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      To Jail or Not to Jail

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      WASHINGTON — Studying “Hamlet,” the revenge play about a rotten kingdom, I tried for years to fathom Hamlet’s motives, state of mind, family web, obsessions.His consciousness was so complex, Harold Bloom wrote, it seemed bigger than the play itself.Now I’m mired in another revenge play about a rotten kingdom, “Trump.” I’ve tried for years to fathom Donald Trump’s motives, state of mind, family web, obsessions.The man who dumbed down the office of the presidency is a less gratifying subject than the smarty-pants doomed prince. Hamlet is transcendent, while Trump is merely transgressive. But we can’t shuffle off the mortal coil of Trump. He has burrowed, tick-like, into the national bloodstream, causing all kinds of septic responses.Trump is feral, focused on his own survival, with no sense of shame or boundaries or restraint.“In that sense,” David Axelrod told me, “being a sociopath really works for him.”As Axelrod wrote in The Atlantic, “Over time, Trump has worked to discredit and demean any institution that raises inconvenient truths or seeks to hold him accountable for his actions — not just media, but law enforcement and the election system itself.”It remains to be seen, as Axelrod has noted, whether indictments will serve as kryptonite against Trump or energy packs fueling his return to the Oval Office.After believing time and time again that Trump had self-destructed — after he denigrated John McCain, after we found out he had pretended to be his own spokesman, after the “Access Hollywood” tape, and after he shared classified material with Russian diplomats — I have learned to wait and see whether Trump will preposterously get away with things. He has spent his entire life cutting corners and dancing on the edge of legal. But Jack Smith, the special counsel, is teaching him that you can’t conduct a presidency that way.So we must contemplate Trump’s weird preoccupation with his boxes full of state secrets.“He held onto them. Why?” Mitt Romney asked reporters on Capitol Hill. “That’s the question. Why is the country going to have to go through all this angst and tumult? Why didn’t he just turn the documents in?”The papers spilling out of boxes are a snapshot of Trump’s id. He raised his personality to a management style. His disordered mind has caused public disorder.During his presidency, The Times reported, “his aides began to refer to the boxes full of papers and odds and ends he carted around with him almost everywhere as the ‘beautiful mind’ material. It was a reference to the title of a book and movie depicting the life of John F. Nash Jr., the mathematician with schizophrenia played in the film by Russell Crowe, who covered his office with newspaper clippings, believing they held a Russian code he needed to crack.”The aides used the phrase — which turned up in the indictment — as shorthand for Trump’s organized chaos, how he somehow kept track of what was in the boxes, which he held close as a security blanket. During the 2016 campaign, some reporters said, he traveled with cardboard boxes full of real estate contracts, newspaper clippings and schedules, as though he were carrying his world around with him.The guy likes paper. And, like Louis XIV, he believes “L’État, c’est moi.” His favorite words are personal pronouns and possessive adjectives. Kevin McCarthy is “my Kevin.” Army officers were “my generals.” Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was “my favorite dictator.” In the indictment, a Trump lawyer quotes Trump as warning, “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes.”Is he so addled by narcissism that he sees no distinction between highly sensitive documents belonging to the government and papers he wants to keep? He treats classified maps and nuclear secrets and a Pentagon war plan for Iran like pelts, hunting trophies, or family scrapbook items.He’s like a child, dragging around the things that are important to him. Chris Christie joked about Trump taking some of the boxes on his jet to his club in Bedminster: “He flew the boxes up to New Jersey for summer vacation. What is this? Like, they’re a family member?”It bespeaks a frailty, a need to be bolstered by talismanic items.When he was a real estate dealer and reality star, his office in Trump Tower was papered in framed magazine covers, so that his face stared back at him from every angle, like an infinity mirror.He must worry: Without pieces of paper to prove I am important, am I important?Trump has said one of his favorite movies is “Citizen Kane.” Perhaps the boxes at Xanadu he’s obsessed with, the papers that could make him the locked-up loser he dreads being, have been revealed as his Rosebud.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Business of Being Chris Christie

