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      Francis Suarez, Miami Mayor, Is Running for President: What to Know

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      Mr. Suarez, who is entering the Republican presidential race, is a cryptocurrency enthusiast who holds a largely ceremonial job as mayor of Miami.Francis X. Suarez, the two-term mayor of Miami who formally announced his entry into the 2024 presidential race on Thursday, is presenting himself as a fresh face for the Republican Party: a 45-year-old in a field led by a septuagenarian, and a Cuban American in a party whose elected officials are overwhelmingly white.In a speech at the Reagan Library in California on Thursday evening, brimming with callbacks to decades-old Republican catchphrases like George H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light,” Mr. Suarez declared his candidacy with a reference to one more — and to his own catchphrase from a Twitter post he made in 2021 in response to a venture capitalist who suggested moving Silicon Valley to Miami.“I believe America is still a shining city on a hill whose eyes of the world are upon us and whose promise needs to be restored,” he said, a day after filing paperwork for his run. “And I believe the city needs more than a shouter or a fighter. I believe it needs a servant. It needs a mayor. My name is Francis Suarez, and I am here to help.”Here are five things to know about Mr. Suarez.His current job is largely ceremonial.Mr. Suarez was elected as mayor in 2017 with 86 percent of the vote and re-elected in 2021 with 79 percent of the vote — striking margins made possible by the fact that he faced only token opposition. (Miami’s mayoral elections are officially nonpartisan.)He will be running largely on his mayoral experience, since the only other elected office he has held was on the City Commission, not a job known for kick-starting presidential campaigns. But the Miami mayoralty is part time and largely ceremonial.Mr. Suarez’s main powers are vetoing legislation and hiring and firing the city manager. He does not have a vote on the City Commission. Shortly after taking office, he put forward a proposal to give himself more power, including authority over Miami’s budget and work force, but voters soundly rejected it.This distinguishes Mr. Suarez from other sitting or former mayors who have run for president, who already faced long odds. The three who ran prominent campaigns for the Democratic nomination in 2020 — Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., and Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio of New York City — had more authority than Mr. Suarez does.He is enthusiastic about Silicon Valley and cryptocurrency.In 2021, Mr. Suarez drew headlines for announcing that he would take his salary in Bitcoin and for suggesting that Miami pay city workers, accept tax payments and invest public funds in Bitcoin, too.He praised a deal in which the cryptocurrency exchange FTX — founded by the now-disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried — acquired naming rights to Miami’s N.B.A. arena. (The deal was terminated this year after FTX collapsed.)Mr. Suarez embraced cryptocurrency before the industry’s tumult last year.Marco Bello/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe also promoted a branded cryptocurrency called MiamiCoin. Part of the proceeds went into city coffers, and Mr. Suarez suggested it could eventually allow Miami to eliminate taxes. The initial results were promising, but the currency’s value soon plummeted, and the exchange that had hosted it suspended trading of MiamiCoin this year.Mr. Suarez continued to support cryptocurrency even as the industry crashed last year. “I call them tsunamis of opportunity,” he told The Washington Post. “And we have two options. We can take out a surfboard and surf the wave like a tsunami. Or we can hide and try to run from it and pretend it’s not there and potentially get washed away.”He has been accused of influence peddling.Mr. Suarez has come under fire over reports that he was paid tens of thousands of dollars by a company looking for help advancing a luxury condominium project.The Miami Herald reported last month that a developer, Location Ventures, had paid Mr. Suarez — who is a real estate lawyer — at least $170,000 to consult for it and “to help cut through red tape and secure critical permits.” This month, The Herald reported that the F.B.I. was investigating “whether the payments constitute bribes in exchange for securing permits or other favors from the mayor” for a project in the Coconut Grove neighborhood.Mr. Suarez has denied wrongdoing and dismissed The Herald’s reporting as a product of political bias. In an interview on Fox News a few days before he announced his campaign, he suggested that his moves toward a presidential run had motivated journalists to attack him after “an unblemished 13 years in public service.”He has sometimes bucked the Republican line.Mr. Suarez did not vote for Donald J. Trump’s re-election as president in 2020. Nor did he vote for Ron DeSantis for Florida governor in 2018; he voted for Mr. DeSantis’s Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, and said he supported Mr. Gillum’s calls for a higher minimum wage because a “basic standard of living” was “a fundamental human right.”Mr. Suarez voted for Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, in the 2018 Florida governor’s race.Steve Cannon/Associated PressIn early 2021, he criticized Mr. DeSantis for forbidding local leaders to enforce mask mandates as Covid-19 cases surged, telling CBS News that he had tried unsuccessfully to reach Mr. DeSantis and persuade him to let officials “institute things that we think are common-sense, that we think are backed up by science, that we can demonstrate are backed up by science.”And two years earlier, he co-wrote a New York Times opinion essay with Ban Ki-moon, the former secretary general of the United Nations, emphasizing the damage climate change was already doing in Miami. “There isn’t a single aspect of our daily lives that isn’t affected by climate change,” he and Mr. Ban wrote.He opposed Trump in 2020, but defends him now.When other Republicans have changed their minds about Mr. Trump, it has generally been to oppose him after previously supporting him, à la Chris Christie. Mr. Suarez has gone in the opposite direction: Though he did not vote for Mr. Trump in 2020, he has said he will in 2024 if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee.He told Fox News this month that he was motivated by “a fear of Joe Biden’s America.”“It’s an America where the poor get poorer, it’s an America where America gets weaker, and it’s an America where the possibility of China being the lone superpower is something that frightens me to no end,” he said.“What has changed and what has happened is we’ve gotten a taste of what a dysfunctional government can do to destroy our country in a short period of time,” Mr. Suarez added, “and if you take that out into the future, it is incredibly scary.”When Mr. Trump was indicted in New York this year, Mr. Suarez told The Miami Herald that he saw the Manhattan district attorney’s decision to pursue the case as “a slippery slope.” After Mr. Trump’s second indictment this month, he went further, saying in the Fox News interview that it “feels un-American.”Patricia Mazzei More

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      The Radical Strategy Behind Trump’s Promise to ‘Go After’ Biden

