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      Two Trump White House Lawyers Meet With Jan. 6 Investigators

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      Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel, and Patrick F. Philbin, who was his deputy, met separately with the panel after the former president authorized them to do so.Two of former President Donald J. Trump’s top White House lawyers met on Wednesday with the House committee investigating the Capitol attack, after Mr. Trump authorized them to engage with the panel, according to a person familiar with the matter.Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel, and Patrick F. Philbin, who was his deputy, met separately with the panel, two people familiar with the sessions said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the meetings.It was not immediately clear how much information Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Philbin had provided to the committee or what they said, but they were present for key moments in the buildup to the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including pivotal conversations and meetings in which Mr. Trump discussed using the powers of his office to try to overturn the election.Their cooperation, which was reported earlier by Politico, added to the more than two dozen White House officials who agreed to take the committee’s questions.The two were not under oath and their interviews were not transcribed, but the men could return for formal interviews or deposition later, one of the people said, describing it as a typical process as investigators determine who they want to question.The interviews came as the committee learned from the National Archives that lawmakers would receive additional documents from the Trump White House after President Biden declined to assert executive privilege over them.In a letter on Wednesday, David S. Ferriero, the national archivist, told Mr. Trump that he would turn over a new set of records to the committee within 15 days “unless prohibited by court order.” Mr. Trump wrote to the archives in February to say he asserted executive privilege over more than 1,000 documents in its possession.In recent days, the committee has questioned Mr. Trump’s elder daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, both former White House advisers. In transcribed interviews, they provided testimony that lawmakers described as “helpful.”Mr. Trump told The Washington Post that he had offered his daughter and son-in-law “privilege,” but they declined it. Courts have rejected Mr. Trump’s claims of executive privilege, and the Biden White House has declined to invoke it for material and witnesses sought by the Jan. 6 inquiry, including for Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner’s testimony.The panel has also heard from John McEntee, who served as Mr. Trump’s chief of presidential personnel; Anthony M. Ornato, the former White House chief of operations; and Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer. Another top adviser, Stephen Miller, was slated to testify on Thursday, according to another person familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.Mr. Miller was subpoenaed late last year and had lengthy negotiations to appear.Mr. Cipollone, who defended Mr. Trump during his first impeachment trial, pushed back against some of the most extreme plans the president considered for overturning the election. He participated in meetings with Trump allies who were pressing for the military to seize voting machines and in which Attorney General William P. Barr offered his resignation after making clear that the Justice Department had found no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Patrick F. Philbin, who was Mr. Cipollone’s deputy, also met with the House committee investigating the Capitol attack.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. Cipollone also tried to persuade Mr. Trump to stop pursuing baseless claims of fraud. He balked at pursuing a plan proposed by Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer, who had wanted to distribute official letters to multiple state legislatures falsely alerting them that the election might have been stolen and urging them to reconsider certified results.“That letter that this guy wants to send — that letter is a murder-suicide pact,” Mr. Cipollone told Mr. Trump, according to testimony the panel has received. “It’s going to damage everyone who touches it. And we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don’t ever want to see that letter again.”Mr. Philbin, who was a senior Justice Department lawyer under President George W. Bush, was also present for the meeting in which Mr. Barr offered his resignation.The Supreme Court has ordered the National Archives to turn over to the committee Mr. Philbin’s White House records, which include a memo about a potential lawsuit against several states that Mr. Biden won in the 2020 election. They also contain a series of emails from a state official regarding election-related issues and talking points on alleged election irregularities in a county in Michigan.And they include a plan pushed by Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, and the lawyer Sidney Powell to declare that there was foreign influence in the election, with the goal of allowing Mr. Trump to use the powers of the Defense Department to seize voting machines and have the votes recounted. More

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      Jan. 6 Suspect Blames Trump for Spurring Him to Capitol Riot

