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    Justice Dept. Takes Broad View of Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons

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    The department has increasingly taken the position that criminal behavior discovered during an investigation stemming from a suspect’s role in the Capitol attack is in fact related to Jan. 6.Four years ago, when F.B.I. agents searched the Florida home of Jeremy Brown, a former Special Forces soldier, in connection with his role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they found several illegal items: an unregistered assault rifle, two live fragmentation grenades and a classified “trip report” that Mr. Brown wrote while he was in the Army.Mr. Brown was ultimately tried in Tampa on charges of illegally possessing the weapons and the classified material. And after he was convicted, he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison — even before his Jan. 6 indictment had a chance to go in front of a jury.On Tuesday, however, federal prosecutors abruptly declared that because the second case was related to Jan. 6, it was covered by the sprawling clemency proclamation that President Trump issued on his first day in office to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack.And if a judge eventually agrees with that assessment, it could mean that Mr. Brown — whose Jan. 6 charges were already wiped out by the presidential pardon — will get to go free on his other case as well.The Justice Department’s position with regard to Mr. Brown is not the first time it has said in recent days that separate criminal cases emerging from the investigation of Jan. 6 — especially those involving weapons discovered during searches — should be covered by Mr. Trump’s sweeping reprieves.Ed Martin, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, advanced that view on Tuesday in the case of another pardoned Jan. 6 defendant, Daniel Edwin Wilson.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Ban on The A.P. Echoes Orwell’s ‘1984’

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      President Trump has been battling with The Associated Press over his decree that the body of water between Florida and Mexico be identified as the Gulf of America. This may look like no more than a classic Washington quarrel, long a characteristic of the press and the presidency, that has reached an extreme level over semantics. It’s much bigger than that, and the implications are far-reachingI say that as a former longtime White House reporter. I began my stint there covering Jimmy Carter for The A.P. As its senior White House correspondent during most of Ronald Reagan’s first term, I was in and out of the Oval Office almost daily and regularly traveled aboard Air Force One. Later, as a Los Angeles Times correspondent, I covered the White House during Mr. Reagan’s second term and the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.This far from conventional dispute erupted nearly two weeks ago when an A.P. reporter was barred from an Oval Office event because his news organization had continued to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its longstanding name. Three days later, a White House official said the administration would bar A.P. reporters from the Oval Office and from Air Force One, though they would retain credentials to the White House complex. Mr. Trump weighed in on Tuesday, saying, “We’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America.”Dozens of major news organizations, including The New York Times and the conservative outlets Fox News and Newsmax, called on the White House on Monday to lift its ban on The A.P., to no avail. On Friday, The A.P. sued top White House officials, accusing them of violating the First and Fifth Amendments by denying its reporters access.The attack on the news agency brings into focus the administration’s refusal to respect the First Amendment, with presidential aides and the president himself trying to dictate the very language news reporters may use — just as George Orwell’s fictional dictators did. It is emblematic of the broader assault by the White House on the public’s right to know. In the administration’s opening weeks, Brendan Carr, Mr. Trump’s new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has ordered his agency to investigate ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and NPR. The Defense Department has thrown such mainstream media outlets as The New York Times, NBC News and NPR out of their work spaces in the Pentagon and moved in some conservative outlets.The pressure has begun to take on the outlines of chilling history. Dictators and other authoritarian leaders have long sought to control the critical role the mass media plays in shaping public discourse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      This Is What the Courts Can Do if Trump Defies Them

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      Are we heading toward a full-blown constitutional crisis? For the first time in decades, the country is wrestling with this question. It was provoked by members of the Trump administration, including Russell Vought, the influential director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, who have hinted or walked right up to the edge of saying outright that officials should refuse to obey a court order against certain actions of the administration. President Trump has said he would obey court orders — though on Saturday he posted on social media, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”Some have argued that if the administration is defiant there is little the courts can do. But while the courts do not have a standing army, there are actually several escalating measures they can take to counter a defiant executive branch.The fundamental principle of the rule of law is that once the legal process, including appeals and stay applications, has reached completion, public officials must obey an order of the courts. This country’s constitutional traditions are built on, and depend upon, that understanding.A profound illustration is President Richard Nixon’s compliance with the Supreme Court decision requiring him to turn over the secret White House tape recordings he had made, even though Nixon knew that doing so would surely end his presidency.If the Trump administration ignores a court order, it would represent the start of a full-blown constitutional crisis.The courts rarely issue binding orders to the president, so these orders are not likely to be directed at President Trump personally. His executive orders and other commands are typically enforced by subordinate officials in the executive branch, and any court order — initially, it would come from the Federal District Court — would be directed at them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?