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      Conservatives with close ties to Donald J. Trump are laying out a “paradigm-shifting” legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president.When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”Mr. Trump’s message was that the Justice Department charged him only because he is Mr. Biden’s political opponent, so he would invert that supposed politicization. In reality, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and the financial dealings of his son, Hunter.But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr. Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.The naked politics infusing Mr. Trump’s headline-generating threat underscored something significant. In his first term, Mr. Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.Two of the most important figures in this effort work at the same Washington-based organization, the Center for Renewing America: Jeffrey B. Clark and Russell T. Vought. During the Trump presidency, Mr. Vought served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Clark, who oversaw the Justice Department’s civil and environmental divisions, was the only senior official at the department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.Jeffrey B. Clark was the only senior official in the Justice Department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAlong with Mr. Clark, Russell T. Vought argues that presidents should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesMr. Trump wanted to make Mr. Clark attorney general during his final days in office but stopped after the senior leadership of the Justice Department threatened to resign en masse. Mr. Clark is now a figure in one of the Justice Department’s investigations into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought are promoting a legal rationale that would fundamentally change the way presidents interact with the Justice Department. They argue that U.S. presidents should not keep federal law enforcement at arm’s length but instead should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency. They are condemning Mr. Biden and Democrats for what they claim is the politicization of the justice system, but at the same time pushing an intellectual framework that a future Republican president might use to justify directing individual law enforcement investigations.Mr. Clark, who is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s and is likely to be in contention for a senior Justice Department position if Mr. Trump wins re-election in 2024, wrote a constitutional analysis, titled “The U.S. Justice Department is not independent,” that will most likely serve as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.Like other conservatives, Mr. Clark adheres to the so-called unitary executive theory, which holds that the president of the United States has the power to directly control the entire federal bureaucracy and Congress cannot fracture that control by giving some officials independent decision-making authority.There are debates among conservatives about how far to push that doctrine — and whether some agencies should be allowed to operate independently — but Mr. Clark takes a maximalist view. Mr. Trump does, too, though he’s never been caught reading the Federalist Papers.In statements to The New York Times, both Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought leaned into their battle against the Justice Department, with Mr. Clark framing it as a fight over the survival of America itself.Conservatives have been attacking President Biden and the Justice Department, claiming it has been “weaponized.”Doug Mills/The New York Times“Biden and D.O.J. are baying for Trump’s blood so they can put fear into America,” Mr. Clark wrote in his statement. “The Constitution and our Article IV ‘Republican Form of Government’ cannot survive like this.”Mr. Vought wrote in his statement that the Justice Department was “ground zero for the weaponization of the government against the American people.” He added, “Conservatives are waking up to the fact that federal law enforcement is weaponized against them and as a result are embracing paradigm-shifting policies to reverse that trend.”Mr. Trump often exploited gaps between what the rules technically allow and the norms of self-restraint that guided past presidents of both parties. In 2021, House Democrats passed the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a legislative package intended to codify numerous previous norms as law, including requiring the Justice Department to give Congress logs of its contacts with White House officials. But Republicans portrayed the bill as an attack on Mr. Trump and it died in the Senate.The modern era for the Justice Department traces back to the Watergate scandal and the period of government reforms that followed President Richard M. Nixon’s abuses. The norm took root that the president can set broad policies for the Justice Department — directing it to put greater resources and emphasis on particular types of crimes or adopting certain positions before the Supreme Court — but should not get involved in specific criminal case decisions absent extraordinary circumstances, such as if a case has foreign policy implications.Since then, it has become routine at confirmation hearings for attorney general nominees to have senators elicit promises that they will resist any effort by the president to politicize law enforcement by intruding on matters of prosecutorial judgment and discretion.As the Republican Party has morphed in response to Mr. Trump’s influence, his attacks on federal law enforcement — which trace back to the early Russia investigation in 2017, the backlash to his firing of then-F.B.I. director James B. Comey Jr. and the appointment of Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel — have become enmeshed in the ideology of his supporters.Mr. Trump’s top rival for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, also rejects the norm that the Justice Department should be independent.Gov. Ron DeSantis has likewise argued that the Justice Department should be an extension of the executive branch.Kate Medley for The New York Times“Republican presidents have accepted the canard that the D.O.J. and F.B.I. are — quote — ‘independent,’” Mr. DeSantis said in May on Fox News. “They are not independent agencies. They are part of the executive branch. They answer to the elected president of the United States.”Several other Republican candidates acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents — as outlined in the indictment prepared by the special counsel, Jack Smith, and his team — was a serious problem. But even these candidates — including Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Vice President Mike Pence — have also accused the Justice Department of being overly politicized and meting out unequal justice.The most powerful conservative think tanks are working on plans that would go far beyond “reforming” the F.B.I., even though its Senate-confirmed directors in the modern era have all been Republicans. They want to rip it up and start again.“The F.B.I. has become a political weapon for the ruling elite rather than an impartial, law-enforcement agency,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of the conservative movement since the Reagan years. He added, “Small-ball reforms that increase accountability within the F.B.I. fail to meet the moment. The F.B.I. must be rebuilt from the ground up — reforming it in its current state is impossible.”Conservative media channels and social media influencers have been hammering the F.B.I. and the Justice Department for months since the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago, following a playbook they honed while defending Mr. Trump during the investigation into whether his campaign conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.Senator Tim Scott is among the other Republican presidential candidates who say the Justice Department is politicized.Travis Dove for The New York TimesOn its most-watched nighttime programs, Fox News has been all-in on attacks against the Justice Department, including the accusation, presented without evidence, that Mr. Biden had directed the prosecution of Mr. Trump. As the former president addressed his supporters on Tuesday night at his Bedminster club, Fox News displayed a split screen — Mr. Trump on the right and Mr. Biden on the left. The chyron on the bottom of the screen read: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”As president, Mr. Trump saw his attorney general as simply another one of his personal lawyers. He was infuriated when his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the Russia investigation — and then refused to reverse that decision to shut down the case.After firing Mr. Sessions, Mr. Trump believed he had found someone who would do his bidding in William P. Barr, who had been in the role during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. Mr. Barr had an expansive view of a president’s constitutionally prescribed powers, and shared Mr. Trump’s critical views of the origins of the Russia investigation.Under Mr. Barr, the Justice Department overruled career prosecutors’ recommendations on the length of a sentence for Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr., and sought to shut down a case against Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had already pleaded guilty. Both cases stemmed from the Russia investigation.But when Mr. Trump wanted to use the Justice Department to stay in power after he lost the election, he grew enraged when Mr. Barr refused to comply. Mr. Barr ultimately resigned in late 2020. More

