Smith, Jack (Attorney)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Receives a Target Letter in Special Counsel’s Jan. 6 Investigation

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump has been informed that he could soon face federal indictment for his efforts to hold onto power after his 2020 election loss, potentially adding to the remarkable array of criminal charges and other legal troubles facing him even as he campaigns to return to the White House.Mr. Trump was informed by his lawyers on Sunday that he had received a so-called target letter from Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating his attempts to reverse his defeat at the polls, Mr. Trump and other people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. Prosecutors use target letters to tell potential defendants that investigators have evidence tying them to crimes and that they could be subject to indictment.“Deranged Jack Smith” sent Mr. Trump a letter on Sunday night informing him he was a “TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury” investigation, Mr. Trump said in a post on his social media platform.Such a letter “almost always means an Arrest and Indictment,” wrote Mr. Trump, whose campaign is rooted in accusations of political persecution and a promise to purge the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation of personnel he sees as hostile to him and his agenda.Mr. Smith’s spokesman had no comment.An indictment of Mr. Trump would be the second brought by Mr. Smith, who is also prosecuting the former president for risking national security secrets by taking classified documents from the White House and for obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim the material.Mr. Trump is also under indictment in Manhattan on charges related to hush money payments to a porn star before the 2016 election. And he faces the likelihood of charges from the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., who has been conducting a wide-ranging inquiry into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election loss in that state.The target letter cited three statutes that could be applied in a prosecution of Mr. Trump by Mr. Smith’s team, a person briefed on the matter said. They include a potential charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States and a broad charge related to a violation of rights, the person said.Whether Mr. Smith and his prosecutors will choose to charge Mr. Trump on any or all of those statutes remained unclear, but they appear to have assembled evidence about an array of tactics that Mr. Trump and his allies used to try to stave off his election defeat.Those efforts included assembling slates of so-called fake electors from swing states that Mr. Trump lost; pressuring state officials to block or delay Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victories; seeking to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to impede congressional certification of the Electoral College outcome; raising money based on false claims of election fraud; and rallying supporters to come to Washington and march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.It also remains unknown whether others might be charged along with Mr. Trump. Several of his closest allies during his efforts to remain in office, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was serving as his personal lawyer, and John Eastman, who promoted the idea that Mr. Pence could keep Congress from certifying Mr. Biden’s victory, said through their lawyers that they had not received target letters.Just hours after Mr. Trump disclosed his receipt of the target letter, the Michigan attorney general announced felony state charges against 16 people for their involvement in an attempt to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in the state by convening a slate of pro-Trump electors.The news of another potential indictment of Mr. Trump underscored the stakes of an intensifying legal and political battle whose consequences are both incalculable and unpredictable.Mr. Trump remains a dominant front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, in spite of — or to some degree because of — the growing list of charges and potential charges against him.His campaign strategy has been to embrace the investigations as evidence of a plot by a Democratic administration to deny him and his supporters a victory in 2024, a message that continues to resonate among his followers. He was raising money off news of the target letter within hours of disclosing that he had received it.But for Mr. Trump, the stakes are deeply personal, given the serious threat that he could face prison time if convicted in one or more of the cases. In that sense, a winning campaign — and the power to make at least the federal cases go away by pardoning himself or directing his Justice Department to dismiss them — is also a battle for his liberty.At a Fox News town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday night, the host, Sean Hannity, asked Mr. Trump how he appeared unbothered by the investigations. But Mr. Trump pushed back.“It bothers me,” Mr. Trump said. He accused the Biden administration of trying to intimidate him but said, “They don’t frighten us.”Mr. Trump spent much of Tuesday promoting a scorched-earth political strategy, consulting with allies in Washington including Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican and onetime critic who has become one of his staunchest defenders. Mr. Trump urged Ms. Stefanik to go “on offense” during a lengthy call from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., according to a person with knowledge of the conversation.His main rival at the moment for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, said Mr. Trump was a victim of the “politicization” of the Justice Department, continuing a pattern in which prominent figures in his party remain leery of criticizing him and drawing the ire of his supporters.At least two grand juries in Washington have been hearing matters related to Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in office. A trial, if it comes to that, would likely be held in Federal District Court in Washington, where many of the Jan. 6 rioters and leaders of two far-right groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, have been prosecuted.Based on the outcomes of those trials, the jury pool in Washington would likely be less favorable to the former president than the one that would be empaneled from a largely pro-Trump region around Fort Pierce, Fla., where the classified documents trial is currently scheduled to take place.Two of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Christopher M. Kise, briefly mentioned the new target letter at a pretrial hearing in Florida on Tuesday on the documents case. While Mr. Kise and Mr. Blanche gave no details about what the letter said, they used it to argue that Mr. Trump was essentially being besieged by prosecutors and that the trial in the classified documents case should be delayed until after the 2024 election.In disclosing that he had received the target letter, Mr. Trump said he was given four days to testify before a grand jury if he chooses. He is expected to decline. The timetable suggested by the letter suggests that he will not be charged this week, according to people familiar with the situation.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., who has pressed ahead with her own investigation of Mr. Trump and his allies, could bring charges as early as next month. If she were to proceed first, that could complicate Mr. Smith’s case. Accounts of witnesses called to testify both cases could vary slightly, seeding doubts about their testimony, for instance — which might explain why Mr. Smith is moving fast, according to former federal prosecutors.Federal investigators were slow to begin investigating all the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, overwhelmed with prosecuting the hundreds of rioters who illegally entered the Capitol. The initial plan for investigating the attack’s planners, drafted by the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Washington and later adopted by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, did not include any explicit reference to the former president. The F.B.I. took a similar tack.However, in the months leading up to Mr. Smith’s appointment as a special counsel last fall, there were strong indications that federal prosecutors were pivoting to examine whether Mr. Trump and his allies may have committed crimes.The F.B.I.’s Washington field office opened an investigation in April 2022 into electors who pledged fealty to Mr. Trump in states he had lost. Earlier, the authorities had seized the cellphones of Mr. Eastman, a legal architect of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, and Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer whom Mr. Trump had tried to install as the acting attorney general.Among the crimes that prosecutors and agents intended to investigate were mail and wire fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding before Congress.By late last year, the various investigations were brought under Mr. Smith, who moved quickly with a flurry of activity, including subpoenas and witness interviews.Mr. Smith and his team do not appear to be done. A spokesman for former Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona said that Mr. Smith’s team reached out to him after The Washington Post reported that Mr. Trump had tasked Mr. Pence with pressuring Mr. Ducey to overturn Mr. Biden’s narrow victory there.The spokesman said that Mr. Ducey will do “the right thing” and that he had done so since the election. It was unclear whether the contact was to request a voluntary interview by Mr. Ducey or a grand jury appearance.Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, appeared before one of the grand juries in June, according to people familiar with his appearance. Mr. Giuliani had a recent interview with prosecutors.Ben Protess More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Michigan Charges 16 in False Elector Scheme to Overturn Trump’s 2020 Loss