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      Dustin Thompson, an unemployed exterminator from Ohio, was the first defendant tried in the Capitol attack to offer a Trump-made-me-do-it defense before a jury.WASHINGTON — Dustin Thompson’s trip down what he called “the rabbit hole” of election misinformation began eight months before a single vote was cast in 2020. It ended inside the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where he was part of the mob of Trump supporters that stormed inside during Congress’s counting of electoral votes in the worst attack on the building since the War of 1812.An exterminator from Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Thompson, 38, was laid off in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. Alone at home with his new wife, he began spending long days on the internet, steeping himself in conspiracy theories about the upcoming vote.As the election approached, he said, he fully believed that if Donald J. Trump ended up losing, it would only be because the voting had been rigged, as the president had been warning publicly for months. Even after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner, Mr. Thompson could not accept that it was true.All of this, he told a jury at his criminal trial on Wednesday, led him to Washington on Jan. 6 for a Stop the Steal rally, where he and a friend listened to Mr. Trump give an incendiary speech near the White House.In an hour on the witness stand, Mr. Thompson blamed Mr. Trump for what eventually occurred, saying that he had been answering the president’s call to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” when he joined the throng swarming into the building and made off with a bottle of bourbon and a coat rack.“If the president’s giving you almost an order to do something,” he said, “I felt obligated to do that.”Mr. Thompson’s story is not unusual. At several points during the Justice Department’s vast investigation of the Capitol attack, many people charged with crimes have sought to blame Mr. Trump in various ways for their actions, mostly at pretrial bail hearings or at sentencings after pleading guilty.But Mr. Thompson is the first defendant to attempt the argument at trial in front of a jury. In making his case, he offered a window into the toxic and relentless flood of conspiracy theories and lies, stoked by Mr. Trump, that helped give rise to the riot.The move comes with considerable risk, and its success or failure could determine not only Mr. Thompson’s fate, but that of other defendants accused of taking part in the violence of Jan. 6.Before the trial began, Mr. Thompson admitted to prosecutors that he had gone into the Capitol and stolen government property, agreeing in advance to nearly every element of the six charges he faces. His defense will rest almost entirely on the question of his state of mind during the riot.Mr. Thompson has claimed that he did not knowingly or corruptly break the law, but rather, as his lawyer said on Tuesday, was “so influenced — so used and abused” by Mr. Trump that he could not be held accountable for his behavior.The Trump-made-me-do-it defense has not fared well with judges. While it could work better on a jury, Mr. Thompson seemed to stumble on Wednesday during cross-examination, undercutting key elements of his argument.William Dreher, a prosecutor, got him to admit several times that Mr. Trump had not been at his side, offering him step-by-step instructions, when he walked into the Senate parliamentarian’s office and walked out with the whiskey and the coat rack. Mr. Thompson acknowledged that he was a married adult with a college degree who could make his own decisions.Mr. Thompson also conceded under questioning by Mr. Dreher that he had known it was unlawful to go into the Capitol on Jan. 6 while lawmakers were finalizing the results of the election. That appeared to contradict a central pillar of his own defense.While Mr. Thompson’s claims that he was under Mr. Trump’s spell do not carry any legal weight as evidence, they echo similar allegations the government has made in other cases connected to Jan. 6. In those cases, prosecutors have gone to great lengths to describe how rioters at the Capitol were motivated by Mr. Trump’s statements, including his speech at the Ellipse and a tweet he posted on Dec. 19, 2020 calling on his followers to attend a “wild” protest in Washington on Jan. 6.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Debating a criminal referral. More

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      Mark Zuckerberg Ends Election Grants

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      Mark Zuckerberg, who donated nearly half a billion dollars to election offices across the nation in 2020 and drew criticism from conservatives suspicious of his influence on the presidential election, won’t be making additional grants this year, a spokesman for the Facebook founder confirmed on Tuesday.The spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said the donations by Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were never intended to be a stream of funding for the administration of elections.The couple gave $419 million to two nonprofit organizations that disbursed grants in 2020 to more than 2,500 election departments, which were grappling with a shortfall of government funding as they adopted new procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.The infusion of private donations helped to pay for new ballot-counting equipment, efforts to expand mail-in voting, personal protective equipment and the training of poll workers.It also sowed seeds of mistrust among supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. Critics referred to the grants as “Zuckerbucks” and some frequently claimed, without evidence, that the money was used to help secure Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Several states controlled by Republicans banned private donations to election offices in response.