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      Trump’s Indictment: Given What We Know, Not Charging Him Would Be the Greater Scandal

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      Donald Trump has been indicted. Again. And this time, it appears richly deserved, even if one includes special considerations related to the unique recent history of public officials mishandling classified documents.Before we dive into the details of the case, it’s important to restate the general principles that should govern any prosecution decision. The first principle, as I’ve argued, is that no person is above the law. That’s, of course, easy to say in the abstract, but perhaps a better way to frame it is that Trump’s status as a former president means that he should be treated no better and — crucially — no worse than ordinary American citizens.“No better” means that Trump should face charges if, for example, I would face charges under similar facts. It really is that straightforward.“No worse” means don’t stretch the law to indict the man. That may have been the case in March, when the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicted Trump on charges related to hush-money payments made to the pornographic actress Stormy Daniels. As I explained at some length, there are real questions as to the legal sufficiency of Bragg’s complaint, including whether federal law pre-empts his state charges. It does not appear to be an easy case to make.But in the case of the new indictment by the special counsel, Jack Smith, “no worse” comes with an additional twist. Trump’s case is not the first high-profile instance of a senior public official mishandling classified information. Hillary Clinton comes to mind, and while the Department of Justice might be able to prosecute Trump under facts similar to those in Clinton’s case, it should not. I can think of few things that would damage the legitimacy of the American criminal justice system more than for the department to impose a double standard on Republican and Democratic presidential contenders.So in addition to evaluating the relevant law, the Justice Department should apply the same standard to Trump as it did to Clinton, the standard articulated by the F.B.I. director at the time, James Comey, in his public statement announcing that the bureau would not recommend prosecution.As Comey said of Clinton’s storing classified information on a private server, “There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”But Comey declined to recommend prosecution because he said he couldn’t find evidence that the Justice Department had prosecuted any case under similar facts: “All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct or indications of disloyalty to the United States or efforts to obstruct justice.”That’s the Comey test: no prosecution absent evidence of one or more of the factors above. I disagreed with the decision at the time and still disagree. I’m a former Judge Advocate General’s Corps officer, an Army lawyer who helped investigate classified information breaches when I served in Iraq, and I feel confident that I would have faced military charges under similar facts.But once the Comey test was articulated, it should be evenly applied. And thus the critical question for the political legitimacy — and not just legal sufficiency — of the indictment is whether there is evidence of intentionality or obstruction in the Trump case that was absent in Clinton’s. (This is the same question that should be asked of the mishandling of classified documents by Joe Biden and Mike Pence.)As of Thursday night, we had not yet seen the indictment, so there is a chance my assessment will change. But a review of the publicly available evidence indicates that Trump’s conduct likely does meet the Comey test. There is evidence of intentionality and obstruction.Justice Department court filings related to the Mar-a-Lago search warrant make a series of damning claims against Trump. According to the department, in 2021 the National Archives and Records Administration corresponded with Trump’s team, hoping to obtain the “transfer of what it perceived were missing records from his administration.” In January 2022, Trump provided the archives with 15 boxes of records. When it reviewed the documents, it found 184 with classification markings and 25 marked “top secret,” including some with extraordinary “H.C.S.” and “S.I.” markings. “H.C.S.” indicates classified information “derived from clandestine human sources; “S.I.” indicates information “derived from the monitoring of foreign communications signals by other than the intended recipients.” In other words, these documents were quite sensitive.The inclusion of this information among the files in question caused the National Archives to contact the Justice Department, which promptly began efforts to determine if Trump retained any additional classified information. As the department told a federal court, the “F.B.I. developed evidence” that “dozens of additional boxes” remained at Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago and they were “also likely to contain classified information.”The Justice Department then obtained a grand jury subpoena demanding “any and all” records in Trump’s possession that contained classification markings. What happened next is what makes this case quite serious for Trump. On June 3, 2022, the Trump legal team provided a small batch of files to department officials and included a sworn certification letter indicating that Trump’s custodian of records had conducted a “diligent search” to locate any documents responsive to the subpoena and that the custodian had produced all such documents.According to the Justice Department, this certification was not accurate. While the Trump team produced 38 additional documents bearing classification markings (including 17 marked “top secret”) in its subpoena response, the department believed that there were still more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Its filing states that “the F.B.I. uncovered multiple sources of evidence” indicating that the response to the grand jury subpoena was “incomplete.” Even worse, “the government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed” from their storage area and “that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”This is the evidence that precipitated the grant of a search warrant, and on Aug. 8 the F.B.I. searched Mar-a-Lago. It claims that search uncovered more than 100 additional classified records, “including information classified at the highest levels.”These claims alone — if proved at trial — already provide evidence of intentionality and obstruction. Close observers of the case will note that I have not included an analysis of numerous news reports indicating that Trump engaged in even more egregious conduct, including ones that he was caught on a recording discussing a highly sensitive document detailing military plans for confronting Iran.Before we see the indictment, we know only the broad brushstrokes of the possible claims. But those brushstrokes paint a