      by

      The Michigan attorney general announced felony charges on Tuesday against 16 Republicans for falsely portraying themselves as electors from the state in an effort to overturn Donald J. Trump’s 2020 defeat there.Each of the defendants was charged with eight felony counts, including forgery and conspiracy to commit forgery, on accusation that they had signed documents attesting falsely that they were Michigan’s “duly elected and qualified electors” for president and vice president.“They weren’t the duly elected and qualified electors, and each of the defendants knew it,” Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said in announcing the charges. “They carried out these actions with the hope and belief that the electoral votes of Michigan’s 2020 election would be awarded to the candidate of their choosing instead of the candidate that Michigan voters actually chose.”The charges, the first against false electors in a sprawling scheme to hand the electoral votes of swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. to Mr. Trump, add to the rapidly developing legal peril for Mr. Trump and those who helped him try to overturn the results of the election. They came the same day that Mr. Trump said federal prosecutors had told him that he is a target of their investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and other schemes he and his allies used to try to maintain power.Those charged in Michigan included Meshawn Maddock, 55, who went on to serve for a time as the co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party. Ms. Maddock, who has close ties to former President Donald J. Trump and is married to Matt Maddock, a state representative, accused Ms. Nessel of “a personal vendetta.”“This is part of a national coordinated” effort to stop Mr. Trump, she added.Wright Blake, a lawyer representing Mayra Rodriguez, 64, another elector who is a lawyer, said in an interview: “I’m very disappointed in the attorney general’s office. This is all political, obviously. If they want to charge my client, how come they didn’t charge Trump and the Trump lawyers that he sent here to discuss with the delegates what to do?”While a similar investigation in Atlanta has pulled in witnesses from across the country and has led to legal battles with Mr. Trump himself, thus far the Michigan inquiry has focused on residents of the state. It is not clear whether that will remain the case.“This remains an ongoing investigation, and our department has not ruled out potential charges against additional defendants,” Ms. Nessel said Tuesday of her inquiry.Others among the electors who were charged included Kathy Berden, 70, a member of the Republican National Committee, and Marian Sheridan, 69, the state party’s grass-roots vice chair. Neither responded to requests for comment.Documents released Tuesday by Ms. Nessel’s office laid out a scheme in which many of the Trump electors convened at the Republican Party state headquarters on Dec. 14, 2020, after being turned away from the State Capitol. The real electors who were certified by the Board of State Canvassers did meet at the Capitol, as required by law. Yet the Republican group falsely claimed they were the rightful electors and had met at the Capitol.Michigan is one of three states, along with Georgia and Arizona, where there are ongoing investigations relating to the use of false electors by the Trump team in 2020. Another investigation in Michigan, being conducted by a special prosecutor, concerns a network of right-wing activists — including Matthew DePerno, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully against Ms. Nessel last year — who are suspected of breaching voting machines in search of evidence of election fraud.In total, allies of Mr. Trump pushed to convene slates of fake electors in seven swing states that Mr. Biden won. The plan was to create the illusion of a dispute over which slates — the fake Trump ones or the real Biden ones — were legitimate, and to have members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence certify the fake Trump slates, thus handing the election to Mr. Trump in defiance of the will of voters.Ms. Nessel began investigating the matter in early 2021, but referred it to the Justice Department in January 2022. She said at the time that while there were grounds to bring criminal charges, because there appeared to be “a coordinated effort between the Republican parties in various different states, we think this is a matter that is best investigated and potentially prosecuted by the feds.”A few months later, she posted on Twitter: “If we don’t hold the people involved in the alternate elector scheme accountable, there is literally nothing to stop them from doing this again because there will have been no repercussions for it.”But by January of this year, federal prosecutors had taken no apparent action. So Ms. Nessel announced that “we are reopening our investigation, because I don’t know what the federal government plans to do.”In recent weeks, investigators have collected evidence and interviewed witnesses who have been affiliated with the state party.Since Ms. Nessel reopened her investigation, federal prosecutors have become increasingly active in Michigan and appear to be treading similar ground. A number of elections officials and lawmakers — including the secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson — have reportedly been interviewed in recent months by federal prosecutors.Both the federal and Michigan investigations are part of a reckoning over the conspiracy theories Mr. Trump and his allies have promoted about the election. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      ‘The 2024 Issue: Democracy or Autocracy?’