“As Mark and Priscilla made clear previously, their election infrastructure donation to help ensure that Americans could vote during the height of the pandemic was a one-time donation given the unprecedented nature of the crisis,” Mr. LaBolt said in an email on Tuesday. “They have no plans to repeat that donation.”The Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit group with liberal ties that became a vessel for $350 million of the contributions from Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan in 2020, announced on Monday that it was shifting to a different model for supporting the work of local election administrators.During an appearance on Monday at the TED2022 conference in Vancouver, Tiana Epps-Johnson, the center’s executive director, said that the organization would begin a five-year, $80 million program to help meet the needs of election departments across the country.Called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, the program will draw funding through the Audacious Project, a philanthropic collective housed at the TED organization, the center said. Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan are not involved in the new initiative, Mr. LaBolt said.At the event on Monday, Ms. Epps-Johnson said the grants distributed by the center in 2020 helped fill a substantial void of resources for those overseeing elections in the United States. One town in New England, she said without specifying, was able to replace voting equipment from the early 1900s that was held together with duct tape.“The United States election infrastructure is crumbling,” Ms. Epps-Johnson said.In addition to the Center for Technology and Civic Life, Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan gave $69.6 million to the Center for Election Innovation & Research in 2020. At the time, that nonprofit group said that the top election officials in 23 states had applied for grants.Republicans have been unrelenting in their criticism of the social media mogul and his donations.While campaigning for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday in Perrysburg, Ohio, J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author who has undergone a conversion to Trumpism, continued to accuse Mr. Zuckerberg of tipping the election in 2020 to Mr. Biden.Mr. Vance, a venture capitalist, hasn’t exactly sworn off help from big tech. He counts Peter Thiel, a departing board member of Mr. Zuckerberg’s company, Meta, and a major donor to Mr. Trump, as a top fund-raiser. Mr. Thiel has also supported Blake Masters, a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona.In an opinion piece for The New York Post last October, Mr. Vance and Mr. Masters called for Facebook’s influence to be curbed, writing that Mr. Zuckerberg had spent half a billion dollars to “buy the presidency for Joe Biden.”In Colorado, Tina Peters, the top vote-getter for secretary of state at the state Republican Party’s assembly last weekend, has been a fierce critic of Mr. Zuckerberg, even after her arrest this year on charges stemming from an election security breach. Ms. Peters, the Mesa County clerk, is facing several felonies amid accusations that she allowed an unauthorized person to copy voting machine hard drive information. More

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      In Call Before Jan. 6 Riot, a Plea to ‘Descend on the Capitol’

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      Days before Jan. 6, a onetime aide to Roger J. Stone Jr. told Trump backers to make lawmakers meeting to finalize the 2020 election results feel that “people are breathing down their necks.”One week before an angry mob stormed the Capitol, a communications expert named Jason Sullivan, a onetime aide to Roger J. Stone Jr., joined a conference call with a group of President Donald J. Trump’s supporters and made an urgent plea.After assuring his listeners that the 2020 election had been stolen, Mr. Sullivan told them that they had to go to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day that Congress was to meet to finalize the electoral count — and “descend on the Capitol,” according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.While Mr. Sullivan claimed that he was “not inciting violence or any kind of riots,” he urged those on the call to make their presence felt at the Capitol in a way that would intimidate members of Congress, telling the group that they had to ensure that lawmakers inside the building “understand that people are breathing down their necks.”He also pledged that Mr. Trump was going to take action on his own; the president, he said, was going to impose a form of martial law on Jan. 6 and would not be leaving office.