused his subordinates to fail to turn them all over while leading officials to believe they had complied. The penalty is up to 20 years per offense.False statementIt is a crime to make a false statement to a law enforcement officer about a fact material to the officer’s investigation. Such crimes carry a penalty of up to five years per offense.Mr. Trump is not known to have directly made substantive statements to the government, but prosecutors could charge him if they can show that he conspired with or induced another person to lie to the Justice Department about there being no further documents responsive to the subpoena.Or, if prosecutors can show that he induced his lawyers to unwittingly lie to the Justice Department, they could charge Mr. Trump directly for causing the false statement even if he himself did not commit the offense himself. The law says that “whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.”It is not known what the other charges are, but here are some possibilities:Mishandling official documentsWhether or not the documents relate to national security, it is a crime to conceal or destroy official documents. Among other disclosures, former aides to Mr. Trump have recounted how he sometimes ripped up official documents. The National Archives has also said that some of the White House paper records the Trump administration transferred to it had been torn up, including some that had been taped back together. The penalty is up to three years per offense, in addition to a ban on holding federal office, although the latter is most likely unconstitutional, legal experts say.Contempt of courtIt is a crime to willfully disobey a court order, like the grand jury subpoena Mr. Trump received in May 2022 that required him to turn over all documents marked as classified that remained in his possession. It carries a penalty of a fine of up to $1,000 and up to six months in prison. To bring this charge, prosecutors would need evidence showing he knew that he was still holding onto other files with classification markings during and after his representatives purported to comply with the subpoena. More

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      Trump Investigations: Where Other Notable Inquiries Stand

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      Former President Donald J. Trump faces a host of investigations around the country, at both the state and federal levels, into matters related to his business and political careers.Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts filed by prosecutors in Manhattan related to his role in what they described as a hush-money scheme to cover up a potential sex scandal in order to clear his path to the presidency in 2016. A Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.And Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the documents case, is also examining Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat at the polls in 2020 and his role in the events that led to the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Here is where notable inquiries involving the former president stand.Manhattan Criminal CaseThe Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, brought the case over Mr. Trump’s role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who was poised during the campaign to go public with her story of a sexual encounter with him.Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time, paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. Once he was sworn in as president, Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen.While paying hush money is not inherently criminal, Mr. Bragg accused Mr. Trump of falsifying records related to the payments and the reimbursement of Mr. Cohen, who is expected to serve as the prosecution’s star witness.In court papers, prosecutors also cited the account of another woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model. Ms. McDougal had tried to sell her story of an affair with Mr. Trump during the campaign and reached a $150,000 agreement with The National Enquirer.Rather than publish her account, the tabloid suppressed it in cooperation with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, prosecutors say. (Mr. Trump has denied having affairs with either Ms. Daniels or Ms. McDougal.)The case is scheduled to go to trial in March.Georgia Criminal InquiryProsecutors in Georgia recently indicated that they would announce indictments this summer in their investigation of Mr. Trump and some of his allies over their efforts to interfere with the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state.Mr. Trump and his associates had numerous interactions with Georgia officials after the election, including a call in which he urged the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find 11,780 votes” — the number he would have needed to overcome President Biden’s lead there.Legal experts say that Mr. Trump and others appear to be at “substantial risk” of prosecution for violating a number Georgia statutes, including the state’s racketeering law.A special grand jury was impaneled in May of last year in Fulton County, and it heard testimony from 75 witnesses behind closed doors over a series of months. The jurors produced a final report, but the most important elements of it — including recommendations on who should be indicted and on what charges — remain under seal.But the forewoman, Emily Kohrs, has said that indictments were recommended against more than a dozen people, and she strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was included among those names. “You’re not going to be shocked,” she said. “It’s not rocket science.”Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, will ultimately decide what charges to seek and then bring them before a regular grand jury. She recently indicated that she would do so during the first three weeks of August.Jan. 6 InquiriesA House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol spent a year and a half examining the role that Mr. Trump and his allies played in his efforts to hold on to power after his electoral defeat in November 2020.In December, the committee issued an 845-page report detailing the events that led to the attack on the Capitol that concluded that Mr. Trump and some of his associates had devised “a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”The panel also accused Mr. Trump of inciting insurrection and conspiracy to defraud the United States, among other federal crimes, and referred him and some of his allies to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.The referrals were largely symbolic, but they sent a powerful signal that a bipartisan committee of Congress believed the former president had committed crimes.Mr. Smith’s office has been conducting its own investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, building on months of work by other federal prosecutors in Washington who have also filed charges against nearly 1,000 people who took part in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The special counsel’s office has focused its attention on a wide array of schemes that Mr. Trump and his allies used to try to stave off defeat, among them a plan to create false slates of pro-Trump electors in key swing states that were won by Mr. Biden. Prosecutors under Mr. Smith have also sought information about Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising operation after the election.The special counsel’s office has recently won important legal battles in its inquiry as judges in Washington have issued rulings forcing top Trump administration officials like former Vice President Mike Pence and the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify in front of a grand jury.It is unclear what charges, if any, might come from the federal investigation. But prosecutors continue to pursue a variety of angles. They recently subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who might have been involved in firing the cybersecurity official whose agency judged the 2020 election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter.New York State Civil InquiryIn a September lawsuit, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, accused Mr. Trump of lying to lenders and insurers by fraudulently overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars.Ms. James is seeking to bar the Trumps, including Mr. Trump’s older sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, and his older daughter, Ivanka, from running a business in New York.She has already successfully requested that a judge appoint an independent monitor to oversee the Trump Organization’s use of its annual financial statements.Because Ms. James’s investigation is civil, she cannot file criminal charges. She could opt to pursue settlement negotiations in hopes of obtaining a swifter financial payout. But if she were to prevail at trial, a judge could impose steep financial penalties on Mr. Trump and restrict his business operations in New York.Ms. James’s investigators questioned Mr. Trump under oath in April, and a trial is scheduled for October.Reporting was contributed by More

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      5 Takeaways From Mike Pence’s CNN Town Hall

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      Donald Trump’s former vice president sought to draw a contrast with his old boss while also embracing the actions of their administration.Former Vice President Mike Pence capped his first full day as a formally declared presidential candidate with a CNN town hall on Wednesday night in Iowa, casting himself as an experienced, traditional conservative.But his challenges in a Republican primary field dominated by former President Donald J. Trump were evident throughout the roughly 90-minute event.Mr. Pence sought at once to align himself with Trump administration actions that were cheered by many Republicans, while drawing both explicit and oblique contrasts with Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the nomination. It is a difficult balancing act for any Republican candidate, but especially for Mr. Trump’s former vice president, who has so far gained little traction in the polls.He also sought to emerge as the leading social conservative in the race, quoting Scripture and emphasizing his opposition to abortion and transgender rights.“I’d put my arm around them and their parents, but before they had a chemical or surgical procedure I would say, ‘Wait, just wait,’” Mr. Pence said, when asked about his opposition to gender-transition care for young people even when their parents consent.Here are five takeaways:Trump’s legal troubles were a thorny topic.A number of the Republican 2024 hopefuls have struggled with how to distance themselves from Mr. Trump, who maintains a strong grip on a slice of the Republican base.Mr. Pence confronted that issue early in the town hall, when he was asked about the possibility of another indictment of Mr. Trump. Federal prosecutors have informed Mr. Trump’s legal team that he is a target of an investigation concerning his handling of classified documents after he left office.