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      Mr. Christie left the governor’s office in New Jersey and set out to, as he put it, “make money.” He successfully traded on his political profile — and on his ties to the man he now wants to defeat.As his second term as governor of New Jersey drew to a close in 2017, Chris Christie was characteristically blunt about his plans.“I want to have fun, and I want to make money,” he told The New York Times in an interview.Mr. Christie wasted no time. On his first day out of office, he saw Bruce Springsteen on Broadway. On his second, he met with executives of DraftKings, a fantasy sports behemoth that stood to benefit enormously from the Christie administration’s support for legalizing sports betting. The company later put the former governor on retainer to advise and influence state officials.Over the past six years, Mr. Christie has repeatedly capitalized, for personal gain, on the connections he made as one of the best-known governors in the country.He started a federal lobbying and consulting firm called Christie 55 Solutions, joined a multimillion-dollar real estate venture with a donor, landed a contract with ABC News, represented an international fugitive and sat on corporate boards, including that of his beloved New York Mets, the tortured baseball franchise run by his friend and megadonor, the billionaire Steve Cohen.And in 2018, the Christies bought a multimillion-dollar shorefront home in Bay Head, one of the more exclusive towns on the Jersey Shore. Their neighbors included, at one point, members of Bon Jovi. The business of being Chris Christie has received only sporadic attention since he left public office. But his latest enterprise — a presidential campaign bent on taking down former President Donald J. Trump, a man he once endorsed and advised — has cast a new light on his success.A close review of corporate and government records as well as interviews with more than 30 people familiar with his lobbying and consulting work shows Mr. Christie has profited from his relationship to the man he now wants to defeat, as well as from the political profile he gained in eight years as New Jersey’s governor.Mr. Christie has made millions from interests wanting to leverage his political ties, including pharmaceutical, medical and sports betting companies, like DraftKings — whose hiring of Mr. Christie has not been previously reported. Some had business with the state when Mr. Christie was governor, and saw him as a reliable advocate for their bottom line, while others were interested in tapping into his close association with Mr. Trump and the Trump administration.Christie 55 Solutions earned roughly $1.3 million in federal lobbying fees from April 2020 to April 2021, according to federal records. The firm also earned more than $800,000 in consulting fees from Pacira Biosciences, a pharmaceutical company with a significant presence in New Jersey. And he has earned around $400,000 a year for his work as a contributor to ABC News, according to a person familiar with the contract. Before he signed with ABC, multiple networks were interested in and were competing for Mr. Christie, another person familiar with the contract said. ABC later suspended its relationship with Mr. Christie before he began his campaign.The total value of Mr. Christie’s financial ventures is difficult to tabulate; much of his work involves corporate consulting, contracts that are not generally made public. Mr. Christie, who announced his bid in early June, has not yet been required to file a personal financial disclosure, a requirement for all federal candidates.Mr. Christie’s campaign declined both to comment on his finances and to disclose his post-governor clients and contracts.Mr. Christie at his campaign announcement. He has made millions from interests wanting to leverage his political ties.John Tully for The New York TimesFormer public officials from both parties regularly turn to political donors and corporate allies to make money. Former President Barack Obama earned $400,000 in a single speech from a Wall Street firm months after leaving office and later signed a production deal with Netflix, whose founder, Reed Hastings, is a major Democratic donor.No modern president comes close to Mr. Trump’s voluminous record of conflicts of interest, allegations of self-dealing and post-presidential deal-making that marked the Trump administration and its afterlife. His entanglements have spawned continued interest on the part of ethics experts, watchdog groups and federal prosecutors, who have issued subpoenas for information about his business dealings in foreign countries during his time in the White House.“The grift from this family is breathtaking,” Mr. Christie said at a recent town hall on CNN.While Mr. Christie’s own business ties don’t match Mr. Trump’s, they may test how far one more norm has been eroded in the Trump era: Registering as a lobbyist — a card-carrying member of the so-called swamp — has long been viewed as tantamount to retiring from electoral politics.Ambitious politicians typically tried to put distance between the “public office and the private interests they’re serving,” said Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group.“But if he’s got all of these other adjacent interests,” Ms. Canter said of Mr. Christie, “how impartial can you be?”