Presidential Election of 2020

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      6 Takeaways From the Final Jan. 6 Hearing

      by

      The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Monday concluded a year and a half of work, finding that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his associates violated federal laws, conspired against the United States and should be prosecuted.At their final meeting, the bipartisan committee of nine House lawmakers released a 160-page summary of their findings, bringing to an end the most comprehensive examination of the violence aimed at stopping the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the 46th president.The panel voted 9 to 0 to accept the final report and to urge the Justice Department to consider criminal charges against Mr. Trump and his allies in four separate areas of the law.Here are some takeaways:The committee kept its focus on Trump.The committee’s hourlong presentation focused almost exclusively on Mr. Trump, essentially ignoring findings about intelligence and security failures at the Capitol before and during the attack. The committee also did not dwell on the information it collected about the rise of domestic extremism.The focus on Mr. Trump had been telegraphed for months as the committee drafted its final report, using it primarily as a means to hold Mr. Trump to account for his actions in trying to prevent the orderly transfer of power after a presidential election. As Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a Republican and the panel’s vice chairwoman, put it: “Every president in our history has defended this orderly transfer of authority, except one.”In one place, the report laid out the facts of how Trump attempted to stay in power.The summary of the committee’s final report is a remarkable account of a president’s desperate attempt to stay in office following his election loss to Mr. Biden in 2020.While it breaks no new ground since the panel’s series of public hearings this summer, the report for the first time brings together all the facts in one place.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.The report states that even people around Mr. Trump “ultimately admitted that they lacked actual evidence sufficient to change the election result, and they admitted that what they were attempting was unlawful.”The report laid out, step by step, how Mr. Trump sought to cling to power after losing the 2020 election: first, by lying about widespread fraud, despite being told his claims were false; by organizing false slates of electors in states won by Mr. Biden by pressuring state officials, the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election; and finally, by amassing a mob of his supporters to march on the Capitol, where they engaged in hours of bloody violence while Mr. Trump did nothing to call them off.“That evidence has led to an overriding and straightforward conclusion: The central cause of Jan. 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” the report states. “None of the events of Jan. 6 would have happened without him.”During the final day of hearings, Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway were included in a projection of officials who told former President Trump that there was no election fraud.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe committee revealed new details from two top advisers: Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway.The committee revealed on Monday the investigative work it had done since the end of their previous hearings. That included the panel’s first interviews with two of the former president’s top advisers: Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway.Ms. Hicks, who served as a senior adviser in the White House, said that when she raised concerns with the former president about the actions on Jan. 6 affecting Mr. Trump’s legacy, he responded that “nobody will care about my legacy if I lose. So, that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning.”The committee also revealed testimony from Ms. Conway, who described telling Mr. Trump that Jan. 6 was a “terrible day.” She recalled him responding: “No. People are upset. They are very upset.”The events of Jan. 6 hurt Trump but did not knock him out of 2024 contention.The work of the committee over the past year has already helped to chip away at Mr. Trump’s political standing and his reputation as the nation’s 45th president. Ms. Cheney said again on Monday that Mr. Trump should never “serve in any position of authority in our nation again. He is unfit for any office.”And yet, Mr. Trump already has announced his pursuit of the presidency again, hoping to reclaim the office he falsely asserts was stolen from him. Despite a rocky campaign announcement and a swirl of potential criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump remains a central figure in the Republican Party, with strong support across the country. And he has weathered setbacks, both political and legal, before.The committee’s legacy is still an open question.The legacy of the Jan. 6 committee is now out of the panel’s hands, and will most likely be determined by federal prosecutors in the coming months. It will be up to Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to oversee investigations into Mr. Trump’s actions, to determine whether the information sent over by the committee, along with the Justice Department’s own material, warrants charging the former president with any crimes.That remains an open question. Members of the committee were firm on Monday in their belief that Mr. Trump and the people around him violated four statutes in the planning and execution of the Capitol attack. They are: obstructing or influencing an official proceeding; conspiring against the U.S. government; making false statements to the government; and engaging in insurrection against the government.Pursuing those charges, or others, against Mr. Trump would be a historic effort to hold the nation’s top official accountable for his actions. But it will be up to the special counsel, and ultimately Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, to decide whether to move forward. Other Justice Department officials will have to decide whether to charge Mr. Trump’s aides as committee members called for.Meanwhile, Republicans are already gearing up to discredit the committee when they take control of the House in January. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who is seeking to become the speaker next year, has vowed to investigate the committee’s work and has demanded that the staff and lawmakers preserve records for that purpose.The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack during the final meeting on Monday.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe committee has not been a political boon for many of its members.The end of the Jan. 6 committee is also the end of the House careers of four of the nine members of the panel.Two of them — Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, and Representative Stephanie Murphy, Democrat of Florida — decided not to run for re-election in 2022. Mr. Kinzinger faced fierce opposition from within his own party because of his frequent criticism of Mr. Trump and his decision to be part of the Jan. 6 committee.Two others — Ms. Cheney and Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia — lost their House seats in 2022. Ms. Cheney was defeated in her primary campaign in Wyoming after drawing the ire of party officials and voters for her opposition to Mr. Trump and her determination to hold him accountable for Jan. 6. Ms. Luria was defeated in the general election in Virginia.All four have said they have no regrets about serving on the committee. But it is unlikely to serve as a political steppingstone for many of its members. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      In Capitol Attack, Over 900 People Have Been Criminally Charged