“It would be terribly divisive to the country,” Mr. Pence said, saying he “would hope” that an indictment would not go forward. “It would also send a terrible message to the wider world.”He added, “No one’s above the law,” when pressed on whether he thought prosecutors should not pursue an indictment even if they believed Mr. Trump had committed a crime. But he suggested that the situation involving Mr. Trump presented “unique circumstances here.”Asked whether, as president, he would pardon Mr. Trump if he was convicted of a crime, Mr. Pence instead shifted to speak lightheartedly about his chances in the race.“I’m not sure I’m going to be elected president of the United States,” he said. “But I believe we have a fighting chance. I really believe we do.”Mr. Pence has faced his own scrutiny over his retention of documents, but the Justice Department declined to pursue charges.He was firmer in criticizing Trump over Jan. 6.Hours before the town hall, Mr. Pence issued his sternest denunciations to date of Mr. Trump, lacing into him over his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Pence, who had helped legitimize Mr. Trump in the eyes of some conservatives in 2016 and was long his loyal lieutenant, rebuffed Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign to seek to effectively reject now-President Biden’s victory in the Electoral College. He drew threats of “Hang Mike Pence” from some in the pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol that day.During the town hall, moderated by Dana Bash, Mr. Pence again made clear that he and Mr. Trump had “a difference” in their approach to the results of the 2020 election.“That hasn’t changed,” he said. “But also there are profound differences about the future of this country, the future of the Republican Party.”Asked if he would consider pardoning those who attacked the Capitol, as Mr. Trump has suggested doing, Mr. Pence said, “I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that assaulted police officers or vandalized our Capitol. They need to be answerable to the law.”The declaration drew little audible reaction from the audience.He tied himself to key Trump administration decisions.Even as Mr. Pence highlighted areas of disagreement with Mr. Trump, he also spoke frequently about their shared time in the White House as he discussed issues as varied as immigration, abortion and the pandemic, illustrating the challenge of running on a record tied so closely to a political rival.“I couldn’t be more proud to have been vice president in an administration that appointed three of the justices that sent Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs,” he said.At another point, he said, “I’m proud of everything that we did during our administration to come alongside families and businesses in the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years.”He made frequent overtures to evangelical voters.Mr. Pence, the former governor of Indiana, is a man of deep faith, and his allies see an opening to connect with evangelical voters in Iowa, the leadoff caucus state that is home to many socially conservative voters.Mr. Pence spoke about his personal faith journey and sprinkled his remarks with references to the Bible. He also emphasized his opposition to abortion rights, pledging that “we will not rest or relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the country.”“If I have the great privilege to serve as president of the United States, I’ll support the cause of life at every level,” he said, even as he acknowledged that “we have a long way to go to win the hearts and minds of the American people.”Some Republican presidential candidates have been reluctant to give specifics on their positions regarding abortion policy, or have modulated how they approach it depending on the audience. Mr. Pence seemed eager to discuss the subject, but he faces stiff competition for the voters who are often most moved by the issue. White evangelical voters ultimately became one of Mr. Trump’s most crucial constituencies, and many other candidates, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, are competing hard to make inroads with those voters as well.He sounded at times like a pre-Trump Republican.Mr. Pence invoked former President Ronald Reagan, expressed qualms about spending and made the case for a muscular foreign policy that emphasized American leadership in the world.Throughout the night, he often sounded like a Republican candidate from the pre-Trump era.“It’s also disappointing to me that Donald Trump’s position on entitlement reform is identical to Joe Biden’s,” Mr. Pence said as he discussed the social safety net.He chided both Mr. Trump — and, more obliquely, Mr. DeSantis — for their postures toward Ukraine.“When Vladimir Putin rolled into Ukraine, the former president called him a genius,” Mr. Pence said. “I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal.”Swiping at Mr. DeSantis, he said at another point, “I know that some in this debate have called the war in Ukraine a territorial dispute. It’s not.” Mr. DeSantis, who did use that phrase, has since sought to clarify that description, also calling Mr. Putin a war criminal.And despite his own involvement in the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice overhaul during the Trump administration, Mr. Pence sounded tough-on-crime notes. “I frankly think we need to take a step back from the approach of the First Step Act,” he said.As the event wound down, Mr. Pence was pressed repeatedly on how he squared casting Mr. Trump as a threat to the Constitution with his promise to support the Republican nominee. Mr. Pence did not answer directly, insisting, “I don’t think Donald Trump’s going to be the nominee.” More

