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      Special Counsel Inquiries Into Trump Cost at Least $5.4 Million

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      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

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      Investigation of Trump Documents Case Continues After His Indictment

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      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

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      Giuliani Sat for Voluntary Interview in Jan. 6 Investigation

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      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

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      Worrying About the Judge and the Jury for Trump’s Trial

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      More from our inbox:The Revolt in RussiaMigrants and New York’s SuburbsClimate Education: New Jersey’s ExampleThe special counsel, Jack Smith, released an indictment of former President Donald J. Trump this month.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Don’t do it, liberal America! Don’t get caught up in the melodrama of the Florida trial! The former president craves attention. The news media collude by granting him free publicity. Why give this despicable man what he wants?And the trial outcome? Yes, it seems that Jack Smith has an open-and-shut case. Yet there is a reasonable likelihood that we have a shut-and-shut-down judge. This is the bad luck of the draw.Judge Aileen M. Cannon has myriad tactics at her disposal to delay, disrupt and derail the proceedings. She can influence jury selection, undercutting chances of a unanimous guilty verdict. Even if the jury reaches that conclusion, it is the judge who sets the sentence. This could be a slap on the wrist.Why not assume that the chances of conviction and a serious sentence are small and turn your attention to other matters of national significance?If you must follow the legal adventures of the former president, it’s better to focus on the likely trial in Georgia and Mr. Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation.David B. AbernethyPortola Valley, Calif.The writer is professor emeritus of political science at Stanford University.To the Editor:Re “Trial Judge Puts Documents Case on Speedy Path” (front page, June 21):So Judge Aileen M. Cannon has set a trial date for August. I’m suspicious. She will have total power over the sentence as well as the ability to dismiss the case. Is she helping Donald Trump by getting the whole matter resolved quickly in order for it to be done before the election?How dare she ignore calls to recuse herself, given her record? She must be removed.Sandy MileySherrill, N.Y.To the Editor:Re “Leaving Trump’s Fate to 12 Ordinary Citizens Is Genius,” by Deborah Pearlstein (Opinion guest essay, June 16):In ordinary times Professor Pearlstein’s belief in the wisdom of the jury system in trying Donald Trump would be warranted, but these are not ordinary times. Mr. Trump has primed his followers to threaten and intimidate anyone who might oppose him.No matter the strength of the case, I believe that at least some jurors will vote to acquit because they justifiably fear for their safety.David LigareCarmel Valley, Calif.To the Editor:Central to the case against Donald Trump are the details about the highly classified documents he took. And the key problem is that the defense’s right to see the government’s evidence conflicts with the absolute need to keep that material secret.There is then the possibility that the judge might agree to suppress such crucial evidence. Could people with the highest security clearance review the documents and present affidavits and witnesses in court supporting the government’s assertions?This might provide a litmus test for the integrity of the judicial process.Arnold MitchellScarsdale, N.Y.To the Editor:Re “Judge’s Record in Trump Case Raises Concern” (front page, June 15):While I understand that any judge presiding over an unprecedented and historic case like this will receive scrutiny, I am appalled