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      Brian Kemp Must Testify in Trump Inquiry After Election

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      ATLANTA — A judge ruled on Monday that Gov. Brian P. Kemp of Georgia must appear before a special grand jury investigating election interference by former President Donald J. Trump, but will not be compelled to do so until after the Nov. 8 election.Mr. Kemp, who is running for a second term this year, is one of a number of high-profile Republicans who have been fighting subpoenas that call upon them to testify in the sprawling case. Unlike many of those other Republicans, Mr. Kemp does not appear to have been involved in efforts after the November 2020 election to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss in Georgia.Indeed, Mr. Kemp resisted a personal entreaty from Mr. Trump, in December 2020, to convene the state Legislature in order to appoint pro-Trump electors from Georgia, even though Joseph R. Biden, a Democrat, had won the popular vote in the state.Nevertheless, Mr. Kemp’s lawyers in recent days have tried to persuade Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court that under Georgia law, the sitting governor should not be subject to subpoenas. They argued, among other things, that the governor was protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, and that the subpoena had been issued “for improper political purposes” because his presence was being demanded before the November 2022 election. The investigation is being overseen by a Democrat, District Attorney Fani T. Willis of Fulton County, which encompasses most of Atlanta.In a prepared statement on Monday, a spokesperson for Mr. Kemp said the court had “correctly paused” his testimony until after the election, saying the governor’s office would work “to ensure a full accounting of the governor’s limited role in the issues being investigated is available to the special grand jury.”Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationCard 1 of 5Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationAn immediate legal threat to Trump. More

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      Is a Local Prosecutor Making the Strongest Case Against Trump?

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      Rachel Quester and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherSince he left office, former President Donald J. Trump has been facing several investigations.They include the congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol and the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, his club and Florida residence, as part of an investigation into his handling of classified material.Of all the government investigations, the one that is receiving the least attention — a case being made by a local prosecutor in Georgia — may end up being the most consequential.On today’s episodeRichard Fausset, a correspondent based in Atlanta for The New York Times.Fani T. Willis, an Atlanta area district attorney, is casting a wide net as she looks at what happened in Georgia after the 2020 election.Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via APBackground readingOver a year into a criminal investigation of election interference by Mr. Trump and his allies, a Georgia prosecutor is beginning to show the broad contours of her inquiry.Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta area district attorney, is seeking to build a broad conspiracy case that encompasses multifaceted efforts by Trump allies to disrupt and overturn the 2020 election.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Richard Fausset contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli and Maddy Masiello. More

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      Michigan GOP Set to Nominate Election-Denying Lawyer Backed by Trump

