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      Why Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 Trump Indictment Is So Smart

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      This is the indictment that those who were horrified by the events of Jan. 6, 2021, have been waiting for. The catalog of misdeeds that Donald Trump is accused of is extensive, some reflected in other prosecutions over classified documents and hush-money payments or in civil lawsuits.But this case — a sitting U.S. president’s assault on democracy — is by far the most consequential. And from the looks of this indictment, the prosecution’s case is going to be thorough and relentless.The charging decisions in the indictment reflect smart lawyering by the special counsel Jack Smith and his team. The beauty of this indictment is that it provides three legal frameworks that prosecutors can use to tell the same fulsome story.It will allow prosecutors to put on a compelling case that will hold Mr. Trump fully accountable for the multipronged effort to overturn the election. At the same time, it avoids legal and political pitfalls that could have delayed or derailed the prosecution.The lead charge, conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. 371, is a go-to charge for federal prosecutors. Count 1 charges a conspiracy to defraud the United States by obstructing and defeating the lawful counting of votes and certification of the election. Conspiracy is the perfect vehicle for describing a complex criminal scheme and identifying all the actors and everything they did.The conspiracy charge, which makes up most of the indictment, encompasses the tentacles of the scheme to overturn the election results. Pressuring state officials to overturn their elections, recruiting slates of fake electors from seven states, trying to corrupt the Justice Department to further the scheme, pressuring Mike Pence to throw out lawful votes and directing the mob to the Capitol on Jan. 6 — all are included as part of a single overarching conspiracy to defraud the United States.A conspiracy requires two or more people who agree to participate. This indictment lists but does not yet charge or formally identify six Trump co-conspirators. Mr. Smith clearly has enough evidence to charge those unindicted co-conspirators but has chosen not to — for now. This, too, is a smart tactical decision.Proceeding against Mr. Trump alone streamlines the case and gives Mr. Smith the best chance for a trial to be held and concluded before the 2024 presidential election. It’s possible some of the unindicted co-conspirators will cut a deal and testify for the prosecution. If not, there is plenty of time to charge them later.Counts 2 and 3 are conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of a proceeding, under 18 U.S.C. Section 1512. Prosecutors have successfully used this statute to charge hundreds of the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, including members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, with disrupting the joint congressional proceeding to certify the election results.But when it comes to Mr. Trump and the senior people around him, this obstruction charge is much broader than the assault on the Capitol. The conspiracy to obstruct justice again encompasses all the different methods he and his allies used to seek to overturn the election results by thwarting the proceeding to certify the election. In addition, his dispatching supporters to the Capitol and then taking no steps to stop them for three hours potentially makes him liable for aiding and abetting that obstruction — even though he did not set foot in the Capitol himself. And aiding and abetting is part of the theory of the obstruction charge in Count 3.Count 4 is a civil rights violation under 18 U.S.C. Section 241. That statute makes it a crime to “injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate” any people in their exercise and enjoyment of rights guaranteed by the Constitution or laws. Based on the same evidence, this charge alleges that Mr. Trump and others conspired to injure one or more people by depriving them of their right to have their votes counted.For each of these charges, all aspects of the effort to overturn the election, including those that took place well before Jan. 6, may be introduced as part of a single multifaceted scheme and part of one story that proves all the charges.Prosecutors love having alternative legal theories underlying a single presentation of evidence. It’s a belt-and-suspenders approach: If a legal issue arises that weakens or eliminates one charge, the others remain, and the case can continue. And within the scheme are yet more backstops: If the evidence for one aspect of the scheme falters, the remaining aspects are still more than sufficient to prove the charge.Mr. Smith has also avoided some potential land mines that could be lurking in other charges.One charge that was not included in the indictment falls under 18 U.S.C. Section 2383, which makes it a crime to incite, assist or engage in a rebellion or insurrection against the United States or to give aid and comfort to such an insurrection. This charge was part of the referral from the Jan. 6 committee.It would have faced some potentially tricky First Amendment issues, to the extent it would have relied on Mr. Trump’s speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 to allege that he incited the riot. I believe those issues could be overcome, but the free speech battles over that charge would have been time-consuming and distracting because the speech could be easily characterized as a political rally.Seditious conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. Section 2384 is also absent. A number of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have been convicted of violating that law, which prohibits conspiracies to overthrow the government. But violating the statute requires the use of force. Conviction presumably would require proof that Mr. Trump intended the Capitol riot to take place and that it was not just a political protest that got out of hand. That proof may be there, but the issue could easily become a major distraction.There will be those who say any case that does not charge Mr. Trump with insurrection or sedition is a whitewash that fails to hold him properly accountable. I think those critics are wrong. These charges will allow prosecutors to present the sweeping, multistate scheme to overturn the election, with all its different aspects, to the jury and the public. They are serious felony charges that carry hefty penalties.Although it might have been psychologically gratifying to see Mr. Trump charged with sedition, the name of the legal charge is less important than the facts that will make up the government’s case.This indictment presents detailed and overwhelming allegations. It reflects sound legal and tactical decisions that should allow the government to move quickly and put on a powerful case. The most significant prosecution of Mr. Trump is off to a strong start.Randall D. Eliason is a former chief of the fraud and public corruption section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School. He writes the Sidebars blog.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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      Matt DePerno, Trump Meddler in Michigan, Is Charged in Election Breach

