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      Virginia Thomas Agrees to Interview With Jan. 6 Panel

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      The committee has sought for months to interview Ms. Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, about her involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas and a conservative activist who pushed to overturn the 2020 election, has agreed to sit for an interview with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The development could represent a breakthrough for the committee, which for months has sought to interview Ms. Thomas, who goes by Ginni, about her communications with a conservative lawyer in close contact with former President Donald J. Trump.“I can confirm that Ginni Thomas has agreed to participate in a voluntary interview with the committee,” her lawyer, Mark Paoletta, said in a statement. “As she has said from the outset, Mrs. Thomas is eager to answer the committee’s questions to clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election. She looks forward to that opportunity.”Her cooperation was reported earlier by CNN. A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.The committee requested an interview with Ms. Thomas in June, after it emerged that she had exchanged text messages with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, in which she urged on efforts to challenge Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the 2020 election. She also pressed lawmakers in several states to fight the results of the election.But it was Ms. Thomas’s interactions with John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who pushed Vice President Mike Pence to block or delay the certification of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021, that has most interested investigators.“We are specifically investigating the activities of President Trump, John Eastman and others as they relate to the Constitution and certain other laws, including the Electoral Count Act, that set out the required process for the election and inauguration of the president,” the committee’s leaders — Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming — wrote to Ms. Thomas. “The select committee has obtained evidence that John Eastman worked to develop alternate slates of electors to stop the electoral count on Jan. 6.”The panel obtained at least one email between Ms. Thomas and Mr. Eastman after a federal judge ordered Mr. Eastman to turn over documents to the panel from the period after the November 2020 election when he was meeting with conservative groups to discuss fighting the election results.That same judge has said it is “more likely than not” that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman committed two felonies as part of the effort, including conspiracy to defraud the American people.Mr. Paoletta has argued that the communications between Ms. Thomas and Mr. Eastman contain little of value to the panel’s investigation.Ms. Thomas’s cooperation comes as the Jan. 6 committee is entering its final months of work after a summer of high-profile hearings and preparing an extensive report, which is expected to include recommendations for how to confront the threats to democracy highlighted by the riot and Mr. Trump’s drive to overturn the election. Mr. Thompson, the chairman of the panel, said the next and likely final hearing would take place on Sept. 28.“We have substantial footage of what occurred that we haven’t used; we’ve had significant witness testimony that we haven’t used,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “This is an opportunity to use some of that material.” More

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      House Passes Overhaul of Electoral Count, Moving to Avert Another Jan. 6 Crisis

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      WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday took the first major step to respond to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, voting mostly along party lines to overhaul the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, the law that former President Donald J. Trump tried to exploit that day to overturn his defeat.The bill was the most significant legislative answer yet to the riot and the monthslong campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the 2020 presidential election, but it also underscored the lingering partisan divide over Jan. 6 and the former president’s continuing grip on his party.It cleared a divided House, passing on a 229 to 203 vote. All but nine Republicans opposed the measure, wary of angering Mr. Trump and unwilling to back legislation co-written by Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and a leader of the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 and what led to them.The partisan division could complicate future negotiations with the Senate, which is moving ahead with its own bipartisan version of the legislation that differs from the House bill in some significant respects. Lawmakers now say they do not expect final approval before Congress returns for a lame-duck session after the Nov. 8 midterm elections.The legislation is aimed at updating the law that governs Congress’s counting of the electoral votes cast by the states, the final step under the Constitution to confirm the results of a presidential election and historically a mostly ceremonial process. Democrats said that the aftermath of the 2020 election — in which Mr. Trump and his allies’ attempts to throw out legitimate electoral votes led to the violent disruption of the congressional count by his supporters on Jan. 6 — made clear that the statute needed to be changed.“These are common-sense reforms that will preserve the rule of law for all elections moving forward,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Rules Committee. “Time is running out before the next election.”One key provision in the bill, which is also contained in the Senate proposal, would clarify that the role of the vice president, who by law presides over the counting of the ballots in his capacity as president of the Senate, is strictly ministerial. After the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his advisers tried but failed to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to accept electoral votes from states where Trump was falsely claiming victory.The measure also would raise the threshold substantially for Congress to consider an objection to a state’s electoral votes, requiring that at least one-third of the House and Senate sign on to such a challenge, up dramatically from the one member of each chamber that is now required. The Senate proposal has a lower threshold, requiring one-fifth of the House and Senate to agree.Members of both parties have raised objections in recent elections, though none have been sustained by a majority of the House and Senate. The House bill would also more narrowly define the grounds for an objection to those with a defined constitutional basis.