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      Trump visita la Pequeña Habana y recuerda la corrupción en América Latina

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      Los republicanos han comparado cada vez más los casos judiciales del expresidente con la corrupción y la opresión política en la región.Después de su comparecencia del martes, el expresidente Donald Trump visitó la Pequeña Habana, en Miami, en su más reciente intento de presentarse como un hombre perseguido por sus adversarios políticos.Fue un intento nada sutil de buscar la solidaridad de los latinos de Florida y de otros lugares.La visita de Trump al restaurante Versailles, un punto de referencia emblemático de la diáspora cubana, coincidió con la comparación, cada vez más frecuente, que hacen los republicanos de su caso con la corrupción y la opresión política en los países latinoamericanos.Afuera del juzgado federal de Miami donde se hizo la comparecencia, Alina Habba, abogada y vocera de Trump insinuó que él no era diferente de los disidentes políticos de Latinoamérica.“La persecución y enjuiciamiento de un opositor político importante es el tipo de cosas que se ven en dictaduras como Cuba y Venezuela. En esos sitios, es un lugar común que los candidatos rivales sean juzgados, perseguidos y encarcelados”, señaló.El día previo a su comparecencia, Trump afirmó que los latinos del sur de Florida se solidarizaban con él porque están familiarizados con los gobiernos que persiguen a sus adversarios.“En verdad pueden verlo mejor de lo que lo ven las demás personas”, dijo en una entrevista con Americano Media, un medio conservador en idioma español del sur de Florida.Trump ha contado con un apoyo relativamente fuerte entre las comunidades latinas, sobre todo en el sur de Florida. Eduardo A. Gamarra, profesor de Política y Relaciones Internacionales en la Universidad Internacional de Florida que también forma parte del Instituto de Estudios Cubanos, comentó que la narrativa urdida por Trump y sus partidarios, aunque falsa, era astuta.“Se ve reforzada por los medios locales, por mucho de lo que la campaña de Trump y otros republicanos están diciendo: que este gobierno, el de Biden, se está comportando como se comportan las repúblicas bananeras, así que eso ha resonado con mucha intensidad aquí. A nivel político, es buena, pero no es veraz”, afirmó el académico.Gamarra, quien nació en Bolivia, destacó que Trump también había intentado obtener el apoyo de los electores latinos al arremeter contra el socialismo y el comunismo. Lamentó la manera en que Trump y sus aliados habían mencionado a Latinoamérica en muchas ocasiones.“Es una narrativa muy poco afortunada. Creo que solo difunde los estereotipos existentes sobre Latinoamérica. Es mucho más complejo que solo la imagen de la república bananera”, dijo.La breve aparición de Trump en el restaurante fue la más reciente de él y de una larga lista de políticos que incluye a los expresidentes Bill Clinton y George W. Bush. En 2016, el restaurante recibió a Trump y a Rudy Giuliani juntos después del primer debate del exmandatario contra Hillary Clinton.Paloma Marcos, quien ha sido ciudadana estadounidense desde hace 15 años y es oriunda de Nicaragua, llegó al Versalles con una gorra de Trump y un letrero que decía “Estoy con Trump”.Comentó que muchos nicaragüenses como ella tenían afinidad por el expresidente, porque está contra el comunismo. También agregó que la gente como ella, así como los cubanos y venezolanos, habían visto que esa forma de gobierno destrozaba a sus países de origen.“Sabe él que siempre lo hemos apoyado acá. Los latinos estamos bien concientizados”, dijo Marcos. “Hemos podido quitarnos el velo, digamos, un despertar”.La reverenda Yoelis Sánchez, pastora en una iglesia local y oriunda de la República Dominicana, dijo que cuando le pidieron que fuera al restaurante Versalles a orar con Trump no dudó en acudir. Varias personas religiosas, entre evangélicas y católicas, oraban con él mientras su hija cantaba.Comentó que había orado “para que Dios le dé fortaleza y le ayude”, comentó. “Y que toda la verdad salga a la luz”. Y añadió que estaban “preocupados por el bienestar de él”.Sánchez, que vive en Doral, una ciudad que forma parte del condado de Miami-Dade y donde Trump tiene un club de golf, no era ciudadana en 2020. No quiso decir si planea votar por él en 2024.“No creo que haya venido porque le interese el voto latino solamente”, dijo. “Sino el voto de todas las personas que estamos de acuerdo en mantener los valores bíblicos”. Y añadió que como él, “los latinos de por sí nos identificamos con lo que es la familia, la vida”.Trump enfrenta acusaciones penales relacionadas con el mal manejo de documentos clasificados y la posterior obstrucción de los intentos de recuperarlos por parte del gobierno. En Estados Unidos no tiene precedentes el enjuiciamiento federal a un expresidente, pero muchos presidentes latinoamericanos han sido juzgados tras dejar el poder.El actual presidente de Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, pasó más de un año en la cárcel después de salir de la presidencia la primera vez. El año pasado, la expresidenta de Argentina, Cristina Fernández, fue sentenciada a seis años por corrupción. En Perú, Alejandro Toledo fue extraditado hace poco para enfrentar una acusación de soborno. El exmandatario, Alberto Fujimori, está cumpliendo una condena de 25 años en prisión.Arnoldo Alemán, de Nicaragua, es uno de los pocos expresidentes que fue arrestado en un caso de corrupción a pesar de que su propio partido estaba en el poder.“Es algo que se ve mucho en Latinoamérica, sobre todo en Perú y ahora en El Salvador”, comentó Mario García, un cliente habitual del Versailles a quien le hizo gracia ver a Trump en el restaurante. “Pero en nuestros países, en Latinoamérica, hay justificación porque lo roban todo” los presidentes, explicó García y afirmó que creía que el gobierno estaba persiguiendo a Trump porque no tiene “otra manera de detenerlo”.García señaló que no pensaba que Trump fuera al Versailles en busca de los votos de los latinos. “Los votos de aquí ya los tiene. Es muy bonito rodearse de cariño cuando a uno todo el mundo lo está atacando”.Maggie Haberman More

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      Verificación de la defensa de Trump en el caso de los documentos clasificados