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      A key figure in a multistate effort to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. DePerno lost his race for Michigan attorney general in 2022. He later finished second to lead the state’s Republican Party.Matthew DePerno, a key orchestrator of efforts to help former President Donald J. Trump try to overturn the 2020 election in Michigan and an unsuccessful candidate for state attorney general last year, was arraigned on four felony charges on Tuesday, according to documents released by D.J. Hilson, the special prosecutor handling the investigation.The charges against Mr. DePerno, which include undue possession of a voting machine and a conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a computer or computer system, come after a nearly yearlong investigation in one of the battleground states that cemented the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president.Former State Representative Daire Rendon was also charged with two crimes, including a conspiracy to illegally obtain a voting machine and false pretenses.Both Mr. DePerno and Ms. Rendon were arraigned remotely on Tuesday before Chief Judge Jeffery Matis, according to Richard Lynch, the court administrator for Oakland County’s Sixth Circuit, and remained free on bond.The charges were first reported by The Detroit News.Mr. DePerno denied any wrongdoing and said that his efforts “uncovered significant security flaws” in a statement from his lawyer, Paul Stablein.“He maintains his innocence and firmly believes that these charges are not based upon any actual truth and are motivated primarily by politics rather than evidence,” Mr. Stablein said.The criminal inquiry in Michigan has largely been overshadowed by developments in Georgia, where a grand jury is weighing charges against Mr. Trump for trying to subvert the election, but both are part of the ongoing reckoning over the conspiracy theories about election machines promoted by Mr. Trump and his allies.The efforts to legitimize the falsehoods and conspiracy theories promoted widely by Mr. Trump and his allies continued long after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and after Mr. Biden took office. In Arizona, such efforts included the discredited election audit of Maricopa County led by Republicans in the state legislature.In a statement, Mr. Hilson said, “Although our office made no recommendations to the grand jury as to whether an indictment should be issued or not, we support the grand jury’s decision and we will prosecute each of the cases as they have directed in the sole interests of justice.”Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general and a Democrat who went on to defeat Mr. DePerno in the November election, has not been involved in the investigation since the appointment of a special prosecutor in August last year. In a statement on Tuesday, Ms. Nessel said that the allegations “caused undeniable harm to our democracy” and issued a warning for the future.“The 2024 presidential election will soon be upon us. The lies espoused by attorneys involved in this matter, and those who worked in concert with them across the nation, wreaked havoc and sowed distrust within our democratic institutions and processes,” Ms. Nessel said. “We hope for swift justice in the courts.”The charges stemmed from a bizarre plot hatched by a group of conservative activists in early 2021 to pick apart voting machines in at least three Michigan counties, in some cases taking them to hotels and Airbnb rentals as they hunted for evidence of election fraud.In the weeks after the 2020 election, he drew widespread attention and the admiration of Mr. Trump when he filed a lawsuit challenging the vote tallies in Antrim County, a rural area in Northern Michigan where a minor clerical error fueled conspiracy theories.He falsely claimed that voting machines there had been rigged, a premise that was rejected as “idiotic” by William P. Barr, an attorney general under Mr. Trump, and “demonstrably false” by Republicans in the Michigan Senate.Mr. Hilson, the prosecutor in Muskegon County appointed as special prosecutor, had initially delayed bringing charges, asking a state judge to determine whether it was against state law to take possession of a voting machine without the secretary of state’s permission or a court order. A judge determined last month that doing so was against the law, clearing the way for charges.Democrats swept the governor’s race and other statewide contests last fall, in addition to flipping the full Legislature for the first time in decades. Mr. DePerno, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, lost the attorney general’s race by eight percentage points.This year, Mr. DePerno had been a front-runner to lead the Michigan Republican Party after its disappointing showing in last year’s midterm election, but he finished second to another election-denier: Kristina Karamo.In his campaign to lead the G.O.P. in Michigan, Mr. DePerno had vowed to pack the party’s leadership ranks with Trump loyalists, close primaries to just Republicans and ratchet up the distribution of absentee ballot applications to party members — despite what he said was lingering opposition to voting by mail within the party’s ranks.His candidacy was supported by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who has spread conspiracy theories about election fraud and appeared at a fund-raising reception for Mr. DePerno in Lansing on the night before the chairmanship vote.Mr. DePerno lost to Ms. Karamo after three rounds of balloting at the state party convention, a process that was slowed for several hours by the use of paper ballots and hand counting.Danny Hakim More

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      Target Letter to Trump Raises Possibility of Obstruction and Fraud Charges

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      In the two and a half years since a mob laid siege to the Capitol in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory, a wealth of evidence has emerged about Donald J. Trump’s bid to stay in power after the 2020 election.Mr. Trump and his allies peddled spurious claims of voter fraud, pressured officials in states he narrowly lost and recruited false slates of electors in those states. He urged Vice President Mike Pence to delay certification of Mr. Biden’s win. And he called on a huge crowd of his supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.”Now, Mr. Trump appears almost certain to face criminal charges for some of his efforts to remain in office. On Tuesday, he disclosed on social media that federal prosecutors had sent him a so-called target letter, suggesting that he could soon be indicted in the investigation into the events that culminated in the riot.Mr. Trump did not say what criminal charges, if any, the special counsel, Jack Smith, had specified in issuing the letter.But since the Capitol attack — in part because of revelations by a House committee investigation and news reports — many legal specialists and commentators have converged on several charges that are particularly likely, especially obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the government.A person briefed on the matter said the target letter cited three statutes that could be applied in a prosecution of Mr. Trump by the special counsel, Jack Smith, including a potential charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States.Norman Eisen, who worked for the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and contributed to a prosecution memo modeling potential Jan. 6-related charges, said that the target letter suggested the special counsel “has more than enough evidence” to bring a case against the former president.“By leading the effort to procure fraudulent electoral certificates across the nation, Trump helmed a conspiracy to defraud the U.S.,” Mr. Eisen said. “And by using those false documents to press Mike Pence to disrupt the Jan. 6 meeting of Congress, Trump attempted to obstruct an official proceeding.”There have also been signs that prosecutors have explored potential charges involving wire or mail fraud related to Mr. Trump’s fund-raising efforts in the name of overturning the election results.Any charges in the District of Columbia — where federal grand juries have been hearing evidence — would raise additional legal peril for Mr. Trump. Already, the Justice Department has won guilty pleas or convictions in hundreds of cases related to the riot, suggesting that a pool of jurors may be less receptive toward him than in Palm Beach County, Fla., where he faces charges over his hoarding of sensitive government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.These are some of the charges Mr. Trump could face in the Jan. 6 case.Corruptly Obstructing an Official ProceedingBoth the House committee that scrutinized Jan. 6 and a federal judge in California who intervened in its inquiry have said that there is evidence that Mr. Trump tried to corruptly obstruct Congress’s session to certify Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory. Under Section 1512(c) of Title 18 of the United States Code, such a crime would be punishable by up to 20 years in prison.Prosecutors have already used that law to charge hundreds of ordinary defendants in Jan. 6 cases, and in April, a federal appeals court upheld the viability of applying that charge to the Capitol attack. Still, unlike ordinary rioters, Mr. Trump did not physically participate in the storming of the Capitol.The House committee investigating the Capitol riot at a hearing in December.