      by

      Even as a House select committee prepared on Monday to recommend criminal charges in connection with a series of attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the Justice Department has not relented in its own investigation of the culmination of those efforts: the mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The inquiry into the Capitol assault is the largest criminal investigation in the department’s history and has shown no signs of slowing down. More than 900 people, from nearly every state, are now facing charges, and prosecutors have indicated that hundreds more cases could be filed.While most of the charges brought have been for petty offenses like disorderly conduct or illegally parading in the Capitol, more than 280 people have been accused of assaulting or resisting the police, including about 100 who are facing additional charges of using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing bodily injury to officers.In addition, 290 people have been charged with obstructing an official proceeding in front of Congress — the count that prosecutors have used to describe how the mob disrupted the certification of the election that was taking place at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Last week, a federal appeals court was asked to toss the charge in all of the cases by defense lawyers who claim it was improperly used.Nearly 40 defendants have gone to trial in Jan. 6-related cases, and only one of them — a former government contractor from New Mexico — has been fully acquitted. All of the trials have taken place in Federal District Court in Washington, which sits within sight of the Capitol building. In the most prominent trial so far, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, was convicted along with one of his lieutenants of seditious conspiracy.The sentences handed down by judges in the cases have varied widely. Many, if not most, of the defendants who were charged with minor crimes and pleaded guilty have faced no jail time. The stiffest sentence issued so far — a 10-year prison term — was given to a former New York City police officer who swung a metal flagpole at a Washington officer during the attack.In a separate investigation, a special counsel, Jack Smith, is examining the roles that former President Donald J. Trump and several of his allies played in seeking to overturn the results of the election. While that inquiry has many tentacles, one of the chief lines of investigation concerns an expansive plan to create false slates of electors pledged to Mr. Trump in seven key swing states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. More

    • 50 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      What Are Criminal Referrals?

      by

      Members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have suggested that they are heavily inclined to call for prosecutions of those involved in the riot and the monthslong election subversion effort that gave rise to it.Criminal referrals — essentially letters to the Justice Department laying out evidence of specific crimes — from the panel would be largely symbolic. They would hold no legal weight because Congress has no enforcement power and no formal say in what the Justice Department does. The department has been carrying out a criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including the appointment last month of a special counsel who authorized a round of subpoenas after taking over.Yet a referral would be another remarkable development in a precedent-shattering investigation by Congress of former President Donald J. Trump’s bid to nullify his defeat, and it could increase the pressure on Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to bring prosecutions.If members of the committee agreed to move forward with criminal referrals, they would be creating a road map for prosecutors, in granular detail, of how they contend Mr. Trump and his allies broke the law. The committee has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, including some of the former president’s closest confidants, and examined reams of text messages, emails and notes.Peter Navarro and Stephen K. Bannon were charged by the Justice Department after Congress referred them for prosecution — albeit under a slightly different process that involves not just a letter but a law granting lawmakers the power to refer contempt of Congress charges. Both men were charged with contempt of Congress for ignoring subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee. Mr. Bannon was convicted in July; Mr. Navarro is set to go on trial in January.Alan Feuer More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Jan. 6 Panel Will Conduct Final Hearing and Vote on Trump Referrals