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      El expresidente hizo comparaciones inexactas con otros políticos, tergiversó el proceso de clasificación y lanzó ataques con imprecisiones contra funcionarios.Horas después de declararse no culpable ante un tribunal federal en Miami por los cargos relacionados con su manejo de documentos clasificados, el expresidente Donald Trump defendió su conducta el 13 de junio con una serie de falsedades ya conocidas.En su club de golf en Bedminster, Nueva Jersey, Trump hizo comparaciones engañosas con otros personajes políticos, malinterpretó el proceso de clasificación y lanzó ataques con imprecisiones contra funcionarios.Aquí ofrecemos una verificación de datos de los argumentos de Trump sobre la investigación.Lo que dijo Trump“Amenazarme con 400 años en la cárcel por tener en mi poder mis propios documentos presidenciales, que es lo que prácticamente todos los presidentes han hecho, es una de las teorías legales más ofensivas y agresivas presentadas en la historia ante un tribunal estadounidense”.Falso. La Ley de Registros Presidenciales de 1978, que rige la conservación y retención de registros oficiales de los expresidentes, le da a la Administración Nacional de Archivos y Registros (NARA, por su sigla en inglés) total propiedad y control sobre los registros presidenciales. La legislación, que hace una distinción clara entre registros oficiales y documentos personales, se ha aplicado a todos los presidentes desde Ronald Reagan.La agencia señaló que “asumió la custodia física y legal de los registros presidenciales de las gestiones de Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush y Ronald Reagan cuando esos presidentes abandonaron el cargo”.De manera independiente, después de que Trump en repetidas ocasiones y engañosamente comparó su manejo de registros con el de su predecesor inmediato, la Administración Nacional de Archivos indicó en un comunicado que Barack Obama entregó sus documentos, tanto los clasificados como los que no lo estaban, de conformidad con la ley. La agencia también afirmó no estar al tanto de que se haya perdido alguna caja de registros presidenciales del gobierno de Obama.Lo que dijo Trump“El presidente toma la decisión de separar materiales personales de los registros presidenciales durante su mandato, y bajo su entera discreción”.Falso. La Ley de Registros Presidenciales distingue qué constituye material personal (como diarios o documentos de campañas políticas) y qué se clasifica como registros oficiales. No le da al presidente “discrecionalidad” para determinar qué es un registro personal y qué no lo es. Según la ley, el presidente saliente debe separar los documentos personales de los registros oficiales antes de abandonar el cargo.Agentes del FBI realizaron una búsqueda en el inmueble de Mar-a-Lago de Trump en agosto, más de un año después de que el abogado general de la NARA solicitó que se recuperaran materiales y tras meses de reiteradas consultas de funcionarios de la agencia y el Departamento de Justicia.Lo que dijo Trump“Se suponía que debía negociar con la NARA, que es exactamente lo que estaba haciendo hasta la redada en Mar-a-Lago organizada por agentes armados del FBI”.Falso. La Ley de Registros Presidenciales no establece un proceso de negociación entre el presidente y la NARA. La búsqueda realizada en la residencia de Trump en Florida, autorizada por los tribunales, ocurrió después de que se opuso en repetidas ocasiones a responder a las solicitudes del gobierno para que devolviera el material, incluso después de recibir una citación.Lo que dijo Trump“Biden envió 1850 cajas a la Universidad de Delaware, lo que dificultó la búsqueda, independientemente de quién la realizara. Se niega a entregarlas y se niega a permitir siquiera que alguien las vea, y luego dicen que se comporta con gran amabilidad”.Esta afirmación es engañosa. En 2012, Joe Biden le donó a la Universidad de Delaware 1850 cajas de documentos de la época en que fungió como senador del estado desde 1973 hasta 2009. A diferencia de los documentos presidenciales, que deben entregarse a la NARA al término del mandato del presidente, los documentos de los miembros del Congreso no están cubiertos por la Ley de Registros Presidenciales. Es común que los senadores y representantes les donen esos artículos a universidades, institutos de investigación o instalaciones históricas.La Universidad de Delaware convino en no darle acceso al público a los documentos de la época de Biden como senador hasta dos años después de su retiro de la vida pública. Pero el FBI sí revisó la colección en febrero como parte de una investigación independiente sobre el manejo de Biden de los documentos de gobierno y en colaboración con su equipo legal. The New York Times informó, en su momento, que continuaba el análisis del material y que todo parecía indicar que no contenía documentos clasificados.Lo que dijo Trump“Cuando la descubrieron, Hillary borró y ‘lavó con ácido’. Nadie hace eso, por los costos involucrados, pero es muy concluyente. Treinta y tres mil correos electrónicos en desafío a una citación del Congreso que ya se había emitido. La citación estaba ahí y ella decidió borrar, lavar con ácido y luego aplastar y destruir sus teléfonos celulares con un martillo. Y luego dicen que yo participé en una obstrucción”.Este es un argumento engañoso. Existen varias diferencias clave entre el caso de Trump y el uso por parte de Hillary Clinton de un servidor de correo electrónico privado cuando era secretaria de Estado, que Trump también describió de manera imprecisa.Una diferencia crucial es que varias investigaciones oficiales han concluido que Clinton no manejó indebidamente material clasificado de manera sistemática o deliberada, además de que un informe preparado en 2018 por el inspector general respaldó la decisión del FBI de no presentar cargos contra Clinton.En cambio, a Trump se le acusa de haber manejado indebidamente documentos clasificados y obstruir varias acciones del gobierno con el propósito de recuperarlos, así como de hacer declaraciones falsas ante algunos funcionarios. La acusación formal permitió tener acceso la semana pasada a fotografías de documentos guardados, en algunos casos, de manera veleidosa, como cajas apiladas en una regadera y otras en el escenario