      by

      More from our inbox:Trump as Target: Is Another Indictment Coming?The Israeli-Palestinian ConflictStudent Loans, and the Purpose of CollegeDonald J. Trump intends to bring independent regulatory agencies under direct presidential control.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump and Allies Seeking Vast Increase of His Power” (front page, July 17):Donald Trump plans, if elected next year, to revamp the administrative state, also known to conservatives as the deep state, also known to Mr. Trump as the warmongers, the globalists, the “communists, Marxists and fascists,” “the political class that hates our country.”Once revamped, this new state would be much more under Mr. Trump’s control, without those pesky independent agencies that are beyond his reach.We had a state like that in the past, headed by King George III, and decided that we did not like it, which is why we have what are quaintly known as “checks and balances,” designed precisely to prevent the president from amassing too much power.Are we really ready to replace “Hail to the Chief” with “Hail to the King”?John T. DillonWest Caldwell, N.J.To the Editor:If someone told Donald Trump that he is merely a tool of the Republican Party, he would be livid. But tool he is, and also a tool of the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation and all the billionaires who stand to gain from longstanding Republican tenets, if implemented.Going back to the Nixon era, conservative Republicans would often say, “The best government is the least government.” During several Republican administrations there have been efforts to reduce the size and the role of government. They have sought a smaller I.R.S., so that earnings of wealthy people would not be audited, and reduced regulation by federal agencies, maximizing the profits of businesses that would otherwise be regulated, at the expense of the health and safety of American citizens.Mr. Trump is a useful tool to the Republicans, who hope he can normalize discussion about a reduced government in a strongman executive branch. Even if another Republican is elected president in 2024, he will follow the Republican blueprint for the executive branch, and we can kiss our seminal experiment in democracy goodbye.Ben MyersHarvard, Mass.To the Editor:Those supporters of broader powers for a re-elected President Donald Trump should keep in mind the proverb “what goes around comes around.”If Republicans are successful in broadening a president’s executive branch powers, those powers could just as easily be used, and abused, by a future liberal Democratic president.Bert ElyAlexandria, Va.To the Editor:This article about Donald Trump and his allies seeking a vast increase in power for the president almost makes this anti-Trumper want to vote for him. What the article suggests that Mr. Trump will do is long overdue. I just wish he’d shut up and quit social media.Tom BrownKansas City, Mo.To the Editor:Donald Trump has said, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” This is as clear a statement of intent as Mussolini’s in 1936: “We do not argue with those who disagree with us, we destroy them.”The common goal is to establish an autocracy. With his militarized acolytes, media allies and anti-regulation donors, Mr. Trump presents a clear threat to democracy, rule of law and any hope for equity or equality.This is the 2024 issue: democracy or autocracy?Brian KellyRockville Centre, N.Y.To the Editor:If people weren’t scared before, they should be after reading this. How fascism comes to the United States.People of good conscience know what must be done. Save our democracy! Vote!Alison Goodwin SchiffNew YorkTrump as Target: Is Another Indictment Coming? Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Says He’s a Target in Special Counsel’s Capitol Attack Investigation” (news update, nytimes.com, July 18):Donald Trump announced that on Sunday he received a notice that he is a target in the ongoing federal investigation into the Jan. 6 uprising being conducted by the special counsel Jack Smith. Such notices are almost always followed by an actual indictment.This is huge news. It felt like a lock that the Justice Department would indict Mr. Trump for his flagrant mishandling of classified documents. But it was far from certain that the evidence would be deemed compelling enough to indict him on charges related to Jan. 6.In the past it has often seemed as if Mr. Trump was shrouded in an impenetrable Teflon coating and nothing could pierce that protective barrier. Perhaps this, an indictment on charges he helped to incite the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, will prove to be his final undoing.Whether the news affects his strong front-runner status in the Republican presidential race remains to be seen. But what does seem certain is that it will erode his support in the 2024 general election if he is the Republican nominee and help to ensure that this man never again resides in the White House.Ken DerowSwarthmore, Pa.The Israeli-Palestinian ConflictRepresentative Pramila Jayapal told a Netroots Nation conference over the weekend that some lawmakers “have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state.” Kenny Holston for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Hysteria Over Jayapal’s ‘Racist State’ Gaffe,” by Michelle Goldberg (column, July 18):I write to thank Ms. Goldberg for calling attention to an important point: Israel’s defenders must face the reality that its policies are deeply destructive to the Palestinian people and ultimately to the state of Israel itself.It is impossible to choose to oppress a people without morally implicating oneself. This is true for a single human and true for any state in our complex and conflicted world.Unless Israel acknowledges the humanity of the Palestinian people and changes its policies, it is doomed to fail by its own hand.Marea Siris WexlerNorthampton, Mass.To the Editor:Michelle Goldberg’s thoughtful column does not mention the reason the Israeli people and government have turned rightward. The Palestinians refuse to recognize the right of the Israeli nation to exist and have been lax in preventing Palestinian attacks, including murders of Israeli citizens.Albert MarshakAtlantic Beach, N.Y.Student Loans, and the Purpose of CollegeAmerica’s Student Loans Were Never Going to Be RepaidDuring the pandemic, the U.S. paused regular payments for student loans. But repayment was dwindling for at least a decade before that.To the Editor:Re “Who Repays Student Loans?,” by Laura Beamer and Marshall Steinbaum (Opinion guest essay, July 16):Proposed policies to fund or defund public colleges based on students’ labor market outcomes will merely reinforce the notion that colleges are job-training institutions and will further damage liberal arts education at institutions serving minorities and the working class.Having students rack up more debt will ultimately damage the economy when those indebted former students cannot afford to buy cars or homes, marry or have children.We should revisit how the interest on student loans is compounded, which forces former students to pay two or three times the original amount of their loans as interest accrues over time.But in the larger sense, we must rethink the whole system of higher education to see it as a public good rather than a privilege reserved for those who can best afford it.Max HermanBloomfield, N.J.The writer is an associate professor of sociology at New Jersey City University. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Prosecutors Push Back on Trump’s Request to Delay Documents Trial