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesIn issuing criminal referrals as it ended its investigation, the Jan. 6 committee argued that Mr. Trump should be charged under the statute based on two sets of actions. By summoning supporters to Washington and stoking them to march on the Capitol, lawmakers argued, Mr. Trump had violated that law. Mr. Trump’s lawyers would likely raise doubts over whether he intended for his supporters to riot in part because he also told them to protest “peacefully.”The committee also cited Mr. Trump’s participation in the fake electors scheme as a reason to issue charges, pointing to his effort to strong-arm Mr. Pence to cite the existence of slates of electors pledged to Mr. Trump in seven states that Mr. Biden had actually won as a basis to delay certifying the election. The panel stressed how Mr. Trump had been told that there was no truth to his claims of a stolen election, which it said showed his intentions were corrupt.Conspiring to Defraud the Government and to Make False StatementsBoth the federal judge in California and the Jan. 6 committee also said there was evidence that Mr. Trump violated Section 371 of Title 18, which makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to conspire with another person to defraud the government.The basis for such a charge would be similar: Mr. Trump’s interactions with various lawyers and aides in his effort to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s electoral victory, even though Mr. Trump was repeatedly told that his allegations of widespread voter fraud were baseless.In his ruling last year in a civil lawsuit over whether the Jan. 6 committee could obtain the emails of John Eastman, a legal adviser to Mr. Trump in his fight to overturn the election results, Judge David O. Carter ruled that it was more likely than not that the communications involved crimes, so qualified for an exception to attorney-client privilege.“The illegality of the plan was obvious,” he wrote. “Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the vice president to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election.”A conspiracy to submit false electors to Congress could also implicate Section 1001, which makes false statements a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. In the documents case, Mr. Trump is charged under this statute, accused of having caused his lawyer to lie to the Justice Department.Wire and Mail FraudA constellation of other potential crimes has also surrounded the Jan. 6 investigation. One is wire fraud. Section 1343 of Title 18 makes it a crime, punishable by 20 years in prison, to cause money to be transferred by wire across state lines as part of a scheme to obtain money by means of false or fraudulent representations. A similar fraud statute, Section 1341, covers schemes that use the Postal Service.Subpoenas issued by Mr. Smith suggest that he has been scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s political action committee, Save America PAC. It raised as much as $250 million, telling donors the money was needed to fight election fraud even as Mr. Trump had been told repeatedly that there was no evidence to back up those claims.The House Jan. 6 committee had also suggested that Mr. Trump and his associates had defrauded his own supporters. It described how after the election, they appealed to donors as many as 25 times a day to help fight the results in court and contribute to a defense fund. But no such fund existed, and they used the money for other purposes, including spending more than $200,000 at Trump hotel properties.“Throughout the committee’s investigation, we found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, said during one hearing. “So not only was there the big lie. There was the big rip-off.”The Jan. 6 committee and some legal commentators have also suggested Mr. Trump could be charged under Section 2383 of Title 18, which makes it a crime to incite, assist, “aid or comfort” an insurrection against the authority and laws of the federal government. That offense, however, is rarely charged and has not been leveled against any Jan. 6 defendant to date.In its final report, the committee singled out five of Mr. Trump’s other allies — Mark Meadows, his final chief of staff; and the lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro — as potential co-conspirators with Mr. Trump in actions the committee said warranted Justice Department investigation.Luke Broadwater More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Relatives Condemn His Comments About Covid

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      His sister Kerry Kennedy criticized his remarks, and his brother Joseph Kennedy II said “they play on antisemitic myths and stoke mistrust of the Chinese.”Several members of the Kennedy family have condemned a bigoted conspiracy theory from the Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suggested that the coronavirus was “ethnically targeted” to spare Jews and Chinese people.In comments at a recent event in New York City, a recording of which was first published by The New York Post, Mr. Kennedy said: “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” He added, “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not.”His sister Kerry Kennedy called his remarks “deplorable and untruthful” and said they did not represent the principles espoused by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the organization she leads — named after their father, the former attorney general and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.His brother Joseph Kennedy II issued a similar statement, telling The Boston Globe: “Bobby’s comments are morally and factually wrong. They play on antisemitic myths and stoke mistrust of the Chinese. His remarks in no way reflect the words and actions of our father, Robert F. Kennedy.”And former Representative Joseph Kennedy III wrote on Twitter on Monday afternoon: “My uncle’s comments were hurtful and wrong. I unequivocally condemn what he said.”Mr. Kennedy rejected criticism of his comments on Sunday, saying in a lengthy Twitter post, “The insinuation by @nypost and others that, as a result of my quoting a peer-reviewed paper on bio-weapons, I am somehow antisemitic, is a disgusting fabrication.” (The paper he referred to did not support the claims he made.)It was far from the first time that Mr. Kennedy’s relatives felt compelled to disavow his words or actions.Once an environmental lawyer known for his work to clean up the Hudson River, Mr. Kennedy — now a long-shot candidate running against President Biden for next year’s Democratic nomination — has become a leading purveyor of anti-vaccine misinformation. Long before the coronavirus pandemic, he helped popularize false claims of a connection between childhood vaccines and autism, and since Covid vaccines became available, he has sought loudly and frequently to cast doubt on their well-documented safety.Last year, Mr. Kennedy suggested that unvaccinated Americans would soon be more persecuted than Anne Frank, who was murdered by the Nazis. Several of his siblings criticized him for that comment, as did his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, who called it “reprehensible and insensitive.”He has advanced many other conspiracy theories as well, including claiming that there is a link between antidepressants and mass shootings (there isn’t) and that Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election (they didn’t).Despite his promotion of misinformation and some policy views more aligned with the Republican base than the Democratic one, Mr. Kennedy is polling relatively strongly — between 10 and 20 percent in several surveys, nowhere near enough to overtake Mr. Biden, but nonetheless striking numbers against an incumbent. More