at how easily a Latina woman is denigrated for her inexperience and for bristling when she is questioned.Such descriptions hold no weight for this 49-year-old working mother and small-business owner. I’ve heard it all before ad nauseam.Speaking as a liberal, I hope that Judge Aileen M. Cannon proves all of her naysayers wrong and goes down in history as an amazing jurist.Would a male judge have had the same questions raised about him at the same stage of his career? I highly doubt it. So much of this article reads like water cooler talk about the new female boss.Shantha Krishnamurthy SmithSan Jose, Calif.To the Editor:It was not the Watergate break-in that brought Richard Nixon down; it was the cover-up and obstruction of justice. Similarly, it was not the taking or storage of classified documents that resulted in Donald Trump’s indictment; it was the lying to the F.B.I. and D.O.J. and obstruction of justice.Mike Pence and Joe Biden stored government documents, but promptly cooperated with the government and returned the documents. It’s not complicated.Alan M. GoldbergBrooklynTo the Editor:I already know how I would vote if I were on the jury of the Trump trial.Good luck finding 12 Americans who don’t.Eliot RiskinRiverside, Conn.The Revolt in Russia Dmitri Lovetsky/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “How Revolt Undermines Putin’s Grip” (news analysis, front page, June 26):An autocrat must always appear strong. An act of treason and rebellion was committed against Russia, and Vladimir Putin blinked. His mentor Stalin is turning over in his grave.A severe crack has now developed in Mr. Putin’s power structure that he may not have enough cement to repair.Ed HoulihanRidgewood, N.J.To the Editor:What kind of world have we come to when we’re rooting for the mercenaries?Elliot ShoenmanLos AngelesMigrants and New York’s SuburbsEd Day, the Rockland County executive, is one of many county leaders who have taken legal steps to try to stop New York City from sending migrants their way.Gregg Vigliotti for The New York TimesTo the Editor:“New York City and Suburbs: A Rift Widens” (front page, June 18) highlighted the opposition of Ed Day, the Rockland County executive, to migrants being housed in hotels in the suburbs.Although some suburban residents oppose migrants coming to our communities, there are others who want to give migrants a chance to have a better life. I have met many Westchester residents who want to donate food and clothing to migrants.And — if the federal government would make it easier for the migrants to work legally — we could try matching employers who can’t find employees to work in their industry with migrants who would like to work legally in the suburbs.Churches and synagogues in the suburbs would welcome the opportunity to have congregants “adopt” individual migrants and to provide them with personal attention and help so they could live a better life.Ed Day does not speak for the suburbs.Paul FeinerGreenburgh, N.Y.The writer is the Greenburgh town supervisor.Climate Education: New Jersey’s Example Desiree Rios for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Schools Encourage 7-Year-Olds to Fix Climate Change, Not Fear It” (front page, June 17):Three cheers to my former home state, New Jersey, for having the guts and the smarts to take on climate change in its education system. The effects of our climate’s unsettling behavior will continue to be felt by all, whether you agree that it’s happening or deny it.The youngest of us will experience its effects longer than my generation of grandparents, so of course it is totally logical to begin with them in their early education years.The great purpose of education is to prepare all ages to live meaningfully in the world as it is and as it changes. Surely, teaching the young how to bend with the arc of change and sway with its seasons could not be more relevant today.I wish New Jerseyans well with this, but even more I wish them insight into what they are doing so they can become ambassadors to the other states and, yes, the federal Department of Education as well.Well done, New Jersey!Bill HoadleySanta Fe, N.M. More