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      Several weeks after the 2020 election, as Donald J. Trump worked to overturn his defeat, he called a Republican lawmaker in Michigan with an urgent request. Mr. Trump had seen a report that made wild claims about rigged voting machines in a rural northern county in the state. He wanted his allies to look into it.The president told the lawmaker that a Michigan lawyer, Matthew DePerno, had already filed a lawsuit and that it looked promising, according to the lawmaker and two others familiar with the call.For that lawmaker, the lawyer’s name set off alarms. Mr. DePerno, a trial attorney from Kalamazoo, was well known in the Legislature for representing a former legislator embroiled in a sex scandal. Mr. DePerno had spent years unsuccessfully accusing lawmakers and aides of devising a complex plot to bring down his client, complete with accusations of collusion, stalking, extortion, doctored recordings and secretive phone tapping. Federal judges dismissed the cases, with one calling a conspiracy claim “patently absurd.”Mr. DePerno’s involvement will only undermine your cause, the lawmaker, who along with the others asked for anonymity to discuss the private conversation, told the president. Mr. Trump seemed to dig in: If everyone hates Mr. DePerno, he should be on my team, Mr. Trump responded, according to two of the people.Donald Trump endorsed the candidacy of Matthew DePerno, who pushed a conspiracy theory about the vote count in a rural Michigan county.Emily Elconin/ReutersBolstered by his association with the former president, Mr. DePerno on Saturday was nominated as the G.O.P. candidate for attorney general, the top legal official in the state, at a state party convention. He is among a coterie of election deniers running for offices that have significant authority over elections, worrying some election experts, Democrats and some Republicans across the country.This month, the Michigan attorney general’s office released documents that suggest Mr. DePerno was a key orchestrator of a separate plot to gain improper access to voting machines in three other Michigan counties. The attorney general, Dana Nessel, the Democrat Mr. DePerno is challenging for the office, requested that a special prosecutor be appointed to pursue the investigation into the scheme and weigh criminal charges. Mr. DePerno denies the allegations and called them politically motivated.Mr. DePerno played a critical role in the report mentioned by Mr. Trump about that rural county, Antrim. The report turned a minor clerical error into a major conspiracy theory, and was later dismissed as “idiotic” by William P. Barr, an attorney general under Mr. Trump, and “demonstrably false” by Republicans in the Michigan Senate.For some who have watched his career, there are parallels between Mr. DePerno’s dive into election conspiracies and his recent legal record. He has at times used the legal system to advance specious claims and unfounded allegations detailed in a blizzard of lengthy filings, according to an examination of court records in some of his cases and interviews with attorneys and judges.“The playbook is the same,” said Joshua Cline, a former Republican legislative aide whom Mr. DePerno sued as part of the conspiracy allegations involving the legislature. The case was dismissed in court. “It’s trying to play to a base of people and trying to get them to buy into something that when you put the magnifying glass to it, it falls apart,” Mr. Cline said. “It’s more than terrifying.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsThe Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.New Women Voters: The number of women signing up to vote surged in some states after Roe was overturned, particularly in states where abortion rights are at risk.Sensing a Shift: Abortion rights, falling gas prices, legislative victories and Donald J. Trump’s re-emergence have Democrats dreaming again that they just might keep control of Congress. But the House map still favors Republicans.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Mr. DePerno declined to be interviewed. In response to written questions, he stood by his claims and defended his legal tactics.“If you are criticizing me on being a bulldog of a lawyer who is well-versed in the law and procedure and who defends his client to the best of his ability, I take that criticism with pride,” he said in a statement.At least five times, Mr. DePerno’s clients or legal colleagues have asked Michigan’s Attorney Grievance Commission to investigate his conduct, according to records reviewed by The New York Times. Three requests have not been previously reported: The commission keeps the filings and investigations private unless they result in formal disciplinary complaints.Three of the five investigations were closed without disciplinary actions, the records showed. In at least one of those closed cases, however, the commission did find Mr. DePerno’s conduct — baselessly accusing a judge of taking a bribe — worthy of a private “admonishment,” according to a 2021 letter viewed by The Times. Mr. DePerno said a fourth inquiry, regarding the Michigan Legislature cases, also closed privately, and another, related to the Antrim County case, is still open. Mr. DePerno did not respond to a request for records confirming his account.Asked about the grievances, Mr. DePerno said: “I have never been disciplined. The reality is that any person at any time can file any garbage they want” with the commission.One of the completed investigations involved former clients who sued Mr. DePerno over malpractice, claiming he had taken actions without their consent, overcharged them and tried to foreclose on their home as payment. A federal magistrate judge also expressed concerns about Mr. DePerno’s conduct in the case, at one point sanctioning him for obstructing a deposition and coaching a witness. In the same hearing, the judge also said Mr. DePerno had “arrogantly tried to justify the unjustifiable” in a brief, and falsely and unethically accused another lawyer of being unprofessional.