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      Mike Pence Hasn’t Grown Less Conservative, but Republicans Have Shifted

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      The polls say the former vice president, who announced his 2024 candidacy in a video on Wednesday, has little chance. But he is driven by his faith.Mike Pence is the most conservative candidate competing for the presidency. The former vice president wants abortion banned from the point of conception. He’s the only major candidate calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. And he has the most hawkish foreign policy, especially on confronting Russia.Being the most conservative used to matter in Republican presidential primaries.Not anymore.The president Mr. Pence served under, Donald J. Trump, transformed the G.O.P. electorate, making the path to a Pence presidency visible only to the truest of true believers. Mr. Pence has not really changed all that much since he was governor of Indiana less than a decade ago, but his party has. It’s the same Mike Pence but a different G.O.P., and it’s a different G.O.P. because of his former boss.The Republican Party’s intense focus on character and morality during the Bill Clinton years has been replaced by a different credo — articulated by a former Justice Department official, Jeffrey B. Clark, during a recent Twitter squabble over Mr. Trump’s fitness for office.“We’re not a congregation voting for a new pastor,” argued Mr. Clark, the one senior Justice Department official who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election. “We’re voting for a leader of the nation.”By this way of thinking, it doesn’t matter that Mr. Pence has been married only once and is so determined to honor his vows that he doesn’t allow himself to dine alone with a woman who is not his wife. Nor does it matter how many affairs Mr. Trump has had or whether he paid hush money to a porn star. Mr. Trump silences all of that, in a way, with one blunt social media post: “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade.”Mr. Pence, who announced his candidacy in a video early Wednesday, hours before a planned rally in a Des Moines suburb, is given little chance by anybody outside of his core team. Republican pollsters and strategists have written him off. Faced with Mr. Pence’s situation — being both dominated and burdened by Mr. Trump — most politicians would have concluded, after reviewing polls and focus groups, that there was no “theory of the case” for him to win the nomination.But Mr. Pence appears to have no use for statistical analysis.Mr. Pence in Des Moines on Saturday. Even in heavily evangelical Iowa, he polls around just 5 percent.Jordan Gale for The New York Times“Our country’s in a lot of trouble,” Mr. Pence says in his nearly three-minute-long announcement video, accusing “President Joe Biden and the radical left” of weakening America “at home and abroad.”Citing “runaway inflation,” a looming recession, a southern border “under siege,” unchecked “enemies of freedom” in Russia and China “on the march,” and what he calls an unprecedented assault on “timeless American values,” he promises to deliver what he says the nation sorely needs.“We’re better than this,” Mr. Pence says. “We can turn this country around. But different times call for different leadership. Today our party and our country need a leader that’ll appeal, as Lincoln said, to the better angels of our nature.”Whereas some Republican politicians use God as a talking point and have little acquaintance with the Bible, Mr. Pence makes every decision through the filter of Scripture. When he says he has prayed on a decision, he means it, and that includes running for president. Throughout his political career, according to people who have worked for him, Mr. Pence has gathered around his staff and his family in frequent prayer. If his theory of the case in this race seems to rely more on faith than data — that’s because it does.Mr. Pence served as Mr. Trump’s yes-man for three years and 11 months. In that final month, Mr. Pence refused to follow a presidential order that was plainly unconstitutional: to single-handedly overturn the 2020 election. His loyalty to the Constitution was rewarded with people in a pro-Trump mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence” as they stormed the Capitol, while Mr. Pence and his family rushed to a barely secure room.Instead of punishing Mr. Trump for how he treated Mr. Pence, Republican voters have made him their front-runner. More than 50 percent of Republicans support the former president in national polls. Mr. Pence draws around 4 percent. Even in heavily evangelical Iowa, where Mr. Pence is staking his candidacy, he polls around 5 percent.Mr. Pence and Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, began certifying the results of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, before a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol, chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. Pence has no trouble explaining his policy positions. He will run for president as a national security