      by

      The office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, said there “is no basis in law or fact” for granting a motion from former President Donald J. Trump that could push the start of the trial until after Election Day.Federal prosecutors on Thursday asked the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case to reject a motion by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to have his trial indefinitely postponed, a move that could serve to delay the proceeding until after the 2024 election.The filing by the prosecutors came three days after Mr. Trump’s legal team made an unusual request to the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, asking her to set aside the government’s initial suggestion to hold the trial in December and delay it until all “substantive motions” in the case were presented and resolved.The timing of a trial is crucial in all criminal matters. But it is especially important in this case, in which Mr. Trump has been charged with illegally holding on to 31 classified documents after leaving the White House and conspiring with one of his personal aides, Walt Nauta, to obstruct the government’s efforts to reclaim them.Mr. Trump is now both a federal criminal defendant and the Republican Party’s leading candidate in the presidential campaign. There could be untold complications if his trial seeps into the final stages of the race. Moreover, if the trial is pushed back until after the election and Mr. Trump wins, he could try to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general dismiss the matter entirely.Apparently recognizing these high stakes, prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, told Judge Cannon that she should not allow Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta to let the case drag on without a foreseeable ending.“There is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion,” they wrote, “and the defendants provide none.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers based their motion for a delay — which was filed on Monday in the Southern District of Florida — on several assertions.They said that as the case moved forward, they intended to make novel — and presumably time-consuming — arguments that the Presidential Records Act permitted Mr. Trump to take documents with him from the White House. That interpretation of the Watergate-era law is at odds with how legal experts interpret it.Prosecutors responded by saying this potential defense “borders on frivolous.” They also reminded Judge Cannon that it was not new at all, but in fact was central to an extended legal battle last year that she oversaw, in which an outside arbiter was put in place to review a trove of materials seized by the F.B.I. from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.Mr. Trump’s lawyers also complained that a first trove of discovery evidence provided by the government was expansive — including more than 800,000 pages of material — and would take a significant amount of time to sort through.Prosecutors shot back, saying about a third of those pages contained unimportant “email header and footer information” and that a set of “key” documents that would guide the defense toward the crucial sections of discovery was only about 4,500 pages.The prosecutors also told Judge Cannon that they intended to provide Mr. Trump’s lawyers with a second batch of unclassified discovery evidence as early as next week, including interviews conducted with witnesses as recently as June 23 — a few weeks after Mr. Trump was indicted. That suggests, as The New York Times has reported, that the investigation of the classified documents case continued even after charges were filed.As for the classified discovery evidence, prosecutors said they planned to take the bulk of the classified materials seized from Mar-a-Lago to a sensitive compartmented information facility inside Miami’s federal courthouse next week for review by Mr. Trump’s lawyers — even though some of them only have interim security clearances.Once the lawyers have their final security clearances, the prosecutors said, they will be able to look at the remaining classified records, including some “pertaining to the declassification of various materials during the Trump administration.”In asking for a delay, Mr. Trump’s lawyers had said that his campaign schedule “requires a tremendous amount of time and energy” and that these efforts would continue until the election. They argued that Mr. Nauta had a similar problem since his job requires him to accompany Mr. Trump on “most campaign trips around the country.”But prosecutors seemed to have no patience for this argument, saying the two men’s “professional schedules do not provide a basis to delay.”“Many indicted defendants have demanding jobs that require a considerable amount of their time and energy, or a significant amount of travel,” they wrote. “The Speedy Trial Act contemplates no such factor as a basis for a continuance, and the court should not indulge it here.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Prosecutors Ask Witnesses Whether Trump Acknowledged He Lost 2020 Race