“Ultimately, this bill is about protecting the will of the American voters, which is a principle that is beyond partisanship,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who leads the Administration Committee and introduced the measure with Ms. Cheney. “The bottom line is if you want to object to the vote, you’d better have your colleagues and the Constitution on your side.”Passage of the bill comes as the Jan. 6 committee is wrapping up its work after a summer of high-profile hearings and preparing an extensive report, which is expected to include recommendations for how to confront the threats to democracy raised by the riot and Mr. Trump’s drive to overturn the election. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the panel, said the next and likely final hearing would take place on Sept. 28.“We have substantial footage of what occurred that we haven’t used; we’ve had significant witness testimony that we haven’t used,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “This is an opportunity to use some of that material.”The legislation was also a direct response to Mr. Trump’s efforts to orchestrate the submission of fake slates of electors in states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. It would require that states choose their electors under laws in place before the election, a provision intended to prevent states from reversing course if they do not like the result. And the bill would allow candidates to sue state officials if they failed to submit their electors or certified electors that did not match the election results..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-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs 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;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.It also would lay out the circumstances in which a federal judge could extend an election following a catastrophe and force election officials to count ballots or certify an election if they refused to do so.Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, sponsored the bill along with Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California.Kim Raff for The New York TimesRepublicans said the legislation represented a renewed Democratic attempt to exert more federal control over elections that are usually the responsibility of state officials and courts.Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, called it “another attempt to federalize elections at the expense of states.” Other Republicans accused Democrats of rushing the legislation to the floor without review by the appropriate committees or engaging Republicans.They also accused Democrats of using the bill to take aim at Mr. Trump, portraying the legislation as an extension of the work of the special committee investigating Jan. 6, which most House Republicans denounce as a partisan exercise aimed at blaming Mr. Trump for the assault on the Capitol.“This is nothing more than an attack on President Trump and the 2020 election, an attack on a man who has not been in office for nearly two years,” said Representative Guy Reschenthaler, Republican of Pennsylvania.Lawmakers said the legislation’s close association with Ms. Cheney led House Republicans to abandon it in large numbers. Her aggressive criticism of Mr. Trump prompted Republicans to remove her from a party leadership position in May last year, and she lost her re-election primary last month.But Ms. Cheney noted strong support for the measure from conservative jurists and analysts and called on Republicans to embrace it.“If your aim is to prevent future efforts to steal elections, I would respectfully request that conservatives should support this bill,” she said on the House floor. “If instead your aim is to leave open the door for elections to be stolen in the future, you might decide not to support this or any other bill to address the Electoral Count Act.”Leaders of the bipartisan group behind the Senate bill, which was made public in July, were surprised by the sudden House action on the legislation just days after it was introduced and after months with few details on how the House was proceeding. Backers of the Senate bill said the House approach could lead to more election lawsuits, a prospect that could increase Republican opposition. But they remained hopeful the bills could be reconciled.“We can work together to try to bridge the considerable differences,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and one of the chief authors of the Senate bill. “But it would have been better if we had been consulted prior to the House sponsors deciding to drop their bill.”The Senate Rules Committee is scheduled to consider that chamber’s version next week. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the panel, is preparing a new version that incorporates changes sought by election experts and other lawmakers in hopes of enhancing its chances of approval. The legislation so far has at least 10 Republican backers, meaning it could overcome a G.O.P. filibuster if all Democrats supported it.Despite the differences, supporters of the legislation said it needed to become law.“Failure is not an option,” said Representative Pete Aguilar of California, a member of the Democratic leadership and the Jan. 6 panel. “We’ve got to put a piece of reform on the president’s desk. We’ve got to protect democracy.”Luke Broadwater More

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      ¿Cuáles son las seis investigaciones que enfrenta Trump?

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      Sin el poder de la presidencia, el exmandatario enfrenta a una multitud de fiscales y abogados que lo investigan a él y a sus asociados.WASHINGTON — La oficina que el expresidente Donald Trump instaló en el segundo piso de su propiedad de Mar-a-Lago, en Florida, en parte es una réplica del Despacho Oval y también es un homenaje a su paso por la verdadera Casa Blanca.Durante una visita el año pasado, sobre la pared se veían seis de sus fotografías favoritas, incluidas aquellas donde aparece con la reina Isabel II y Kim Jong-un. También se podían ver algunas monedas de membresía, una placa conmemorativa de su muro fronterizo y un retrato del expresidente hecho con casquillos de bala, regalo de Jair Bolsonaro, a quien llaman el Trump de Brasil.Esa oficina se ha convertido en la fortaleza de Trump en el exilio y en su sala de guerra, el cuartel general del extenso conflicto con las investigaciones que ha llegado a consumir la etapa posterior a su presidencia. Se trata de una guerra en varios frentes, con campos de batalla en Nueva York, Georgia y la capital del país, con una lista cambiante de abogados y una ventisca de acusaciones de irregularidades que son difíciles de seguir.Nunca antes un expresidente se había enfrentado a un conjunto de investigaciones federales, estatales y del Congreso tan amplio como el de Trump, quizá son las consecuencias de una carrera empresarial y, al final, política que ha vivido al límite o tal vez por encima de cualquier límite. Ya sea en relación con sus prácticas empresariales engañosas, sus esfuerzos por anular unas elecciones democráticas o su negativa a entregar documentos gubernamentales confidenciales que no le pertenecían, los diversos problemas jurídicos de Trump se derivan de la misma sensación de que