“Biden will never be in that White House,” Mr. Sullivan declared. “That’s my promise to each and every one of you.”Before Riot, Operative Urged Trump Supporters to ‘Descend on the Capitol’ on Jan. 6In a conference call days before the Jan. 6 attack, Jason Sullivan, a onetime aide to Roger J. Stone Jr., exhorted supporters of President Donald J. Trump to go to the Capitol that day and pressure lawmakers meeting to finalize the 2020 election results.The recording of the call, which took place on Dec. 30, 2020, emerged as the Justice Department has expanded its criminal investigation of the Capitol attack. It offers a glimpse of the planning that went on in the run-up to the storming of the Capitol and the mind-set of some of those who zeroed in on Jan. 6 as a kind of last stand for keeping Mr. Trump in office.It also reflects the complexities that federal prosecutors are likely to face as they begin the task of figuring out how much — or even whether — people involved in the political rallies that preceded the assault can be held accountable for the violence that erupted.After more than a year of focusing exclusively on rioters who took part in the storming of the Capitol, prosecutors have widened their gaze in recent weeks and have started to question whether those involved in encouraging protests — like the one that Mr. Sullivan was describing — can be held culpable for disrupting the work of Congress.Mr. Sullivan’s remarks during the call appeared to be an effort to motivate a group of people aggrieved by the election to take direct action against members of Congress on Jan. 6, presaging what Mr. Trump himself would say in a speech that day. While it remains unclear whether anyone on Mr. Sullivan’s call went on to join the mob that breached the Capitol, he seemed to be exhorting his listeners to apply unusual pressure on lawmakers just as they were overseeing the final count of Electoral College votes.In a statement provided by his lawyer, Mr. Sullivan played down the nature of the call, saying he had merely “shared some encouragement” with what he described as “people who all felt their votes had been disenfranchised in the 2020 elections.” Mr. Sullivan said he had been asked to participate in the call by a group of anti-vaccine activists — or what he called “health freedom advocate moms” — who were hosting “a small, permitted event” at the Capitol on Jan. 6.“I only promoted peaceful solutions where Americans could raise their voices and be heard as expressed in our First Amendment,” Mr. Sullivan said in the statement. “I in no way condone the violence of any protesters.”Still, in the recording of the call, Mr. Sullivan can be heard telling his listeners that the lawmakers inside the Capitol “need to feel pressure.”“If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” he said. “We have to put that pressure there.”As the Justice Department widens its inquiry, federal prosecutors are using a grand jury in Washington to gather information on political organizers, speakers and so-called V.I.P.s connected to a series of pro-Trump rallies after the 2020 election. One prominent planner of those rallies, Ali Alexander, received a subpoena from the grand jury and said last week that he intended to comply with its requests.In the run-up to Jan. 6, Mr. Alexander publicly discussed a pressure campaign against lawmakers that was meant to stop the final electoral count, saying he was working with Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama and Representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, all Republicans.“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Mr. Alexander said in a since-deleted video on Periscope. The plan, he said, was to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside.”It is unclear if the Justice Department is aware of Mr. Sullivan’s conference call; the department declined to comment. The House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 was provided with a copy of the recording some months ago by the woman who made it, Staci Burk, a law student and Republican activist from Arizona.Shortly after the election, Ms. Burk became convinced that phony ballots had been flown in bulk into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. She eventually submitted an anonymous affidavit concerning the ballots in an election fraud case filed in Federal District Court in Phoenix by the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Debating a criminal referral. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Has Evidence for Criminal Referral of Trump, but Splits on Sending

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      Despite concluding that it has enough evidence, the committee is concerned that making a referral to the Justice Department would backfire by politicizing the investigation into the Capitol riot.WASHINGTON — The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack have grown divided over whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department of former President Donald J. Trump, even though they have concluded that they have enough evidence to do so, people involved in the discussions said.The debate centers on whether making a referral — a largely symbolic act — would backfire by politically tainting the Justice Department’s expanding investigation into the Jan. 6 assault and what led up to it.Since last summer, a team of former federal prosecutors working for the committee has focused on documenting the attack and the preceding efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election. The panel plans to issue a detailed report on its findings, but in recent months it has regularly signaled that it was also weighing a criminal referral that would pressure Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to open a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump.But now, with the Justice Department appearing to ramp up a wide-ranging investigation, some Democrats are questioning whether there is any need to make a referral — and whether doing so would saddle a criminal case with further partisan baggage at a time when Mr. Trump is openly flirting with running again in 2024.A federal judge found that it was “more likely than not” that President Donald J. Trump had committed crimes in his efforts to derail the certification of the 2020 election.