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      When I was a teenager, my older brother took me to see “Shane.”I wasn’t that into westerns, and the movie just seemed to be about a little boy running after Alan Ladd in the wilderness of the Tetons, screaming “Sha-a-a-a-ne, come back!”I came across the movie on Turner Classic Movies the other night, and this time I understood why the George Stevens film is considered one of best of all time. (The A.F.I. ranks “Shane, come back!” as one of the 50 top movie lines of all time.)The parable on good and bad involves a fight between cattle ranchers and homesteaders. Ladd’s Shane is on the side of the honest homesteaders — including an alluring married woman, played by Jean Arthur. Arriving in creamy fringed buckskin, he is an enigmatic golden gunslinger who goes to work as a farmhand. Jack Palance plays the malevolent hired gun imported by the brutal cattle ranchers to drive out the homesteaders. Palance is dressed in a black hat and black vest. In case you don’t get the idea, a dog skulks away as Palance enters a saloon.It’s so easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, the right thing to do versus the wrong. Law and order wasn’t a cliché or a passé principle that could be kicked aside if it interfered with baser ambitions.The 1953 film is also a meditation on American masculinity in the wake of World War II. A real man doesn’t babble or whine or brag or take advantage. He stands up for the right thing and protects those who can’t protect themselves from bullies.I loved seeing all those sentimental, corny ideals that America was built on, even if those ideals have often been betrayed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Opinion Today: Decoding the Chaos of Trump’s America

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      Where America Stands: Donald Trump’s reckless and illegal campaign to remake the government crossed more lines in Week 4, but we’re seeing the emergence of heroes and fresh demonstrations of courage.What Times Opinion Is Doing: “The actions of this presidency need to be tracked,” our editorial board wrote last weekend, as Trump tries to overwhelm people so he can blaze ahead unchecked. We are sorting through the chaos by identifying what matters most in columns, guest essays and podcasts, and we are rolling out ways to track Trump’s moves and the good work of others. Today’s newsletter is one way — looking at where Americans can’t afford to turn away from.Trump Abhors Independent Voices, Part I: Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten are new names to many of us, and they are among the heroes of the Southern District of New York for standing up to Trump’s Department of Justice and its farcical orders to dismiss the Eric Adams case. Read The Times’s annotations of Sassoon’s letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi for insight into what courage and duty look like, and Justice’s Emil Bove’s letter of reply for the plain purpose of this administration: Crush anyone, even appointees and friends, who stakes out independence from Trump.Worth reading: Two deeper articles about Bove in The Times and The Wall Street Journal.Trump Abhors Independent Voices, Part II: The administration is trying to redefine free speech into state-permitted speech, with the Federal Communications Commission going after NPR, CBS and now NBC-owned Comcast, and the Trump White House penalizing The Associated Press for not using the president’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico. Keep an eye on this: Trump has long labeled facts as “misinformation,” but now he’s escalating a crackdown on disfavored speech. What happens when he renames the Panama Canal “the American Canal”?A Notorious Science Denialist Takes Power: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed Thursday as health and human services secretary — a dark day for the Senate, where many Republican members would have voted against Kennedy on a secret ballot. America will need watchdogs and whistle-blowers to protect public health from Kennedy.Worth reading: A Post examination of Kennedy’s public statements.A Terrible Message for Europe and Ukraine: Trump started negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine — with Vladimir Putin, and initially without Ukraine — at the same time Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Europe that the United States is no longer the guarantor of European security. So Putin can take any part of Europe he wants (except maybe Greenland)?Musk in the Oval: While he wasn’t quite behind the Resolute Desk, Elon Musk held forth in the Oval next to Trump, whose moments of assent made clear for anyone who wondered if Musk was at the wheel. “The fraudsters complain the loudest,” Musk said of the brave people standing up to illegal efforts to disband agencies and cut off grants and funds authorized by Congress.Worth reading: Three closer looks at Musk from my colleagues David Brooks and Tressie McMillan Cottom (or watch her TikTok) and from The Post.Heroes in the Land: And I’d like to end with a few more heroes to read about: Brian Driscoll at the F.B.I.; Chrystia Freeland, former deputy prime minister of Canada; and the federal judge John McConnell and other judges who have issued temporary restraining orders against Trump actions. Some of these folks are heroes simply for doing their duty — a great American value that is no small thing in Trump’s America.With contributions from M. Gessen, Binyamin Appelbaum, Mara Gay, Michelle Cottle and Serge Schmemann of Times Opinion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Muses About a Third Term, Over and Over Again

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      The president’s suggestion that he would seek to stay in office beyond the constitutional limit comes as he has pushed to expand executive authority.Standing inside the Capitol for the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Trump declared his plans to resurrect an idea he had in his first term: to create a national garden filled with statues of notable Americans.The choice of who would be included would be “the president’s sole opinion,” Mr. Trump said, chuckling. And he was giving himself “a 25-year period” to make the selections.A short time later, at a breakfast at a Washington hotel, Mr. Trump flicked again at the prospect that his time in office could extend beyond two four-year terms.“They say I can’t run again; that’s the expression,” he said. “Then somebody said, I don’t think you can. Oh.”At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Mr. Trump spoke of giving himself a “25-year period” to choose statues for a national garden.Eric Lee/The New York TimesJust eight days after he won a second term, Mr. Trump — whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory from being certified — mused about whether he could have a third presidential term, which is barred by the Constitution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Biden Commutes 1,500 Sentences, Some Celebrate and Plan