las normas que los demás deben cumplir no aplican para él.El relato de cómo llegó a este punto es único en la historia y bastante predecible. Desde hace medio siglo, Trump ha evadido investigaciones y problemas legales, desde que el Departamento de Justicia demandó a su empresa familiar por discriminación racial y a través de las innumerables investigaciones que le siguieron a lo largo de los años. Cuenta con un notable historial de esquivar los peores resultados, pero es posible que ahora esté enfrentando tantas investigaciones que la salida sea incierta.Su visión del sistema legal siempre ha sido transaccional: es un arma para ser utilizada, ya sea por él o en su contra, y rara vez se ha sentido intimidado por las citaciones y declaraciones juradas que conmocionarían a cualquier persona menos acostumbrada a los litigios. En el aspecto civil, ha estado involucrado en miles de juicios con socios comerciales, proveedores y otros, muchos de los cuales lo demandaron porque se negó a pagar sus cuentas.Mientras era presidente, una vez explicó su visión del sistema legal a algunos colaboradores, diciendo que acudiría a los tribunales para intimidar a los adversarios porque solo amenazar con demandar no era suficiente.“Cuando amenazas con demandar, no hacen nada”, le dijo Trump a sus asistentes. “Dicen: ‘¡Psshh!’. Y siguen haciendo lo que quieren”, afirmó mientras agitaba su mano en el aire. “Pero, cuando los demandas, dicen: ‘¡Oooh!’, y se conforman. Es tan fácil como eso”, dijo con una mueca.Cuando, siendo presidente, comenzó a perder batallas jurídicas con regularidad arremetió contra el sistema de justicia. En un momento dado, cuando el Tribunal de Apelaciones del 9º Circuito, un tribunal liberal por tradición con sede en California, falló en contra de una de sus políticas, exigió a sus asesores que se deshicieran del tribunal. “Cancelémoslo”, dijo, como si se tratara de un acto de campaña y no de un sistema judicial establecido por ley. Si para ello es necesario redactar una legislación, que se haga un proyecto de ley para “deshacernos” de los jueces, dijo, utilizando un improperio.Pero sus asistentes lo ignoraron y ahora que no tiene el poder de la presidencia debe enfrentarse a una serie de fiscales y abogados que lo tienen a él, y a sus socios, en la mira. Algunas de las cuestiones son añejas, pero muchas de las semillas de su actual peligro jurídico se plantaron en los frenéticos últimos días que pasó en el cargo, cuando trató de anular la voluntad de los electores y aferrarse al poder mediante una serie de mentiras sobre un fraude electoral inexistente.Es bastante comprensible que muchos estadounidenses hayan perdido el hilo de todas las investigaciones en medio del torbellino de mociones, audiencias y sentencias de las últimas semanas. Pero, en esencia, son estas.Estado de Nueva YorkMucho antes de llegar a la presidencia, se puede decir que Trump, en muchos sentidos, se tomaba a la ligera sus negocios. La pregunta es si violó la ley de alguna manera. Durante años, según sus propios socios, infló el valor de varias propiedades para obtener préstamos.Durante más de tres años, Letitia James, la fiscala general del estado de Nueva York, ha analizado sus prácticas comerciales para determinar si constituyeron fraude. Cuando citó a Trump para que testificara, él invocó más de 400 veces el derecho que otorga la Quinta Enmienda para no responder preguntas con base en que sus respuestas podrían incriminarlo.Trump ha atacado a James con el argumento de que es una demócrata partidista que lo persigue por motivos políticos. Durante su candidatura de 2018, ella criticó a Trump sin rodeos, dijo que era un “presidente ilegítimo” y sugirió que los gobiernos extranjeros canalizaron dinero a las propiedades inmobiliarias de su familia, lo que caracterizó como un “patrón y práctica de lavado de dinero”.Hace poco, los abogados de Trump trataron de llegar a un acuerdo en el caso, lo que podría indicar la preocupación que sienten por su riesgo jurídico, pero James rechazó su oferta. Debido a que su investigación es civil, y no penal, ella tendría que decidir si sus hallazgos justifican una demanda en la que se acuse de fraude al expresidente.ManhattanLa fiscalía de distrito de Manhattan, ahora a cargo de Alvin L. Bragg, se ha ocupado de algunos de esos asuntos como parte de una investigación penal y está a punto de llevar a juicio a partir del 24 de octubre a la Organización Trump, la empresa familiar del expresidente, por cargos de fraude y evasión fiscal.Allen H. Weisselberg, el director de finanzas de toda la vida de la Organización Trump, se declaró culpable de 15 delitos graves y admitió que se asoció ilegalmente con la empresa para implementar un plan con la finalidad de evadir impuestos sobre lujosas prebendas. Como parte de su acuerdo de culpabilidad, Weisselberg está obligado a testificar en el próximo juicio. Pero Trump no es acusado en ese juicio y Weisselberg se negó a cooperar con la investigación más extensa.Allen Weisselberg, quien durante mucho tiempo fue el director financiero de la Organización Trump, se declaró culpable de 15 delitos graves relacionados con su trabajo en la empresa.Jefferson Siegel para The New York TimesPero después de que Bragg asumió el cargo en enero, le dijo al equipo que trabajaba en la investigación que estaba escéptico ante la posibilidad de que tuvieran pruebas suficientes para condenar al propio Trump. Eso hizo que los dos fiscales que dirigían la investigación renunciaran, y uno dijo en su carta de renuncia que el expresidente era “culpable de numerosos delitos graves” y que era “una grave falta de justicia” no hacerlo responsable.GeorgiaEl 2 de enero de 2021, Trump se puso en un posible riesgo jurídico en el estado de Georgia cuando llamó a Brad Raffensperger, el secretario de Estado, y le exigió “encontrar 11.780 votos”, los suficientes para cambiar el resultado y arrebatarle el estado a Joe Biden. Durante la llamada, Trump le advirtió a Raffensperger, quien es republicano, que enfrentaba un “gran riesgo” si no lograba encontrar esos votos, una amenaza implícita que el georgiano desafió.Los aliados de Trump también intentaron presionar a los funcionarios estatales para que cambiaran los resultados y, como hicieron en otros estados clave que ganó su opositor, trataron de armar una lista de electores falsos para enviarlos a Washington para que votaran en el Colegio Electoral a favor del presidente derrotado en lugar de Biden, que ganó el voto popular en Georgia.Fani T. Willis, la fiscala de distrito del condado de Fulton, inició una amplia investigación y presionó para obtener la declaración del senador republicano de Carolina del Sur Lindsey Graham e informó a Rudy Giuliani, el abogado del expresidente, que también es parte de su investigación.Willis parece estar construyendo un posible caso de asociación delictiva para cometer fraude electoral o chantaje mediante un esfuerzo coordinado para socavar las elecciones. Además de Giuliani, se ha informado a múltiples aliados del expresidente que también se les investiga, incluido el presidente del partido estatal y los miembros de la lista de electores falsos.Trump ha subestimado a Willis, una demócrata que fue elegida