de un salón de baile frecuentado por visitantes.Según la investigación del FBI sobre el asunto, los abogados de Clinton le proporcionaron al Departamento de Estado en 2014 alrededor de 30.000 correos electrónicos relacionados con el trabajo y le ordenaron a un empleado que borrara todos los correos electrónicos personales de más de 60 días de antigüedad. En 2015, después de que el Times dio la noticia de que Clinton había usado una cuenta personal de correo electrónico, el comité de la Cámara de Representantes liderado por republicanos que estaba a cargo de la investigación de los ataques de 2012 contra puestos de avanzada estadounidenses en Bengasi, Libia, envió una citación en la que solicitaba todos los correos electrónicos de esa cuenta relacionados con Libia.Ese mismo mes, un empleado de la empresa que administraba el servidor de Clinton se percató de que en realidad no había borrado los correos electrónicos personales como se le pidió en 2014. Entonces procedió a aplicar un programa de software gratuito llamado BleachBit —no ácido real ni ningún otro compuesto químico— para borrar alrededor de 30.000 correos electrónicos personales.El FBI encontró miles de correos electrónicos adicionales relacionados con el trabajo que Clinton no le entregó al Departamento de Estado, pero James Comey, quien era director de la agencia en ese momento, declaró que no había “evidencia de que los correos electrónicos adicionales relacionados con el trabajo se hubieran borrado intencionalmente con el fin de ocultarlos”.Lo más seguro es que Clinton esté en desacuerdo con la aseveración de Trump de que el FBI y el Departamento de Justicia la “protegieron”, pues ha dicho que las acciones de Comey, junto con la interferencia rusa, le costaron las elecciones de 2016.Lo que dijo Trump“Por supuesto que exoneró a Mike Pence. Me da gusto. Mike no hizo nada malo, aunque tenía documentos clasificados en su casa. Pero lo exoneraron. Y el caso de Biden es otra cosa”.Esta afirmación es engañosa. Se encontraron documentos clasificados tanto en la casa del exvicepresidente Mike Pence en Indiana, en enero, como en la antigua oficina de Biden en un centro de investigación en Washington en noviembre y en su residencia de Delaware en enero. El Departamento de Justicia decidió no presentar cargos contra Pence; en cuanto a Biden, la investigación sobre su manejo de materiales está en proceso.Pero las diferencias entre esos casos y el de Trump son significativas, en particular en lo que respecta al volumen de documentos encontrados y la respuesta de Biden y de Pence.En la casa de Pence se encontró aproximadamente una decena de documentos marcados como clasificados. El FBI inspeccionó su casa en febrero, con su consentimiento, y encontró un documento clasificado más. No está claro cuántos documentos clasificados tenía en su posesión Biden, pero sus abogados han dicho que se encontró “un pequeño número” en su antigua oficina y alrededor de media docena en su casa de Delaware.En contraste, Trump tenía “cientos” de documentos clasificados, según la acusación formal del Departamento de Justicia, en la que se indica que algunos de los registros contenían información sobre los programas nucleares del país y “posibles vulnerabilidades de Estados Unidos y sus aliados a ataques militares”. En total, el gobierno ha recuperado más de 300 archivos con marcas de clasificado de su casa y su club privado de Florida.Otra diferencia es que representantes de Pence y Biden han dicho que no se percataron de que habían conservado esos documentos y no tardaron en informar a la NARA cuando lo descubrieron. Además, ambos cooperaron con funcionarios del gobierno para devolver los documentos y, al parecer, cumplieron voluntariamente con la realización de búsquedas en sus propiedades.En contraste, Trump se opuso en repetidas ocasiones, durante meses, a las solicitudes de devolver materiales y, según se lee en la acusación formal, desempeñó un papel activo para ocultarles a los investigadores documentos clasificados. La NARA le informó a Trump en mayo de 2021 que faltaban ciertos documentos presidenciales. Algunos agentes recuperaron 15 cajas de Mar-a-Lago en enero de 2022, pero sospechaban que todavía faltaban registros. Siete meses después, agentes del FBI registraron el inmueble de Florida y recuperaron más documentos.Lo que dijo Trump“A diferencia de mí, que contaba con total autoridad de desclasificación en mi carácter de presidente, Joe Biden, quien era vicepresidente, no tenía facultades para desclasificar y tampoco el derecho de tener en su posesión los documentos. No tenía ese derecho”.Esta afirmación es engañosa. Los vicepresidentes sí cuentan con facultades para desclasificar ciertos materiales, aunque el alcance de esas facultades no se ha cuestionado explícitamente ante los tribunales.Trump ha insistido en otras ocasiones en que contaba con facultades para desclasificar materiales sin necesidad de informarle a nadie. Existen procedimientos formales para levantar el secreto oficial de la información, pero el debate legal sobre si los presidentes deben cumplirlos no se ha resuelto, según el Colegio de Abogados de Estados Unidos y el Servicio de Investigación del Congreso, un organismo sin afiliación partidista. Un tribunal federal de apelaciones decidió en 2020 que “levantar el secreto oficial de materiales, incluso si lo hace el presidente, debe someterse a procedimientos establecidos”. No obstante, la Corte Suprema no ha emitido ningún fallo al respecto.De cualquier forma, cabe señalar que Trump siguió estos procedimientos con respecto a algunos documentos; por ejemplo, emitió un memorando el día previo al final de su mandato con el que desclasificó información relativa a la investigación del FBI sobre las relaciones de su campaña de 2016 con Rusia.Por otra parte, expertos legales han señalado que la clasificación de información sobre armas nucleares o “datos restringidos” se rige conforme a un marco legal totalmente distinto, la Ley de Energía Atómica. Esa ley no le otorga facultades explícitas al presidente para tomar la decisión unilateral de desclasificar secretos nucleares y establece un proceso estricto de desclasificación en el que participan varias agencias. No está claro si los documentos guardados en Mar-a-Lago incluían “datos restringidos”.Chris Cameron More