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      Former Trump Campaign Official in Talks to Cooperate in Jan. 6 Inquiry

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      The office of the special counsel is negotiating with Michael Roman, who was closely involved in the efforts to create slates of pro-Trump electors in states won in 2020 by Joseph R. Biden Jr.Michael Roman, a top official in former President Donald J. Trump’s 2020 campaign, is in discussions with the office of the special counsel Jack Smith that could soon lead to Mr. Roman voluntarily answering questions about a plan to create slates of pro-Trump electors in key swing states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr., according to a person familiar with the matter.If Mr. Roman ends up giving the interview — known as a proffer — to prosecutors working for Mr. Smith, it would be the first known instance of cooperation by someone with direct knowledge of the so-called fake elector plan. That plan has long been at the center of Mr. Smith’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The talks with Mr. Roman, who served as Mr. Trump’s director of Election Day operations, were the latest indication that Mr. Smith is actively pressing forward with his election interference investigation even as attention has been focused on the other case in his portfolio: the recent indictment of Mr. Trump in Florida on charges of illegally keeping hold of classified documents and then obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.In the past few weeks, several witnesses with connections to the fake elector plan have appeared in front of a grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington that is investigating the ways in which Mr. Trump and his allies sought to reverse his defeat to Mr. Biden. Among them was Gary Michael Brown, Mr. Roman’s onetime deputy, who was questioned in front of the grand jury on Thursday.Mr. Roman did much of the legwork in putting together the fake elector plan and in finding ways to challenge Mr. Trump’s losses in several key battleground states, according to emails reviewed last summer by The New York Times. Mr. Roman, the emails show, coordinated with several other lawyers and aides to Mr. Trump in seeking to assemble support to create the false slates of electors in states like Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Nevada.Among those with whom Mr. Roman worked closely, the emails showed, were Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer and political adviser on the campaign who has since served as something like Mr. Trump in-house counsel, and Jenna Ellis, another lawyer who advised Mr. Trump after his defeat to Mr. Biden on how to challenge the election results.In March, as part of a disciplinary proceeding by bar officials in her home state of Colorado, Ms. Ellis admitted that she had knowingly misrepresented facts in several of her public claims that widespread voting fraud had led to Mr. Trump’s defeat.The emails reviewed by The Times showed Mr. Roman and others discussing options to try to prevent Mr. Biden from being certified as the winner of the election. He reported details of their activities to Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, who championed Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud.The fake-elector strategy was arguably the longest-running and most expansive of the multiple efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It involved a sprawling cast of pro-Trump lawyers, state Republican officials and White House aides in an effort that began before some states had even finished counting their ballots.The plan culminated in a campaign by Mr. Trump and others to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use the false slates to subvert congressional certification of the outcome of the election in front of a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. That proceeding was interrupted when a violent mob of Mr. Trump’s followers stormed the Capitol and chased lawmakers away.Even some of those connected to efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office appeared to acknowledge the electors plan was legally dubious.“We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted,” Jack Wilenchik, a Phoenix-based lawyer who was helping to organize the pro-Trump electors in Arizona, wrote in a December 2020 email to Mr. Epshteyn.In a follow-up email, Mr. Wilenchik wrote that calling them “alternate” electors was probably better than “fake” electors, adding a smiley face emoji.The F.B.I. formally opened an investigation into the fake elector plan in April 2022, according to people familiar with the matter, and federal prosecutors issued a flurry of grand jury subpoenas to Republican officials in states like Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Nevada two months later.Two top Republican officials from Nevada who were involved in the plan — Jim DeGraffenreid and Michael McDonald — gave testimony to the grand jury in Washington two weeks ago, on the same day that Mr. Trump was arraigned in Miami in the classified documents case.Throughout the winter and into the spring, a steady stream of witnesses — some of them exceptionally close to Mr. Trump — were subpoenaed to appear in front of the grand jury and answer questions about the fake-elector plan and other efforts by the former president to cling to power after losing the election.Among those who were forced to show up were Pat A. Cipollone, Mr. Trump’s former White House counsel; Mark Meadows, his onetime chief of staff; and former Vice President Mike Pence. Most of these witnesses sought to limit the scope of their testimony by asserting various forms of privilege in a long-running, closed-door legal battle that ultimately failed.In a separate avenue of inquiry, the Justice Department seized the cellphones of a handful of lawyers connected to the fake elector scheme in June 2022. Those included John Eastman, a California law professor who advised Mr. Trump on the plan, and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who was nearly installed as acting attorney general and who helped to draft a letter to state officials in Georgia recommending that they create a slate of pro-Trump electors.By last July, the Justice Department had created a team of prosecutors — working under the code name Project Coconut — to sort through the various communications seized from Mr. Eastman, Mr. Clark and another former Justice Department lawyer, Ken Klukowski, for any that were potentially protected by attorney-client or executive privilege, according to a person familiar with the matter.This so-called filter team grew in size and scope, the person said, as investigators obtained more data from other subjects of the inquiry, including Mr. Meadows; Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who recruited Mr. Eastman to work on the fake-elector plan; and Mr. Epshteyn.Adam Goldman More