en la misma votación de 2020 en la que él perdió, diciendo que su investigación es, en palabras de un portavoz el año pasado, “simplemente el último intento de los demócratas para sumar puntos políticos al continuar con su cacería de brujas contra el presidente Trump”.CongresoLa Comisión de la Cámara de Representantes que investiga el ataque al Capitolio del 6 de enero de 2021, compuesta por siete demócratas y dos republicanos, ha hecho más por exponer un posible caso penal contra Trump en el espacio público que cualquiera de las personas que investigan al expresidente.En su serie de audiencias celebradas a lo largo del verano, que podrían reanudarse el 28 de septiembre, los asesores de Trump rindieron testimonio e indicaron que se le informó en varias ocasiones que las elecciones de 2020 no habían sido robadas, que lo que estaba diciendo a la opinión pública no era cierto, que no había fundamentos para impugnar el resultado e incluso que la multitud que convocó el 6 de enero incluía a algunas personas armadas.La comisión documentó los amplios esfuerzos de Trump para aferrarse al poder: cómo presionó no solo a Raffensperger, sino a funcionarios en varios estados para que cambiaran los resultados, cómo contempló declarar la ley marcial y apoderarse de máquinas electorales, cómo trató de obligar al Departamento de Justicia para que interviniera aun cuando se le dijo que no había motivos, cómo conspiró con aliados del Congreso para llevar electores falsos a la votación del Colegio Electoral y en última instancia cómo trató de obligar a su propio vicepresidente a bloquear la victoria de Biden.La comisión no tiene facultades para iniciar un proceso judicial, pero acudió a los tribunales para hacer cumplir citatorios para testificar e hizo que el Departamento de Justicia emitiera cargos por desacato al Congreso en contra de Steve Bannon y Peter Navarro, dos exaliados de Trump. Bannon fue condenado y espera su sentencia; Navarro solicitó al tribunal que desestimara su caso.Sin embargo, aunque los legisladores no pueden acusar a Trump, están debatiendo si deben recomendar al Departamento de Justicia que lo haga. Eso tiene poco significado sustantivo, pero incrementaría la importancia del fiscal general Merrick Garland.Fani T. Willis, la fiscala de distrito del condado de Fulton, ha hecho una amplia investigación.Nicole Craine para The New York TimesStephen Bannon, exasesor de Trump, fue declarado culpable de desacato al Congreso.Jefferson Siegel para The New York TimesEl 6 de eneroEn muchos sentidos, Garland sigue siendo el mayor misterio a medida que Trump busca obstaculizar a los investigadores. Garland, un exfiscal y juez de apelación ecuánime y bastante respetado, no ha dicho mucho para dar pistas, pero es evidente que su departamento está siguiendo múltiples líneas en su investigación sobre lo que ocurrió antes del 6 de enero y ese día.El departamento ha entrevistado o llevado ante un gran jurado a exasistentes de la Casa Blanca, como Pat A. Cipollone y Marc Short; también incautó los teléfonos o dispositivos electrónicos de aliados de Trump como John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark y Mike Lindell y hasta de un miembro del Congreso y en fechas recientes envió cerca de 40 citatorios a exasesores de la Casa Blanca, entre los cuales se encuentran Stephen Miller y Dan Scavino, además de otros personajes cercanos al expresidente.Tras pasar buena parte de los últimos 18 meses procesando a cientos de seguidores de Trump que ingresaron por la fuerza al Capitolio, parece que el equipo de Garland está analizando varios ángulos, incluido el plan de los electores falsos, la operación de recaudación de fondos de Trump mientras promovía afirmaciones falsas sobre el fraude electoral y la intervención del presidente mismo para tratar de anular las elecciones.Lo que no está claro es si Garland ya tiene una teoría del caso. Si bien las citaciones indicaban que los investigadores estaban analizando, entre otras cosas, los intentos de “obstruir, influir, impedir o retrasar” la certificación de las elecciones presidenciales, el departamento aún tiene que acusar a las personas cercanas a Trump y, por lo tanto, no ha presentado ninguna conclusión legal sobre las acciones tomadas por su oficina.Una persona que aún no sabe si será citada es el mismo Trump, pero sigue siendo una posibilidad. Con el fin de prepararse para el día en que los investigadores se presenten en su puerta, Trump ha estado buscando abogados que lo representen, ya que muchos de sus abogados anteriores ya no quieren involucrarse con él o tienen que enfrentar sus propios problemas legales.Los documentos clasificadosComo si Trump ya no estuviese expuesto a suficientes problemas jurídicos por los sucesos acaecidos durante sus últimos días en el cargo, al irse de la Casa Blanca tomó decisiones que también le han causado problemas.La última amenaza para el expresidente se deriva de su insistencia en llevarse a casa miles de documentos propiedad del gobierno, incluidos cientos que están marcados con varias designaciones de clasificado, además no los devolvió todos cuando se lo pidieron.El equipo de Garland ha indicado en documentos judiciales que no solo está analizando los cargos penales relacionados con el mal manejo de documentos clasificados, sino, además, la obstrucción de la justicia. Un abogado de Trump firmó un documento que afirmaba que su cliente había devuelto todos los documentos clasificados en su poder, lo cual se comprobó que era falso cuando los agentes del FBI allanaron Mar-a-Lago y encontraron cajas de esos documentos. Los investigadores indicaron que los archivos tal vez fueron escondidos y los cambiaron de ubicación en vez de entregarlos.En el caso de los documentos, la estrategia jurídica de Trump se parece al método que ha empleado a lo largo de los años: encontrar maneras de retrasar y despistar a sus adversarios. Al convencer a una jueza federal, a la que confirmó en el puesto durante los últimos días de su presidencia, para que impidiera que los investigadores usaran los documentos recuperados mientras los analiza un inspector especial, les ató las manos a los fiscales por el momento.Pero eso puede no durar para siempre. La semana pasada dijo que “no me puedo imaginar ser acusado”, pero admitió que “siempre es una posibilidad” porque los fiscales están “simplemente enfermos y trastornados”. Y afirmó que desclasificó los papeles que tomó, aunque no hay registro de eso.Pero su estrategia real es clara: esta es una batalla tanto política como legal, y advirtió sombríamente que habría “grandes problemas” si lo acusaban porque sus partidarios, “simplemente no lo soportarían”.Cuando el locutor de radio Hugh Hewitt le dijo que sus críticos interpretarían eso como incitar a la violencia, Trump dijo: “Eso no es incitar. Solo digo mi opinión. No creo que la gente de este país lo toleraría”.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe de la Casa Blanca y ha cubierto a los últimos cinco presidentes para el Times y The Washington Post. Es autor de siete libros, el más reciente The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, coescrito con Susan Glasser, que se publicará en septiembre. @peterbakernyt • Facebook More