‘The George Washington of legalized gaming’Retaining Mr. Christie was a natural move for DraftKings. As governor, he had been a leading force in the push to overturn the federal law that barred sports betting in most states. In 2018, when the Supreme Court decision in the case initially known as Christie vs. National Collegiate Athletic Association allowed states to legalize sports gambling, the industry rushed to push laws in states that would allow them to cash in on a new market.Weeks after the court’s ruling, Mr. Christie was the keynote speaker at a conference a gambling industry group hosted for state legislators in New Orleans, where he criticized sports leagues that had opposed expanding gambling.At the time, Mr. Christie was a consultant for Scientific Games, a lottery company that was part of a consortium that had won big when he privatized the New Jersey state lottery operations in 2013.The company was now seeking Mr. Christie’s advice on expanding into sports betting. Mr. Christie was paid more than $30,000 a month by Scientific Games, according to a person with knowledge of the arrangement who requested anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the contract.DraftKings also put Mr. Christie on a monthly retainer and then sent him to speak to state legislators, although he did not register as a state lobbyist.Soon after Mr. Christie left office, DraftKings put him on retainer to advise and influence state officials.AJ Mast for The New York TimesMr. Christie initially had broad appeal. His blue-state Republicanism made him popular with moderate lawmakers in the Northeast and Midwest, and his ties to then-President Trump gave him credibility with more right-wing legislators.“Having the George Washington of legalized gaming in the U.S. was obviously something we thought would be helpful,” said Jeremy Kudon, who worked for DraftKings and a rival, FanDuel, on joint lobbying efforts at the time and now runs a gambling industry trade association. “And his relationship with Trump we thought would be helpful.”But in late 2020, just as the sports gambling industry focused its lobbying efforts on conservative Southern states, Mr. Christie broke with Mr. Trump over the president’s false claims of a stolen election — and DraftKings stopped deploying him.A spokesman for the company declined to comment.An $800,000 New Jersey connectionMr. Christie has also worked closely with — and for — the pharmaceutical industry, one of the biggest economic drivers in his state.Just months after leaving office, Mr. Christie was tapped by Mr. Trump to lead the President’s Commission on Opioids, giving him a prominent national post on an issue he had made a major focus of his second term as governor.Among the industry executives the commission brought in to testify was David Stack, the chief executive of Pacira Biosciences. Mr. Stack pressed for a change in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement policies, arguing, along with some policy experts, that the programs created incentives for doctors to prescribe opioids instead of non-opioid painkillers and other treatments that are less addictive.The commission included Mr. Stack’s suggestions in its final report and in 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services changed their policies for non-opioid treatments for pain, citing the recommendation from the Christie-led commission.The change benefited just one drug on the market at the time: Exparel, made by Pacira.Donald Trump chose Mr. Christie, a former rival who became a close adviser, to lead a commission on the opioid crisis. Mr. Christie later became a consultant and lobbyist for drug companies. Doug Mills/The New York TimesThat same year in 2018, Pacira paid $481,000 to Christie 55 Solutions for consulting work. In 2019, Pacira put Mr. Christie on its board and paid his firm $320,000, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The reports did not offer any further details, and the company did not respond to questions about the payments.As of June 2022, Mr. Christie owned 3,486 Pacira Biosciences shares worth $207,034.Mr. Christie has said he was not employed by Pacira while serving on the opioids commission.Sara Marino, a spokeswoman for the company, said Mr. Christie “provided Pacira with valuable insight and guidance” as it sought “to provide an opioid alternative to as many patients as appropriate.”Mr. Christie has continued to consult for drug companies. In April, he joined the advisory board for Cytogel Pharma, a company testing a new non-opioid pain reliever in clinical trials.Dean Maglaris, the chief executive of Cytogel, said Mr. Christie had helped connect the young company with industry experts and government officials.“Being from New Jersey, which is the, probably the state with the largest population of pharmaceutical companies, he has put us in contact with people that he knows,” Mr. Maglaris said. Mr. Christie also helped connect the company with “folks in the federal government who have an abiding interest in solving the addiction crisis.”Negotiating with JusticeMr. Christie, a former federal prosecutor, also got involved in a high-profile money-laundering case. Mr. Christie was hired by Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman who had been indicted in 2018 on money laundering and bribery charges and was living as a fugitive. At the time, the U.S. government had seized hundreds of millions of dollars in assets tied to Mr. Low and associates.Mr. Christie never registered in court as an attorney for Mr. Low, but he worked behind the scenes to negotiate a deal with Justice Department lawyers. Mr. Low ultimately forfeited nearly all of the seized assets — with the exception of $15 million in