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      Trump Trial Setting Could Provide Conservative Jury Pool

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      If Judge Aileen Cannon sticks to her initial decision to hold the trial in Fort Pierce, Fla., the jury would be drawn largely from counties that Donald Trump won handily in his previous campaigns.When Judge Aileen M. Cannon assumed control of the case stemming from former President Donald J. Trump’s indictment for putting national security secrets at risk, she set the stage for the trial to be held with a regional jury pool made up mostly of counties that Mr. Trump won handily in his two previous campaigns.She signaled that the trial would take place in the federal courthouse where she normally sits, in Fort Pierce, at the northern end of the Southern District of Florida. The region that feeds potential jurors to that courthouse is made up of one swing county and four others that are ruby red in their political leanings and that Mr. Trump won by substantial margins in both 2016 and 2020.She left open the possibility that the trial could be moved — and political leanings are not necessarily indicative of how a jury will decide — but the fact that the trial is expected to draw jurors who live in places that tilt Republican has caught the attention of Mr. Trump’s allies and veterans of Florida courts.“For years, it’s been a very conservative venue for plaintiffs’ lawyers,” said John Morgan, a trial lawyer who founded a large personal injury firm. Describing the various counties that feed into Fort Pierce, he said, “It is solid, solid Trump country.”In Okeechobee County, a rural county where just over 16,000 people voted in the 2020 election, Mr. Trump won 71.5 percent of the vote, according to the county’s election tally. In Highlands County, a rural area where more than 52,000 people voted in that election, Mr. Trump won with 66.8 percent of the vote.In Martin County, where more than 98,000 people voted, Mr. Trump got 61.8 percent of the vote. In Indian River County, which contains Vero Beach and where more than 97,000 votes were cast, Mr. Trump got 60.2 percent of the vote.Only St. Lucie County, where about 172,000 votes were cast, is a swing district. Mr. Trump eked out a victory there over President Biden in 2020 with 50.4 percent of the ballots cast, the data shows, and also won the county narrowly in 2016.Dave Aronberg, an outgoing Florida state attorney in Palm Beach County, said he could recall few major or politically sensitive cases in the Fort Pierce courthouse. He agreed that the Fort Pierce counties provide a “much more conservative jury pool,” although he suggested that a number of prospective jurors could be drawn from St. Lucie, which is more politically diverse.Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020, disclosed in an order on Tuesday that the trial and all the hearings connected to it would likely be held in Fort Pierce, about 120 miles north of Miami along the east coast of Florida.She left open the possibility of eventually moving the trial, noting in her order that “modifications” could “be made as necessary as this matter proceeds.”The trial of a former president who is also the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination is likely to involve substantial security issues as well as logistical challenges given the crush of interest in the case.When Mr. Trump was arraigned this month, the proceeding took place at the large federal courthouse complex in Miami, likely because the duty magistrate assigned to the initial hearing was based there. But now that Judge Cannon will handle the remainder of the case, it became her prerogative to move it to Fort Pierce, one of four other cities in the Southern District of Florida to have a federal courthouse. (Courthouses in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach sit in counties that Mr. Biden won in 2020.)The Fort Pierce courthouse, which sits on a busy state highway a few blocks from the water, is Judge Cannon’s home base. She is the sole district judge working from the building.First the Justice Department and then the special counsel, Jack Smith, investigated Mr. Trump’s mishandling of classified documents for months in front of a grand jury in Washington. Had the case been prosecuted there, the former president and his allies would have almost certainly raised concerns about the fairness of the jury pool in the city.Many rioters charged in connection with the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, sought to move their trials from Washington by claiming that local residents were largely liberals. But not one of the numerous attempts to move the trials elsewhere was approved by a judge. And Mr. Trump’s advisers are well aware that Florida, which Mr. Trump carried twice, is a more beneficial place for this particular defendant.Mr. Aronberg suggested that Judge Cannon’s order allowing flexibility could be a signal of a change down the road.“I’m not convinced this case is going to go in Fort Pierce,” he said, predicting a potential move to West Palm Beach, which would put it in the county where Mr. Trump lives and where the classified documents in question were stored after he left office. More