“Mr. DePerno, you get an F,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph G. Scoville said, according to a transcript.Mr. DePerno called the federal magistrate’s comments “overly harsh and unwarranted.” The malpractice lawsuit, which was first reported by Bridge Michigan, was later settled.A Scandal in the State HouseMr. DePerno also faced criticism in a far more prominent case. In 2015, he was hired by Todd Courser, a freshman state House member and Tea Party activist who was accused of trying to cover up an extramarital affair with a fellow legislator by producing a “false-flag” email, according to court filings and articles in The Detroit News.Mr. DePerno called in forensic experts to argue that audio recordings used by local media in reporting on the scandal had been doctored. He claimed that legislative leaders and aides had conspired to wiretap Mr. Courser and fabricate and destroy evidence. He lodged accusations of lying and bias against the lawyers and judges. He sued aides, lawmakers, The Detroit News, the Michigan State Police, the attorney general and even the hotel chain where Mr. Courser and the other lawmaker met.The legal blitz was not successful. Some claims were dismissed for procedural reasons; others were found to have no merit. One federal district judge, Gordon Quist, called the conspiracy claim “not only implausible, but absurd on its face.” Judge Quist did reject a request to sanction Mr. Courser and Mr. DePerno for filing claims with no basis in fact. An appeals court ruling also noted that one of his theories was “not entirely implausible,” but still found there was no merit to that claim.Another federal appeals court panel wrote that Mr. Courser spent “more time enumerating claims than developing arguments.”Mr. DePerno, left, with Todd Courser during a hearing in 2016. Mr. Courser was accused of trying to cover up an extramarital affair with a fellow legislator.David Eggert/Associated PressA state circuit court judge imposed a nearly $80,000 sanction against Mr. DePerno and Mr. Courser in a defamation lawsuit against The Detroit News, finding Mr. DePerno “does not have a reasonable basis that the underlying facts are true as represented,” according to a transcript of a state court hearing in 2019. Mr. DePerno later sued that judge in federal court, accusing him of bias. He eventually dropped the case against the judge and agreed to a settlement with the news organization that cut the payment to $20,000.The Courser cases became a legal morass, with criminal charges filed against Mr. Courser and a barrage of civil suits. The cases dragged on for years, exasperating lawyers and clients. Michael Nichols, a Michigan lawyer who represented a co-defendant in a related criminal case, said Mr. DePerno often seemed to be more interested in pushing his theory about political bias against Tea Party-aligned Republicans than defending his client against the criminal charges.“I think he wanted to make this all about getting attention as the doll of the Tea Party movement,” Mr. Nichols said.In August 2019, Mr. Courser pleaded no contest to willful neglect of duty by a public officer, a misdemeanor.Mr. Courser in a recent interview stood by his longtime contention that he is the victim of a conspiracy by the legislative aides, legislators and others.He said Mr. DePerno “did everything he had to do to defend his client against the tyranny and unjust prosecution.”“I have nothing but great praise and admiration,” Mr. Courser said. “He’s going to be a great attorney general.”2020 Election ClaimsShortly after Mr. Trump lost the presidential election in Michigan, Bill Bailey, a real estate agent in the state’s lower peninsula, noticed some anomalies in the initial vote count from his local county, Antrim.The results in the conservative county had suddenly, and briefly, been reported as a win for Joseph R. Biden Jr., owing to an error in the clerk’s office. Mr. Bailey connected with Mr. Trump’s legal team, which advised him to get a Michigan lawyer, according to an associate of the legal team.He found Mr. DePerno, who got a court order granting him access to data from Antrim County’s voting machines. That information became the basis for the Antrim report and also gave Mr. DePerno a place in the loose collection of Trump associates, self-proclaimed data gurus and lawyers who were searching for evidence that could propel the fiction that Mr. Trump won the race. Mr. DePerno, along with the others, have continued that quest.Mr. DePerno in October 2021, at an event calling for an “audit” of the 2020 election in Michigan, which Mr. Trump lost.Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal, via Associated PressAs his work in Antrim County gained national attention, he began raising money. By December 2020, Mr. DePerno had set up multiple donation links on his website under the banner of “The 2020 Election Fraud Defense Fund.” One was hosted by a Michigan resident and has raised $62,000 to date. Another was started by Mr. DePerno, and has raised more than $400,000, according to a live tracker on the site.Mr. DePerno eventually added a direct PayPal invoice button urging people to “Donate via PayPal.” The link went directly to his law firm’s website. Asked about the PayPal link, Mr. DePerno said it was meant for clients to pay their legal bills.Mr. DePerno has refused to answer further questions about how he has used the money. In June, Republicans in the State Senate asked the attorney general to investigate how people have used the Antrim County theory “to raise money or publicity for their own ends,” though they did not single out Mr. DePerno.By spring, as it became clear that Mr. DePerno was flirting with a run for attorney general, Republicans in Michigan grew fearful that his candidacy could be a drag on the entire ticket, according to multiple former members of the state party and others familiar with the state party discussions. They encouraged another Republican to run and tried — and failed — to head off a potential endorsement from Mr. Trump.In September, Mr. Trump issued an endorsement praising Mr. DePerno for being “on the front lines pursuing fair and accurate elections, as he relentlessly fights to reveal the truth.”Kitty Bennett More