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      Cambodia Strongman Hun Sen Wields Facebook to Undermine Democracy

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      The Cambodian People’s Party created its Cyber War Room about a decade ago. The goal was to support Prime Minister Hun Sen’s regime through social media propagandizing. Led by the prime minister’s son Hun Manet, a troll army used Facebook and other digital platforms to attack his father’s opposition with disinformation and even allegedly wield death threats.Fast forward to the Cambodian election taking place next month. The CPP’s Cyber War Room is back up and running. General Manet, commander of the Cambodian Army and most likely the country’s next prime minister, is reportedly back at the helm, this time defending his father’s legacy and himself.Facebook is extremely popular in Cambodia, with roughly 12 million of the country’s almost 17 million people on the site. Many people in Cambodia use Facebook as a core means of getting information, and social media platforms are critical for the few journalists still producing independent reporting. The populations of many other countries where governments have continually used social media for manipulation, including the Philippines and Turkey, rely heavily on Facebook as well. So why has state-sponsored trolling like this been allowed to endure for 10 years?It will come as no surprise when I say that Big Tech has a lot of problems on its plate, including fury about transnational digital propaganda campaigns, a global outcry about networked disinformation during the pandemic and panic about both real and hypothetic threats of generative A.I.But as one issue pops into the immediate view, the others don’t go anywhere. Instead, the global problems with our online information ecosystem compound. And while society and tech’s most powerful firms jump from one issue to the next, the abusive disinformation practices in places like Cambodia become entrenched. Governments refine their techniques, and opposition groups become less and less present because they are either trolled into submission, arrested, exiled or killed. It all benefits Big Tech, from Meta to Alphabet, which publicly seizes upon the idea du jour while cutting staffs and curbing efforts aimed at combating standing informational issues.What does this mean for the people of Cambodia? For a people who, in living memory, endured the horrors of genocide and totalitarianism?The Cambodian news ecosystem and the lives of Cambodians are controlled by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has led them in some capacity for 38 years. He is quick to justify his long reign by pointing to economic gains before Covid — by which time the country achieved lower-middle-income status through tourism, textile exports and a growing relationship with China. His people have languished in many other ways, however: Environmental degradation is rife, corruption is commonplace, and human rights abuses are worsening.Mr. Sen and his cronies own or control all but the thinnest sliver of the country’s media outlets. They recently banned the main opposition party from running in the coming election because of an alleged clerical error. And curtailing speech on social media has been critical to the consolidation of their power. Facebook, Telegram and other platforms have been central to the CPP’s illicit, strategic and authoritarian control of Cambodia’s information space and, consequently, public opinion.Other despots have made use of highly organized state-sponsored trolling outfits to quash dissent. Some, like Mr. Sen, have also hired their kids to run them. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro’s Office of Hate, run by his sons, used social media to defame journalists and threaten opposition. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the autocrat recently re-elected as president of Turkey, benefited greatly from organized troll armies operating on Twitter. Back in Southeast Asia, the increasingly tyrannical regimes of Thailand, the Philippines and Myanmar have all deployed cyber-troops to do their oppressive bidding.Another factor is central to understanding why social media firms have failed to curb state-sponsored trolling around the globe: language.Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms have overwhelmingly focused their efforts to counter harmful and purposely misleading content in English. One reason is that they are based in the United States. Another is the malignant supremacy of Western concerns. But the larger reason is that social media companies cannot or will not supply the resources necessary to moderating content in other languages — particularly those such as Cambodia’s Khmer, which is complex and spoken by about 18 million people worldwide. That’s a small number when compared with the roughly 1.5 billion who speak English.This issue is a major problem for our own democracy too. During the 2020 and 2022 elections, social media platforms failed spectacularly in quashing hateful and disenfranchising content aimed at the tens of millions of Americans who speak Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and a variety of other languages. This resulted in communities of color and groups already marginalized in our political system bearing the brunt of digital hate and purposely false information about these contests. According to my research and work with community leaders, this structural disinformation causes apathy, anger and civic disenchantment among minority voters, and as a result, many don’t show up to vote.The strength of global democracy is tied to the number of countries around the world that truly practice it. And while the leaders of relatively strong democracies like the United States obsess over information technology problems and political spectacle in Washington, they fail to do their duty to protect the less fortunate, both in their own country and elsewhere. This, in turn, lets social media companies off the hook.I recently returned from a lecture tour in Cambodia, where I spoke to more than 12 groups of professional journalists, citizen reporters, scholars, students and activists about the informational and political challenges they face online and offline. All told me that they still use platforms like Facebook and Telegram to coordinate, organize and share information about breaking news and elections.Facebook is especially popular in the country, in part because of its controversial Free Basics program, which offers free internet in a number of developing countries via a constrained number of websites (including, naturally, Facebook). Critics derided this as less a benevolent bid to connect the world and more a heavy-handed effort to “capture more of the market in the name of connectivity.” The promise of social media — that it can be the conduit for communication in countries with controlled media systems — remains true for the people I spoke to in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville. But this potential is quickly dwindling as people lose faith in the safety of online communication. Meanwhile, Facebook remains a potent means for disseminating propaganda.If Meta, Alphabet and other tech firms do not take swift action to curb state-sponsored trolling, and if policymakers and civil society groups in the United States and other democracies don’t put more pressure on authoritarians like Hun Sen, then Cambodians and many others around the world will lose one of their last means of fighting back. We must speak out about the oppression surrounding the Cambodian election, which takes place on July 23 — and speak out about digital injustice.Samuel Woolley is the author of “Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity” and a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin.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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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Conspiracy Theories Go Beyond Vaccines