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      Judge in Trump Documents Case Sets Tentative Trial Date as Soon as August

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      The judge, Aileen M. Cannon, set an aggressive schedule for moving the case forward, though the proceedings are likely to be delayed by pretrial clashes.The federal judge presiding over the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump in the classified documents case set an aggressive schedule on Tuesday, ordering a trial to begin as soon as Aug. 14.While the timeline set by the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, is likely to be delayed by extensive pretrial litigation — including over how to handle classified material — its brisk pace suggests that she is seeking to avoid any criticism for dragging her feet or for slow-walking the proceeding. In each of four other criminal trials she has overseen that were identified in a New York Times review, she has initially set a relatively quick trial date and later pushed it back.The early moves by Judge Cannon, a relatively inexperienced jurist who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020, are being particularly closely watched. She disrupted the documents investigation last year with several rulings favorable to the former president before a conservative appeals court overturned her, saying that she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene. Brandon L. Van Grack, a former federal prosecutor who has worked on complex criminal matters involving national security, said the trial date was “unlikely to hold” considering that the process of turning over classified evidence to the defense in discovery had not yet begun. Still, he said, Judge Cannon appeared to be showing that she intended to do what she could to push the case to trial quickly.“It signals that the court is at least trying to do everything it can to move the case along and that it’s important that the case proceed quickly,” Mr. Van Grack said. “Even though it’s unlikely to hold, it’s at least a positive signal — positive in the sense that all parties and the public should want this case to proceed as quickly as possible.”But it is not clear that the defense wants the case to proceed quickly. Mr. Trump’s strategy in legal matters has long been to delay them, and the federal case against him is unlikely to be an exception. If a trial drags past the 2024 election and Mr. Trump wins the race, he could, in theory, try to pardon himself — or he could direct his attorney general to drop the charges and wipe out the case.In public remarks after the indictment against Mr. Trump and one of his aides, Walt Nauta, was filed two weeks ago in Federal District Court in Miami, the special counsel, Jack Smith, who oversaw the investigation, said he wanted a speedy trial.The schedule that Judge Cannon set forth in her order on Tuesday clearly does that, requesting that all pretrial motions be filed by July 24.She also ruled that the trial — and all the hearings in the case — will be held at her home courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., a small town in the northern portion of the Southern District of Florida. Mr. Trump’s arraignment was held in the federal courthouse in Miami.Pretrial proceedings in the case are highly unlikely to be done by August. Legal experts have identified a series of complicated matters that Judge Cannon, the defense and the prosecution will have to work through before the matter is ready to go in front of a jury.For one thing, following Judge Cannon’s orders, Mr. Trump’s lawyers started the process of obtaining the security clearances needed to deal with the significant classified evidence issues in the case only last week. The background check process to obtain the clearances can take months.Mr. Trump’s legal team is also still in flux. Mr. Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., is still interviewing Florida-based lawyers to assist him with the case. He expects to have someone in place when Mr. Nauta is arraigned next week.Beyond the array of legal tactics that Mr. Trump’s lawyers may use to attack the validity of the charges against him, the parties in the case will also have to engage in significant closed-door litigation over how to handle the classified evidence at the heart of the government’s prosecution. Mr. Trump has been accused of illegally holding on to 31 individual national defense documents, many of which were marked as top secret.Much of the secret litigation will take place under the aegis of the Classified Information Procedures Act. If the government does not agree with any of Judge Cannon’s rulings involving the act, it can pause pretrial proceedings and appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. (The defense would have to wait until after any conviction to appeal an evidentiary issue under the act.)Mr. Trump’s lawyers are expected to file a battery of pretrial motions, including one claiming that he is being selectively prosecuted while other public officials investigated for mishandling classified material — chief among them, Hillary Clinton — did not face charges.The former president’s legal team may also file motions accusing prosecutors of various types of misconduct or seeking to suppress audio notes by one of his lawyers, which the government obtained before the indictment and was filed by piercing the traditional protections of attorney-client privilege.Depending on how seriously Judge Cannon considers the claims made in those filings, she could order additional briefs, attestations and hearings, further slowing down the process.The preliminary court calendar underscores how Mr. Trump’s decision to press ahead with his political campaign, now a key part of his defense, could affect the broader presidential primary race. The first Republican debate is scheduled for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee. Mr. Trump has not said whether he is attending and has signaled he might skip the first two debates.The second debate is scheduled for September, and there is expected to be one each month through the end of the year. Depending on the court calendar, Mr. Trump’s political plans could again coincide with court dates.What’s more, this is not Mr. Trump’s only court proceeding. His trial in a Manhattan state court, on charges stemming from hush money payments to a porn actress during the 2016 presidential campaign, is set to begin in March. A second defamation trial, brought by a New York writer who claimed Mr. Trump raped her decades ago, is set to begin in January.The former president is also facing the prospect of at least one more indictment. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., may bring charges in connection with his efforts to stay in office. Mr. Smith, the special counsel, is also still investigating issues related to Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election. More