picture of intentionality and obstruction, including allegations of efforts to conceal and remove documents and the false certification of a complete response to the grand jury subpoena.Times news reports indicate that Trump is facing charges that include retaining national defense information, obstruction of justice, false statements, contempt of court and conspiracy. Each of those charges is substantiated even by the partial information we currently possess. The available evidence indicates that Trump’s conduct meets both the legal test for prosecution and the more lenient Comey test applied to Clinton.To say that the Trump indictment is credible is not the same thing as saying that he is guilty. We possess only partial information, and he has not yet mounted his legal defense. But for now, the evidence seems sufficient to support an indictment. Indeed, given what we know now, not charging Trump would be the greater scandal. It would place presidents outside the rule of federal law and declare to the American public that its presidents enjoy something akin to a royal privilege. But this is a republic, not a monarchy, and it is right to make Donald Trump answer for the crimes he is accused of.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      How Jack Smith Can Succeed in His Case Against Trump

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      It has been expected for months, but the reality of it is no less staggering: The special counsel Jack Smith has brought seven federal charges against Donald Trump. It is the first time in our nation’s history that a former president has been indicted on federal charges, and among Mr. Trump’s many legal problems, it has the greatest likelihood of a pre-election conviction.The prosecution follows a long investigation into Mr. Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents and other presidential records at his private club in Florida and elsewhere after he left office. It poses unique challenges, and not only because the defendant is a former president who is running for re-election in an already tense political environment.Prosecutors will have to reckon with the challenge of publicly trying a case that involves some of our nation’s most highly classified secrets.Furthermore, this case will inevitably have to be coordinated for scheduling purposes with the case against Mr. Trump by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, as well as potential future charges in Fulton County, Ga., and perhaps by Mr. Smith related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Still, from what we know of the charges and publicly available evidence, Mr. Smith appears to have the upper hand with a compelling case. But the potential for conviction and actually winning a jury verdict are two very different things — particularly against the notoriously combative and slippery former president. To secure a conviction, Mr. Smith will have to overcome four significant hurdles.Keep things simpleOver two years (and counting), the case unfolded in twists and turns that have dipped into and out of a dizzying whirl of topics: the administration of presidential documents, delicate aspects of national security, classification and declassification of documents, special counsel regulations, the spectacle of a search warrant being executed by F.B.I. agents on the luxury resort of a former president and the legally dubious appointment of a special master by a rogue Florida district court judge.But for all that chaos and confusion, Mr. Smith’s job is straightforward. He must cut through it all and make clear to the jury that this case is about two simple things: First, a former president took documents containing some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets, which he was no more entitled to remove than the portraits of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin hanging on the walls of the Oval Office. Second, when he was caught, he persistently made up excuses, lied and tried to cover up his behavior, which he continues to do.Mr. Trump took about 13,000 government documents, among them over 300 documents with classified markings, with some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets, reportedly containing secrets about Iran’s missile program, foreign nuclear issues, China and the leadership of France.By doing so, Mr. Trump put our national security at risk. When we consider these documents, we see not only paper but also the U.S. and allied human assets who gather our secrets and do so to keep America and the world safe. By putting this sensitive information in highly insecure circumstances, Mr. Trump put our nation, our allies and all of us as individuals in jeopardy.The indictment reportedly includes seven charges, related to willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice.The evidence a jury hears at trial must be organized around a simple theory of the case and streamlined into the form of readily understandable and convincing proof. Fortunately for Mr. Smith, everything we know about the case provides ample support for an easily digestible one-two narrative punch of Mr. Trump taking documents that didn’t belong to him and then lying about it to cover up his misdeeds.The Trump defenseOne usual challenge that may not be much of a hurdle is Mr. Trump’s defenses. His claim that he can declassify documents “even by thinking about it” is inimical to applicable law. And his claim that the Presidential Records Act gives him a right to attempt to keep these documents flies in the face of the statute.The justifications Mr. Trump has so far advanced are so thin and so inconsistent that we expect Mr. Smith will get an order from the judge that they are frivolous and may not be argued to the jury unless Mr. Trump introduces competent evidence to support them. (He most likely can’t.)These cases are so hard to defend that the usual approach is to plead guilty. That’s what other prominent defendants, such as the former Central Intelligence Agency directors John Deutch and David Petraeus, agreed to when caught with mishandling classified documents. (Mr. Deutch was pardoned before the charges were filed.) But Mr. Trump’s case is unique because of his characteristic refusal to ever admit wrongdoing. It’s nearly impossible to imagine him standing up in a courtroom in a plea deal and saying that he is guilty.By charging the case in the Southern District of Florida, the special counsel has wisely pre-empted one other potential defense: improper venue. The rule is that a case must be brought where the “essential conduct” took place, and here there was an argument for Washington, D.C., as an alternative, one with possibly friendlier juries for Mr. Smith. But there is potentially much at stake on the proper selection of venue: This term, the Supreme Court is deciding a case that looks at whether the price of selecting the wrong venue could be dismissal of the charges and prevention of prosecuting the offense again.The clock is tickingMr. Smith’s third hurdle is time. He will have to battle the clock. On the one hand, he has to