      by

      The committee, which consistently broke new ground for a congressional investigation, is expected to approve its final report and vote on issuing criminal and ethics referrals against Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its last public meeting on Monday afternoon, ending an 18-month investigation with the approval of its final report and a vote on issuing criminal and ethics referrals against former President Donald J. Trump and his top allies.During a business meeting at 1 p.m., the committee is expected to discuss some of the findings in its final report and recommendations for legislative changes.The panel is also expected to vote on referring Mr. Trump to the Justice Department on charges of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to a person familiar with the matter.Referrals against Mr. Trump would not carry any legal weight or compel the Justice Department to take any action, but they would send a powerful signal that a congressional committee believes the former president committed certain crimes.The department is already conducting an investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, and the plans to overturn the 2020 election that preceded the violence. In recent weeks, federal prosecutors have issued subpoenas to officials in seven states in which the Trump campaign organized electors to falsely certify the election for Mr. Trump despite the voters choosing Joseph R. Biden Jr.A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.McCarthy’s Fraught Speaker Bid: Representative Kevin McCarthy has so far been unable to quash a mini-revolt on the right that threatens to imperil his effort to secure the top House job.Kyrsten Sinema: The Arizona senator said that she would leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent, just days after the Democrats secured an expanded majority in the Senate.A Looming Clash: Congressional leaders have all but abandoned the idea of acting to raise the debt ceiling before Democrats lose control of the House, punting the issue to a new Congress.First Gen Z Congressman: In the weeks after his election, Representative-elect Maxwell Frost of Florida, a Democrat, has learned just how different his perspective is from that of his older colleagues.In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, dismissed the committee’s planned actions on Monday as those of a “kangaroo court” that held “show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history.”Monday’s meeting will mark the end of one of the most consequential congressional committees in a generation. Over the course of a year and a half, the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, obtained more than one million documents, issued more than 100 subpoenas and held 10 public hearings that consistently drew millions of viewers.The meeting is not expected to be as long as hearings from the summer, which detailed the plot to overturn the 2020 election and featured live witnesses.In recent days, committee members have fanned out on cable television to lay the public groundwork for the vote, making it clear they were in agreement that Mr. Trump needed to be held accountable.“I think the president has violated multiple criminal laws,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “And I think you have to be treated like any other American who breaks the law, and that is, you have to be prosecuted.”Mr. Schiff detailed why he thought a charge of insurrection was appropriate.“In terms of the criminal statute, if you can prove that someone incited an insurrection — that is, they incited violence against the government, or they gave aid and comfort to those who did — that violates that law,” Mr. Schiff said. “And if you look at Donald Trump’s acts, and you match them up against the statute, it’s a pretty good match. I realize that statute hasn’t been used in a long time. But, then, when have we had a president essentially incite an attack on his own government?”The House created the Jan. 6 committee after Senate Republicans used a filibuster to defeat a proposal to create an independent commission to investigate the attack, during which more than 150 police officers were injured as pro-Trump rioters interrupted the peaceful transfer of power from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.The committee — made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans — consistently broke new ground for a congressional investigation. Staffed with more than a dozen former federal prosecutors, the panel set a new production standard for how to hold a congressional hearing. It also got significantly ahead of a parallel Justice Department investigation into the events of Jan. 6, with federal prosecutors later interviewing many of the same witnesses Congress had already spoken with.Lawmakers on the panel also believe they played a significant role in elevating the issue of threats to democracy in the minds of voters, who rejected many election deniers in the November midterms.On Monday, the panel will take another unprecedented step for a legislative body: voting on criminal referrals against a former president. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, has said the panel is considering referrals to “five or six” entities, including the Justice Department, the House Ethics Committee, the Federal Election Commission and bar associations.Among those under scrutiny from the panel are five congressional Republicans who refused to comply with the committee’s subpoenas.In addition to a vote on referrals, the panel also plans to release a portion of its eight-chapter final report into the effort to block the transition of power.The report — which contains an executive summary of more than 100 pages — roughly mirrors the presentation of the committee’s investigative hearings that drew wide viewership over the summer. Chapter topics include Mr. Trump’s spreading of lies about the election, the creation of fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states won by Mr. Biden, and the former president’s pressure campaign against state officials, the Justice Department and former Vice President Mike Pence as he sought to overturn his defeat.The committee’s report is also expected to document how Mr. Trump summoned a mob of his supporters to Washington and then did nothing to stop them as they attacked the Capitol for more than three hours. It will also include a detailed analysis of the breach of the Capitol.In terms of legislative recommendations, the panel has already endorsed overhauling the Electoral Count Act, the law that Mr. Trump and his allies tried to exploit on Jan. 6 in an attempt to cling to power. Lawmakers have also discussed changes to the Insurrection Act and legislation to enforce the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on insurrectionists holding office. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Donald Trump Faces a Week of Headaches on Jan. 6 and His Tax Returns