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      In Trump Prosecution, Special Counsel Seeks to Avoid Distracting Fights

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      Jack Smith has taken an iron-fist-in-a-kid-glove approach, sidestepping secondary issues that could divert attention from the weight of the evidence he has assembled in his case against the former president.Jonathan Goodman, the magistrate judge assigned to handle Donald J. Trump’s arraignment, did something of a double take during the proceeding on Tuesday, when the Justice Department offered the former president a bond deal that was not merely lenient but imposed virtually no restrictions on him at all.Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the prosecution for the department, opted not to request conditions routinely imposed on other defendants seeking to be released from custody, like cash bail, limits on domestic travel or turning in his passport.But Judge Goodman, tasked with hashing out a bond agreement during a one-day cameo appearance on the case, was not entirely on board. He suggested that Mr. Trump be compelled to “avoid all contact with co-defendants, victims and witnesses except through counsel.” Mr. Smith’s deputy, David Harbach, joined Mr. Trump’s lawyers in opposing that idea — but the judge imposed a version of it anyway.The first courtroom skirmish in United States v. Donald J. Trump underscored the legal perils the former president faces and his determination to make the indictment a centerpiece of a 2024 presidential campaign fueled by grievance and retribution.It also provided telling insights into the fist-inside-a-kid-glove approach that Mr. Smith and his team employed: an aggressive fast-track approach to prosecution coupled with a conspicuously respectful posture toward the defendant.Mr. Smith’s decision not to demand any conditions at the arraignment, people familiar with the situation said, reflected a belief that prosecutors should avoid impairing Mr. Trump’s ability to campaign. He is also seeking to dodge potentially distracting elements to a case focused on concrete evidence about the former president’s handling of classified documents and efforts to obstruct government efforts to reclaim them.His approach also seems to be a nod to the political sensitivities created by years of Republican protests — and misinformation — about prior investigations into Mr. Trump by the Justice Department and the F.B.I.“The prosecution of a former president and the current political rival of President Biden is obviously hugely politically fraught and comes against the background of prior Justice Department actions against Trump marked by error and excess,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former assistant attorney general.“Trump and his allies will do everything they can to demonize the prosecution as unfair,” he added. “It makes perfect sense that Smith, who has the law clearly on his side, would do everything he can to avoid raising the temperature on the matter further.”There are other indications that Mr. Smith, who sat a few feet behind Mr. Harbach in the courtroom on Tuesday, intently following the back-and-forth with the judge, seems intent on avoiding unnecessary confrontation.Conspicuously absent from the indictment was a potential charge that had been listed in the affidavit the Justice Department filed to obtain a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago last summer: Section 2071 of the federal criminal code, which prohibits the concealment and mishandling of sensitive government documents.It was the only crime on the sheet that might have directly affected Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, requiring that anyone convicted of it “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”Jack Smith, the special counsel, opted not to request conditions routinely imposed on other defendants seeking to be released from custody.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMany legal scholars believe that the provision is unconstitutional and would have ultimately been struck down if it were imposed on Mr. Trump. But Mr. Smith’s team sidestepped the issue altogether, leaving it out of their 37-count indictment on a section of the Espionage Act that imposes a prison term but no restrictions on holding office.