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      Promoting His Memoir, Kushner Offers Tortured Defenses of Trump

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      Jared Kushner, who spent his years in the White House evading responsibility for his father-in-law’s most extreme moves, has had to answer for some of them on his book tour.WASHINGTON — Making the rounds promoting his new memoir, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald J. Trump, this week ran into the question he has managed for months to avoid commenting on publicly: Did he agree with Mr. Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen?“I think that there’s different words,” Mr. Kushner told the talk show host Megyn Kelly during a friendly interview on SiriusXM. He added, “I think there’s a whole bunch of different approaches that different people have taken, and different theories.”Pressed to say whether Mr. Trump lost, Mr. Kushner demurred. “I believe it was a very sloppy election,” he said. “I think that there’s a lot of issues that I think if litigated differently may have had different insights into them.”In reality, the words that election officials have used to describe the 2020 contest are “the most secure in American history,” and judges across the country rejected nearly all of the several dozen lawsuits that allies of Mr. Trump filed alleging fraud.Mr. Kushner’s reluctance to concede as much reflected the contortions he is now attempting as he tries to sell a book whose success hinges on his close ties to Mr. Trump. At the same time, he is seeking to keep his distance from the lies and misdeeds that paved the way for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Like the memoir itself, titled “Breaking History,” the task involves a highly selective narrative that casts Mr. Kushner as a young star getting things done in the White House without getting his hands dirty.“Before I came into office,” the unelected Mr. Kushner said on Tuesday, settling into the “Fox & Friends” couch, the “conventional thinking” had been that there could never be peace between Israel and Arab nations “until you have peace with the Palestinians.”In that interview, Mr. Kushner, who was a senior adviser in the Trump White House, credited himself with helping to bring an “outsider’s point of view” to the world’s intractable problems.“Before I came into office,” Mr. Kushner said, the “conventional thinking” had been that there could never be peace between Israel and Arab nations “until you have peace with the Palestinians.”Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesIn another interview, he noted that his father-in-law had “asked me to take lead on building the wall.”During a virtual book event, Mr. Kushner even suggested he might be immortal, saying that he had prioritized exercising since leaving the White House because his generation could be “the first generation to live forever.”When it comes to Jan. 6 and the election lies that spurred the riot, Mr. Kushner is less sure-footed. In the interview with Ms. Kelly, he labored to defend Mr. Trump’s feverish obsession with the 2020 election.“What’s happened over the last year is that there has been a debate that’s been badly needed in this country about election integrity,” he said. More