ensure that Mr. Trump, like any defendant, has sufficient time to file motions challenging the charges and evidence and time to prepare for trial. The robust materials the government is required to provide to a defendant in discovery must be turned over promptly so the government does not extend the clock.Special attention is required by Mr. Smith here because the case involves classified evidence. That means the court will probably have to deal with motions under the Classified Information Procedures Act. These rules create avenues for the government to prosecute the case and protect classified information without having a defendant graymail the government with the risk of public disclosure.But because this case is in Florida, where the act is rarely used, rather than in the District of Columbia, where it is invoked more commonly, prosecutors will have to contend with a judge who may not have experience with these intricate issues. There is also the strong likelihood the government will be forced to seek other protective orders as well, as we saw New York Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan impose in the Manhattan case, to prevent Mr. Trump from using material obtained in discovery to intimidate or retaliate against witnesses or otherwise misuse discovery materials.American voters are entitled to a determination of Mr. Trump’s guilt at a trial. Ideally, that will happen before the presidential nominating process, but at a minimum, it must take place before the general election. That can be done while ensuring that the defendant has his day in court, with full due process rights to seek to be cleared of charges against him — or not, given the strength of the evidence against him.Persuade the American publicMr. Smith can educate the public in court filings that the charges are merited. He should follow the lead of the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who held a news conference to explain his case directly to the American public during Watergate. In October 1973, as tensions were coming to a boil, with Mr. Cox having issued a grand jury subpoena for the incriminating Oval Office tapes of President Richard Nixon, the special prosecutor rejected a compromise offer from the White House to have a senator listen to the tapes and verify White House-drafted summaries. Mr. Cox chose to make a detailed presentation to the press and explain to the American people why he was seeking a ruling from the Supreme Court that he was entitled to the White House tapes and would not settle for a cherry-picked summary.Mr. Smith can make a public statement explaining, without straying from the four corners of the indictment, why the charges against Mr. Trump are consistent with — indeed, required by — previous Justice Department cases in which many defendants were charged in similar or even less egregious factual scenarios.It is impossible to overstate how essential it will be for Mr. Smith to overcome these hurdles and persuade the trial jury and the American people that whether they like the former president or not, whether they voted for him in the past or intend to vote for him again, he committed serious criminal acts. The consequence of doing that would be nothing short of affirmation of the rule of law in this country. The alternative is too grim to contemplate.Norman Eisen was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Andrew Weissmann, a senior prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, is a professor at N.Y.U. School of Law. Joyce Vance, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and the author of the newsletter Civil Discourse, was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump’s Indictment Puts Us Into Uncharted Waters

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      Former President Donald Trump finds himself once again facing indictment, this time in federal court, after an investigation into his handling of classified documents after departing the White House. The prospect of putting Mr. Trump on trial for serious crimes and sending him to prison has many Americans feeling giddy: Finally, justice might be done.Such reactions are understandable, but news of Mr. Trump’s legal jeopardy shouldn’t blind us to the political jeopardy that now confronts the nation.Other countries have tried, convicted and imprisoned former presidents, but the United States never has. We’ve been fortunate in this regard. Legal processes establish and maintain legitimacy by the appearance of impartiality. But when a public figure associated with one political party is prosecuted by officials associated with another, such appearances can become impossible to uphold. This is especially so when the public figure is a populist adept at exposing (and accusing opponents of concealing) base and self-interested motives behind righteous rhetoric about the rule of law.This corrosive dynamic is even more pronounced when the public figure is not only a former official but also a potential future one. Mr. Trump is running for president against President Biden, whose attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed the special counsel Jack Smith. That’s a scenario seemingly tailor-made to confirm and vindicate Mr. Trump’s longstanding claim that he’s the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt.We don’t have to speculate about the immediate political consequences. Public-spirited and law-abiding Americans believe the appropriate response of voters to news that their favored candidate faces indictment is to turn on him and run the other way. But the populist politics that are Mr. Trump’s specialty operate according to an inverse logic. Before the end of March, polls of the Republican primary electorate showed him hovering in the mid-40s and leading his nearest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by about 15 points. By the end of May, Mr. Trump was in the mid-50s and leading Mr. DeSantis by roughly 30 points.What happened at the end of March to elevate Mr. Trump’s standing? He was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.Hard as it may be for some of us to believe, Mr. Trump’s indictment by the special counsel on federal charges could well boost him further, placing him in a position of even greater advantage against his rivals for the Republican nomination.That possibility typically prompts one of two responses from Democrats: one narrowly political (not to say cynical), the other more high-minded and focused on the law and public morals.The political response sees Mr. Trump benefiting in the G.O.P. primaries from indictment as a good thing, because the former president appears to be the most beatable alternative for Mr. Biden to face in the fall of 2024, and that will be even truer when Mr. Trump is embroiled in a federal trial on major charges and facing possible prison time. What’s good for Mr. Trump in the primaries, in other words, will be terrible for him in the general election.This may well be true, but not necessarily. Anyone who becomes one of two major party nominees has a shot at winning the White