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesThe shift in the committee’s perspective on making a referral was prompted in part by a ruling two weeks ago by Judge David O. Carter of the Federal District Court for Central California. Deciding a civil case in which the committee had sought access to more than 100 emails written by John C. Eastman, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump on efforts to derail certification of the Electoral College outcome, Judge Carter found that it was “more likely than not” that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had committed federal crimes.The ruling led some committee and staff members to argue that even though they felt they had amassed enough evidence to justify calling for a prosecution for obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiring to defraud the American people, the judge’s decision would carry far greater weight with Mr. Garland than any referral letter they could write, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.The members and aides who were reluctant to support a referral contended that making one would create the appearance that Mr. Garland was investigating Mr. Trump at the behest of a Democratic Congress and that if the committee could avoid that perception it should, the people said.Even if the final report does not include a specific referral letter to Mr. Garland, the findings would still provide federal prosecutors with the evidence the committee uncovered — including some that has not yet become public — that could be used as a road map for any prosecution, the people said.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has given no public indication of the Justice Department’s intentions other than to say that it will follow the facts and the law. Yuri Gripas for The New York Times“If you read his decision, I think it’s quite telling,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a member of the committee said of Judge Carter’s ruling. “He and we have reviewed a huge amount of documents, and he reached a conclusion that he outlined in very stark terms.”Ms. Lofgren is among those who believe a referral letter to the Justice Department is superfluous, since it would carry no legal weight.“Maybe we will, maybe we won’t,” she said of a referral. “It doesn’t have a legal impact.”But the question about whether to send the referral has, for one of the first times since the committee was formed in July, exposed differences among members about the panel’s mission.Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the panel, said that the committee should still send a referral for any crimes it uncovers.Representatives Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Elaine Luria of Virginia, Democratic members of the Jan. 6 committee, at the Capitol last month. Ms. Luria said that the committee should send a referral for any crimes it uncovers.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press“I would say that I don’t agree with what some of my colleagues have said about this,” Ms. Luria said on MSNBC this month. “I think it’s a lot more important to do what’s right than it is to worry about the political ramifications. This committee, our purpose is legislative and oversight, but if in the course of our investigation we find that criminal activity has occurred, I think it’s our responsibility to refer that to the Department of Justice.”Although staff members have been in discussions about a referral, and some have debated the matter publicly, the committee members have not sat down together to discuss whether to proceed with a referral, several lawmakers said.Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California, said the committee was likely to hold off on making a final determination until investigators finished their work. He said the panel was “finishing up” its investigative phase and shifting to a more “public-facing” one in which the panel will present its findings.“The members haven’t had those conversations,” Mr. Aguilar said of a meeting to discuss a potential referral. “Right now, we’re gathering the material that we need. As the investigative phase winds down, we’ll have more conversations about what the report looks like. But we’re not presupposing where that’s going to go before we get a little further with the interviews.”Although the committee has the ability to subpoena testimony and documents and make referrals to the Justice Department for prosecutions, it has no criminal prosecution powers.The committee’s vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, singled out Mr. Trump’s conduct at a public hearing in December, reading from the criminal code and laying out how she believed he had obstructed Congress. In early March, the committee in effect road-tested whether the evidence it had gathered could support a prosecution, laying out in a filing in the civil case before Judge Carter its position that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had obstructed Congress and defrauded the American public.In validating the committee’s position, legal experts said, the judge made it difficult for the Justice Department to avoid an investigation. Mr. Garland has given no public indication of the department’s intentions other than to say that it will follow the facts and the law. But subpoenas issued by a federal grand jury indicate that prosecutors are gathering information about a wide array of issues, including about efforts to obstruct the election certification by people in the Trump White House and in Congress.Investigators from the House committee and the Justice Department have not been sharing information, except to avoid conflicts around the scheduling of certain witnesses.Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California, has said that the committee is “finishing up” its investigative phase.Oliver Contreras for The New York Times“We want them to move faster, but we respect their work,” Mr. Aguilar said, adding that the committee has a different goal the Justice Department’s inquiry: to fully investigate what led to the riot, which injured more than 150 police officers, and take legislative steps to prevent a repeat. “It’s an insult to the lives of the Capitol Police officers if we don’t pursue what happened and take meaningful and concrete steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 6A Trump ally agrees to cooperate. 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      Donald Trump Jr. Text Laid Out Strategies to Fight Election Outcome

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      In a message two days after Election Day 2020, the president’s son conveyed a range of ideas for keeping his father in office.Former President Donald J. Trump’s eldest son sent the White House chief of staff a text message two days after Election Day in 2020 that laid out strategies for declaring his father the winner regardless of the electoral outcome, people familiar with the exchange said on Friday.The text, which was reported earlier by CNN, was sent two days before Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner of the election. The recipient, Mark Meadows, turned a cache of his text messages over to the House committee investigating the events leading up to the deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as the Electoral College results in Mr. Biden’s favor were being certified.“It’s very simple,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote to Mr. Meadows on Nov. 5, 2020. He wrote at another point, “We have multiple paths We control them all.”The message went on to lay out a variety of options that Mr. Trump or his allies ultimately employed in trying to overturn the results of the election, from legal challenges to promoting alternative slates of electors to focusing efforts on the statutory date of Jan. 6 for certification of the Electoral College results.In a statement, the younger Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, confirmed that the text message was sent but suggested it was someone else’s idea that Donald Trump Jr. was passing along.“After the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others,” Mr. Futerfas said. “Given the date, this message likely originated from someone else and was forwarded.”Still, the text message underscores the extraordinary lengths that Mr. Trump’s allies and official aides were already exploring right after Election Day to keep Mr. Trump in power if the voters throughout the country failed to do so.Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric called on Republicans to keep fighting on their father’s behalf in the immediate aftermath of Election Day, as votes were still being counted in a string of close races in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Arizona.“The total lack of action from virtually all of the ‘2024 GOP hopefuls’ is pretty amazing,” Donald Jr. wrote on Twitter the same day he sent the text to Mr. Meadows. “They have a perfect platform to show that they’re willing & able to fight but they will cower to the media mob instead. Don’t worry @realDonaldTrump will fight & they can watch as usual!”The House committee is investigating what led to the assault on the Capitol and the various efforts to try to thwart Mr. Biden’s victory, all of which failed. Ultimately, a mob of supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol during the certification. At least seven people died in connection with the riot.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5The effort to disqualify “insurrectionists.” More

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      Legal Effort Expands to Disqualify Republicans as ‘Insurrectionists’

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      New lawsuits target Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, as well as Mark Finchem, a candidate for Arizona secretary of state, claiming they are barred from office under the 14th Amendment.A legal effort to disqualify from re-election lawmakers who participated in events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol expanded on Thursday, when a cluster of voters and a progressive group filed suit against three elected officials in Arizona to bar them under the 14th Amendment from running again.In three separate candidacy challenges filed in Superior Court in Maricopa County, Ariz., voters and the progressive group, Free Speech for People, targeted Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs and State Representative Mark Finchem, who is running for Arizona secretary of state with former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement.It was unclear whether the challenges would go anywhere; an initial skirmish, also led by Free Speech for People, failed to block Representative Madison Cawthorn’s candidacy in North Carolina. But they were the latest bids to find a way to punish members of Congress who have encouraged or made common cause with