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      House Kills Effort to Censure Adam Schiff, Aided by Some Republicans

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      The NewsThe House turned back a Republican effort on Wednesday to formally censure Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, for his role in investigating and impeaching former President Donald J. Trump.The vote was 225 to 196 to table, or kill, a resolution by Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican who has allied herself closely with the former president. Twenty Republicans joined Democrats in voting to sideline it, with another two G.O.P. lawmakers voting “present” to avoid registering a position. In a surprise, five Democrats also voted “present.”The measure would have rebuked Mr. Schiff, who as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee investigated whether Mr. Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election and prosecuted Mr. Trump at his first impeachment trial. It called for an ethics investigation into Mr. Schiff and a $16 million fine if he was found to have lied.Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, investigated whether former President Donald J. Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election and prosecuted Mr. Trump at his first impeachment trial.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWhy It MattersThe censure resolution, coming a day after Mr. Trump was arraigned in a federal court on 37 criminal counts related to his mishandling of classified documents and efforts to obstruct federal investigators, was the latest bid by Republicans to retaliate against Democrats for their treatment of the former president.But while the measure, which accused Mr. Schiff of willfully lying for political gain, was highly partisan, it raised complicated questions about accountability and revenge. Mr. Schiff’s claims that there was “ample evidence” that Mr. Trump colluded with Russia were undermined by the conclusions of the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who wrote in his report that his investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Republicans have wielded that determination to accuse Mr. Schiff of lying.“Ultimately, this is an accountability tool that we can do to each other to ensure that the integrity of the institution is intact,” Ms. Luna said.Still, Mr. Schiff’s statements and allegations were made during an official investigation of Mr. Trump. On Wednesday, Mr. Schiff called the effort to censure him “political payback” and warned that it would set “a dangerous precedent of going after someone who held a corrupt president accountable.”The bipartisan vote to table the measure suggested that at least some Republicans agreed that it was inappropriate.BackgroundMr. Schiff, who is running in a competitive primary for the chance to succeed a fellow California Democrat, Senator Dianne Feinstein, has long been vilified by the G.O.P. Earlier this year, Speaker Kevin McCarthy unilaterally removed him from the Intelligence Committee.Ms. Luna, who first filed a resolution to fine and censure Mr. Schiff, rewrote her measure to say that the House Ethics Committee should impose the $16 million penalty if it determined that Mr. Schiff had “lied, made misrepresentations and abused sensitive information.” The move was geared toward allaying concerns about the resolution among Republicans, but it did not appear to have succeeded.“The Constitution says the House may make its own rules but we can’t violate other (later) provisions of the Constitution,” Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, wrote on Twitter, arguing that the resolution violated amendments governing excessive fines and changes to congressional pay.What’s NextMr. Schiff has been using the censure resolution to raise funds for his Senate campaign, beseeching supporters to chip in money to help him cover a fine that has little chance of being levied.It was unclear whether Ms. Luna’s effort was the start of a trend. This month, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, filed a resolution to censure Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, accusing him of improperly sharing records with the Biden administration while running the committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and the events leading up to it. More

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      In Legal Peril, Trump Tries to Shift the Spotlight to Biden

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      Donald J. Trump, who is under indictment, is trying to undermine the American justice system by lashing out at his successor.Under indictment and enraged, former President Donald J. Trump — with the help of Republican allies, social media supporters and Fox News — is lashing out at his successor in the hopes of undermining the charges against him.“A corrupt sitting president!” Mr. Trump blared on Tuesday night after being arrested and pleading not guilty in Miami. “The Biden administration has turned us into a banana republic,” one of his longtime advisers wrote in a fund-raising email. “Wannabe dictator,” read a chyron on Fox News, accusing Mr. Biden of having his political rival arrested.The accusations against Mr. Biden are being presented without any evidence that they are true, and Mr. Trump’s claims of an unfair prosecution came even after Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel specifically to insulate the inquiries from political considerations.But that hardly seems to be the point for Mr. Trump and his allies as they make a concerted effort to smear Mr. Biden and erode confidence in the legal system. Just hours after his arraignment, Mr. Trump promised payback if he wins the White House in 2024.“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said during remarks at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.On Twitter, the former president’s followers used words like “traitor,” “disgrace,” “corrupt” and “biggest liar” to describe the current president. And while Fox News said on Wednesday that the “wannabe dictator” headline was “taken down immediately” and addressed, the network counts Mr. Trump’s many followers as loyal viewers.The response from Mr. Biden and his advisers has been studious silence.The president has vowed not to give the slightest hint that he is interfering in the criminal case against Mr. Trump, and he has ordered his White House aides and campaign staff members not to comment. That decision has quieted what is usually a robust rapid response team that aims to counter Republican attacks.The president’s press aides responsible for instantly blasting out pro-Biden commentary to reporters have gone dark. Even Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, issued a terse “no comment” on Wednesday.Jill Biden, the first lady, broke the code of silence on Monday, telling donors at a fund-raiser in New York that she was shocked that Republicans were not bothered by Mr. Trump’s indictment. “My heart feels so broken by a lot of the headlines that we see on the news,” she said at the event, according to The Associated Press.The attorney general also weighed in — somewhat — on Wednesday with his first public comments since Mr. Trump was charged. He took the opportunity to defend Jack Smith, the special counsel, as “a veteran career prosecutor.”“He has assembled a group of experienced and talented prosecutors and agents who share his commitment to integrity and the rule of law,” Mr. Garland said.Still, the no-comment strategy out of the White House is reminiscent of the determined silence by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between Russian operatives and Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Mueller said virtually nothing for more than a year as Mr. Trump and his allies attacked his investigation and his motives.Like Mr. Mueller’s approach, Mr. Biden’s refusal to comment is intended to make sure he does not provide ammunition that his adversaries can try to use to undermine his credibility and integrity.But in the end, the sustained assault on Mr. Mueller and his investigation helped Mr. Trump create a false narrative and survive the damning revelations contained in the more than 400-page report bearing the prosecutor’s name.On Wednesday, when a reporter noted that Mr. Trump had accused Mr. Biden of “having him arrested, effectively directing his arrest,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said, “I’m not going to comment.”Eddie Vale, a longtime Democratic strategist, said the White House position made sense, given the need to avoid even the hint that Mr. Biden was meddling in Mr. Trump’s case.But he said members of outside Democratic groups would most likely begin coming to Mr. Biden’s defense if the attacks continued.“This is such a charged and hot subject,” Mr. Vale said. “There’s nothing to be gained by weighing in. But I think as it goes on, you will have folks on the outer circle weighing in.”Strategists for Mr. Trump promise that the attacks will continue.Chris LaCivita, a senior campaign consultant for Mr. Trump, said on Wednesday that it was fair to assign responsibility for the investigation to Mr. Biden because the special counsel was appointed by Mr. Biden’s attorney general.“There’s a thing called in government, the chain of command,” he said.America First Legal, the pro-Trump group founded by Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s immigration agenda, sent out a fund-raising appeal on Wednesday morning, using the indictment as a rallying cry.The theme has been echoed by Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress, who trained their ire on Mr. Biden even as they also railed against the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the “mainstream media” and Democrats generally.Most of them, it seemed, were trying to goad Mr. Biden into a reaction.“I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice,” tweeted Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the leading Republican in Congress.Mr. Biden has so far focused on governing.On Tuesday, the president met with Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, in the Oval Office. Later, he hosted a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn of the White House, an event where it was easy to avoid the subject of Mr. Trump.“To me, making Juneteenth a federal holiday wasn’t just a symbolic gesture,” Mr. Biden told the crowd in brief remarks. “It was a statement of fact for this country to acknowledge the original sin of slavery.”But it is likely to get more difficult to refrain from wading into the Trump situation.On Saturday, the president is scheduled to attend a political rally with union supporters in Philadelphia. It is the kind of event where he would be expected to draw the contrast between himself and his rivals. Mr. Biden may be able to navigate that issue in the short term; Mr. Trump has a long way to go to win the Republican nomination.But if he does become Mr. Biden’s opponent for the presidency again, the strategy of avoidance may eventually have to change.As the first lady told donors at an event in California — referring to Mr. Trump’s four-year term in the White House: “We cannot go back to those dark days. And with your help, we won’t go back.” More