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      Inside the Completely Legal G.O.P. Plot to Destroy American Democracy

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      Glenn Youngkin Is Playing a Dangerous Game

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      It’s obvious. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor of Virginia, wants to be president.Within months of taking office, Youngkin had already established two political organizations, Spirit of Virginia and America’s Spirit, meant to raise his profile in national Republican politics with donations and assistance to candidates both in his home state and across the country. In July, he met privately with major conservative donors in New York City, underlining the sense that his ambitions run larger than his term in Richmond.Youngkin, a former private equity executive, is on a tour of the country, speaking and raising money for Republican candidates in key presidential swing states. And as he crisscrosses the United States in support of the Republican Party, Youngkin is neither avoiding Donald Trump nor scorning his acolytes; he’s embracing them.In Nevada last week, Youngkin stumped for Joe Lombardo, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for governor who acknowledges that President Biden won the election but says he is worried about the “sanctity of the voting system.” In Michigan, Youngkin stumped for Tudor Dixon, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for governor who has repeatedly challenged the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. And later this month, in Arizona, Youngkin will stump for Kari Lake, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for governor who accused Democrats of fraud in the state and says that unlike Gov. Doug Ducey, she “would not have certified” the 2020 election results.Whether Youngkin agrees with any of this himself is an open question. In the 2021 Virginia Republican primary, he flirted with election denialism but never fully committed. What matters, for our purposes, is that Youngkin believes he needs to cater to and actually support election questioners and deniers to have a shot at leading the Republican Party.You can sense, in conversations about the present and future of the Republican Party, a hope that there is some way to force the party off its current, anti-democratic path. You could see it in the outrage over Democratic Party “meddling” in Republican primaries. As the conservative columnist Henry Olsen wrote for The Washington Post in July, “True friends of democracy would seek to build new alliances that cross old partisan boundaries.”What Youngkin — a more polished and ostensibly moderate Republican politician — aptly demonstrates is that this is false. The issue is that Republican voters want MAGA candidates, and ambitious Republicans see no path to power that doesn’t treat election deniers and their supporters as partners in arms.There is an analogy to make here to the midcentury Democratic Party, which was torn between a liberal, Northern, pro-civil rights faction and a reactionary, Southern, segregationist faction. The analogy is useful, not because the outcome of the struggle is instructive in this case, but because the reason the liberal faction prevailed helps illustrate why anti-MAGA Republicans are fighting a losing battle.In 1948, the mayor of Minneapolis — 37-year-old Hubert Humphrey — called on the hundreds of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia to add a strong civil rights plank to the party’s national platform. “To those who say we are rushing this issue of civil rights,” Humphrey said, “I say to them we are 172 years late.”“The time has arrived for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights,” Humphrey added.As the historian Michael Kazin notes in “What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party,” both “the speech and the ebullient, and quite spontaneous, floor demonstration that followed helped convince a majority of delegates — and President Truman, reluctantly — to include the civil rights pledge in the platform.”But there were dissenters. A small number of Southern delegates left the convention in protest. Calling themselves the States’ Rights Democratic Party, they organized a challenge to Truman with Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina at the top of their ticket.These “Dixiecrats” were anti-civil rights and, for good measure, anti-labor. “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race, the constitutional right to choose one’s associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one’s living in any lawful way,” reads the States’ Rights Democratic platform, unanimously adopted at their convention in Oklahoma City the next month. We favor, they continued, “home-rule, local self-government and a minimum of interference with individual rights.”Of course, this meant the maintenance of Jim Crow, the subversion of the constitutional guarantees embedded in the 14th and 15th Amendments, and the continued domination of Black Americans by a tyrannical planter-industrial elite.From its inception in the late 1820s as the movement to elect Andrew Jackson president, the Democratic Party relied on the Solid South to win national elections. Now it had a choice. Democrats could reject their new civil rights plank, accommodate the Dixiecrats and fight with a unified front against a hungry and energetic Republican Party, shut out of power since Herbert Hoover’s defeat in 1932. Or they could scorn the so-called States’ Rights Democrats and run as a liberal party committed to equal rights and opportunity for all Americans.They chose the latter and changed American politics forever. And while much of this choice was born of sincere belief, we also should not ignore the powerful force of demographic change.From 1915 to 1965, more than six million Black Americans left their homes in the agrarian South to settle in the cities of the industrial North, from New York and Chicago to Philadelphia and Detroit and beyond.Their arrival marked the beginning of a tectonic shift in American political life. “The difference in laws between the North and the South created a political coming-of-age for Black migrants,” the political scientist Keneshia N. Grant writes in “The Great Migration and the Democratic Party: Black Voters and the Realignment of American Politics in the 20th Century.” “Seeing political participation as a badge of honor and hallmark of success in northern life, migrants registered to vote in large numbers. Northern parties and candidates worked to gain Black support through their election campaigns, and the parties expected Black voters to turn out to vote for their nominees on Election Day.”For a Democratic Party whose national fortunes rested on control of urban machines, Black voters could mean the difference between four years in power and four years in the wilderness. With the rise of Franklin Roosevelt, who won an appreciable share of the Black vote in the 1932 presidential election, Northern Democratic politicians began to pay real attention to the interests of Black Americans in cities across the