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      A longtime vaccine skeptic, Mr. Kennedy is leaning heavily on misinformation as he mounts a long-shot 2024 campaign.He has promoted a conspiracy theory that coronavirus vaccines were developed to control people via microchips. He has endorsed the false notion that antidepressants are linked to school shootings. And he has pushed the decades-old theory that the C.I.A. killed his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, is a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories who has leaned heavily on misinformation as he mounts his long-shot 2024 campaign for the Democratic nomination.But as voters express discontentment at a likely rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Kennedy has garnered as much as 20 percent of the vote in recent Democratic primary polling.Mr. Biden and the Democratic National Committee have not publicly acknowledged Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy and have declined to comment on his campaign. Nevertheless, the public scrutiny that accompanies a White House bid has highlighted other questionable beliefs and statements Mr. Kennedy has elevated over the years.Here are five of the many baseless claims Mr. Kennedy has peddled on the campaign trail and beyond.He has falsely linked vaccines to various medical conditions.Mr. Kennedy has promoted many false, specious or unproven claims that center on public health and the pharmaceutical industry — most notably, the scientifically discredited belief that childhood vaccines cause autism.That notion has been rejected by more than a dozen peer-reviewed scientific studies across multiple countries. The National Academy of Medicine reviewed eight vaccines for children and adults and found that with rare exceptions, the vaccines are very safe, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Seen by many as the face of the vaccine resistance movement, Mr. Kennedy has asserted that he is “not anti-vaccine” and seeks to make vaccines more safe. But he has advertised misleading information about vaccine ingredients and circulated retracted studies linking vaccines to various medical conditions. At a rally in Washington last year, he compared the vaccination records some called “vaccine passports” to life in Germany during the Holocaust, a statement he later apologized for. And he falsely told Louisiana lawmakers in 2021 that the coronavirus vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”Children’s Health Defense, an organization Mr. Kennedy originally founded as the World Mercury Project, has frequently campaigned against vaccines. Facebook and Instagram removed the group’s accounts last year for espousing vaccine misinformation, and Mr. Kennedy has often lamented the perils of “censorship” in campaign speeches since.Mr. Kennedy, who many see as a prominent representative for the vaccine resistance movement, attended the New York Rally for Vaccine Injury and Vaccine Rights in Albany in 2019.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesHe has made baseless claims about a connection between gender dysphoria and chemical exposure.In an interview last month with Jordan Peterson, a conservative Canadian psychologist and public speaker, Mr. Kennedy falsely linked chemicals present in water sources to transgender identity.“A lot of the problems we see in kids, particularly boys, it’s probably underappreciated how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing,” he said. He referred to research on an herbicide, atrazine, in which scientists found that it “induces complete feminization and chemical castration” in certain frogs.But no evidence exists to indicate that the chemical, typically used on farms to kill weeds, causes the same effects in humans, let alone gender dysphoria. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Most people are not exposed to atrazine on a regular basis.”He has falsely linked antidepressants to school shootings.Drawing on longstanding dubious claims, Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly endorsed the idea that mass shootings have increased because of heightened use of antidepressants.“Kids always had access to guns, and there was no time in American history or human history where kids were going to schools and shooting their classmates,” he told the comedian Bill Maher on a recent episode of the podcast, “Club Random With Bill Maher.” “It really started happening conterminous with the introduction of these drugs, with Prozac and the other drugs.”While both antidepressant use and mass shooting occurrences have increased in the last several decades, the scientific community has found “no biological plausibility” to back a link between the two, according to Ragy Girgis, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.Antidepressants often have warnings that reference suicidal thoughts, Mr. Girgis said. But those warnings refer to the possibility that people who already experience suicidal ideation might share pre-existing beliefs aloud once they take the medicine as part of their treatment.Mr. Kennedy, however, has pointed to such warnings as evidence of the false notion that the drugs might induce “homicidal tendencies.”Several high-profile figures, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have amplified similar claims following recent mass shootings.Most school shooters were not prescribed with psychotropic medications before committing acts of violence, a 2019 study found. And even when they were, researchers wrote, “no direct or causal association was found.”He has bolstered a conspiracy theory that the C.I.A. assassinated his uncle.Former President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, the former first lady, are shown in the back of a car minutes before Mr. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.Bettmann, Getty ImagesMr. Kennedy has long promoted a conspiracy theory that the C.I.A. killed his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.He claimed, without evidence, during a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity in May that Allen W. Dulles, a C.I.A. director fired by President Kennedy, helped cover up evidence of the organization’s involvement when he served on the Warren Commission, convened in 1963 to investigate the Kennedy assassination.Referencing a House committee inquiry in 1976, he said: “Most of the people in that investigation believed it was the C.I.A. that was behind it because the evidence was so overwhelming to them.”But even that investigation, which found that President Kennedy was “probably” the victim of a conspiracy of some kind, flatly concluded that the C.I.A. was “not involved.”The Warren Commission found that the killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone and was not connected to any governmental agency.And he has said that Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election.Mr. Kennedy told The Washington Post in June that he still believed that John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, had won the 2004 presidential election.Mr. Kennedy first promoted that idea in a 2006 article in Rolling Stone, asserting that Republicans had “mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people” and assure the re-election of President George W. Bush. He claimed that their efforts “prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted.”But it is one thing to complain of vote suppression; it is another thing to demonstrate that Mr. Kerry won more of the votes cast.Mr. Bush defeated Mr. Kerry by a margin of 35 electoral college votes nationally; he carried Ohio and its 20 electoral votes by more than 118,000 ballots.The Times reported in 2004 that a glitch in an electronic Ohio voting machine added 3,893 votes to Mr. Bush’s tally. That error was caught in preliminary vote counts, officials said. But the event, alongside other voting controversies nationwide, spurred widespread questions about election integrity that caught traction with people like Mr. Kennedy.Mr. Kerry, however, conceded the race a day after the election. More

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      Bolsonaro ha sido inhabilitado en Brasil. Trump busca la presidencia en EE. UU.