House. That’s especially true in our era of stark partisan polarization and intense negative partisanship. That Mr. Trump would be running against an opponent with persistently low approval ratings who will be 81 years old on Election Day 2024 only makes a Biden-Trump matchup more uncertain.The other response dismisses such concerns entirely. Let justice be done, we are told, though the heavens fall. To weigh political considerations in determining whether someone, even a former and possibly future president, should be prosecuted is to supposedly commit a grievous offense against the rule of law, because no one is above the law and the consequences of holding him or her to account shouldn’t matter.This is a powerful argument and one seemingly vindicated in the case of Mr. Trump, who has now managed to get himself ensnared in legal trouble in multiple jurisdictions dealing with a wide range of possible crimes. At a certain point, the logic of the law applying to everyone equally demands that the process be seen through.But that doesn’t mean we should deny the gravity of the potential consequences. Mr. Trump is not a standard-issue politician who happened to run afoul of corruption statutes. He’s a man who rose once to the presidency and seeks to return to it by mobilizing and enhancing mass suspicion of public institutions and officials. That’s why one of the first things he said after announcing the indictment on Thursday night was to proclaim it was “a DARK DAY for the United States of America.” It’s why die-hard supporters like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio tweeted: “Sad day for America. God Bless President Trump.” It’s likely that tens of millions of our fellow citizens agree with the sentiment.To most Americans, such a reaction to news of Mr. Trump’s indictment seems unimaginable. But it’s clearly something sincerely felt by many. Our country has a history of lionizing outlaws — folk heroes who defy authority, especially when they claim to speak for, channel and champion the grievances and resentments of ordinary people against those in positions of power and influence. From the beginning of his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump has portrayed himself as just such a man of defiance, eager to serve as a tribune for those who feel left behind, denigrated and humiliated by members of the establishment.That’s why the more concerted opposition Mr. Trump has faced from law enforcement, the mainstream media, Congress and other prominent people in our country and culture, the more popular he has become within his party. Efforts to rein him in — to defeat him politically and legally — have often backfired, vindicating him and his struggle in the eyes of his supporters.There’s no reason at all to suppose the prospect of Mr. Trump’s ending up a convicted criminal would disrupt this dynamic. On the contrary, it’s far more likely to transform him into something resembling a martyr to millions of Americans — and in the process to wrest those devoted supporters free from attachment to the rule of law altogether.How politically radical could the base of the Republican Party become over the 17 months between now and the 2024 presidential election? There’s really no way to know. We are heading into uncharted and turbulent waters.Damon Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter Notes From the Middleground and is a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Indictment Brings Trump Story Full Circle

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      The former president assailed Hillary Clinton for her handling of sensitive information. Now, the same issue threatens his chances of reclaiming the presidency.There was a time, not that long ago really, when Donald J. Trump said he cared about the sanctity of classified information. That, of course, was when his opponent was accused of jeopardizing it and it was a useful political weapon for Mr. Trump.Throughout 2016, he castigated Hillary Clinton for using a private email server instead of a secure government one. “I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,” he declared. “No one will be above the law.” Mrs. Clinton’s cavalier handling of the sensitive information, he said, “disqualifies her from the presidency.”Seven years later, Mr. Trump faces criminal charges for endangering national security by taking classified documents when he left the White House and refusing to return all of them even after being subpoenaed. Even in the what-goes-around-comes-around department of American politics, it is rather remarkable that the issue that helped propel Mr. Trump to the White House in the first place now threatens to ruin his chances of getting back there.The indictment handed up by a federal grand jury at the request of the special counsel Jack Smith effectively brings the Trump story full circle. “Lock her up,” the crowds at his campaign rallies chanted with his encouragement. Now he may be the one locked up if convicted on any of the seven reported counts that include conspiracy to obstruct justice and willful retention of documents.The indictment is the second brought against the former president in recent months, but in many ways it eclipses the first in terms of both legal gravity and political peril. The first indictment, announced in March by the Manhattan district attorney, charged Mr. Trump with falsifying business records to cover up hush money to an adult film actress who alleged that they had a sexual tryst. The second is brought by a federal prosecutor representing the nation as a whole, the first in American history against a former president, and concerns the nation’s secrets.While Mr. Trump’s defenders have tried to brush off the first as the work of a local elected Democrat concerning issues that, however unseemly, seem relatively petty and happened before he took office, the latest charges stem directly from his responsibility as the nation’s commander in chief to safeguard data that could be useful to America’s enemies.Republican voters may not care if their leader slips money to a porn star to keep quiet, but will they be indifferent about impeding authorities seeking to recover clandestine material?Perhaps. Mr. Trump certainly hopes so. The Manhattan indictment only seemed to boost his poll ratings rather than hurt him. And so he immediately cast the latest indictment as part of the most extravagant conspiracy in American history, one that in his telling seems to involve a wide range of local and federal prosecutors, grand jurors, judges, plaintiffs, regulators and witnesses who have all lied for years to set him up while he is the one truth teller, no matter what the charges.