those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.In all three suits, the plaintiffs claim that the politicians are disqualified from seeking office because their support for rioters who attacked the Capitol made them “insurrectionists” under the Constitution and therefore barred them under the little-known third section of the 14th Amendment, adopted during Reconstruction to punish members of the Confederacy.That section declares that “no person shall” hold “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath” to “support the Constitution,” had then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”A separate action is being pursued by a Democratic-aligned super PAC against Senator Ron Johnson and Representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald, all Wisconsin Republicans.And on Friday, a federal judge in Atlanta will hear Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s effort to dismiss a case filed against her to strike her from the ballot in Georgia. Unless the judge, Amy Totenberg of Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, issues a temporary restraining order, an administrative law judge is set to hear arguments next Wednesday on whether Ms. Greene should be removed from the ballot.Ron Fein, the legal director of Free Speech for People, said the effort was putting pressure on the Justice Department and the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack to take action against individual members of Congress — and to find remedies in court.“Our goal is to reach a ruling by a competent state tribunal, which of course can be appealed to the highest levels if need be, that these individuals are in fact disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” he said. “These are even stronger cases. We’re not going after people who have a tenuous connection to the insurrection.”James Bopp Jr., a conservative election lawyer who is defending Ms. Greene and Mr. Cawthorn, said the groups ultimately could take action against as many as two dozen Republican lawmakers, hoping to establish some legal precedent for trying to bar Mr. Trump from the presidential ballot in 2024. And with enough test cases, one might succeed.“Judges do make a difference,” he said.Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs and Mr. Finchem did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The legal fight in the cases has come down to two questions: What is an insurrectionist, and did Congress in 1872 not only grant amnesty to those who supported and fought for the Confederacy but also to those who would take part in future insurrections, effectively nullifying Section 3?In Mr. Cawthorn’s case, a federal judge appointed by Mr. Trump blocked an inquiry into the congressman’s role in the Jan. 6 attack by ruling that the Amnesty Act of 1872 did indeed confer amnesty on all future insurrectionists.The judge, Richard E. Myers II, focused on a caveat within Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that said “Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House remove” the disqualification — or “disability” — for insurrection. The Amnesty Act was passed by that wide of a margin.That ruling remains in dispute and is on appeal.In the run-up to Jan. 6, Representative Andy Biggs repeatedly posted the falsehood that President Donald J. Trump had won the election.Cooper Neill for The New York Times“The waiver of disability is the functional equivalent of a pardon,” said Gerard N. Magliocca, a constitutional law professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law who has studied the insurrection clause. “Pardons by presidents or governors cannot be for the future. You cannot license future illegality.”The lawyers bringing the new suits believe they have a stronger case to show that the elected officials in question are insurrectionists.In the run-up to Jan. 6, Mr. Gosar and Mr. Biggs repeatedly posted the falsehood that Mr. Trump had won the election. Mr. Gosar organized some of the earliest rallies to “Stop the Steal,” the movement to keep Mr. Trump in office, coordinating with Ali Alexander, a far-right activist, and with Mr. Finchem.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5The effort to disqualify “insurrectionists.” More

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      House Votes to Find Scavino and Navarro in Contempt in Jan. 6 Inquiry

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      The vote was mostly along party lines to recommend that the Justice Department charge Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr. with criminal contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas.The House of Representatives voted to recommend that the Justice Department charge Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr. with criminal contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas issued by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday voted to recommend criminal contempt of Congress charges against Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr., two close allies of former President Donald J. Trump, after the pair defied subpoenas from the special committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The mostly party-line vote of 220 to 203 referred contempt charges to the Justice Department, calling for prosecutions of Mr. Navarro, a former top White House adviser, and Mr. Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff. It came as congressional investigators have grown increasingly frustrated with some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters who have refused to meet with the panel or turn over a single page of evidence to the committee as it digs into the worst assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812.