      by

      Jared Kushner was questioned before a federal grand jury as prosecutors appeared to be trying to establish if the former president knew his efforts to stay in power were built on a lie.Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election have questioned multiple witnesses in recent weeks — including Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner — about whether Mr. Trump had privately acknowledged in the days after the 2020 election that he had lost, according to four people briefed on the matter.The line of questioning suggests prosecutors are trying to establish whether Mr. Trump was acting with corrupt intent as he sought to remain in power — essentially that his efforts were knowingly based on a lie — evidence that could substantially bolster any case they might decide to bring against him. Mr. Kushner testified before a grand jury at the federal courthouse in Washington last month, where he is said to have maintained that it was his impression that Mr. Trump truly believed the election was stolen, according to a person briefed on the matter.The questioning of Mr. Kushner shows that the federal investigation being led by the special counsel Jack Smith continues to pierce the layers closest to Mr. Trump as prosecutors weigh whether to bring charges against the former president in connection with the efforts to promote baseless assertions of widespread voter fraud and block or delay congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory.A spokesman for Mr. Kushner and a spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment.Mr. Trump is already facing federal charges brought by Jack Smith, the special counsel, in connection with classified documents taken from the White House. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesBut others in Mr. Trump’s orbit who interacted with him in the weeks after the 2020 election, who have potentially more damaging accounts of Mr. Trump’s behavior, have been questioned by the special counsel’s office recently.Among them is Alyssa Farah Griffin, the White House communications director in the days after the 2020 election. Repeating an account she provided last year to the House select committee on Jan. 6, she told prosecutors this spring that Mr. Trump had said to her in the days after the election: Can you believe I lost to Joe Biden?“In that moment I think he knew he lost,” Ms. Griffin told the House committee.Ms. Griffin’s lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, declined to comment.Still other witnesses have been asked whether aides told Mr. Trump that he had lost, according to people familiar with some of the testimony, another topic explored by the House committee. Witnesses have also been asked about things the former president was telling people in the summer months leading up to Election Day and even as far back as the spring of 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began.The question of Mr. Trump’s intent could be important in strengthening the hand of prosecutors if they decide to charge Mr. Trump in the case. It is not known what charges they might be considering, but the House select committee, controlled by Democrats, referred a number of possible charges to the Justice Department last year, including inciting an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstructing an act of Congress.Prosecutors may be trying to establish whether Mr. Trump was acting with corrupt intent as he sought to remain in power after the election.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Trump is already facing federal charges brought by Mr. Smith in connection with classified documents taken from the White House, and he is under indictment in New York on charges related to hush-money payments to a pornographic film actress before the 2016 election. A district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., has been investigating efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia.Legal experts and former federal prosecutors say that establishing Mr. Trump’s mind-set to show he knew that what he was doing was wrong would give prosecutors in Mr. Smith’s election-focused inquiry a more robust case to put in front of a jury if they choose to bring charges.Prosecutors do not need hard evidence of a defendant saying: I know that I am breaking the law. But their cases are made stronger when they can produce evidence that the defendant knows there is no legal or factual basis for a claim but goes ahead with making it anyway.Daniel Zelenko, a partner at the firm Crowell & Moring and a former federal prosecutor, said that being able to cite a defendant’s own words can go a long way in helping prosecutors convince a jury that the defendant should be convicted.“Words are incredibly powerful in white-collar cases because in a lot of them you’re not going to hear from a defendant, as they are seldom going to take the stand,” he said. “So, having those words put in front of a jury gives them more importance and makes them more consequential.”Andrew Goldstein, the lead prosecutor in the investigation into Mr. Trump for obstruction during the Russia investigation and a partner at the law firm Cooley, said there were other benefits to having Mr. Trump’s own statements that were critical in such a potentially weighty case.“Just as important, if the Department of Justice has this kind of evidence, it could help justify to the public why charges in this case would be necessary to bring,” Mr. Goldstein said.Some aides and allies who interacted with Mr. Trump in the days after the election have previously disclosed that Mr. Trump indicated that he knew he lost the election. In testimony before the House select committee, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, said that in an Oval Office meeting in late November or early December 2020, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he had lost the election.“He says words to the effect of: Yeah, we lost, we need to let that issue go to the next guy,” Mr. Milley said, adding: “Meaning President Biden.”“And the entire gist of the conversation was — and it lasted — that meeting lasted maybe an hour or something like that — very rational,” General Milley said. “He was calm. There wasn’t anything — the subject we were talking about was a very serious subject, but everything looked very normal to me. But I do remember him saying that.”General Milley said, though, that in subsequent meetings Mr. Trump had increasingly discussed how the election was stolen from him.“It wasn’t there in the first session, but then all of a sudden it starts appearing,” General Milley said. A text message from early December 2020 between some of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, disclosed on Tuesday night, shows Mr. Trump searching at that time for reports of how the election was stolen, if they had not been substantiated. The text was sent by one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, Boris Epshteyn, to other members of the legal team, including Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Epshteyn said that he was relaying a direct message from Mr. Trump’s communications aide Jason Miller.Rudolph W. Giuliani urged Mr. Trump to follow through with a plan to simply declare victory in the 2020 election.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“Urgent POTUS request need best examples of ‘election fraud’ that we’ve alleged that’s super easy to explain,” the text message said. “Doesn’t necessarily have to be proven, but does need to be easy to understand.”He continued, “Is there any sort of ‘greatest hits’ clearinghouse that anyone has for best examples? Thank you!!!”That same day, Mr. Giuliani replied: “The security camera in Atlanta alone captures theft of a minimum of 30,000 votes which alone would change result in Georgia.” He continued, “Remember it will live in history as the theft of a state if it is not corrected by State Legislature.”The text messages were made public in connection with a defamation lawsuit being brought by two Georgia election workers against Mr. Giuliani.Mr. Trump has continued to maintain publicly, without any credible evidence, that he lost his re-election bid because of fraud and has defended the motivations of the mob that sought to disrupt the certification of his loss on Jan. 6, 2021. Even if Mr. Kushner, a key White House adviser to Mr. Trump, did not provide prosecutors with evidence to bolster any charge they might bring, his testimony gives them a sense of what he might say if called by the defense to testify in any trial.The New York Times reported in February that Mr. Smith’s office had subpoenaed Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, to testify before the grand jury. The special counsel’s office has yet to question her before the grand jury. Ms. Trump testified before the House committee last year.The House Jan. 6 committee determined that Mr. Trump’s decision to declare victory on election night even though the votes had not been fully counted yet was not spontaneous, but rather a “premeditated” plan promoted by a small group of his advisers.The panel found evidence, for instance, that Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, was in direct communication with Mr. Trump even before Election Day and understood that he “would falsely declare victory on election night and call for the vote counting to stop.”Similarly, congressional investigators unearthed an audio recording made on Oct. 31, 2020, of Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, who told associates that the president was going to summarily declare he had won the election.“But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” Mr. Bannon said in the recording. “He’s just going to say he’s a winner.”Mr. Bannon was issued a subpoena last month to appear before the grand jury in Washington investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.In the last two years, reported accounts of Mr. Trump’s final months in office included his former White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, describing to a friend how Mr. Trump had acted out a script the month before the election that he planned to deliver on election night, saying he had won if he was ahead in the early returns. Mr. Trump at the White House on election night. The House Jan. 6 committee determined that Mr. Trump’s decision to declare victory was a “premeditated” plan.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn election night, Mr. Giuliani — who, witnesses testified to the House committee, appeared inebriated — wanted Mr. Trump to follow through with the plan to simply declare victory. Mr. Giuliani was the sole adviser encouraging Mr. Trump to pursue that course, the committee found.Among those telling Mr. Trump on election night that it was too early to know if he had won or lost were his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and Mr. Miller, the communications adviser. In the weeks that followed, several other aides and advisers told Mr. Trump there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the results of the election, including William P. Barr, his former attorney general.Alan Feuer More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Special Counsel Inquiries Into Trump Cost at Least $5.4 Million