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      Election Data Breach Attracts Georgia Investigators

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      The district attorney in Atlanta is seeking to build a broad conspiracy case that encompasses multifaceted efforts by Trump allies to disrupt and overturn the 2020 election.The day after Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, a small group working on his behalf traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga., about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta.One member of the group was Paul Maggio, an executive at a firm based in Atlanta called SullivanStrickler, which helps organizations analyze and manage their data. His company had been hired by Sidney Powell, a conspiracy theorist and lawyer advising Mr. Trump, who was tasked with scouring voting systems in Georgia and other states. It was part of an effort by Trump allies in a number of swing states to access and copy sensitive election software, with the help of friendly election administrators.“We are on our way to Coffee County, Georgia, to collect what we can from the election/voting machines and systems,” Mr. Maggio wrote to Ms. Powell on the morning of Jan. 7, 2021, according to an email exchange that recently emerged in civil litigation. Weeks later, Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area Trump supporter and bail bondsman who traveled to Coffee County on a chartered plane, described what he and the group did there.“We scanned every freaking ballot,” he said in a recorded phone conversation in March 2021. Mr. Hall said that 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.”This week, court filings revealed that the Coffee County data breach is now part of the sprawling investigation into election interference being conducted by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., which encompasses most of Atlanta.Though Coffee County is well outside of her jurisdiction, Ms. Willis is seeking to build a broad conspiracy and racketeering case that encompasses multifaceted efforts by Trump allies to disrupt and overturn the lawful election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. On Aug. 16, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation also confirmed that it was working with the Georgia secretary of state’s office on an investigation into the Coffee County data breach, court records show. Many of the details of the Coffee County visit were included in emails and texts that surfaced in civil litigation brought by voting rights activists against Georgia’s secretary of state; news of the breach was reported earlier by The Washington Post.A Trump supporter protested election results at the Georgia State Capitol in 2020.Audra Melton for The New York TimesSimilar breaches coordinated by Trump allies played out in several swing states. This month, Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, sought the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate data breaches there. She is seeking to remove herself from the case because one of the people potentially implicated in the scheme is her likely Republican election opponent, Matthew DePerno. Ms. Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.SullivanStrickler, in a statement released by a law firm representing the company, said it “has never been part of a ‘pro-Trump team’ or any ‘team’ whose goal is to undermine our democracy,” adding that it was a “politically agnostic” firm that was hired to “preserve and forensically copy the Dominion voting machines used in the 2020 election.” The statement said it was “categorically false” that SullivanStrickler was part of an effort that “illegally ‘breached’ servers” or other voting equipment, adding that it was retained and directed by “licensed, practicing attorneys.”“The firm elected to cease any further new work on this matter after the Jan. 7 time period,” the statement said. “With the benefit of hindsight, and knowing everything they know now, they would not take on any further work of this kind.”Legal experts say the Fulton County investigation could be particularly perilous for Mr. Trump’s allies, and perhaps for Mr. Trump himself, given the phone call that Mr. Trump made as president to Georgia’s secretary of state on Jan. 2, 2021, asking him to “find” enough votes to help him overturn his election loss in the state.A special grand jury has been impaneled with the sole purpose of investigating election meddling in the state and has already heard testimony from more than 30 witnesses, including Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani is one of at least 18 people who have been notified by prosecutors that they could face indictment in the case.This week, prosecutors filed court documents indicating that they were seeking testimony from a number of other Trump allies, including Ms. Powell and Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. The petition seeking to compel Ms. Powell’s testimony notes that Ms. Powell coordinated with SullivanStrickler “to obtain elections data” from Coffee County, adding: “There is further evidence in the public record that indicates that the witness was involved in similar efforts in Michigan and Nevada during the same time period.”As a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump after the election, Ms. Powell made a number of specious claims about election fraud, including an assertion that Democrats had “developed a computer system to alter votes electronically.” Ms. Powell is among those who have been sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems, the company that provides the voting machines for Coffee County and the rest of Georgia. As part of that suit, lawyers for Ms. Powell have argued that “no reasonable person would conclude” that some of her wilder statements “were truly statements of fact.”Fulton County prosecutors are seeking to have Ms. Powell testify before the special grand jury next month. In their court filing this week, they said that she possessed “unique knowledge” about postelection meetings held at the South Carolina plantation of L. Lin Wood, a pro-Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist. Mr. Wood, prosecutors wrote, stated that he and a group of other Trump supporters, including Ms. Powell and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, met at the plantation to explore “options to influence the results” of the 2020 election “in Georgia and elsewhere.”President Donald J. Trump departed a campaign rally in support of Georgia’s Republican senators in 2020.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMs. Willis’s office cited the Coffee County data breach in its filing on Thursday seeking Ms. Powell’s testimony, which was the first time the matter had surfaced in connection with her investigation. It remains unclear to what extent Ms. Willis’s office will focus on the Coffee County matter in her inquiry, or what, if any, charges could flow from it.“There are a variety of avenues the state has to bring criminal charges,” said David D. Cross, a lawyer representing plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit brought by civic groups against the Georgia secretary of state’s office over election security. “There are specific laws in Georgia that prevent access to voting equipment in particular,” he said, as well as “general laws about accessing computer equipment that doesn’t belong to you.”Mr. Trump won nearly 70 percent of Coffee County, which is home to just 43,000 people. Trump officials most likely targeted the county’s voting system because the county was run by friendly officials who were eager to cooperate. Cathy Latham, who was chair of the local Republican Party at the time, was also one of 16 pro-Trump fake electors who convened in the Georgia State Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, despite Mr. Trump’s loss in the state. All of them, including Ms. Latham, have been identified as targets of Ms. Willis’s investigation.The costs of election security breaches have been onerous. In Antrim County, Mich., which was at the forefront of efforts to overturn the election, Sheryl Guy, the clerk, said on Thursday that officials had to rent voting equipment to replace equipment that is being held as evidence in civil litigation.In Colorado, the secretary of state’s office estimated that taxpayers incurred a bill of at least $1 million to replace voting equipment in Mesa County after a pro-Trump election supervisor was indicted on charges that she tampered with the equipment after the 2020 election. Election experts noted that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, recommended that the safest course of action was to decommission voting equipment that has been compromised.“We’re getting to the point where this is happening at an alarming rate,” Lawrence Norden, senior director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center, said in an interview on Thursday. “When election officials permit or facilitate untrustworthy actors in gaining access to the system without any oversight, that is in and of itself going to leave the public questioning whether they trust these systems.”Nick Corasaniti More