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      Aunque el comportamiento de ambos expresidentes fue muy similar, las consecuencias políticas que enfrentan han sido drásticamente diferentes.El presidente de extrema derecha, que no era el favorito en las encuestas, alertó sobre un fraude electoral a pesar de no tener ninguna prueba. Tras perder, afirmó que las elecciones estaban amañadas. Miles de sus seguidores —envueltos en banderas nacionales y engañados por teorías de la conspiración— procedieron a asaltar el Congreso, buscando anular los resultados.Ese escenario describe las elecciones presidenciales más recientes en las democracias más grandes del hemisferio occidental: Estados Unidos y Brasil.Pero si bien el comportamiento de los dos expresidentes —Donald Trump y Jair Bolsonaro— fue muy similar, las consecuencias políticas han sido drásticamente diferentes.Si bien Trump enfrenta cargos federales y estatales que lo acusan de pagarle a una actriz de cine porno por su silencio y de manejar de manera indebida documentos clasificados, sigue siendo la figura más influyente de la derecha estadounidense. Más de dos años después de dejar la Casa Blanca, Trump parece estar destinado a convertirse en el candidato republicano a la presidencia, con una amplia ventaja en las encuestas.En Brasil, Bolsonaro ha enfrentado represalias más rápidas y feroces. También enfrenta numerosas investigaciones criminales. Las autoridades allanaron su casa y confiscaron su teléfono celular. Y el viernes, menos de seis meses después de que dejara el poder, el Tribunal Superior Electoral de Brasil votó para inhabilitar a Bolsonaro de optar a un cargo político durante lo que queda de la década.Las secuelas de un asalto en el complejo de oficinas del gobierno brasileño por parte de los partidarios de Bolsonaro en enero.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesEl tribunal dictaminó que el expresidente abusó de su poder cuando hizo afirmaciones sin fundamento sobre la integridad de los sistemas de votación de Brasil en la televisión estatal. Su próxima oportunidad a la presidencia sería en las elecciones de 2030, en las que tendría 75 años.Trump, incluso si es hallado culpable en un caso antes de las elecciones del año que viene, no sería descalificado automáticamente de postularse a la presidencia.El contraste entre las consecuencias que enfrentan ambos hombres refleja las diferencias de las estructuras políticas y gubernamentales de los dos países. El sistema estadounidense ha dejado el destino de Trump en manos de los votantes y del proceso lento y metódico del sistema judicial. En Brasil, los tribunales han sido proactivos, rápidos y agresivos para eliminar cualquier cosa que consideren una amenaza para la joven democracia de la nación.Las elecciones estadounidenses están a cargo de los estados, con un mosaico de reglas en todo el país sobre quién es elegible para postularse y cómo. En muchos casos, uno de los pocos obstáculos para aparecer en una boleta es recolectar suficientes firmas de votantes elegibles.En Brasil, las elecciones están regidas por el Tribunal Superior Electoral, el cual, como parte de sus funciones, sopesa regularmente si los candidatos tienen derecho a postularse para un cargo.“El alcalde, el gobernador o el presidente tienden a abusar de su poder para ser reelectos. Por eso creamos la ley de inelegibilidad”, dijo Ricardo Lewandowski, juez jubilado del Supremo Tribunal Federal de Brasil y expresidente del Tribunal Superior Electoral.La ley brasileña establece que los políticos que abusen de sus cargos sean temporalmente inelegibles para cargos. Como resultado, el Tribunal Superior Electoral ha bloqueado rutinariamente la postulación de políticos, incluidos, junto con Bolsonaro, tres expresidentes.“Lo que nuestro sistema trata de hacer es proteger al votante”, dijo Lewandowski. “Quienes cometieron delitos contra el pueblo deben permanecer fuera del juego durante cierto periodo de tiempo hasta que se rehabiliten”.Según algunos analistas, esta estrategia ha puesto demasiado poder en manos de los siete jueces del Tribunal Superior Electoral, en lugar de que sean los votantes quienes decidan.“Es una diferencia estructural entre los dos países”, dijo Thomas Traumann, analista político y exsecretario Especial de Comunicación Social de una presidenta brasileña de izquierda. Los políticos en Brasil conocen las reglas, dijo, y el sistema ha ayudado a mantener alejados del poder a algunos políticos corruptos. “Por otro lado, estás impidiendo que la gente decida”, dijo.El sistema electoral centralizado de Brasil también impidió que Bolsonaro librara una batalla tan prolongada por los resultados de las elecciones como lo hizo Trump.En Estados Unidos, un conteo lento de votos retrasó una semana la proclamación del ganador y luego el proceso del Colegio Electoral tomó varios meses más. Cada estado también realizó sus propias elecciones y auditorías. Eso le dio a Trump, y a los políticos y grupos que lo apoyaban, tiempo y varios frentes para implementar ataques contra el proceso.En Brasil, un país con 220 millones de habitantes, el sistema electrónico de votación contó las boletas en dos horas. La autoridad electoral central y no los medios de comunicación, procedieron a anunciar al ganador esa noche, en una ceremonia que involucró a líderes del Congreso, los tribunales y el gobierno.El sistema de votación electrónica de Brasil contó las papeletas en dos horas.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesBolsonaro permaneció en silencio durante dos días pero, con pocas opciones, al final se hizo a un lado.Sin embargo, ese enfoque también conlleva riesgos.