      by

      The Justice Department also disclosed $616,000 in spending by the special counsel scrutinizing President Biden’s handling of classified files.The investigations into former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of government files and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election cost taxpayers about $5.4 million from November through March as the special counsel, Jack Smith, moved toward charging Mr. Trump, the Justice Department disclosed on Friday.Budgeting documents also showed that Robert K. Hur, the special counsel investigating President Biden’s handling of classified documents after he left the vice presidency, spent just under $616,000 from his appointment in January through March.And John H. Durham, who was appointed special counsel during the Trump administration to investigate the Russia inquiry, reported spending a little over $1.1 million from October 2022 to the end of March, representing the first half of the 2022-2023 fiscal year. Mr. Durham’s investigation had ended, but he was writing a final report he delivered in May.The budget disclosures covered an extraordinary period in which the Justice Department had three special counsels — prosecutors who operate with a greater degree of day-to-day autonomy than ordinary U.S. attorneys — at work. With the conclusion of Mr. Durham’s investigation, two such inquiries remain.Last month, Mr. Smith, who was appointed in November, obtained a grand jury indictment against Mr. Trump and an aide, Walt Nauta. The former president faces 31 counts of unauthorized retention of secret national-security documents and six other counts involving accusations of obstructing the investigation and causing one of his lawyers to lie to the government.Mr. Smith has also continued to investigate Mr. Trump and several of his associates over the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters. Both investigations have involved significant litigation over Mr. Trump’s attempts to block grand-jury testimony by various witnesses under attorney-client privilege.The largest line item of spending by Mr. Smith through the end of March — $2,672,783 — covered personnel compensation and expenses, according to the statement of expenditures. Most of that salary money was to reimburse the Justice Department for employees who already worked for the government and had been detailed to the special counsel’s office.Mr. Smith’s operation also paid $1,881,926 for contractual services, including litigation and investigative support and purchasing transcripts.Mr. Hur’s investigation has been much quieter. Mr. Garland appointed him in January after several classified documents were found at a former office of Mr. Biden’s in Washington and at his home in Wilmington, Del. Mr. Biden and his lawyers, who alerted the government to the discoveries and have portrayed their retention as inadvertent, have said they are cooperating with the investigation.The largest line item in Mr. Hur’s office during the two and a half months covered by the budgeting document was also personnel compensation and benefits, at $346,139. That figure indicates that his operation is significantly smaller than Mr. Smith’s, reflecting the narrower scope of his assignment.Of the three special counsels, only Mr. Durham’s office was operating for the entire six-month period covered by the budgeting documents. His largest expenditure — $544,044 — also covered employee salaries and benefits.To date, Mr. Durham has reported spending about $7.7 million in taxpayer funds since Attorney General William P. Barr gave him special counsel status in October 2020, entrenching him to continue his investigation after Mr. Trump lost the election.Mr. Durham, however, began his assignment in the spring of 2019, and the Justice Department has not disclosed what taxpayers spent on about the first 16 months of his work. That period included trips to Europe as Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham fruitlessly pursued a pro-Trump conspiracy theory that the Russia inquiry had originated in a plot by Western spy agencies.Mr. Durham also later developed two narrow cases accusing nongovernment officials of making false statements, both of which ended in acquittals. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Investigation of Trump Documents Case Continues After His Indictment