hawk, a staunch social conservative, a free-trader and a fiscal conservative. Nobody who knows him well doubts his sincerity on any of these issues. He may be running the least poll-tested campaign in the Republican field.The problem is that the Mike Pence known to most Republicans is a man whose job for four years was to cheer Mr. Trump through policies and actions that often contradicted his professed principles. If Mr. Pence, in a moment of introspection, wonders why the party he has long aspired to lead no longer seems interested in being led by someone like him, he may shoulder some portion of the blame himself.The Trump-Pence administration added around $8 trillion to the national debt. So much for fiscal conservatism. The Trump-Pence administration had a trade policy that, for the most part, delighted protectionist Democrats. So much for free trade. And while Mr. Trump spent his first three years in office largely listening to his more conventional national security advisers, in his final year he laid the groundwork for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan that Mr. Pence did not support.Mr. Trump’s current articulation of his “America First” foreign policy — which involves dropping U.S. support for Ukraine and musing about giving away chunks of Ukrainian land to the Russians — could not be further removed from Mr. Pence’s Reaganite vision of America defending freedom across the globe.But it’s not just Mr. Pence’s anti-populist policies that hobble him. It’s that Republican voters have sharply different expectations of their leaders than they did during Mr. Pence’s political rise as a member of Congress and then governor of Indiana.For the past seven years, Mr. Trump has trained Republican voters to value a different set of virtues in their candidates. He has trained them to value Republicans who fight hard and dirty, using whatever tactics are necessary to vanquish their opponents. He has also trained them to avert their gazes from behaviors that were once considered disqualifying.Mr. Pence averted his gaze for four years as Mr. Trump’s vice president, sticking with him through various controversies.Al Drago for The New York TimesFor four years, Mr. Pence, too, averted his gaze. He stuck with Mr. Trump through numerous controversies including the leak of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump boasted about grabbing women’s genitalia. He vouched for Mr. Trump’s character with skeptical evangelicals with whom Mr. Trump ultimately forged his own relationship.When Mr. Trump, as president, showered praise on the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, his vice president, bound by loyalty, stayed silent. Yet recently on the campaign trail, after Mr. Trump had congratulated Mr. Kim for his country’s readmission to the World Health Organization’s executive board, Mr. Pence scolded his former boss for “praising the dictator in North Korea.”Mr. Pence may finally feel liberated to tell voters what he really thinks about Mr. Trump. His problem is that most Republicans don’t want to hear it. More

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      Mark Meadows Testified to Grand Jury in Trump Special Counsel Investigation

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      Mr. Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, is seen as a potentially key witness in the documents and Jan. 6 inquiries.Mark Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under President Donald J. Trump and a potentially key figure in inquiries related to Mr. Trump, has testified before a federal grand jury hearing evidence in the investigations being led by the special counsel’s office, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Meadows is a figure in both of the two distinct lines of inquiry being pursued by the special counsel appointed to oversee the Justice Department’s scrutiny of Mr. Trump, Jack Smith.One inquiry is focused on Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, culminating in the attack by a pro-Trump mob on the Capitol during congressional certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021. The other is an investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of hundreds of classified documents after he left office and whether he obstructed efforts to retrieve them.It is not clear precisely when Mr. Meadows testified or if investigators questioned him about one or both of the cases.For months, people in Mr. Trump’s orbit have been puzzled by and wary about the low profile kept by Mr. Meadows in the investigations. As reports surfaced of one witness after another going into the grand jury or to be interviewed by federal investigators, Mr. Meadows has kept largely out of sight, and some of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he could be a significant witness in the inquiries.Mr. Trump himself has at times asked aides questions about how Mr. Meadows is doing, according to a person familiar with the remarks.Asked about the grand jury testimony, a lawyer for Mr. Meadows, George Terwilliger, said, “Without commenting on whether or not Mr. Meadows has testified before the grand jury or in any other proceeding, Mr. Meadows has maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has a legal obligation to do so.”Mr. Meadows was a polarizing figure at the White House among some of Mr. Trump’s aides, who saw him as a loose gatekeeper at best during a final year in which the former president moved aggressively to mold the government