“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election,” he wrote on his social media site, making multiple misleading assertions in a single sentence. “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”So far, his core supporters have stuck with him and even some of those running against him for the Republican nomination next year have criticized the investigations against him. But he recently was found liable for sexual abuse in a civil trial, his company has been found guilty of 17 counts of tax fraud and other crimes and he still faces two other possible indictments stemming from his effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, leading to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The question, politically at least, is whether the accumulation of all those allegations will someday weigh him down among Republican voters who otherwise like him, especially if there is a third and maybe a fourth indictment. At least some of his rivals for the party nomination are counting on the fatigue factor eventually draining his support.As for Mrs. Clinton, whether she was feeling a little schadenfreude on Thursday night, the defeated candidate herself was not saying. But she and her allies have long believed that the reopening of the email investigation by James B. Comey, then the F.B.I. director, just days before the 2016 election cost her the victory that so many polls had forecast.Mr. Trump will try to turn this around on his pursuers, arguing that the fact that he has been indicted where Mrs. Clinton was not is proof that he is being unfairly persecuted.Never mind that the facts of the cases are different, that he seemed to go out of his way to intentionally thwart authorities trying to recover the secret documents for months while investigators concluded that Mrs. Clinton was not willfully trying to violate the law. But it will be a useful political argument for Mr. Trump to insist that he is a victim of double standards.Why, given the 2016 campaign, he did not recognize the potential danger of mishandling classified information and take more care about it is another matter. But he spent much of his presidency disregarding concerns about the security of information and the rules about preserving government documents.He disclosed highly classified information to Russian officials visiting him in the Oval Office. He posted sensitive satellite imagery of Iran online. He kept using an unsecured mobile phone even after being told it was monitored by Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies. He tore up official documents and threw them to the floor once he was done with them despite laws requiring that they be saved and cataloged, leaving aides to collect the ripped-up pieces and tape them back together.Even when confronted with the consequences of his actions, Mr. Trump never expressed concern. He was the president, after all, and he could do what he pleased. Even during the investigation into the classified documents that he took to Mar-a-Lago, he has defended himself by asserting that he had the power to declassify anything he chose just by thinking about it.But he is no longer president. Now he will face not just primary voters who will decide whether he has been disqualified from the presidency, but a prosecutor who says he will enforce laws concerning the protection of classified information.Mr. Trump will be booked as an accused criminal and, absent an unforeseen development, ultimately will be judged by a jury of his peers.What a difference seven years makes. More

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      Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert

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      The special counsel is scrutinizing the dismissal of Christopher Krebs, who contradicted baseless claims by the former president that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.The special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who may have been involved in firing the government cybersecurity official whose agency judged the election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter.The team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has been asking witnesses about the events surrounding the firing of Christopher Krebs, who was the Trump administration’s top cybersecurity official during the 2020 election. Mr. Krebs’s assessment that the election was secure was at odds with Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions that it was a “fraud on the American public.”Mr. Smith’s team is also seeking information about how White House officials, including in the Presidential Personnel Office, approached the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump turned to after his election loss as a way to try to stay in power, people familiar with the questions said.The investigators appear focused on Mr. Trump’s state of mind around the firing of Mr. Krebs, as well as on establishing a timeline of events leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. The latest subpoenas, issued roughly two weeks ago, went to officials in the personnel office, according to the two people familiar with the matter.Mr. Krebs enraged Mr. Trump when his agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, released a statement nine days after the 2020 election attesting to the security of the results. The statement added a sharp rebuke — in boldface type — to the unfounded conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies were spreading about compromised voting machines.“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” the statement from Mr. Krebs’s agency read.Five days later, Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Krebs was “terminated” after releasing a “highly inaccurate” statement about the 2020 election.Mr. Krebs later testified to the House special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that before his firing, he was aware of “skepticism” among Trump allies about his “loyalty to the president.”It was far more than skepticism. Within the Presidential Personnel Office, a small group of Trump loyalists, led by Mr. Trump’s former personal aide, John McEntee, were on a mission to find and fire people perceived as disloyal to Mr. Trump within the federal bureaucracy. And they had fingered the outspoken Mr. Krebs, who had been appointed by Mr. Trump himself, as among the ranks of the disloyal.Staff members within the personnel office had drafted a document about Mr. Krebs that outlined reasons to distrust him. The memo, first reported by Jonathan Karl of ABC News, detailed a litany of Mr. Krebs’s alleged sins against Mr. Trump, including: “Wife posted a family photo on Facebook with the ‘Biden Harris’ logo watermarked at the bottom.”Mr. Smith’s team is asking witnesses about broader efforts made by Mr. Trump’s personnel officials to test the loyalty of federal officials and potential hires, the people briefed on the matter said. Mr. McEntee was seen going into the grand jury in recent months.Months before the 2020 election, Mr. McEntee, now the head of a dating app for conservatives, and a deputy sought to overhaul the government’s hiring process. They developed what became known by some officials as “the loyalty test” — a new questionnaire for government hires that asked such questions as “What part of Candidate Trump’s campaign message most appealed to you and why?”Mr. Krebs is among those whom Mr. Smith’s team has