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      Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law

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      Over the course of this summer, the nation has been transfixed by the House select committee’s hearings on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and how or whether Donald Trump might face accountability for what happened that day. The Justice Department remained largely silent about its investigations of the former president until this month, when the F.B.I. searched his home in Palm Beach, Fla., in a case related to his handling of classified documents. The spectacle of a former president facing criminal investigation raises profound questions about American democracy, and these questions demand answers.Mr. Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation. The disturbing details of his postelection misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee, leaves little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people. The president, defeated at the polls in 2020, tried to enlist federal law enforcement authorities, state officials and administrators of the nation’s electoral system in a furious effort to remain in power. When all else failed, he roused an armed mob that stormed the Capitol and threatened lawmakers.The Justice Department is reportedly examining Mr. Trump’s conduct, including his role in trying to overturn the election and in taking home classified documents. If Attorney General Merrick Garland and his staff conclude that there is sufficient evidence to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt on a serious charge in a court of law, then they must indict him, too.This board is aware that in deciding how Mr. Trump should be held accountable under the law it is necessary to consider not just whether criminal prosecution would be warranted but whether it would be wise. No American president has ever been criminally prosecuted after leaving office. When President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, he ensured that Nixon would not be prosecuted for crimes committed during the Watergate scandal; Ford explained this decision with the warning that such a prosecution posed grave risks of rousing “ugly passions” and worsening political polarization.That warning is just as salient today. Pursuing prosecution of Mr. Trump could further entrench support for him and play into the conspiracy theories he has sought to stoke. It could inflame the bitter partisan divide, even to the point of civil unrest. A trial, if it is viewed as illegitimate, could also further undermine confidence in the rule of law, whatever the eventual outcome.The risks of political escalation are obvious. The Democratic and Republican parties are already in the thick of a cycle of retribution that could last generations. There is a substantial risk that, if the Justice Department does prosecute Mr. Trump, future presidents — whether Mr. Trump himself or someone of his ilk — could misuse the precedent to punish political rivals. If their party takes a majority in the House of Representatives after the midterm elections, some Republicans have already threatened to impeach President Biden.There is an even more immediate threat of further violence, and it is a possibility that Americans should, sadly, be prepared for. In the hours after federal agents began a court-approved search of Mr. Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, based on a warrant investigating possible violations of three federal laws, including one that governs the handling of defense information under the Espionage Act, his most fervent supporters escalated their rhetoric to the language of warfare. As The Times noted, “The aggressive, widespread response was arguably the clearest outburst of violent public rhetoric since the days leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”Mr. Garland has been deliberate, methodical and scrupulous in his leadership of the Justice Department’s investigations of the Jan. 6 attack and the transfer of documents to Mr. Trump’s home. But no matter how careful he is or how measured the prosecution might be, there is a real and significant risk from those who believe that any criticism of Mr. Trump justifies an extreme response.Yet it is a far greater risk to do nothing when action is called for. Aside from letting Mr. Trump escape punishment, doing nothing to hold him accountable for his actions in the months leading up to Jan. 6 could set an irresistible precedent for future presidents. Why not attempt to stay in power by any means necessary or use the power of the office to enrich oneself or punish one’s enemies, knowing that the law does not apply to presidents in or out of office?More important, democratic government is an ideal that must constantly be made real. America is not sustained by a set of principles; it is sustained by resolute action to defend those principles.Immediately after the Jan. 6 insurrection, cabinet members reportedly debated privately whether to remove Mr. Trump from power under the authority of the 25th Amendment. A week after the attack, the House impeached Mr. Trump for the second time. This editorial board supported his impeachment and removal from office; we also suggested that the former president and lawmakers who participated in the Jan. 6 plot could be permanently barred from holding office under a provision of the 14th Amendment that applies to any official who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or given “aid or comfort” to those who have done so. But most Republicans in the Senate refused to convict Mr. Trump, and Congress has yet to invoke that section of the 14th Amendment against him. As a result, the threat that Mr. Trump and his most ardent supporters pose to American democracy has metastasized.Even now, the former president continues to spread lies about the 2020 election and denounce his vice president, Mike Pence, for not breaking the law on his behalf. Meanwhile, dozens of people who believe Mr. Trump’s lies are running for state and national elected office. Many have already won, some of them elevated to positions that give them control over how elections are conducted. In June the Republican Party in Texas approved measures in its platform declaring that Mr. Biden’s election was illegitimate. And Mr. Trump appears prepared to start a bid for a second term as president.Mr. Trump’s actions as a public official, like no others since the Civil War, attacked the heart of our system of government. He used the power of his office to subvert the rule of law. If we hesitate to call those actions and their perpetrator criminal, then we are saying he is above the law and giving license to future presidents to do whatever they want.In addition to a federal investigation by the Justice Department, Mr. Trump is facing a swirl of civil and criminal liability in several other cases: a lawsuit by the attorney general for the District of Columbia over payments during his inauguration ceremonies; a criminal investigation in Westchester County, N.Y., over taxes on one of his golf courses; a criminal case in Fulton County, Ga., over interference in the 2020 election; a criminal case by the Manhattan district attorney over the valuation of Mr. Trump’s properties; and a civil inquiry by New York’s attorney general into Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization.The specific crimes the Justice Department could consider would likely involve Mr. Trump’s fraudulent efforts to get election officials in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere to declare him the winner even though he lost their states; to get Mr. Pence, at the Jan. 6 congressional certification of the election, to throw out slates of electors from states he lost and replace them with electors loyal to Mr. Trump; and to enlist officials from the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense to persuade officials in certain states to swing the election to him and ultimately stir up a mob that attacked the Capitol. The government could also charge Mr. Trump with seditious conspiracy, a serious charge that federal prosecutors have already brought against leaders of far-right militia groups who participated in the Capitol invasion.The committee hearings make it clear: Mr. Trump must have known he was at the center of a frantic, sprawling and knowingly fraudulent effort that led directly to the Capitol siege. For hours, Mr. Trump refused to call off the mob.The testimony from hundreds of witnesses, many of them high-ranking Republican officials from his own administration, reveal Mr. Trump’s unrelenting efforts, beginning months before Election Day and continuing through Jan. 6, to sow doubt about the election, to refuse to accept the result of that election and then to pursue what he must have known were illegal and unconstitutional means to overturn it. Many participants sought pre-emptive pardons for their conduct — an indication they knew they were violating the law.Other evidence points to other crimes, like obstruction of Congress, defined as a corrupt obstruction of the “proper administration of the law.” The fake-elector scheme that Mr. Trump and his associates pushed before Jan. 6 appears to meet this definition. That may explain why at least three of Mr. Trump’s campaign lawyers were unwilling to participate in the plot. People involved in it were told it was not “legally sound” by White House lawyers, but they moved forward with it anyway.Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Mr. Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, provided powerful evidence that could be used to charge Mr. Trump with seditious conspiracy. In her public testimony at a Jan. 6 committee hearing, she said that Mr. Trump was informed that many in the throng of supporters waiting to hear him speak on the Ellipse that day were armed but that he demanded they be allowed to skip the metal detectors that had been installed for his security. “They’re not here to hurt me,” he said, according to Ms. Hutchinson. “Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.”If Mr. Garland decides to pursue prosecution, a message that the Justice Department must send early and often is that even if Mr. Trump genuinely believed, as he claimed, that the election had been marred by fraud, his schemes to interfere in the certification of the vote would still be crimes. And even though Mr. Trump’s efforts failed, these efforts would still be crimes. More than 850 other Americans have already been charged with crimes for their roles in the Capitol attack. Well-meaning intentions did not shield them from the consequences of their actions. It would be unjust if Mr. Trump, the man who inspired them, faced no consequences.No one should revel in the prospect of this or any former president facing criminal prosecution. Mr. Trump’s actions have brought shame on one of the world’s oldest democracies and destabilized its future. Even justice before the law will not erase that stain. Nor will prosecuting Mr. Trump fix the structural problems that led to the greatest crisis in American democracy since the Civil War. But it is a necessary first step toward doing so.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.