      by

      The House panel investigating the Capitol attack is set to release its report and may back criminal charges against the former president, while a separate committee could decide to release his tax returns.After more than five years of dramatic headlines about controversies, scandals and potential crimes surrounding former President Donald J. Trump, the coming week will be among the most consequential.On Monday, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters will hold what is almost certainly its final public meeting before it is disbanded when Republicans take over the majority in the new year.The committee’s members are expected to debate criminal referrals to the Justice Department in connection with the riot and Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power, which culminated on Jan. 6 as the pro-Trump mob tried to thwart the certification of his successor’s 2020 electoral victory. The biggest topic is whether to recommend that Mr. Trump face criminal charges.On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee will meet privately to discuss what to do with the six years of Mr. Trump’s tax returns that it finally obtained after nearly four years of legal efforts by Mr. Trump to block their release.The committee could release them publicly, which would most likely be done in the final days of Democratic control of Congress.And on Wednesday, the Jan. 6 committee is expected to release its report on the attack, along with some transcripts of interviews with witnesses.Taken together, this week will point a spotlight on both Mr. Trump’s refusal to cede power and the issue that he has most acutely guarded for decades, the actual size of his personal wealth and his sources of income.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.“Trump has spent decades avoiding transparency and evading accountability,” said Tim O’Brien, the author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.” “Now both are rushing toward him in the forms of possible tax disclosures and a criminal referral. However much he might want to downplay the significance of all of that, it’s momentous.”Any public release of his tax information would come as Mr. Trump seeks another White House bid, a time in which he’s facing multiple investigations without the immunity that the presidency gave him from indictment.The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Trump’s mishandling of presidential records and classified material, and it remains to be seen whether either he or anyone around him is charged in that case.How much new information will be disclosed this week is unclear. Over the course of more than a year and a half, through nearly a dozen public hearings, the Jan. 6 committee has used testimony and information culled from over 1,000 witnesses to present Mr. Trump as being at the center of an effort to remain in power and thwart the results of a free and fair election.The Justice Department has been conducting a simultaneous investigation but has not been working in lock step with congressional investigators.A congressional referral to the Justice Department does not obligate prosecutors to act. Nonetheless, some of Mr. Trump’s advisers are privately concerned about what the House committee will recommend.Some of Mr. Trump’s tax information is already in the possession of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, whose predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., spent years investigating Mr. Trump and his company.Mr. Trump is also facing a civil suit filed by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who has alleged a widespread practice of fraud over a decade by the former president, his children and his company. Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, helped spur that investigation with testimony before a House committee in 2019 in which he discussed how Mr. Trump, who has always fought anyone asserting he’s worth less than he claims to be, valued his properties.The New York Times has also investigated Mr. Trump’s tax returns, including information from 2020. The investigation showed that Mr. Trump paid no federal income tax for 11 of 18 years The Times examined.Mr. Trump reacted with fury to that investigation. And the possibility of a public disclosure of his tax information looms especially large for Mr. Trump, who has fiercely guarded his actual net worth and the sources of his income.For years leading up to 2016, associates in New York City predicted that, despite repeated feints about a potential campaign, he would never declare because he would have to make his financial information available.He did submit a federally required personal financial disclosure, but during the 2016 presidential campaign he refused to release his tax returns, a voluntary disclosure nearly every candidate has provided since President Richard M. Nixon. Voters had no ability to analyze where the wealthiest person ever to run for president in the United States was getting some of his money, and how much of it he sent the government in taxes.During a debate in 2016, his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, took note of the rare times that Mr. Trump had been forced to disclose his earnings and tax payments.“The only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax,” Mrs. Clinton said.Mr. Trump fired back: “That makes me smart.”Through myriad congressional and Justice Department investigations, including ones related to whether his 2016 campaign conspired with Russian officials to sway the election that year, Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked the investigations, calling them a “witch hunt.” For decades he has insisted that he is a victim whenever he faces scrutiny. Mr. Trump had the same response when his company was convicted of 17 charges of tax fraud and other financial improprieties roughly two weeks ago.But the details that could become public after this week are more consequential, Mr. O’Brien argued, as Mr. Trump prepares to woo voters for his third run for the presidency.“There’s existential consequences on the legal side and reputation and business ones on the tax side,” Mr. O’Brien said. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Justice Dept. Examines Emails from Trump Lawyers in Fake Elector Inquiry