“Se podría alegar que ser tan centralizado también te hace propenso a más abusos que en el sistema estadounidense, que está más descentralizado y permite básicamente una supervisión local”, dijo Omar Encarnación, profesor del Bard College que ha estudiado los sistemas democráticos en ambos países.Sin embargo, añadió, en Estados Unidos, varios estados han aprobado recientemente leyes de votación restrictivas. “Resulta claro que son dos modelos muy diferentes y, dependiendo del punto de vista, se podría argumentar cuál es mejor o peor para la democracia”.En el periodo previo a las elecciones, el sistema de Brasil también le permitió combatir de manera mucho más agresiva contra cualquier desinformación o conspiración antidemocrática. El Supremo Tribunal Federal ordenó redadas y arrestos, bloqueó a miembros del Congreso de las redes sociales y tomó medidas para prohibir a las empresas de tecnología que no cumplieran con las órdenes judiciales.El resultado fue una campaña radical e implacable destinada a combatir la desinformación electoral. Sin embargo las medidas también generaron reclamos generalizados de extralimitación. Algunas redadas se enfocaron en personas solo porque estaban en un grupo de WhatsApp que había mencionado un golpe de Estado. Algunas personas fueron encarceladas temporalmente sin juicio por criticar al tribunal. Un congresista fue sentenciado a prisión por amenazar a los jueces en una transmisión en vivo.Estas acciones estrictas de los tribunales han ampliado su enorme influencia en la política brasileña en los últimos años, incluido su papel central en la llamada investigación Lava Jato que envió a prisión al presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.“La audacia, la temeridad con la que los tribunales han actuado, no solo contra Bolsonaro, sino incluso contra Lula, sugiere que los tribunales se están comportando de una manera un tanto —odio usar la palabra irresponsable— pero tal vez incluso represiva”, dijo Encarnación.Sin embargo, a pesar de los esfuerzos del tribunal, miles de partidarios de Bolsonaro procedieron a atacar y saquear los recintos del poder de la nación en enero, una semana después de la toma de posesión de Lula.Si bien la situación fue inquietantemente similar al asalto al Capitolio de Estados Unidos el 6 de enero de 2021, los roles de los dos expresidentes fueron diferentes.Cientos de simpatizantes de Bolsonaro fueron detenidos temporalmente después de los disturbios de enero.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesAmbos avivaron los reclamos y convencieron a sus seguidores de que se cometió un supuesto fraude, pero Trump les ordenó de manera explícita que marcharan hacia el Capitolio durante un discurso en las inmediaciones del lugar.Cuando los simpatizantes de Bolsonaro formaron su propia turba, Bolsonaro se encontraba a miles de kilómetros en Florida, donde permaneció por tres meses.En ambos países, cientos de invasores fueron arrestados y condenados, e investigaciones de los congresos están investigando lo sucedido. Por lo demás, las consecuencias han sido distintas.Al igual que Trump, Bolsonaro también ha defendido a sus seguidores.El viernes, Bolsonaro dijo que la revuelta no había sido un intento de golpe de Estado sino “viejitas y viejitos con banderas brasileñas en sus espaldas y biblias bajo sus brazos”.Pero las repercusiones políticas han sido diferentes.En Estados Unidos, gran parte del Partido Republicano ha aceptado las afirmaciones infundadas de fraude electoral, los estados han aprobado leyes que dificultan el voto y los votantes han elegido candidatos para el Congreso y las legislaturas estatales que niegan los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales.En Brasil, la clase política se ha alejado en gran medida del discurso de fraude electoral, así como del propio Bolsonaro. Los líderes conservadores están impulsando en la actualidad a un gobernador más moderado como el nuevo abanderado de la derecha brasileña.Encarnación afirmó que, a pesar de sus problemas, el sistema democrático de Brasil puede proporcionar un modelo sobre cómo combatir las nuevas amenazas antidemocráticas.“Básicamente, las democracias están luchando contra la desinformación y Dios sabe qué otras cosas con instituciones muy anticuadas”, dijo. “Necesitamos actualizar el hardware. No creo que haya sido diseñado para personas como las que enfrentan estos países”.Jack Nicas es el jefe de la corresponsalía en Brasil, que abarca Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay. Anteriormente reportó de tecnología desde San Francisco y, antes de integrarse al Times en 2018, trabajó siete años en The Wall Street Journal. @jacknicas • Facebook More

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      Why Trump and Bolsonaro Cases Were Handled Differently

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      In both the United States and Brazil, former presidents made baseless claims of fraud, and their supporters stormed government buildings.Down in the polls, the far-right president warned of voter fraud, despite no evidence. After losing, he claimed the vote was rigged. Thousands of his supporters — draped in the national flag and misled by conspiracy theories — then stormed Congress in a bid to overturn the results.That scenario describes the latest elections in the Western Hemisphere’s largest democracies: the United States and Brazil.But while the behavior of the two former presidents — Donald J. Trump and Jair Bolsonaro — was remarkably similar, the political aftermath has been drastically different.While Mr. Trump faces federal and state charges that accuse him of paying off a porn star and mishandling classified documents, he remains the most influential figure on the American right. More than two years after leaving the White House, he again appears poised to become the Republican nominee for president, with a wide lead in the polls.In Brazil, Mr. Bolsonaro has faced much swifter and fiercer blowback. He, too, faces numerous criminal investigations. The authorities have raided his house and confiscated his cellphone. And on Friday, less than six months after he left power, Brazil’s electoral court voted to block Mr. Bolsonaro from political office for the rest of the decade.The aftermath of a riot at the Brazilian government office complex by supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro in January.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesThe court ruled he had abused his power when he made baseless claims about the integrity of Brazil’s voting systems on state television. His next shot at the presidency would be in the 2030 election, when he is 75.Mr. Trump, even if he is convicted in a case before next year’s election, could still potentially run.The contrasting fallout for the two men reflect key differences in the two countries’ political and governing structures. The U.S. system has left Mr. Trump’s fate up to voters and the slow, methodical process of the justice system. In Brazil, the courts have been proactive, fast and aggressive in snuffing out anything they see as a threat to the nation’s young democracy.U.S. elections are run by the states, with a patchwork of rules across the country on who is eligible to run and how. In many cases, one of the few hurdles to appearing on a ballot is collecting enough signatures from eligible voters.In Brazil, elections are governed by a federal electoral court, which, as part of its duties, regularly weighs in on whether candidates have the right to seek office.