region.By 1948, most Black Americans who could vote were reliable partners in the New Deal coalition, which gave liberals in the Democratic Party some of the political space they needed to buck Jim Crow. Yes, the Dixiecrats would withdraw their support. But for every white vote Harry Truman might lose in Alabama and Mississippi, there was a Black vote he might gain in Ohio and California, the two states that ultimately gave him his victory over the fearsome former prosecutor (and New York governor) Thomas Dewey.Not only did the Dixiecrat rebellion fail; it also demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that Democrats could win national elections without the Solid South. The segregationists were weaker than they looked, and over the next 20 years the Democratic Party would cast them aside. (And even then, with the Dixiecrat exodus, Truman still won most of the states of the former Confederacy.)There is no equivalent to northern Black voters in the Trumpified Republican Party. Put differently, there is no large and pivotal group of Republicans who can exert cross-pressure on MAGA voters. Instead, the further the Republican Party goes down the rabbit hole of “stop the steal” and other conspiracy theories, the more it loses voters who could serve to apply that pressure.In a normal, more majoritarian political system, this dynamic would eventually fix the issue of the MAGA Republican Party. Parties want to win, and they will almost always shift gears when it’s clear they can’t with their existing platform, positions and leadership.The problem is that the American political system, in its current configuration, gives much of its power to the party with the most supporters in all the right places. Republicans may have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, but key features in the system — equal state representation in the Senate, malapportionment in the House of Representatives and winner-take-all distribution of votes in the Electoral College (Nebraska and Maine notwithstanding) — gives them a powerful advantage on the playing field of national politics.To put it in simple terms, Joe Biden won the national popular vote by seven million ballots in the 2020 presidential election, but if not for roughly 120,000 votes across four states — Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Donald Trump would still be president.Which is all to say that someone like Glenn Youngkin is only doing what makes sense. To make MAGA politics weak among Republican politicians, you have to make MAGA voters irrelevant in national elections. But that will take a different political system — or a vastly different political landscape — than the one we have now.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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      Perfectly Reasonable Question: Can We Trust the Polls?

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      Polling error is not inevitable, and there are signs that 2022 may be different.Pollsters are setting sail yet again this year. Is it a little scary? Yes. Adam Dean for The New York TimesLast Monday, I wrote about the early “warning signs” in this year’s Senate polling. Then three days later, I helped write up the results of a new national survey: a New York Times/Siena College poll showing Democrats up by two percentage points in the generic ballot among registered voters.If you thought that was a touch contradictory, you’re not alone. One person tweeted: “Didn’t you just write that the polls are an illusion? Why should we believe this one?”It’s a perfectly fair question, and it’s one I encounter regularly: Should I believe these polls — or not? It’s also a surprisingly complicated question to answer.This may sound obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: We believe our polls provide valuable information about voters and the state of the election. These polls are time-consuming, expensive and stressful, with considerable mental health and reputational costs when they wind up “wrong.” We would not be making this effort if we believed they were doomed to be useless.There are warning signs, yes — and we’ll track them in this newsletter. I do not think you should unquestioningly “believe” polls, at least not in the sense that you “believe” figures from an encyclopedia. Polls are not exact measurements, like the diameter of the Earth or the speed of light. They are imprecise estimates — and even the classic margin of error seriously understates the actual degree of uncertainty.But despite all the limitations, a 2020 polling error is not inevitable, either. In fact, our most recent survey showed some small signs of encouragement that 2022 polls may not be like those of 2020.Polling errors at seaI spent a week on a lake in Ontario last month, so forgive me for analogizing polling failures to a different kind of catastrophe: a boat capsizing in a violent storm.Like a rickety boat in a storm, the polling error in the last cycle required both difficult conditions — whether it’s rough waves or the lower likelihood that Trump voters participate in surveys — and a polling vessel that simply couldn’t handle the adversity.Nonetheless, we’re setting sail yet again this year.Is it a little scary? Yes. We pollsters are stuck with the same boats that flipped last time. We would like to buy something sturdier, but there isn’t anything better on the market. That’s not to say that we aren’t making changes, but many of our best ideas are the equivalent of tightening the screws and patching holes. Even with such changes, we can’t be confident that our ships today will withstand the storm we experienced in 2020.But are we doomed? No. For example, there’s a credible theory that the pandemic contributed to polling error, as safety-conscious liberals were more likely to be home during lockdowns (and answered telephone calls) while conservatives went out and lived their lives. With the lockdowns over, those tendencies may be, too.There’s also a credible theory that Donald J. Trump himself is an important factor. If so, polling could be more “normal” with him off the ballot.What you’ve read to this point is the nautical version of an analysis written by Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, who argued that the polls may not be wrong this fall. Although the piece is sort of framed as a rebuttal to mine, I don’t really disagree with any of it. Consider it recommended reading.A favorable data point from our most recent poll: response rates by partyThere’s one big difference between polling after 2020 and setting sail the day after a storm: The sailor can probably find a weather forecast.We don’t get poll error warnings, but last week’s newsletter pointed to something about as close as it gets: surprising Democratic strength in exactly the same places where the polls overestimated Democrats last time. If you’ll permit this metaphor to continue, it’s an ominous cloud on the horizon. Dark clouds don’t necessarily mean there will be a fierce storm, but if there were going to be a storm, we’d see some dark clouds first. Similarly, this pattern in the state polling is exactly what we would expect to see if the polls were