      by

      A grand jury has issued more subpoenas to people involved in the case after the unveiling of a 38-count indictment this month against the former president and an aide.Three weeks after former President Donald J. Trump was indicted on charges of illegally retaining national security records and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them, a federal grand jury in Miami is still investigating aspects of the case, according to people familiar with the matter.In recent days, the grand jury has issued subpoenas to a handful of people who are connected to the inquiry, those familiar with it said. While it remains unclear who received the subpoenas and the kind of information prosecutors were seeking to obtain, it is clear that the grand jury has stayed active and that investigators are digging even after a 38-count indictment was issued this month against Mr. Trump and a co-defendant, Walt Nauta, one of his personal aides.Prosecutors often continue investigating strands of a criminal case after charges have been brought, and sometimes their efforts go nowhere. But post-indictment investigations can result in additional charges against people who have already been accused of crimes in the case. The investigations can also be used to bring charges against new defendants.When the office of the special counsel Jack Smith filed the charges against Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta in the Southern District of Florida, the 49-page indictment offered an unusually detailed picture of the former president holding on to 31 highly sensitive government documents at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in West Palm Beach, Fla. Among the documents were some that concerned U.S. nuclear programs and others that detailed the nation’s potential vulnerabilities to attack.The indictment was strewn with vivid photographs of government records stored in boxes throughout Mar-a-Lago in a haphazard manner. Some of the boxes were piled up in a storage room, others in a bathroom and on a ballroom stage.Several of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers appeared in the indictment, identified only as Trump Employee 1 or similar descriptions. In one episode, the indictment recounted how Mr. Trump displayed a classified map to someone described as “a representative of his political action committee” during a meeting in August or September 2021 at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.The representative of the PAC was Susie Wiles, one of the top advisers for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, according to two people briefed on the matter. A Trump spokesman declined to comment.Ms. Wiles’s appearance in the indictment was reported earlier by ABC News.The fact that Ms. Wiles could become a prosecution witness should Mr. Trump’s case go to trial, even as she is helping run his third bid for office, underscores the complexities that the former president now faces as he deals with both a presidential campaign and a criminal defense with an overlapping cast of characters.During the meeting with Ms. Wiles, the indictment says, Mr. Trump commented that “an ongoing military operation” in an unnamed country was not going well. He then showed Ms. Wiles, who did not have proper security clearance, a classified map of that country, the indictment says, even while acknowledging that he should not be displaying the map and warning Ms. Wiles “to not get too close.”Many of Mr. Trump’s aides and employees at Mar-a-Lago were questioned as part of the investigation that resulted in his indictment, and Mr. Trump has been barred from discussing the facts of the case with them even though many work in close contact with him. Mr. Trump has made defending himself against the charges a central part of his political and fund-raising messages, adding to the level of overlap that exists between his legal and political worlds.Other aides who have been close to Mr. Trump are featured in the indictment, such as “Trump Employee 2,” who has been identified as Molly Michael, an assistant to Mr. Trump in the White House and his post-presidential office. The portion of the indictment describing the transcript of an audio recording in which Mr. Trump described what he said was a plan to attack Iran given to him by the Pentagon lists someone as a “staffer,” whom three people identified as Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump.Some Trump aides and employees who had initially caught the attention of investigators were mentioned in the indictment only in passing.At one point, for example, prosecutors under Mr. Smith appeared to be focused on Mr. Nauta’s dealings with a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago, Carlos Deoliveira, who helped him move boxes into a storage room at the compound. The movement of those boxes — at Mr. Trump’s request, prosecutors say — ultimately lay at the heart of a conspiracy charge in the indictment accusing Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta of obstructing the government’s attempt to retrieve all of the classified materials in Mr. Trump’s possession.In a previously unreported detail, prosecutors obtained a warrant to seize Mr. Deoliveira’s phone as part of their investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter.Records from the phone eventually showed that Mr. Deoliveira called an I.T. specialist who worked for Mar-a-Lago last summer around the time that prosecutors issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, demanding footage from a surveillance camera near the storage room where the boxes of documents were kept.But Mr. Deoliveira is referenced as “an employee of the Mar-a-Lago Club” in only a single paragraph in the indictment. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Giuliani Sat for Voluntary Interview in Jan. 6 Investigation