interviewed, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Krebs declined to comment when contacted.Mr. Smith’s team has also been trying to figure out how the personnel office interacted with the Justice Department as Mr. Trump grasped at any available instrument within his bureaucracy that might help him subvert the 2020 election result.In his final weeks in office, Mr. Trump grew increasingly frustrated with the department’s leaders as one after another rebuffed his pressure on them to falsely declare that large-scale voter fraud had occurred in swing states, such as Georgia, that Mr. Trump had lost to Mr. Biden.By the time the election took place, Heidi Stirrup, a loyalist close to Mr. Trump’s policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had been installed as the White House liaison at the Justice Department. Mr. Smith’s office has asked questions about her role, one of the people briefed on the matter said.Ms. Stirrup was banned from entering the Justice Department building a month after the 2020 election, after she tried to glean sensitive information from department officials about efforts to hunt for election fraud, according to officials with knowledge of the episode.Soon after, Attorney General William P. Barr, whom Mr. Trump had long seen as an ally, resigned after telling Mr. Trump that his election fraud theories were bogus and that the legal team he had assembled to challenge the results was a “clown show.” Jeffrey A. Rosen, who replaced Mr. Barr, also refused to follow Mr. Trump’s orders to use the machinery of the Justice Department to overturn the election.Jeffrey B. Clark, the acting head of the civil division, was the one senior Justice Department official who embraced Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn President Biden’s victory. Mr. Clark had a relatively low profile, but in the frantic period after the election, Mr. Trump identified him as his most important ally inside the department. Mr. Trump seriously considered firing Mr. Rosen and putting Mr. Clark in charge.Justice Department leaders were horrified and pledged to collectively resign. Mr. Trump shelved the plan, but during the past two years has spoken warmly of Mr. Clark and hosted him at his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.Mr. Clark has been the focus of investigators’ attention as well in connection with his role in helping Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse the election outcome. More

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      Trump Lawyers Seek Meeting With Garland Over Special Counsel Inquiries

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      Two lawyers for the former president asserted that he was being treated unfairly in the investigations into his handling of classified documents and his efforts to remain in power.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump sent a letter on Tuesday requesting a meeting with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland related to the special counsel investigations into Mr. Trump’s conduct.The letter cited no specifics but asserted that Mr. Trump was being treated unfairly by the Justice Department through the investigations led by the special counsel, Jack Smith. Mr. Smith is scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s handling of classified material that was discovered at his private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, after his presidency, as well as his efforts to retain power after he lost the 2020 election.There are indications that Mr. Smith is approaching the stage of the investigation where he could start making decisions about whether to seek indictments of Mr. Trump and others in the documents case. The status of his other line of inquiry, into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss and how they contributed to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by his supporters, is less clear.“Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter and the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly,” the lawyers for Mr. Trump, James Trusty and John Rowley, wrote to Mr. Garland.“No president of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such outrageous and unlawful fashion,” they wrote.They requested a meeting to discuss the “ongoing injustice” by Mr. Smith’s team.The letter was reported earlier by ABC News.A spokesman for Mr. Smith declined to comment.The letter’s tone is markedly different from the approach taken by Mr. Trump shortly after the F.B.I. executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, recovering documents that Mr. Trump had failed to turn over after receiving a subpoena demanding that they be returned to the government. At the time, Mr. Trump, through an intermediary, sent a message to Justice Department officials that the search inflamed the country, and he asked how he could help to lower the temperature.The letter from his lawyers on Tuesday was directly confrontational. It implied that the family of Mr. Biden, who appointed Mr. Garland and who is himself the focus of a special counsel investigation into a far smaller number of classified documents from his vice-presidential and Senate days found in spaces where he worked and in his home, is benefiting from more favorable treatment.Hunter Biden is under separate investigation on possible tax charges and for possibly having lied about his drug use on a federal form he filled out to purchase a handgun.Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination in an increasingly crowded Republican field. But with the letter, Mr. Trump is relying on a frequently used playbook, in which he suggests a judge or prosecutor is treating him unfairly by the act of investigating him.Most recently, he tried suggesting the judge overseeing an indictment against him in a state court in Manhattan has a conflict because a family member works for Democrats.Seen another way, the letter could be an attempt by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to lay down a marker toward asking Mr. Garland to recuse himself from involvement in whether Mr. Trump faces charges.While Mr. Smith will make the recommendation on whether to charge Mr. Trump with federal crimes in the two cases, a final decision would be made by Mr. Garland. In the documents-related case, prosecutors have examined evidence related to obstruction of justice, as well as to whether he mishandled classified material.Mr. Smith’s team is still hearing from witnesses in the two cases, according to multiple familiar with the activity, although all signs point to the documents investigation nearing its end point.Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have privately predicted that the former president will face charges in the case related to the documents at a minimum, although they maintain he did nothing wrong. They have also grown angry at the number of people who have been subpoenaed, from low-level workers at Mar-a-Lago to former government officials.Mr. Trump is under indictment in New York on charges of paying hush money to a porn star and is facing a separate investigation in Georgia into his efforts to reverse his defeat at the polls there in 2020.It is highly unlikely that Mr. Garland would agree to meet with Mr. Trump’s lawyers, one of the attorney general’s former aides said.“Merrick Garland will not meet with Trusty or any of the other Trump lawyers,” said Anthony Coley, Mr. Garland’s former spokesman. “Jack Smith is running this investigation, not Merrick Garland.”Glenn Thrush More