      by

      Prosecutors have combed through more than 100,000 documents from John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Ken Klukowski, who played roles in the effort to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election.Federal prosecutors have examined more than 100,000 documents seized from the email accounts of three lawyers associated with former President Donald J. Trump in a continuing investigation into the roles they played in a wide-ranging scheme to help Mr. Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to court papers released on Friday.The material came from email accounts belonging to John Eastman, who helped devise and promote a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr., and two former Justice Department lawyers, Jeffrey Clark and Ken Klukowski, who have faced scrutiny for their own roles in the fake electors scheme, the papers say.As part of their inquiry, federal investigators in Washington obtained a search warrant for the three men’s email accounts in May and the following month seized their cellphones and other electronic devices. The court papers, unsealed by Beryl A. Howell, the chief judge in Federal District Court in Washington, revealed for the first time the extent of the emails that investigators had obtained.The court papers, which emerged from a behind-the-scenes review of the material for any that might be protected by attorney-client privilege, said little about the contents of the emails. But they noted that each of the men was in contact with a leader of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, whose own phone was seized in August as part of the investigation into the fake elector scheme.Reviewing seized materials for any that might be privileged is a common step in criminal investigations — especially in sensitive ones targeting lawyers. The review of the emails in this case occurred over the summer and was conducted by a team of prosecutors code-named “Project Coconut” that was walled off from the prosecutors running the main investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Mr. Eastman, a professor of constitutional law, has long been a focus of the Justice Department’s efforts to unravel the fake elector scheme, which involved a broad array of characters, including pro-Trump lawyers, White House aides and numerous local officials in key swing states around the country.Mr. Eastman has also been at the center of a parallel inquiry run by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which has accused him of conspiring with Mr. Trump to defraud the United States and obstruct the final certification of the 2020 election.Encouraged by Mr. Perry, Mr. Trump considered then abandoned a plan in the days before the Capitol attack to put Mr. Clark in charge of the Justice Department as acting attorney general.At the time, Mr. Clark was proposing to send a letter to state officials in Georgia falsely stating that the department had evidence that could lead Georgia to rescind its certification of Mr. Biden’s victory in that key state. The effort to send the letter was cut short by Mr. Clark’s superiors.Mr. Klukowski, who briefly served under Mr. Clark at the Justice Department and had earlier worked at the White House budget office, helped Mr. Clark draft the letter to state officials in Georgia. While working at the department, he was also in contact with Mr. Eastman, according to evidence presented by the Jan. 6 House committee.According to the newly unsealed papers, Mr. Klukowski sent Mr. Perry an email eight days after the election with a document attached titled “Electors Clause/The Legislature Option.” The document outlined an argument central to the fake elector scheme — namely, that “the Constitution makes state legislatures the final authority on presidential elections,” the court papers said.Mr. Eastman’s emails to Mr. Perry suggest that the two men traded phone calls in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6. The court papers note that Mr. Clark exchanged several emails with Mr. Perry in February 2021, after the Capitol was stormed, but the descriptions of their contents were redacted.The papers also say that investigators found a draft of Mr. Clark’s autobiography in his emails, tracing his life from “growing up deplorable in Philadelphia” to working in the Justice Department. An outlined portion of the draft provides a “detailed description” of a previously disclosed meeting that Mr. Clark had on Jan. 3, 2021, with Mr. Trump and two top Justice Department officials at which they “discussed Clark’s draft letter” to the officials in Georgia. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Jan. 6 Panel to Consider Criminal Referrals Against Trump and Allies in Final Session