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      Georgia Governor Seeks to Keep Distance From Trump Inquiry

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      ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp was one of the Georgia Republican officials who declined to help Donald J. Trump overturn his 2020 election loss in the state — a decision that had him hailed as a hero in some quarters.And yet, on Thursday, Mr. Kemp’s lawyers showed up in an Atlanta courtroom to argue that the governor should not have to help with the ongoing criminal investigation into election meddling by testifying before a special grand jury. Mr. Kemp’s legal team has accused Fani T. Willis, a Democrat and the local prosecutor leading the inquiry, of politicizing the investigation, and wants any testimony to take place after the polls close on his re-election bid in November.In a sign of how widely her case is expanding, Ms. Willis also moved on Thursday to compel testimony from a number of additional Trump advisers, including Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff in the White House, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who advanced the most aggressive conspiracy theories falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen. And Ms. Willis indicated in court filings that her investigation now encompasses “an alleged breach of elections data” in rural Coffee County, Ga., which was part of a larger effort by Trump allies to infiltrate elections systems in swing states.In court, the lawyers for Mr. Kemp made a number of arguments as to why he should not have to comply with the subpoena at all, but they were received skeptically by Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court, who did not immediately make a ruling.“The governor doesn’t think he’s beyond any reach of law, but he’s just beyond the reach of this particular subpoena,” said S. Derek Bauer, one of Mr. Kemp’s lawyers.Mr. Kemp, who is locked in a tight race for re-election with Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, has tried to maintain a difficult balancing act since falling out of Mr. Trump’s good graces. The former president soured on Mr. Kemp in 2020 after the governor declined Mr. Trump’s request to call a special session of the Georgia Legislature so that a group of pro-Trump electors could be named in place of the legitimate ones earned by Joseph R. Biden Jr., who defeated Mr. Trump by just under 12,000 votes in the state.Jenna Ellis, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, was scheduled to testify before the grand jury in Atlanta on Thursday.Tom Williams/Getty ImagesAt one point, Mr. Trump called Mr. Kemp “the worst ‘election integrity’ governor in the country.”Since then, even as his name elicited torrents of boos from the Trump faithful at rallies and Republican events, Mr. Kemp has found a way to stay alive politically. In May, he crushed Mr. Trump’s handpicked Republican primary candidate, David Perdue, the former U.S. senator, by focusing on his record of conservative policy accomplishments and economic success, and largely avoiding the topic of Mr. Trump.But the general election fight presents its own complex series of calculations. Though polling in recent months has shown Mr. Kemp leading Ms. Abrams, she is a formidable fund-raiser hoping to ride a wave of changing demographics and fresh concerns about Republican overreach on issues like abortion.Charles S. Bullock III, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia, said Mr. Kemp might be wary of turning off some centrist voters, but the deeper risk could be turning off Mr. Trump’s considerable base in Georgia.Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationCard 1 of 5Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationAn immediate legal threat to Trump. More

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      Florida Pair Pleads Guilty in Theft of Ashley Biden’s Diary