payments to Mr. Christie and two law firms. Mr. Christie represented Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman who was indicted on money-laundering charges, in his negotiations with the Justice Department. Scott Roth/Invision, via Scott Roth/Invision/ApThe payout raised eyebrows among other lawyers involved. They saw it as a hefty sum for the legal work performed, but ultimately the Justice Department agreed to it, because the priority was to make sure Mr. Low did not have access to the money himself, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations.Although Mr. Christie had been using his connections in the Trump administration as a consultant for years, he did not register as a federal lobbyist until June 2020, shortly after the pandemic hit.As Congress passed several bills to help both businesses and health care providers, several major health care networks, all in New Jersey, hired Christie 55 Solutions: Atlantic Health System, RWJBarnabas Health and Hackensack Meridian Health each paid the firm $200,000 for a little less than a year’s work.Christie 55 Solutions, whose small staff included Mr. Christie’s wife, Mary Pat Christie, and Rich Bagger, his former chief of staff, closed its federal lobbying shop in late 2021.Seeing opportunity at homeAs he used his sway in Washington, Mr. Christie kept one foot in New Jersey. Both Mr. and Mrs. Christie joined a real estate venture with a New Jersey developer, Jon Hanson, a longtime political ally and fund-raiser for Mr. Christie’s campaigns.Mr. Christie’s involvement was announced in 2019 as the enterprise, named the Hampshire Christie Qualified Opportunity Fund, set out to find investors for real estate developments taking advantage of federal “opportunity zones,” a Republican-backed tax program intended to benefit low-income neighborhoods. The Trump administration program has been criticized as a windfall for wealthy developers.The Christies are “investor partners” in the fund and Mrs. Christie has helped raise some of the money, Mr. Hanson told The Times.Karl Rickett, a spokesman for the Christie campaign, said the former governor was never involved in the fund as a senior adviser or in any other capacity, and that the venture was entirely a project of Mrs. Christie’s.The fund has raised $80 million of its $250 million goal for three luxury housing and retail projects in Hackensack, N.J., and a New London, Conn., storage facility that will be developed by the firm Mr. Hanson founded, according to Mr. Hanson.When the fund was first publicized, Mrs. Christie promoted her husband’s involvement as an advantage, saying he would use his connections to smooth the path with New Jersey mayors, town councils and zoning boards.“Nobody really knows New Jersey as well as Chris, because he’s been at the helm for the last eight years,” she said to The Wall Street Journal at the time.Mr. Hanson, however, has said that has not happened. Mr. Christie has not been involved at the local level, he said.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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      Why Do So Few Democrats Want Biden to Run in 2024?

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      The New York Times Audio app includes podcasts, narrated articles from the newsroom and other publishers, as well as exclusive new shows — including this one — which we’re making available to readers for a limited time. Download the audio app here.A recent AP-NORC poll found that just a quarter of voters, including only around half of Democrats, want to see Joe Biden run for president again. Many voters are concerned about his age in particular.That’s a problem for Biden, but it’s not as unusual as it might seem. In 1982, only 37 percent of voters wanted Ronald Reagan, another older president, to run again; he then won the 1984 election in a landslide. And Biden also has a lot going for him: a better-than-expected midterm performance, an impressive record of legislative achievement and a track record of defeating Donald Trump.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]What are Biden’s chances in 2024? How does he stack up against Republicans like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis? What has his campaign focused on so far, and what should they focus on over the next few years?Jon Favreau served as Barack Obama’s head speechwriter from 2005 to 2013, played a key role in both of Obama’s presidential campaigns and currently co-hosts the podcast “Pod Save America.” So I asked him on the show to talk through the cases for and against Biden in 2024.We cover the concerns over Biden’s age, the strength of Vice President Kamala Harris, the key takeaways from the 2022 midterms, the surprising effectiveness of Biden’s lay-low media strategy, why voters tend to trust Donald Trump’s management of the economy more than Biden’s, how Biden’s bipartisan credentials could help him in 2024 and much more.This episode contains explicit language.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.Kenneth WertThis episode was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Isaac Jones. The show’s production team is Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski. More

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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