      by

      The committee announced a Dec. 19 meeting to discuss its final report and consider criminal and civil referrals against the former president and key players in his plot to overturn the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans on Monday to consider issuing criminal referrals against former President Donald J. Trump and his top allies during a final meeting as it prepares to release a voluminous report laying out its findings about the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.The committee announced a business meeting scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday during which members are expected to discuss the forthcoming report and recommendations for legislative changes, and to consider both criminal and civil referrals against individuals it has concluded broke laws or committed ethical violations.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said the panel was considering referrals to “five or six” different entities, including the Justice Department, the House Ethics Committee, the Federal Election Commission and bar associations. Such referrals, which the committee is slated to approve as it adopts its report, would not carry any legal weight or compel any action, but they would send a powerful signal that a congressional committee believes that the individuals cited committed crimes or other infractions.In the case of Mr. Trump, an official finding that a former president should be prosecuted for violating the law would be a rare and unusual step for the legislative branch to take.In addition to the former president, the panel is likely to consider referring some of his allies to the Justice Department, including John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who was an architect of Mr. Trump’s efforts to invalidate his electoral defeat. The committee has argued in court that Mr. Eastman most likely violated two federal laws for his role in the scheme, including obstructing an official act of Congress and defrauding the American public.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.“Stay tuned,” Mr. Thompson told reporters this week, declining to divulge any charges or individuals who would be named. “We’re going with what we think are the strongest arguments.”The panel plans to release a portion of its eight-chapter final report into the effort to block the peaceful transfer of power from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr. The committee’s full report is scheduled for release on Wednesday. Additional attachments and transcripts will be released before the end of the year, according to a committee aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity without authorization to discuss the plans in advance..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the committee member whom Mr. Thompson tasked with studying criminal referrals, said the panel would present evidence of the alleged wrongdoing along with the names of the individuals it is referring to the Justice Department.“We are focused on key players where there is sufficient evidence or abundant evidence that they committed crimes,” Mr. Raskin said. “We’re focused on crimes that go right to the heart of the constitutional order, such that the Congress can’t remain silent.”The final report — which contains a lengthy executive summary of more than 100 pages — roughly mirrors the presentation of the committee’s investigative hearings that drew wide viewership over the summer. Chapter topics include Mr. Trump’s spreading of lies about the election, the creation of fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states won by Mr. Biden, and the former president’s pressure campaign against state officials, the Justice Department and former Vice President Mike Pence as he sought to overturn his defeat.The committee’s report is also expected to document how Mr. Trump summoned a mob of his supporters to Washington and then did nothing to stop them as they attacked the Capitol for more than three hours. It will also include a detailed analysis of the breach of the Capitol.“This report is written with some energy and precision and focus,” Mr. Raskin said, adding: “We’re all determined that this be a report that is made part of the national dialogue. We don’t want it to just sit up on a shelf.”The panel has already endorsed overhauling the Electoral Count Act, the law that Mr. Trump and his allies tried to exploit on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to cling to power. Lawmakers have also discussed changes to the Insurrection Act and legislation to enforce the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on insurrectionists holding office.“We obviously want to complete the story for the American people,” Mr. Raskin said. “Everybody has come on a journey with us, and we want a satisfactory conclusion, such that people feel that Congress has done its job.”He said the panel would also seek to address what must be done to prevent an event like the Jan. 6 attack from happening again.“That’s the heart of it,” Mr. Raskin said, “because we think there is a clear, continuing present danger to democracy today.”Stephanie Lai More

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Donald Trump Is Weak. And Powerful. Now What?