in his image.Mr. Meadows was around for pivotal moments leading up to and after the 2020 election, as Mr. Trump plotted to try to stay in office and thwart Joseph R. Biden Jr. from being sworn in to succeed him. Some of them were described in hundreds of text messages that Mr. Meadows turned over to the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol before he decided to stop cooperating. Those texts served as a road map for House investigators.But Mr. Meadows also has insight into efforts by the National Archives to retrieve roughly two dozen boxes of presidential material that officials had been told Mr. Trump took with him when he left the White House in January 2021. Mr. Meadows was one of Mr. Trump’s representatives to the archives, and he had some role in trying to discuss the matter with Mr. Trump, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Meadows is also now connected tangentially to a potentially vital piece of evidence that investigators uncovered in recent months: an audio recording of an interview that Mr. Trump gave to two people assisting Mr. Meadows in writing a memoir of his White House years.Mr. Meadows did not attend the meeting, which took place in July 2021 at Mr. Trump’s club at Bedminster, N.J. During the meeting, Mr. Trump referred to a document he appeared to have in front of him and suggested that he should have declassified it but that he no longer could, since he was out of office.That recording could undercut Mr. Trump’s claim that he believed he had declassified all material still held at his properties for months after he left office. More

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      Mike Pence Is ‘a Rebuke of Trump’s Presidency’: Our Columnists and Writers Weigh In on His Candidacy

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      As Republican candidates enter the race for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Mike Pence, the former vice president.Candidate strength averagesRon DeSantis: 6.1Tim Scott: 4.6Nikki Haley: 3.5Mike Pence: 3.0Asa Hutchinson: 2.3How seriously should we take Mike Pence’s candidacy?Frank Bruni At least a bit more seriously than the fly that colonized his coiffure during his 2020 debate with Kamala Harris did. He is polling well enough to be part of the Republican primary debates. Let’s hope that Chris Licht at CNN has an entomologist at the ready for the post-debate panel.Jane Coaston Not very.Michelle Cottle As seriously as the wet dishrag he impersonated for most of his term as V.P.Ross Douthat On paper, a former vice president known for his evangelical faith sounds like a plausible Republican candidate for president. But in practice, because of Pence’s role on Jan. 6 and his break with Donald Trump thereafter, to vote for Trump’s vice president is to actively repudiate Trump himself. So until there’s evidence the G.O.P. voters are ready for such an overt repudiation (as opposed to just moving on to another candidate), there isn’t good reason to take Pence’s chances seriously.David French Nothing signals G.O.P. loyalty to Trump more than G.O.P. anger at Mike Pence. And what sin has he committed in Republican eyes? After years of faithful service to Trump, he refused to violate the law and risk the unity of the Republic by wrongly overturning an American election. We can’t take Pence seriously until Republicans stop taking Trump seriously.Michelle Goldberg One clue to Mike Pence’s standing among Republican base voters is that many of them have made heroes out of a mob chanting “hang Mike Pence.”Nicole Hemmer On the one hand, he’s the former vice president, which has to count for something. On the other hand, a mob whipped up by the former president wanted to hang him in front of Congress, so his candidacy is a high-risk proposition.Katherine Mangu-Ward Mike Pence is a serious person. He is seriously not going to be president.Daniel McCarthy As things stand, his candidacy isn’t very serious. If calamity befalls Donald Trump, however, the former vice president could gain favor as the G.O.P. old guard’s alternative to Ron DeSantis.What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?Bruni He was Trump’s No. 2, so the fact of his candidacy is a rebuke of Trump’s presidency. He has a warm history with evangelical voters, whom he will assiduously court. And if squaring off against Trump somehow prods Pence to be more candid about what he saw at the fair, his words could theoretically wound.Coaston It is a candidacy no one wants.Cottle He’s a uniter: Everyone dislikes him.Douthat As long as he’s polling in the single digits, he matters only as a condensed symbol of the Republican electorate’s resilient loyalty to Trump. What could matter, come the debates, is that he’s the Republican with the strongest incentive to attack his former boss on character and fitness rather than just on issues — because his history with Trump sets him apart from the other non-Trump candidates, and his only possible path to the nomination involves persuading primary voters that he was right on Jan. 6 and Trump was wrong. If he sees it this way, his clashes with Trump could be interesting theater, and they might even help someone beat the former president; that someone, however, is still unlikely to be Pence himself.French Pence’s stand on Jan. 6 is defining him. In a healthy party, his integrity at that moment would be an asset. In the modern G.O.P., it’s a crippling liability.Goldberg It’s notable that Trump’s former vice president, the man chosen, in