going to err in the same way they did two years ago.This week, I can report a new measurement of the conditions facing pollsters: whether Democrats or Republicans were likelier to respond to our latest Times/Siena survey.I wasn’t systematically tracking this in fall 2020 — this data is not always easy to collect and process, especially with everything else going on. But if I had been tracking the response by party, it would have been another warning sign.Looking back at our data from September and October 2020, white Democrats were 20 percent likelier to respond to Times/Siena polls than white Republicans. This disparity most likely betrayed a deeper problem: Trump voters, regardless of party, were less likely to respond to our polls.On this front, I have good news: The response rate by party is more balanced so far this cycle. In the national poll we released last week, white Democrats were only 5 percent likelier to complete the survey than white Republicans. That’s back down near the level of our October 2019 polling, when our early survey of a projected Biden-Trump contest came eerily close to the final result among likely voters. In those battleground state polls, white Democrats were 6 percent likelier to respond than Republicans, compared with a 23 percent gap in the fall 2020 polling of those same states.This is a good sign. Maybe — just maybe — our poll last week was closer to the mark than polls have been in recent cycles.But what if it’s wrong anyway?Still, it’s worth imagining what might happen if the polls are off again by the same 2020 margin.Republicans would have been the ones leading our poll last week by two points among registered voters, instead of Democrats. It would certainly be a different race, but the story might not read very differently. We’d probably still characterize the contest as fairly competitive at the outset of a general campaign. That’s a little different than in 2020, when a four-point error made the difference between a Biden landslide and a fairly competitive race.If you think about it, there are a lot of cases when a 2020-like polling error can be quite tolerable. Does it make a huge difference whether 46 percent or 50 percent of Americans think the economy is good or excellent rather than poor or bad? What about whether Mr. Trump is at 54 percent or 58 percent in an early test of the 2024 primary? In contrast, polls of close partisan elections can be extremely sensitive: whether Mr. Biden has 46 percent or 50 percent of the vote could be the difference between a decisive eight-point victory or a clear victory for Mr. Trump, given the recent skew of the Electoral College.And it’s also worth noting that the polls contain valuable information, even when they miss on the horse race. In 2016, for instance, the pre-election polls showed Mr. Trump’s huge gains among white voters without a college degree.And last cycle, they showed Mr. Trump’s gains among Hispanics. These trends uncovered by polls continue to have import. If you missed it over the weekend, my colleagues analyzed the results of our poll that focused on Hispanics, in this article, based on these cross-tabs. More

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      Videos Show Trump Allies Handling Georgia Voting Equipment

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      The footage raises new questions about efforts by Trump affiliates in a number of swing states to gain access to and copy sensitive voting software after the 2020 election.Newly released videos show allies of former President Donald J. Trump and contractors who were working on his behalf handling sensitive voting equipment in a rural Georgia county weeks after the 2020 election.The footage, which was made public as part of long-running litigation over Georgia’s voting system, raises new questions about efforts by Trump affiliates in a number of swing states to gain access to and copy sensitive election software, with the help of friendly local election administrators. One such incident took place on Jan. 7 of last year, the day after supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol, when a small team traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga.The group included members of an Atlanta-based firm called SullivanStrickler, which had been hired by Sidney Powell, a lawyer advising Mr. Trump who is also a conspiracy theorist.“We are on our way to Coffee County, Ga., to collect what we can from the election/voting machines and systems,” one of the company’s executives, Paul Maggio, wrote Ms. Powell on that January morning. Weeks later, Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area Trump supporter and bail bondsman who also traveled to Coffee County, said “we scanned every freaking ballot” in a recorded phone conversation.Mr. Hall said the team had the blessing of the local elections board and “scanned all the equipment, imaged all the hard drives and scanned every single ballot.”A nonprofit group that is suing over perceived security vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voting system released the new videos after obtaining them in its litigation.Coffee County Elections OfficeThe new videos show members of the team inside an office handling the county’s poll pads, which contain sensitive voter data. (The cases holding the equipment in the footage are labeled with the words “POLL PAD.”) In a court hearing on Sept. 9, David D. Cross, a lawyer for a nonprofit group that is suing over perceived security vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voting system — and that released the new videos after obtaining them in its litigation — told a judge that his group suspected that the “personally identifiable information” of roughly seven million Georgia voters may have been copied.Charles Tonnie Adams, the elections supervisor of Heard County, Ga., said in an email that “poll pads contain every registered voter on the state list.” It was not immediately clear what specific personal information about voters was on the poll pads, or what, if anything, was done with the data.Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, said a poll pad “does have voter information but it’s not accessible because it’s scrambled behind security protocols.” He added that there were no driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers on poll pads at the time.The new videos also show that some of the Trump allies who visited Coffee County were given access to a storage room, and that various people affiliated with Mr. Trump’s campaign, or his allies, had access to the building over several days.The new footage also shows Cathy Latham, then the head of the county’s Republican Party, with members of the Trump team, standing together in an office where the county’s poll pads were laid out on a table. Ms. Latham is among the targets of a criminal investigation in Atlanta, related to her participation as one of an alternate slate of electors who tried to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in Georgia. That investigation, which is being led by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, has also touched on what took place in Coffee County.In a court