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      GOP Rivals See Trump Indictment Stealing Spotlight

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      An all-indictment, all-the-time news diet could swallow the summer, denying attention to other Republican candidates who need it like oxygen.Former President Donald J. Trump faces 37 federal charges that could send him to prison for the remainder of his life, but it’s the rest of the Republican field that’s in the most immediate political trouble.Advisers working for Mr. Trump’s opponents are facing what some consider an infuriating task: trying to persuade Republican primary voters, who are inured to Mr. Trump’s years of controversies and deeply distrustful of the government, that being criminally charged for holding onto classified documents is a bad thing.In previous eras, the indictment of a presidential candidate would have been, at a minimum, a political gift for the other candidates, if not an event that spelled the end of the indicted rival’s run. Competitors would have thrilled at the prospect of the front-runner’s spending months tied up in court, with damaging new details steadily dripping out. And they still could be Mr. Trump’s undoing: If he does not end up convicted before November 2024, his latest arrest is not likely win him converts in the general election.But Mr. Trump’s competitors — counterintuitively, according to the old conventional political wisdom — are actually dreading what threatens to be an endless indictment news cycle that could swallow up the summer. His rivals are desperate to get media coverage for their campaigns, but since the indictment became public last Thursday, as several advisers grumbled, the only way they can get their candidates booked on television is for them to answer questions about Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump is making full use of the trappings of his former office: the big, black sport utility vehicles; the Secret Service agents in dark glasses; the stops at grocery stores and restaurants with entourages, bodyguards and reporters in tow, said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman who works on Nikki Haley’s campaign.“That is powerful stuff when you’re campaigning against it,” Mr. Dawson said.And there’s no end in sight for indictment season. This was the second time Mr. Trump has been indicted in two months, and he may be indicted at least once more this summer, in Georgia, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Georgia prosecutor leading that investigation signaled the timing when she announced last month that most of her staff would work remotely during the first three weeks of August — right when Republican presidential candidates will be preparing for the first debate of the primary season, on Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.Mr. Trump arrived at Wilkie Ferguson Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, making full use of the trappings of his former office.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesIn Mr. Trump’s federal case, in South Florida, it is possible that the former president could face trial in the middle of the primary campaign season.One Republican candidate who has gotten some airtime, Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur and author, did so by flying to Miami from Ohio and addressing journalists gathered outside the courthouse to record Mr. Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday. He promised to pardon Mr. Trump if he gets elected president. He railed against a “donor class” that he asserted was urging him to spurn Mr. Trump, knocked the news media and demanded that every other G.O.P. candidate sign a pledge to pardon Mr. Trump if elected.“Half the battle is showing up,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in an interview Tuesday night on his way to Iowa. “I am getting my message out, at least the part of it that relates to the events of the day.”Most of Mr. Trump’s other rivals have tied themselves in knots trying to fashion responses to the indictments that would grab media attention without alienating Republican voters who remain supportive of Mr. Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida came down on Mr. Trump’s side but with little enthusiasm. He subtly rebuked Mr. Trump’s conduct, raising Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents as a stand-in for Mr. Trump’s when he said he would have been “court-martialed in a New York minute” had he taken classified documents during his service in the Navy.But Mr. DeSantis has also used the opportunity to give Republican voters what they mostly want: He has defended Mr. Trump and attacked President Biden and his Justice Department, saying they unfairly target Republicans. On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis began to roll out his plan to overhaul the “weaponized” F.B.I. and Justice Department. And the main pro-DeSantis super PAC released a video attacking the “Biden D.O.J.” for “indicting the former president.”Before the indictment was released, former Vice President Mike Pence said on CNN that he hoped Mr. Trump would not be charged because it would “be terribly divisive to the country.”Then Mr. Pence read the indictment. On Tuesday, he told The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, “These are very serious allegations. And I can’t defend what is alleged. But the president is entitled to his day in court, he’s entitled to bring a defense, and I want to reserve judgment until he has the opportunity to respond.”Mr. Pence went on to denounce the Biden administration’s Justice Department as politicized — in large part because of its treatment of Mr. Trump — and promised that as president he would clean it up.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, both initially greeted the indictment with condemnation of what they called unequal justice — harsh for Republicans, lenient for Democrats — before tacking on their assessment that the accusations against Mr. Trump were grave and should be taken seriously.Then, on Tuesday, Ms. Haley volunteered that if elected she, too, would consider pardoning Mr. Trump.All of those contortions offer an opening to candidates with simpler messages, either for or against Mr. Trump’s prosecution.“I don’t think they know what they think yet,” said Mr. Ramaswamy of the candidates he called the “finger-in-the-wind class.” Some candidates “tend to serve as mouthpieces for the donors who fund them and the consultants who advise them, and the donors and consultants haven’t figured out their advice yet.”All of this presumably is music to Mr. Trump’s ears: So long as the news media and his rivals are fighting each other and obsessing about him, he must be winning.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is so far the only Republican rival of Mr. Trump’s to make full-throated statements condemning the former president for the actions detailed in the indictment.John Tully for The New York TimesThe only Republican presidential candidate so far to speak clearly and forcefully against Mr. Trump over the actions documented in the indictment was former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. He condemned Mr. Trump and showed contempt for Republicans who were directing blame elsewhere.“We’re in a situation where there are people in my own party who are blaming D.O.J.,” Mr. Christie said on Monday night in a CNN town hall meeting. “How about blame him? He did it.”He also implored his fellow competitors to focus on the front-runner, not each other, saying 2024 is playing out as a rerun of 2016 when a large field, which included Mr. Christie, sniped at each other and let Mr. Trump gallop away with the nomination.Tucker Carlson, who was taken off air by Fox News but remains influential with the Republican base, put out a video on Twitter on Tuesday night that captures what Mr. Trump’s rivals are up against. Mr. Carlson sought to portray the federal indictment as proof that Mr. Trump was “the one guy with an actual shot of becoming president” who was feared by the Washington establishment. The clip is an implied rebuke of Mr. DeSantis and comes close to an endorsement of Mr. Trump.It is too soon after the indictment to draw solid conclusions about how Republican voters are processing the news. But the early data bodes well for Mr. Trump and ominously for his opponents. In a CBS News poll released on Sunday, only 7 percent of likely Republican primary voters said the indictment would lower their opinion of Mr. Trump. Twice as many said the indictment would change their view of him “for the better.”An adviser to one of Mr. Trump’s rivals, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid, admitted he was depressed at how Republican voters were receiving the news of what he considered to be devastating facts unearthed by the special counsel, Jack Smith.“I think the reality is there’s such enormous distrust of the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. after the Hillary years and the Russiagate investigation that it appears that no other fact set will persuade Republican voters otherwise right now,” the adviser said.Mr. Dawson, who is backing Ms. Haley, said Mr. Trump’s poll numbers were likely to rise in the coming weeks, along with the sentiment that the government cannot be trusted.The other candidates are gambling that they have the luxury of time.Mr. Christie has stepped up to bloody the former president with his attacks, which are unlikely to help Mr. Christie’s standing but may help other Republicans in the race: those who are refraining but “drafting” behind Mr. Christie, as one adviser put it, perhaps wishfully, using a horse-racing term.As more information spills out ahead of the former president’s trial, especially about the specifics of what was contained in the classified documents that Mr. Trump held onto — details of battle plans and nuclear programs — the severity of what crimes the former president is charged with may slowly seep in.That’s the hope, at least, for Mr. Trump’s rivals who languish far behind him in polls.“Let that little pop blow up, then get out of here, let the voters read the term paper, and let it sink in,” Mr. Dawson said. He added, of Mr. Trump: “People are going to start questioning his sanity.” More