“I think it’s a very savvy move not bringing that charge,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., who was the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “It makes this much less about politics — this is about the evidence, not about blocking him from office.”The special counsel has already gone where no prosecutor has before, indicting a former president on charges that he illegally retained national security documents and schemed with his personal aide to obstruct investigators. And he has not been shy about ensuring that some of the most vivid evidence (including photographs of boxes stacked in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago and of top-secret documents spilled onto the floor of a storage room) be made public.But Mr. Smith’s team has also taken pains to spare the former president unnecessary embarrassment or inconvenience, as evidenced by their deferential attitude at the arraignment toward Mr. Trump and his co-defendant, Walt Nauta.The U.S. Marshals Service, a branch of the Justice Department responsible for law enforcement at federal courts, adopted a similar tack. They booked Mr. Trump quickly and quietly in an office in the courthouse, registering his fingerprints electronically but eschewing a mug shot “because there are plenty of pictures of him” to choose from, according to a federal law enforcement official who briefed reporters afterward.Mr. Smith’s decision to avoid the placement of strict preconditions on Mr. Trump’s release appears to be part of a larger strategy of avoiding secondary fights that could complicate efforts to obtain a conviction, according to current and former Justice Department officials.By not pressing to limit contact between Mr. Trump and potential witnesses who are also his aides and other employees or advisers and lawyers, the prosecutors were seeking to minimize the potential for any violations of those strictures that might disrupt their efforts to keep the trial focused on the core charges involving national security secrets and obstruction.“I imagine this is why they did not insist on travel restrictions or even a gag order,” said Barbara L. McQuade, who was the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010 to 2017.There is also a sense among some close to the case that much of the evidence needed to convict the defendants — in the form of text messages, photographs, camera footage, sworn testimony and the detailed notes of M. Evan Corcoran, a Trump lawyer — is already in place, making a confrontation over witnesses a costly distraction with limited benefits.“No-contact orders, like the one the judge insisted on, are routine — even in cases where you don’t have a defendant, like Trump, who has tried to influence witnesses,” said Mary McCord, a former top official in the Justice Department’s national security division. “But in this case, Jack Smith has a lot of what he needs already, so he seems to be avoiding a fight that could slow the whole the process down.”Mr. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche had a different reason for objecting to the tougher terms: It was “unworkable” for the court to place preconditions on his client’s casual interactions with potential witnesses on his payroll or in his Secret Service protective detail, he told the court.But some critics, including Andrew Weissmann, who was the lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, see all this as a double standard that unfairly shields Mr. Trump from the conditions placed on others accused of serious offenses.Judge Goodman — a former newspaper reporter with a wry, conversational courtroom style — did not object to the department’s desire to limit the restrictions on Mr. Trump, other than he appear for his court hearings and commit no crimes. But he seemed puzzled why Mr. Smith’s team would not, as a bare minimum, insist that a defendant who has been accused repeatedly of pressuring witnesses be given no constraints at all.“Despite the parties’ recommendations to me, I am also going to be imposing some additional special conditions,” the judge said. “Former President Trump will avoid all contact with witnesses and victims except through counsel” — once prosecutors assembled a list of witnesses.Mr. Harbach said his team would comply, then joked that the “elephant in the room” was that no such list existed yet. More