part, to reassure the Christian right, is now running against him. If Pence were willing to call out the treachery and mayhem he saw up close, it would be a useful intervention into our politics. But so far, he still seems cowed by his former boss.Hemmer In a rational world, he’d be a plausible candidate because of his strong connection to white evangelicals and time as V.P. But in this world, he’s the scapegoat for Trump’s failed effort to overthrow the 2020 election.Mangu-Ward Pence is an old-school Republican. The likely failure of his campaign will demonstrate how dead that version of the party really is. There was lots to hate about that party — including the punitive social conservatism demonstrated in his positions on abortion and gay rights — but I will confess to some nostalgia for the rhetoric of limited government and fiscal conservatism that still sometimes crosses Pence’s lips, seemingly in earnest.McCarthy His experience and calm demeanor give him a gravitas most rivals lack. He puts Governor DeSantis at risk of seeming too young to be president, even as the 44-year-old governor suggests Trump is too old.What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about his vision for America?Bruni I’m unsettled by how strongly Pence has always let his deeply conservative version of Christianity inform his policy positions. I respect people of faith, very much, but in a country with no official church and enormous diversity, he makes inadequate distinction between personal theology and public governance.Coaston He might be the most uninspiring candidate currently running.Cottle He wants to ram his conservative religious views down the nation’s throat.Douthat To the extent that Pence has a distinctive vision, it overlaps with both Nikki Haley’s and Tim Scott’s, albeit with a bit more piety worked in. Like them, he’s selling an upbeat Reaganism that seems out of step with both the concerns of G.O.P. voters and the challenges of the moment. The fact that Pence wants to revive George W. Bush’s push for private Social Security accounts is neither inspiring nor unsettling; it’s just quixotic, which so far feels like the spirit of his entire presidential run.French It’s plain that Pence wants to turn from Trumpism in both tone and in key elements of substance. He’s far more of a Reagan conservative than Trump ever was. Yet his accommodations to Trump remain unsettling even after Jan. 6. One can appreciate his stand for the Constitution while also recognizing that it’s a bit like applauding an arsonist for putting out a fire he helped start.Goldberg Pence would like to impose his religious absolutism on the entire country. As he said last year, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, “We must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land.”Hemmer Pence doesn’t stir up culture wars to win elections — he earnestly believes in a strictly patriarchal, overtly Christian version of the United States. (He was bashing Disney for suggesting women could serve in combat back when DeSantis was still in college.)Mangu-Ward Pence’s vision for America includes the peaceful transfer of power. He was willing to say these words: “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.” This shouldn’t be inspiring; it should be the bare minimum for a viable political career. But here we are.McCarthy What’s unsettling about Pence’s vision is how similar it is to George W. Bush’s. It’s a vision that substitutes moralism for realism in foreign policy and is too deferential to the Chamber of Commerce at home — to the detriment of religious liberty as well as working-class families.Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Pence candidacy?Bruni He was loyal to Trump until that would have been disloyal to democracy. No porn stars or hush money here. He has presidential hair. Even flies think so.Coaston The former governor of Indiana has some thoughts he’d like to share.Cottle He has high name recognition — and great hair.Douthat There are lots of Republicans who claimed they liked Trump’s conservative policies but didn’t like all the feuds, tweets and drama. Well, a vote for Pence is a vote for his administration’s second term, but this time drama-free.French G.O.P. voters, if you’re proud of the Trump administration’s accomplishments yet tired of Trump’s drama, Pence is your man.Goldberg Honestly, it’s not easy to come up with one, but I guess he’s qualified and he looks the part.Hemmer No one is better prepared to face down the woke mob than the candidate who survived an actual mob two years ago.Mangu-Ward Mike Pence: If he loses, he’ll admit that he lost!McCarthy Mike Pence means no drama and no disruption — a return to business as usual. Doesn’t that sound good right now?Ross Douthat, David French and Michelle Goldberg are Times columnists.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer.Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) is a member of The Times’s editorial board.Jane Coaston is a Times Opinion writer.Nicole Hemmer (@pastpunditry) is an associate professor of history and director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University and the author of “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s” and “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.”Katherine Mangu-Ward (@kmanguward) is the editor in chief of Reason magazine.Daniel McCarthy is the editor of “Modern Age: A Conservative Review.”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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      in Elections