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      Among those whose sentences were commuted was Rebecca Parrett, an Arizona woman who now hopes to travel to meet her great-grandchildren for the first time.Early on Thursday morning, Rebecca Parrett received a phone call from her former hairdresser.“Have you heard the news yet?” he asked her.She hadn’t.President Biden was commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people, he told her, and perhaps Mr. Parrett might be among them, suddenly free to travel to see her family.But at that early hour, it was just a headline, the White House telling news organizations that it was the most commutations in a single day by an American president. It would be a couple of hours until the White House released the list of those being offered clemency — and until Ms. Parrett, 76, found her name.All day, she said, “I have just been in tears.”Like many of those whose sentences were commuted by President Biden on Thursday, Ms. Parrett had been released from prison during the pandemic to serve her sentence on home confinement. While that was a relief, she has lived in constant worry that she would be sent back to prison — and Republican lawmakers had been threatening to do just that, by pushing legislation that would have forced people who had been released to home confinement during the pandemic back behind bars.Now, Ms. Parrett, who receives Social Security benefits and recently moved into an apartment in Prescott Valley, Ariz., is hoping she can travel to Indiana to celebrate Christmas with her son, who recently had open-heart surgery. She has five great-grandchildren who live in Florida and Indiana and whom she has never met. As soon as she learns the details of her commutation — which could take a few days, her case manager told her — she will be making travel plans.“I’m certainly praying for just a complete release, time served,” she said.For Ms. Parrett, the commutation is a joyous turn in a journey that she almost didn’t survive. After being convicted of securities fraud and other financial crimes in 2008, Ms. Parrett, still on bond, fled to Mexico, where, she said, she planned to commit suicide. “I thought life would be better if I was gone,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Biden Pardons His Son Hunter, Prison Inmates Hope They’re Next

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      President Biden has pardoned people convicted of some marijuana offenses, but advocates for prisoners say he has been slow to grant other requests.On Thanksgiving, Hunter Biden got the word from his father, President Biden, that he would be pardoned for tax and gun law violations, saving him from potentially spending a few years in federal prison.But Michael Montalvo, 78, a former cocaine ringleader who has spent nearly 40 years behind bars racking up course certifications, credits for good behavior and recommendations from his prison wardens, is still waiting to hear about his request for a pardon.So is Michelle West, who has spent more than 30 years in prison for her role in a drug conspiracy connected to a murder, while the gunman, who testified against her, has gone free. And Sara Gallegos, who is serving a 20-year sentence for being briefly involved in a drug ring after her husband was murdered when she was pregnant with her fourth child.“Everyone wants that chance,” said Lazara Serrano, who is waiting for her mother to win release from prison after more than 25 years, and who was stunned to hear that Hunter Biden’s criminal case was over. “For something just to be so sudden, and to happen right away, is crazy when there’s a line of people waiting.”Andrea James, who runs an organization that helps incarcerated women, said she did not begrudge Hunter Biden his pardon, but said she was hopeful that it would “move President Biden to consider other families who’ve endured what they have gone through for much longer periods of time.”Critics have complained that Mr. Biden has approved a smaller fraction of the requests for clemency that he has received than any other modern president. Of course, he still has time, and presidents have made a habit of waiting until the 11th hour to announce their clemency decisions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Biden Changed His Mind on Pardoning Hunter: ‘Time to End All of This’

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      The threat of a retribution-focused Trump administration and his son’s looming sentencings prompted the president to abandon a promise not to get involved in Hunter Biden’s legal problems.A dark sky had fallen over Nantucket, Mass., on Saturday evening when President Biden left church alongside his family after his final Thanksgiving as president.Inside a borrowed vacation compound earlier in the week, with its views of the Nantucket Harbor, Mr. Biden had met with his wife, Jill Biden, and his son Hunter Biden to discuss a decision that had tormented him for months. The issue: a pardon that would clear Hunter of years of legal trouble, something the president had repeatedly insisted he would not do.Support for pardoning Hunter Biden had been building for months within the family, but external forces had more recently weighed on Mr. Biden, who watched warily as President-elect Donald J. Trump picked loyalists for his administration who promised to bring political and legal retribution to Mr. Trump’s enemies.Mr. Biden had even invited Mr. Trump to the White House, listening without responding as the president-elect aired familiar grievances about the Justice Department — then surprised his host by sympathizing with the Biden family’s own troubles with the department, according to three people briefed on the conversation.But it was Hunter Biden’s looming sentencings on federal gun and tax charges, scheduled for later this month, that gave Mr. Biden the final push. A pardon was one thing he could do for a troubled son, a recovering addict who he felt had been subjected to years of public pain.When the president returned to Washington late Saturday evening, he convened a call with several senior aides to tell them about his decision.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More