      by

      Everyone knows by now how many Trump candidates lost this year, especially the higher-profile, more hard-core ones who claimed the 2020 election was stolen. Kari Lake lost in Arizona. Doug Mastriano lost in Pennsylvania. Most of the notable pro-Trump secretary of state candidates lost. The Senate candidates, too. The Democrats even added on in Georgia on Tuesday, with the same, central animating force behind each development: that Donald Trump forced his party to run a candidate, Herschel Walker, who lost, weakening Mr. Trump and the party — a mutual descent.What everyone does not know by now is what to do with Mr. Trump’s third candidacy for president. What is this campaign? He’s a candidate without opponents, who has made less frequent public appearances since his announcement than he did before, whose party’s other notable members seem to want to move on but often still don’t really say so publicly. The 2022 incarnation of Mr. Trump is like some kind of trap: He keeps losing and forcing others to go with him, in part because of his and their nature and in part because without him, Republicans might not quite be able to win, either.Looming over every aspect of Mr. Trump’s current campaign is the simple question: Will this be like before? That has a technical, outcome-driven dimension (will he win and become president?) and a more cultural, psychological one (will he dominate American life, and will each day’s news turn on the actions and emotions of one person cascading through society?). Politics is about a lot more than just the outcomes of elections; a long time separates us from the 2024 election, and each day has the potential to influence the ones after. Something can be weak and a considerable force in politics or culture at the same time; someone can be losing and influential at the same time. These things are compatible.The country spent nearly two years hearing about voting machine conspiracies and the possibility of subversion in future elections. Voters rejected all that in many cases. What did the last two years mean for Mr. Trump and these candidates? For all of us? Nobody got anything of real value out of conspiracy theories and Trump recriminations. Not the Republicans, certainly, and that’s been the tenor of much post-election coverage and conversation — the way Mr. Trump’s choices produced certain outcomes that hurt the Republican Party.“The people that were on the crazy side, they’ve kind of been sent off to the frontier,” Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, told Semafor this week. “If you’re denying the last election or any election, I think that balloon has been popped.” Even so, it’s no great gift to the country as a whole that candidates ran for two years on suspicion about normal election practices or advancing conspiracy theories, which people heard and internalized — a more intangible result with effects harder to measure.Since Mr. Trump’s announcement for president, as you have also heard by now, he’s repeatedly demanded that the 2020 election be redone, even straight up saying that there could be a “termination” of the Constitution. Two nights before Thanksgiving, he ate dinner with a white supremacist and Kanye West, who can’t stop saying antisemitic things. These events can also be viewed through this dual dynamic of weakness and influence. In the most basic horse race political sense, Mr. Trump’s actions almost certainly hurt him; more Republicans have criticized him, and we have multiple election cycles of results suggesting that people reject his choices. This weakens him. But he still has influence, and through this one dinner, for instance, many, many people heard about an extreme racist they probably never heard about before.In 2022, even when Mr. Trump seems to be fading politically, nobody has conclusively resolved the question of how to deal with him — when to step in and when to ignore, how to measure one action against another. The central issue flows from an understanding that most people in this country seem to share, however they feel about him: Mr. Trump will not be stopped from endlessly wanting things. And he will not confine himself to the ways in which a president or public person is supposed to behave, in pursuit of this endless array of wants and needs.Faced with this uncontrollability, people fall into complex emotional dynamics of how to react to Mr. Trump — to care or not care, how to demonstrate caring, to ignore him or this or that, to never ignore it, how far to go, when to walk away, when to stay, when someone else’s silence becomes unacceptable. How is a person supposed to be? What can a single person do? What are our duties and obligations? These questions animate centuries of literature and philosophy, but Mr. Trump’s chemical mix of emotion and power turns them into an hourly concern. He will not change; you can. This is an exhausting texture of American life in this era, even now.It’s almost hard to remember what the first campaign was like, though it, too, started with a weak hand. Mr. Trump defeated a splintered field with, initially, mere pluralities of votes. And you were constantly finding out how weak American institutions were: the thinness of political belief among Republican politicians, the inability of different institutions to do anything about Mr. Trump’s candidacy, the true incentives of cable news, how game people were to go along with, for instance, an attack on Mexicans or Gold Star parents. Practically overnight, Republican and conservative groups went from opposing Mr. Trump to caving in to the reality of his candidacy to emphatically supporting him. This general dynamic repeated again and again for years.Seven years in, one of the more disorienting aspects of the Trump era is the way there’s never any sense of resolution. The entire population hangs in a kind of eternal suspense, without past or future. Since the week of Jan. 6, 2021, without Mr. Trump’s ceaseless presence on the major social platforms, things have been somewhat different. But who knows where he goes from here? He might return to Twitter. He might really be fading. He might lose to Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor. He might not accept a loss to anyone, at any point. He might be president again. Could we really revert to the full chaotic, exhausting, late-2010s immersion in Mr. Trump’s emotions?The need to know how it ends with Mr. Trump, what will happen next and how people respond to him, can obscure the current situation. And over the past year, it’s become clearer how power and weakness and influence can exist in one space and in one person. In this dark environment, Mr. Trump can lose an election and still change American life indefinitely.Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.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