“The mayor, governor or president tend to abuse their power to be re-elected. So we created the law of ineligibility,” said Ricardo Lewandowski, a retired Brazilian Supreme Court justice and former head of the electoral court.Brazilian law states that politicians who abuse their positions are temporarily ineligible for office. As a result, the electoral court has routinely blocked politicians from running, including, with Mr. Bolsonaro, three former presidents.“What our system has tried to do is protect the voter,” Mr. Lewandowski said. “Those who committed crimes against the public have to stay out of the game for a certain amount of time until they rehabilitate.”The approach has also put what some analysts say is too much power in the hands of the electoral court’s seven judges, instead of voters.“It’s a structural difference between the two countries,” said Thomas Traumann, a political analyst and former press secretary for a leftist Brazilian president. Politicians in Brazil know the rules, he said, and the system has helped keep some corrupt politicians from power. “On the other hand, you are preventing the people from deciding,” he said.Brazil’s centralized electoral system also thwarted Mr. Bolsonaro from waging as protracted a fight over the election’s results as Mr. Trump did.In the United States, a slow vote count delayed the declaration of a winner for a week, and the Electoral College process then took several more months. Each state also ran its own election and audits. That gave Mr. Trump and politicians and groups supporting him time and various fronts to mount attacks against the process.In Brazil, a nation of 220 million people, the electronic voting system counted the ballots in two hours. The central electoral authority, not the news media, then declared the winner that night, in a ceremony involving leaders of Congress, the courts and the government.Brazil’s electronic voting system counted the ballots in two hours. Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesMr. Bolsonaro remained silent for two days but, with few options, eventually stepped aside.But that approach also carries risks.“You can argue that being that centralized is also prone to more abuse than the American system, which is more decentralized and allows for basically local supervision,” said Omar Encarnación, a Bard College professor who has studied the democratic systems in both countries.Yet in the United States, several states have recently passed restrictive voting laws, he added. “So clearly, these are two very different models, and one can argue in either direction, which one is best or worst for democracy.”In the run-up to the election, Brazil’s system also allowed it to fight far more aggressively against any anti-democratic misinformation or plotting. The nation’s Supreme Court ordered raids and arrests, blocked members of Congress from social networks and moved to ban tech companies in Brazil that did not comply with court orders.The result was a sweeping and unrelenting campaign aimed at fighting election misinformation. But the moves also drew widespread claims of overreach. Some raids targeted people just because they were in a WhatsApp group that had mentioned a coup. Some people were temporarily jailed without a trial for criticizing the court. A congressman was sentenced to prison for threatening judges on a livestream.Such stringent actions by the courts extends their outsized influence in Brazilian politics in recent years, including their central role in the so-called Car Wash investigation that sent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to prison.“The boldness, the fearlessness in which the courts have acted, not just against Bolsonaro, but even toward Lula, would suggest that the courts are behaving in a somewhat — I hate to use the word reckless — but perhaps even in a repressive mode,” Mr. Encarnación said.Yet regardless of the court’s efforts, thousands of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters still raided and ransacked the nation’s halls of power a week after Mr. Lula’s inauguration in January.While the scenes were eerily similar to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the roles of the two ex-presidents were different.Hundreds of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters were temporarily detained after the riot in January.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesBoth had fanned the flames, convincing their followers there had been fraud, but Mr. Trump explicitly directed his supporters to march to the Capitol during a speech nearby.When Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters formed their own mob, Mr. Bolsonaro was thousands of miles away in Florida, where he remained for three months.In both countries, hundreds of trespassers were arrested and charged, and congressional investigations are digging into what happened. Otherwise the aftermath has been different.Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro has also defended his supporters.Mr. Bolsonaro said on Friday that the riot was not an attempted coup, but instead “little old women and little old men, with Brazilian flags on their back and Bibles under their arms.”But the political reverberations have differed.In the U.S., much of the Republican Party has embraced the baseless claims of election-fraud, states have passed laws that make it harder to vote, and voters have elected election-denying candidates to Congress and state legislatures.In Brazil, the political establishment has largely moved away from talk of election fraud — and from Mr. Bolsonaro himself. Conservative leaders are now pushing a more moderate governor as the new standard-bearer of the Brazilian right.Mr. Encarnación said that, despite its problems, Brazil’s democratic system can provide a model on how to fight new anti-democratic threats.“Democracies basically are fighting misinformation and God knows what else with very antiquated institutions,” he said. “We do need to upgrade the hardware. I don’t think it was designed for people of the likes these countries are facing.” More