      Atlanta Prosecutors Contact Firms That Consulted With Trump Campaign

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      The two companies were hired in 2020 to investigate voter fraud, but reported that they found no proof that significant fraud had occurred.Prosecutors in Atlanta investigating election interference by Donald J. Trump and his allies recently contacted two consulting companies that were hired by the Trump campaign in 2020 to research myriad claims of vote fraud but ended up finding no proof that significant fraud had occurred, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.Despite the findings of the two companies, Simpatico Software Systems and Berkeley Research Group, Mr. Trump continues to this day to make false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, even though no credible evidence has emerged to support that and many of his election conspiracy theories have been debunked.The interest in the companies and their work in Georgia and several other battleground states could be used by prosecutors to undercut claims by Mr. Trump and his allies that they had legitimate grievances about the election. The firms had previously been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors. The latest development regarding prosecutors in Atlanta was reported earlier by The Washington Post.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is weighing an array of potential charges against Mr. Trump, including whether he violated state laws with his post-election phone calls to state officials, including a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which Mr. Trump said he needed to “find” 11,780 votes, or one more than his margin of defeat in the state. Ms. Willis is looking into a number of other post-election moves by the Trump team, including a plan to create a slate of fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump despite President Biden’s victory in Georgia. More than half of the electors have taken immunity deals.A special grand jury that heard evidence in the case for roughly seven months recommended more than a dozen people for indictments, and its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among them. Ms. Willis will need to seek any indictments from a regular grand jury, and has indicated that she will do so in the first half of August.Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at the University of Alabama, said that Ms. Willis is probably interested in the companies’ failure to find significant fraud because it could help establish that Mr. Trump acted with criminal intent.If Ms. Willis does bring charges, Ms. Vance said, she will have to prove “that Trump knew that he lost the election and was in essence not asking them to find legitimate votes, but asking them to steal votes for him.”Both Ms. Willis’s office and the two companies declined to comment.During the House Jan. 6 committee’s proceedings last year, several Trump aides and allies testified that it was clear that there had been no fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the voting.One of the campaign’s lawyers, Alex Cannon, who was a contact point for Simpatico, told Mr. Trump’s son Eric around Thanksgiving 2020 that fraud claims coming in were largely unreliable, according to testimony Mr. Cannon gave to House investigators in their inquiry into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Asked whether Eric Trump “expressed any dismay or concern about the conclusion that you were sharing with him,” Mr. Cannon said, “I think he was dismayed. I think that’s a fair characterization.” Mr. Cannon added that more senior campaign lawyers were “not surprised” that the vast majority of claims were unfounded.By the time the slate of fake electors convened in Atlanta on Dec. 14, 2020, Mr. Trump had already lost three different counts of the vote and the state’s Republican leadership had certified the outcome.Federal prosecutors, who are conducting criminal investigations of Mr. Trump independent of the Georgia inquiry, have also been focusing on whether Mr. Trump and his aides knew that he had lost the race but continued to use bogus claims of election fraud to raise money from Trump supporters, in potential violation of federal wire fraud statutes.Ken Block, the owner of the Rhode Island-based Simpatico Software, has previously said that he received a subpoena for documents from federal prosecutors. Immediately after the election, he said, a Trump campaign adviser asked him to evaluate specific allegations of election fraud in six states — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin. Mr. Block said that his company disproved all of the allegations “and found no substantive fraud sufficient to overturn an election result.” His company was paid $735,000 for the work.Soon after hiring Simpatico, the Trump campaign hired Berkeley Research Group, a California-based consulting firm that focuses on corporate finance and investigations. A federal grand jury has received evidence that Berkeley was hired at the suggestion of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, who was overseeing the political operation.In late April, The New York Times reported that the federal grand jury had been asking questions about whether Mr. Trump was briefed on the results of the Berkeley Research investigation, which also found no evidence of widespread fraud. The company was paid about $600,000 for its work, records show. More