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      Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander admitted to participating in a conspiracy in which Ashley Biden’s diary ended up in the hands of the conservative group Project Veritas near the end of the 2020 campaign.Federal prosecutors presented new evidence on Thursday implicating the conservative group Project Veritas in the theft of a diary and items belonging to Ashley Biden, President Biden’s daughter, laying out in court papers their fullest account yet of how allies of President Donald J. Trump tried to use the diary to undercut Mr. Biden in the final days of the 2020 campaign.The court papers were filed in connection with the guilty pleas on Thursday of two Florida residents who admitted in federal court in Manhattan that they had stolen the diary and sold it to Project Veritas.Prosecutors directly tied Project Veritas to the theft of Ms. Biden’s items in the court papers, saying that an employee for the group had directed the defendants to steal additional items to authenticate the diary and paid them additional money after receiving them.Citing a text message between the defendants who pleaded guilty — Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander — prosecutors provided new insights into how Project Veritas tried to authenticate the diary and what the group had planned to do with it.“They are in a sketchy business and here they are taking what’s literally a stolen diary and info,” Mr. Kurlander wrote, adding that Project Veritas was “trying to make a story that will ruin” Ms. Biden’s life “and try and effect the election.”Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been investigating the theft of the diary and Project Veritas’s role in it since they were alerted to the theft just days before the 2020 election, as the group sought to interview Mr. Biden about the contents of the diary.The investigation has spurred questions about how much the First Amendment can protect a group that claims it is a news media organization even though its methods fall far outside traditional journalistic norms.And it has put Mr. Biden’s Justice Department in the highly unusual position of investigating a crime in which the president’s daughter was a victim at the same time it is weighing whether to charge his son, Hunter Biden, in a separate case involving potential tax and foreign lobbying violations.In their pleas, Ms. Harris, 40, and Mr. Kurlander, 58, admitted they took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ms. Biden had been living, to New York, where Project Veritas has its headquarters.“Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.“They sold the property to an organization in New York for $40,000 and even returned to take more of the victim’s property when asked to do so,” Mr. Williams said. “Harris and Kurlander sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property, and they now stand convicted of a federal felony as a result.”As part of the investigation, the authorities have executed a search warrant at the homes of two former employees and Project Veritas’s founder, James O’Keefe, and they have obtained a trove of the group’s emails from around the time it purchased the diary.No charges have been filed against Project Veritas or any of its operatives, and the group never published the diary. But in a sign that the investigation into the group will continue, the authorities said Mr. Kurlander had agreed to cooperate with the authorities.Ms. Harris’s lawyer, Sanford Talkin, declined after the hearing to discuss whether she would cooperate with the authorities, saying: “She has accepted responsibility for her actions, and she looks forward to moving forward with her life.”In a brief statement, Project Veritas said its “news gathering was ethical and legal.”“A journalist’s lawful receipt of material later alleged to be stolen is routine, commonplace and protected by the First Amendment,” it said.It is unclear what impact the disclosure about Project Veritas’s role in the scheme will have on its operations, which are often funded by donors. The pleas mark the first time criminal charges have been filed in the theft of Ms. Biden’s diary, which she kept while she recovered from addiction and which contained intimate information about her and her family.“I know what I did was wrong and awful, and I apologize,” Mr. Kurlander said in court.“I sincerely apologize for any actions and know what I did was illegal,” Ms. Harris said.Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris, who surrendered to the authorities early Thursday, were released from custody after the hearing. Both are scheduled to be sentenced in December.Ms. Biden had left the diary at a friend’s home where she had been staying in Delray Beach, Fla., in 2020 and planned to return to retrieve it that year, according to interviews and court documents.After Ms. Biden left, her friend allowed Ms. Harris, who was in a bitter custody dispute and struggling financially, to stay at the home. Ms. Harris learned that Ms. Biden had been living there and found her belongings, including the diary, in August.She told Mr. Kurlander, who texted her that they could make a lot of money from the diary and family photos she had also found among Ms. Biden’s belongings. Mr. Kurlander, The New York Times has reported, then informed a Trump supporter and fund-raiser, Elizabeth Fago.Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander took the diary to a Trump fund-raiser at Ms. Fago’s home, where it was passed around, The Times reported last year, an event also documented in the court filing on Thursday. Before the event, the court papers said, Mr. Kurlander texted Ms. Harris: “On Sunday you may have a chance to make so much money.” Prosecutors said by that time she had stolen additional items belonging to Ms. Biden.“Omg. Coming with stuff that neither one of us have seen or spoken about,” Ms. Harris texted Mr. Kurlander. “I can’t wait to show you what Mama has to bring Papa.”Prosecutors said the pair had hoped to sell the items to the Trump campaign. But a representative of the campaign who was not identified in the court papers told the pair that they were not interested in buying the property and that they should take it to the F.B.I. Instead, The Times has reported, Ms. Fago ultimately helped direct Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander to Project Veritas.Aimee Harris admitted she took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ms. Biden had been living, to New York.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesIn September, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander traveled to Manhattan to show Project Veritas the diary, telling two operatives for the group that they had found it and other items at the Delray Beach home where Ms. Biden had been staying with a friend. Project Veritas paid for the pair to go to New York and stay at a luxury hotel, prosecutors said.Prosecutors said that a Project Veritas operative wanted more of Ms. Biden’s property to try to authenticate the diary and would pay more for those additional items. Mr. Kurlander realized there was an opportunity to make more money from Project Veritas.Mr. Kurlander texted Ms. Harris, the court filing said, that they had “to tread even more carefully and that stuff needs to be gone through by us and if anything worthwhile it needs to be turned over and MUST be out of that house.”Ultimately, Project Veritas paid them $40,000.Prosecutors did not name the Project Veritas employees who met with Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander in New York, but last year the F.B.I. searched the home of Spencer Meads, a confidant of Mr. O’Keefe. The Times has previously reported that Mr. Meads was sent to Florida to authenticate the diary.Prosecutors said that one of the Project Veritas employees traveled to Florida on the same day that Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander stole the additional items. All three of them met, and Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris gave the Project Veritas operative the items. Mr. Kurlander also met with the operative the next day and provided an additional bag, prosecutors said.Project Veritas, which uses deceptive tactics to ensnare targets, undertook a wide-ranging effort to authenticate the diary. As part of that effort, an operative tried to trick Ms. Biden during a phone call into confirming that the diary was hers.Project Veritas later contacted Ms. Biden’s lawyers about the diary in an attempt to secure an interview with her father before the election. Ms. Biden’s lawyers told the group that the idea that she had abandoned the diary was “ludicrous” and accused the group of an “extortionate effort to secure an interview,” according to emails obtained by The Times. Ms. Biden’s lawyers then contacted federal prosecutors in Manhattan.In the midst of this exchange, a conservative website, National File, published excerpts from the diary on Oct. 24, 2020, and its full contents two days later. The disclosure drew little attention.National File said it had obtained the diary from someone at another organization that was unwilling to publish it in the campaign’s final days. Mr. O’Keefe was said to be furious that the diary ended up in the hands of National File.In early November 2020 — days after the election — Project Veritas arranged for Ms. Biden’s items to be taken to the Delray Beach Police Department, where a lawyer was captured on video saying the belongings might have been stolen. The police then contacted the F.B.I. More