      by

      The onetime personal lawyer for Donald Trump answered questions from federal prosecutors about the former president’s efforts to remain in power after his 2020 election loss.Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as former President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, was interviewed last week by federal prosecutors investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, people familiar with the matter said.The voluntary interview, which took place under what is known as a proffer agreement, was a significant development in the election interference investigation led by Jack Smith, the special counsel, and the latest indication that Mr. Smith and his team are actively seeking witnesses who might cooperate in the case.The session with Mr. Giuliani, the people familiar with it said, touched on some of the most important aspects of the special counsel’s inquiry into the ways that Mr. Trump sought to maintain his grip on power after losing the election to Joseph R. Biden Jr.“The appearance was entirely voluntary and conducted in a professional manner,” said Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Mr. Giuliani.A proffer agreement is an understanding between prosecutors and people who are subjects of criminal investigations that can precede a formal cooperation deal. The subjects agree to provide useful information to the government, sometimes to tell their side of events, to stave off potential charges or to avoid testifying under subpoena before a grand jury. In exchange, prosecutors agree not to use those statements against them in future criminal proceedings unless it is determined they were lying.Prosecutors working for Mr. Smith asked Mr. Giuliani about a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in key swing states that were actually won by Mr. Biden, one person familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation. They focused specifically on the role played in that effort by John Eastman, another lawyer who advised Mr. Trump about ways to stay in office after his defeat.Mr. Giuliani also discussed Sidney Powell, a lawyer who was briefly tied to Mr. Trump’s campaign and who made baseless claims about a cabal of foreign actors hacking into voting machines to steal the election from Mr. Trump, the person said.Ms. Powell, who was sanctioned by a federal judge for promoting conspiracy theories about the voting machines, also took part in a meeting in the Oval Office in December 2020 during which Mr. Trump was presented with a brazen plan — opposed by Mr. Giuliani — to use the military to seize control of voting machines and rerun the election.The person said that prosecutors further asked Mr. Giuliani about the scene at the Willard Hotel days before the attack on the Capitol. Mr. Giuliani and a group of close Trump advisers — among them, Mr. Eastman, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and Mr. Trump’s current adviser Boris Epshteyn — had gathered at the hotel, near the White House, to discuss strategies before a violent mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, disrupting the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump.Shortly before Mr. Smith was appointed to his job as special counsel, the Justice Department issued a subpoena to Mr. Giuliani.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe proffer session with Mr. Giuliani, elements of which were reported earlier by CNN, came as Mr. Smith’s team pressed ahead with its election interference inquiry of Mr. Trump even as it prepares for the former president’s trial on separate charges of putting national security secrets at risk and obstructing government efforts to recover classified documents.The prosecutors have been bringing witnesses before a grand jury and conducting separate interviews of others as they seek to assemble a fuller picture of the various ways in which Mr. Trump and his allies were promoting baseless claims that the election had been stolen from him and seeking to reverse his electoral defeat.In some cases, they appear to be gauging whether they can elicit useful information without necessarily agreeing to formal cooperation deals.Last week, The New York Times reported that prosecutors were in negotiations to reach a proffer agreement with Michael Roman, the former director of Election Day operations for Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign. Mr. Roman was also instrumental in helping put together the so-called fake elector plan.The push to assemble slates of pro-Trump electors from swing states won by Mr. Biden is one of a number of components of Mr. Smith’s investigation. Prosecutors have also scrutinized whether Mr. Trump and his allies bilked donors by raising money through false claims of election fraud, examined efforts to use the Justice Department to give credence to election-fraud claims and sought to piece together a detailed picture of the role played by Mr. Trump in inciting the attack on the Capitol and the disruption of the congressional certification of his loss.It remains unclear whether Mr. Giuliani will face charges in the special counsel’s investigation. He is also under scrutiny on many of the same subjects by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., who is pursuing a wide-ranging investigation into Mr. Trump’s effort to reverse his election loss in that swing state.As part of Mr. Smith’s inquiry, prosecutors questioned Mr. Roman’s deputy, Gary Michael Brown, last week in front of a grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington that has been investigating the attempts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the election. Federal prosecutors on Wednesday are also scheduled to interview Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia, who took a call from Mr. Trump in early January 2021 during which the former president asked him to “find” sufficient votes that would put him over the top in the election in that state.A longtime ally of Mr. Trump who served two terms as New York City’s mayor, Mr. Giuliani effectively led the former president’s attempts to overturn his defeat in the last presidential race and has for months been a chief focus of the Justice Department’s broad investigation into the postelection period. His name has appeared on several subpoenas sent to former aides to Mr. Trump and to a host of Republican state officials involved in the plan to create fake slates of electors.Last year, shortly before Mr. Smith was appointed to his job as special counsel, the Justice Department issued a subpoena to Mr. Giuliani for records related to his representation of Mr. Trump, including those that detailed any payments he had received. A group of federal prosecutors including Thomas Windom had been pursuing various strands of the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power before Mr. Smith’s appointment and they continue to play key roles in the investigation.Among the things that prosecutors have been examining are the inner workings of Mr. Trump’s fund-raising vehicle, Save America PAC. The records subpoenaed from Mr. Giuliani could include some related to payments made by the PAC, according to a person familiar with the matter.More recently, prosecutors have been asking questions about Mr. Trump’s false claims that his defeat in the election was caused by widespread fraud, and how he aggressively raised money off those claims. The prosecutors have drilled down on the issue of whether people around Mr. Trump knew that he had lost the race, but continued raising money off the fraud claims anyway.The session with Mr. Giuliani came as Mr. Smith’s team pressed ahead with its election interference inquiry of Mr. Trump.John Tully for The New York TimesThe House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 first raised questions publicly about Mr. Trump’s fund-raising, and the special counsel’s team has picked up on that thread. Among other questions they have asked witnesses is whether their lawyers are being paid for by the political action committee that became a repository for money raised off Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud.Investigators have walked through a timeline with various witnesses, including asking people about election night and what Mr. Giuliani may have been telling Mr. Trump before his defiant speech declaring he had won the election, as well as about Jan. 6 and Mr. Trump’s actions that day.The special counsel’s office has focused on Mr. Trump’s mind-set and who was telling him he lost, according to people familiar with the questions. Among the questions has been whether there were concerns raised among people working with the campaign as to the language used in television ads about fraud in December 2020, and who signed off on the ad copy.Prosecutors also subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence, who was a key focus of Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power as Mr. Trump tried to pressure him to use his ceremonial role overseeing congressional certification to block Mr. Biden from being certified. More