“We have two people who are flagrantly, brazenly defying the authority of the House of Representatives of the United States,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee. He said the men had “nothing but excuses for their noncompliance — excuses you would not accept from a teenage child.”Only two Republicans, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, both members of the investigative committee, voted for the charges. The rest of their party refused to support the move.Dozens of Republicans lined up on the floor of the House on Wednesday to demand a change of topic, trying to force a vote on immigration legislation in line with their efforts to use problems at the border as a political weapon against Democrats ahead of midterm congressional elections.After that failed, Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, attacked the investigation in a floor speech as a “political show trial” and accused the panel of bullying the men and trampling on their civil rights.“Let me be clear: The riot on Jan. 6 was wrong. But make no mistake: the Democrats’ response is also wrong,” Mr. McCarthy said, adding, “Democrats are using the power of the federal government to jail their political opponents.”Mr. Raskin shot back that Republicans were using “circus antics” to try to slow down the vote with a “conga line” of lawmakers queued up on the floor while they skipped out on their committee assignments.Dan Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff to Mr. Trump, addressed the Republican National Convention in 2020.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesHe accused the Republicans of “slavishly” following Mr. Trump like “sycophants,” instead of joining efforts to investigate the deadly attack on the Capitol that left more than 150 police officers injured.A contempt of Congress charge carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a maximum fine of $100,000. The House vote steered the matter to the Justice Department, which now must decide whether to charge the two men.Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, said the stakes of potential jail time were too high, and noted the vote would mean that four Trump White House aides would face criminal referrals from the committee.“Mr. Scavino has two boys. He’s a good dad,” Mr. Banks said.Ms. Cheney called the vote “sad” and “tragic,” but said the committee was left with no other choice after some in her own party had abandoned the truth for fealty to Mr. Trump.“So many in my own party are refusing to address the constitutional crisis and the challenge we face,” she said.The Jan. 6 committee laid out its arguments against Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino in a 34-page report that detailed how closely they were involved in efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power even after he lost decisively at the polls.Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino are among a handful of Mr. Trump’s closest allies who have refused to sit for interviews or turn over documents, even as more than 800 witnesses — including other top White House officials — have complied with the committee’s requests.In the past week, the panel has interviewed both Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, and her husband Jared Kushner, both of whom were high-ranking White House advisers to Mr. Trump. Each sat for lengthy interviews with the committee. Neither asserted executive privilege to avoid answering the committee’s questions.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, contrasted their approach to the hard-line stance adopted by Mr. Scavino and Mr. Navarro.“The president’s own daughter complied with the wishes of the committee,” Mr. Thompson said. “If his daughter complied with the wishes of the committee, everyone else should.”The committee said Mr. Navarro had worked with Stephen K. Bannon, another Trump ally, to carry out a plan to delay Congress’s certification of the election on Jan. 6, 2021, and ultimately to try to change the election’s outcome. Mr. Navarro has previously described this plan as the “Green Bay Sweep” and has said more than 100 members of Congress had signed on to it.Mr. Navarro also wrote a report alleging a stolen election, which was widely shared with others working to overturn the election. Mr. Navarro claimed that Mr. Trump “himself had distributed Volume 1 of the report to every member of the House and Senate” before Jan. 6.The Jan. 6 committee laid out its arguments against Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino in a 34-page report.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe committee issued a subpoena in February to Mr. Navarro, but he said he would not comply, citing Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over White House materials from his time in office.In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Navarro insisted that the committee should have negotiated the matter with Mr. Trump, saying that “it is not my privilege to waive.”“Instead, the committee has colluded with the Biden White House in a futile effort to strip Donald Trump of executive privilege so it can coerce me into cooperating with their witch hunt,” he said. “This dog of a witch hunt won’t hunt at the Supreme Court, and I look forward to arguing the case there.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Contempt charges. 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