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      Trump Lawyer Resigns From Defense Team in Special Counsel Inquiries

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      Timothy Parlatore, who has been defending the former president in the investigations into classified documents and Jan. 6, is leaving as federal prosecutors appear to be nearing decisions about bringing charges.Timothy Parlatore, one of the lawyers representing former President Donald J. Trump in the federal investigations into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has resigned from the former president’s legal team.In a brief interview on Wednesday, Mr. Parlatore declined to discuss the specific reasons for his departure, but said it was not related to the merits of either inquiry — both of which are being led by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Mr. Parlatore said that he informed Mr. Trump of his decision directly and that he left the legal team on good terms with the former president.His departure was reported earlier by CNN.Mr. Parlatore’s withdrawal from the twin special counsel cases leaves Mr. Trump a lawyer short at a moment when prosecutors under Mr. Smith seem to be nearing the end of their sprawling grand jury investigations and may be approaching a decision about whether to bring charges.Two other lawyers — James Trusty and John Rowley — will for now continue to take the lead in representing Mr. Trump in both of the cases.Mr. Parlatore informed Mr. Trump’s team on Monday that he anticipated withdrawing, according to a person familiar with the events.Since last summer and until recently, Mr. Parlatore played a key role in Mr. Trump’s attempts to use attorney-client and executive privilege to limit the scope of the testimony provided by a series of witnesses who appeared in front of grand juries hearing evidence in both of the matters.Over and over in sealed filings and at closed-door hearings, Mr. Parlatore and his colleagues sought to assert privilege on behalf of Mr. Trump in the hopes of narrowing testimony from top Trump aides like Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff, and former Vice President Mike Pence. But their efforts were almost completely unsuccessful.At one point, Mr. Parlatore himself was subpoenaed to appear in front of the grand jury investigating the documents case. During his appearance, he answered questions about efforts made by Mr. Trump’s legal team to comply with a subpoena issued by the Justice Department last May demanding the return of all classified material in the former president’s possession.Among the things that Mr. Parlatore said he discussed with the grand jury were searches — ordered by a judge in response to a push from the Justice Department — that he oversaw at the end of last year of several properties belonging to Mr. Trump, including Trump Tower in New York; Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J.; and a storage site in West Palm Beach, Fla. During the search of the storage site, investigators found at least two more documents with classified markings.Those searches followed a search in August of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, by the F.B.I., which led to the discovery of more than 100 classified documents that had not been returned in response to the earlier subpoena.Mr. Parlatore was brought on to the legal team by Boris Epshteyn, who had been serving as something of an in-house counsel, hiring and negotiating contracts for lawyers. Mr. Epshteyn has shown a penchant for delivering sunny news to Mr. Trump despite bad circumstances, and for creating a bottleneck for the lawyers in dealing with the client, according to several people familiar with the events.Last month, Mr. Parlatore wrote a letter to Congress asking lawmakers for help in taking the documents investigation away from prosecutors and giving it to the intelligence community — a move that, among other things, would have removed the threat of a criminal indictment against Mr. Trump.The letter also seemed to preview some of Mr. Trump’s potential defenses in the documents case, noting that during his chaotic departure from the White House, aides “quickly packed everything into boxes and shipped them to Florida.” This hasty process, Mr. Parlatore argued, suggested that “White House institutional processes,” not “intentional decisions by President Trump,” were responsible for sensitive material being hauled away.Last week, Mr. Trump appeared to undercut those assertions on live television, declaring at a CNN town hall event that he knowingly removed government records from the White House and claiming that he was allowed to take anything he wanted with him as his personal property.“I took the documents,” he said at the event. “I’m allowed to.” More

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      Prosecutors in Jan. 6 Case Step up Inquiry Into Trump Fund-Raising

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      The Justice Department has been gathering evidence about whether the former president and his allies solicited donations with claims of election fraud they knew to be false.As they investigate former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, federal prosecutors have also been drilling down on whether Mr. Trump and a range of political aides knew that he had lost the race but still raised money off claims that they were fighting widespread fraud in the vote results, according to three people familiar with the matter.Led by the special counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors are trying to determine whether Mr. Trump and his aides violated federal wire fraud statutes as they raised as much as $250 million through a political action committee by saying they needed the money to fight to reverse election fraud even though they had been told repeatedly that there was no evidence to back up those fraud claims.The prosecutors are looking at the inner workings of the committee, Save America PAC, and at the Trump campaign’s efforts to prove its baseless case that Mr. Trump had been cheated out of victory.In the past several months, prosecutors have issued multiple batches of subpoenas in a wide-ranging effort to understand Save America, which was set up shortly after the election as Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising entity. An initial round of subpoenas, which started going out before Mr. Trump declared his candidacy in the 2024 race and Mr. Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in November, focused on various Republican officials and vendors that had received payments from Save America.But more recently, investigators have homed in on the activities of a joint fund-raising committee made up of staff members from the 2020 Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, among others. Some of the subpoenas have sought documents from around Election Day 2020 up the present.Prosecutors have been heavily focused on details of the campaign’s finances, spending and fund-raising, such as who was approving email solicitations that were blasted out to lists of possible small donors and what they knew about the truth of the fraud claims, according to the people familiar with their work. All three areas overlap, and could inform prosecutors’ thinking about whether to proceed with charges in an investigation in which witnesses are still being interviewed.The possibility that the fund-raising efforts might have been criminally fraudulent was first raised last year by the House select committee investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to retain power.But the Justice Department, with its ability to bring criminal charges, has been able to prompt more extensive cooperation from a number of witnesses. And prosecutors have developed more information than the House committee did, having targeted communications between Trump campaign aides and other Republican officials to determine if a barrage of fund-raising solicitations sent out after the election were knowingly misleading, according to the three people familiar with the matter.The fund-raising efforts are just one focus of Mr. Smith’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse his loss at the polls.Led by the special counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors are trying to determine whether Mr. Trump and his aides violated federal wire fraud statutes.Peter Dejong/Associated PressProsecutors have also been examining the plan to assemble alternate slates of pro-Trump electors from swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the broader push by Mr. Trump to block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory on Jan. 6, 2021, leading to the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters.On Thursday, former Vice President Mike Pence, a key witness to Mr. Trump’s efforts, testified for hours to the grand jury gathering evidence in the investigation.Prosecutors have been looking at the nexus between research the Trump campaign commissioned almost immediately after the election to try to prove widespread fraud, public statements that he and his allies made at the time, the fund-raising efforts and the establishment of Save America.The Washington Post reported earlier on the efforts by the campaign to fund research into claims of fraud and the new round of subpoenas.Mr. Trump’s team may argue that the fund-raising represented political speech with solicitations that were generally vague, and that subjecting it to a criminal process could raise First Amendment issues and create a slippery slope for future candidates. Political fund-raising materials often engage in bombast or exaggeration.Republicans may also argue that Democrats have been loose in claims they have used in fund-raising solicitations. And the Trump campaign may argue that it did in fact use the funds to try to investigate fraud.Jason Miller, an adviser to Mr. Trump who worked on the 2020 campaign, said that the “Deep State is ramping up their attacks on President Trump” as his poll numbers have increased. “The ‘political police’ have been pushing their witch hunt since President Trump came down the escalator, and they’ve been proven wrong every single time,” he added.Officials with the Republican National Committee declined to comment.Immediately after the election, an adviser to the Trump campaign reached out to Ken Block, the owner of a Rhode Island-based firm, Simpatico Software Systems, to have him evaluate specific allegations of fraud.Jason Miller, a former top Trump aide, appearing on a screen last year during a hearing of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot. Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Block ended up researching multiple claims of possible fraud that Mr. Trump’s aides brought to him. He never produced a final report. But each time he investigated a claim, he said in an interview, he found there was nothing to it.Mr. Block said he had disproved “everything that came in and found no substantive fraud sufficient to overturn an election result.” He said he was isolated from what was taking place within the campaign, as Mr. Trump railed at aides about staying in office and continued to insist he had won an election that he was repeatedly told he had lost.“I was kept very walled off from all of the insanity,” said Mr. Block, whose firm was paid $735,000, records show. He received a subpoena for documents, but declined in the interview to discuss anything related to the grand jury.Days after starting to work with Mr. Block and Simpatico, the Trump campaign hired a second firm, the Berkeley Research Group. The federal grand jury has received evidence that Berkeley was hired at the suggestion of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, who was overseeing the political operation.The grand jury has been asking questions related to whether Mr. Trump was briefed on findings by Berkeley suggesting there had been no widespread fraud.The company ultimately submitted a report indicating there had been no fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election, and was paid roughly $600,000 for its work. The company was hired through a law firm that has long represented Mr. Trump in his personal capacity, Kasowitz Benson Torres, although lawyers there were not involved in pursuing Mr. Trump’s election fraud claims, according to a person briefed on the matter.A deputy counsel for Berkeley Research Group said the company has a “no comment” policy and declined to discuss the matter further.During the House Jan. 6 committee’s proceedings last year, several people close to Mr. Trump testified that they had informed him that there had been no fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the voting.Within two weeks of the election, the Trump campaign’s own communications staff drafted an internal report debunking many aspects of a conspiracy theory that voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems had been hacked and used to flip votes away from Mr. Trump. That report was written before pro-Trump lawyers like Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani promoted the false Dominion story at news conferences and on television.As part of its investigation into the Trump campaign’s postelection fund-raising, the Jan. 6 panel subpoenaed records from Salesforce.com, a vendor that helped the campaign and the Republican National Committee send emails to potential donors. The R.N.C. fought back, filing a lawsuit to quash the subpoena, and the House committee ultimately withdrew it.In the latest round of subpoenas, federal prosecutors have sought documents related to Salesforce in addition to other vendors, according to a person briefed on the matter. More