filing late Monday evening, the plaintiffs in the civil case assailed what they called “the persistent refusal of Latham and her counsel to be straight with this court about the facts.” They accused her of downplaying her involvement with the Trump team when “she literally directed them on what to collect in the office.”Robert D. Cheeley, a lawyer for Ms. Latham, declined to speak on the record on Monday. This month, he told CNN that his client “would not and has not knowingly been involved in any impropriety in any election.”Investigators from Mr. Raffensperger’s office also appear in the new videos, raising questions about what they knew. Along with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Raffensperger’s office is investigating what took place in Coffee County, 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, but voting rights advocates involved in the litigation have questioned why Mr. Raffensperger, the defendant in the civil case, did not move more aggressively.Mr. Hassinger said the secretary of state’s office had “no idea” why its investigators were at the elections office in Coffee County in early January.“We are looking into it,” he said. “Again, we take this very seriously. This investigation is a joint effort between the secretary of state’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and if it’s determined that people have committed a crime, they’re going to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”The storage room at the Coffee County elections office.Coffee County Elections OfficeMr. Hassinger added that at that time, the secretary of state’s office was looking at “vote-counting procedures when Coffee County was unable to certify the results of their election by the time of the deadline.”Lawyers for SullivanStrickler did not respond to requests for comment. The company’s lawyers have previously said it was “categorically false” that it was part of an effort that “illegally ‘breached’ servers” or other voting equipment, but that “with the benefit of hindsight, and knowing everything they know now, they would not take on any further work of this kind.”Reached by phone on Monday, Rachel Ann Roberts, the current election supervisor for Coffee County, said she could not comment on the matter of the poll pads because she had started the job after the visit took place.“I’m not certain about any of that,” she said. “I wasn’t here at the time.”Georgia is hardly the only state where such activity occurred. In Michigan, a special prosecutor is investigating efforts by Trump allies, including the Republican candidate for attorney general, Matthew DePerno, to gain access to voting machines. And in Colorado, the secretary of state’s office estimated that taxpayers faced a bill of at least $1 million to replace voting equipment in Mesa County after a pro-Trump elections supervisor was indicted on charges that she tampered with the county’s voting equipment after the 2020 election. More

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      Where 6 Investigations Into Donald Trump Stand

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      The former president finds himself without the power of the presidency, staring at a host of prosecutors and lawyers who have him and his associates in their sights.WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump has set up his office on the second floor of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida as part replica of the Oval Office and part homage to his time in the real White House.On the wall during a visit last year were six favorite photographs, including ones with Queen Elizabeth II and Kim Jong-un. On display were challenge coins, a plaque commemorating his border wall and a portrait of the former president fashioned out of bullet casings, a present from Jair Bolsonaro, the so-called Trump of Brazil.This has become Mr. Trump’s fortress in exile and his war room, the headquarters for the wide-ranging and rapidly escalating conflict with investigators that has come to consume his post-presidency. It is a multifront war, with battlefields in New York, Georgia and the nation’s capital, featuring a shifting roster of lawyers and a blizzard of allegations of wrongdoing that are hard to keep straight.Never before has a former president faced an array of federal, state and congressional investigations as extensive as Mr. Trump has, the cumulative consequences of a career in business and eventually politics lived on the edge, or perhaps over the edge. Whether it be his misleading business practices or his efforts to overturn a democratic election or his refusal to hand over sensitive government documents that did not belong to him, Mr. Trump’s disparate legal troubles stem from the same sense that rules constraining others did not apply to him.The story of how he got to this point is both historically unique and eminently predictable. Mr. Trump has been fending off investigators and legal troubles for a half century, since the Justice Department sued his family business for racial discrimination and through the myriad inquiries that would follow over the years. He has a remarkable track record of sidestepping the worst outcomes, but even he may now find so many inquiries pointing in his direction that escape is uncertain.His view of the legal system has always been transactional; it is a weapon to be used, either by him or against him, and he has rarely been intimidated by the kinds of subpoenas and affidavits that would chill a less litigious character. On the civil side, he has been involved in thousands of lawsuits with business partners, vendors and others, many of them suing him because he refused to pay his bills.While president, he once explained his view of the legal system to some aides, saying that he would go to court to intimidate adversaries because just threatening to sue was not enough.“When you threaten to sue, they don’t do anything,” Mr. Trump told aides. “They say, ‘Psshh!’” — he waved his hand in the air — “and keep doing what they want. But when you sue them, they go, ‘Oooh!’” — here he made a cringing face — “and they settle. It’s as easy as that.”When he began losing legal battles as president with regularity, he lashed out. At one point when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a traditionally liberal bench based in California, ruled against one of his policies, he demanded that aides get rid of the court altogether. “Let’s just cancel it,” he said, as if it were a campaign event, not a court system established under law. If it required legislation, then draft a bill to “get rid” of the judges, he said, using an expletive.But his aides ignored him and now he finds himself without the power of the presidency, staring at a host of prosecutors and lawyers who have him and his associates in their sights. Some of the issues at hand go back years, but many of the seeds for his current legal jeopardy were planted in those frenetic final days in office when he sought to overturn the will of the voters and hold onto power through a series of lies about election fraud that did not exist.What to Know About the Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More