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      Every Trump Indictment Tells a Story

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      Let’s assume, because it seems like a reasonable assumption, that we have not reached the end of the indictments that will be handed down against Donald Trump. Let’s assume that either the case in Georgia, where he is being investigated for election tampering, or the special counsel’s continuing investigation in Washington, will yield a prosecution related to his conduct between the November 2020 election and the riot on Jan. 6.In that case, Trump’s various indictments would double as a road map to his presidency and his era — each fitting with a different interpretation of the Trump phenomenon, and only together giving the fullest picture of his times.The first indictment, New York’s case against Trump for campaign finance violations related to his alleged affair with the adult thespian Stormy Daniels, fits neatly into the narrative of the Trump era that’s often called “anti-anti-Trump.” This interpretation concedes, to some degree at least, Trump’s sleaziness and folly, but then it invariably insists that his enemies in the American establishment are actually more dangerous — because they’re “protecting democracy” by trampling its norms, embracing conspiracy theories and conducting pointless witch hunts.It’s hard to imagine a better illustration of the anti-anti-Trumpist case than an ideological prosecutor in a Democratic city indicting a former president on a charge considered dubious even by many liberal legal experts. “Norms,” indeed: The Stormy Daniels case looks like Resistance theater, partisan lawfare, exactly the kind of overreach that Trump’s defenders insist defines the entirety of anti-Trumpism.The new federal indictment, for which Trump was arraigned in Miami on Tuesday, moves us into different terrain. This time the case seems legitimate, and even if charges brought under the Espionage Act have a fairly checkered history, on its face the indictment makes a strong case that Trump asked for this, that he invited the prosecution, that he had plenty of opportunities to stay within the law and chose to obstruct, evade and dissemble instead.But at the same time one would need a heart of stone not to find the whole class‌ified-documents affair a little bit comedic: blackly comic, to be sure, in the vein of the Coen Brothers, but for all its serious aspects still essentially absurd. The boxes piled high in the gaudy Mar-a-Lago bathroom is an indelible image for anyone who interprets the Trump era as a vainglorious clown show, with its pileup of scandals driven by narcissism and incompetence, and its serious-minded interpreters worrying about the Authoritarian Menace or the Crisis of Democracy when the evidence before their eyes was usually much shallower and stupider, not the 1930s come again but a reality television mind-set run amok.In the end, though, the reality-television reading was insufficient, because Trump groped his way into genuinely sinister territory — seeking what would have been a constitutional crisis if his postelection wishes had been granted and inspiring mob violence when he didn’t get his way.That aspect of his presidency still awaits its juridical illumination. But we may well get it, and if there is a prosecution related to his postelection conduct, it will complete a presidential triptych — with the persecuted Trump, the farcical Trump and the sinister Trump each making an appearance in our courts.As a matter of electoral politics, Trump’s resilience as a primary candidate depends upon Republican voters interpreting the entire triptych in the light of its first installment — such that his enemies’ overreach is the only thing that his admirers and supporters see, and both his more absurd behaviors and his most destructive acts are assumed to be exaggerated or invented, just so much liberal hype and NeverTrump hysteria.This perspective is false, but it is well entrenched among Republicans and has the advantage of simplicity. Meanwhile, Trump’s rivals for the nomination are stuck playing “on the one hand, on the other hand” games — constantly insisting that Trump has been unfairly treated, because Republican voters believe as much and clearly want to hear it stated, while trying to gently nurture the idea that he brings some of this mistreatment on himself and a different Republican might be just as effective without the constant grist for enemies and prosecutors.In a general election environment, though, we have strong evidence from the recent midterms that many swing voters reverse the Republican interpretation of the triptych, and read the whole of Trumpism in light of its darkest manifestation. Both the liberal overreach they might have opposed and the Trumpian shenanigans they might have tolerated are subsumed by a desire to avoid a repeat of Jan. 6, a revulsion against G.O.P. candidates who seem intent on replaying Trump’s destabilizing behavior.It’s possible to imagine that the multiplication of indictments, the constant action in the courts, eventually helps Republican voters who don’t share this interpretation to recognize how many of their fellow Americans do hold it, making Trump seem too unelectable at last.But Trump has always thrived by persuading a critical mass of Republicans to live inside his reality, not anybody else’s. And inside that gaudy mansion, the walls have room for just one outsize, garish portrait: “The Martyrdom of Donald Trump.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More