Special Prosecutors (Independent Counsel)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      In Trump Prosecution, Special Counsel Seeks to Avoid Distracting Fights

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      The Radical Strategy Behind Trump’s Promise to ‘Go After’ Biden

      by

      Conservatives with close ties to Donald J. Trump are laying out a “paradigm-shifting” legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president.When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”Mr. Trump’s message was that the Justice Department charged him only because he is Mr. Biden’s political opponent, so he would invert that supposed politicization. In reality, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and the financial dealings of his son, Hunter.But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr. Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.The naked politics infusing Mr. Trump’s headline-generating threat underscored something significant. In his first term, Mr. Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.Two of the most important figures in this effort work at the same Washington-based organization, the Center for Renewing America: Jeffrey B. Clark and Russell T. Vought. During the Trump presidency, Mr. Vought served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Clark, who oversaw the Justice Department’s civil and environmental divisions, was the only senior official at the department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.Jeffrey B. Clark was the only senior official in the Justice Department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAlong with Mr. Clark, Russell T. Vought argues that presidents should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesMr. Trump wanted to make Mr. Clark attorney general during his final days in office but stopped after the senior leadership of the Justice Department threatened to resign en masse. Mr. Clark is now a figure in one of the Justice Department’s investigations into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought are promoting a legal rationale that would fundamentally change the way presidents interact with the Justice Department. They argue that U.S. presidents should not keep federal law enforcement at arm’s length but instead should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency. They are condemning Mr. Biden and Democrats for what they claim is the politicization of the justice system, but at the same time pushing an intellectual framework that a future Republican president might use to justify directing individual law enforcement investigations.Mr. Clark, who is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s and is likely to be in contention for a senior Justice Department position if Mr. Trump wins re-election in 2024, wrote a constitutional analysis, titled “The U.S. Justice Department is not independent,” that will most likely serve as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.Like other conservatives, Mr. Clark adheres to the so-called unitary executive theory, which holds that the president of the United States has the power to directly control the entire federal bureaucracy and Congress cannot fracture that control by giving some officials independent decision-making authority.There are debates among conservatives about how far to push that doctrine — and whether some agencies should be allowed to operate independently — but Mr. Clark takes a maximalist view. Mr. Trump does, too, though he’s never been caught reading the Federalist Papers.In statements to The New York Times, both Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought leaned into their battle against the Justice Department, with Mr. Clark framing it as a fight over the survival of America itself.Conservatives have been attacking President Biden and the Justice Department, claiming it has been “weaponized.”Doug Mills/The New York Times“Biden and D.O.J. are baying for Trump’s blood so they can put fear into America,” Mr. Clark wrote in his statement. “The Constitution and our Article IV ‘Republican Form of Government’ cannot survive like this.”Mr. Vought wrote in his statement that the Justice Department was “ground zero for the weaponization of the government against the American people.” He added, “Conservatives are waking up to the fact that federal law enforcement is weaponized against them and as a result are embracing paradigm-shifting policies to reverse that trend.”Mr. Trump often exploited gaps between what the rules technically allow and the norms of self-restraint that guided past presidents of both parties. In 2021, House Democrats passed the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a legislative package intended to codify numerous previous norms as law, including requiring the Justice Department to give Congress logs of its contacts with White House officials. But Republicans portrayed the bill as an attack on Mr. Trump and it died in the Senate.The modern era for the Justice Department traces back to the Watergate scandal and the period of government reforms that followed President Richard M. Nixon’s abuses. The norm took root that the president can set broad policies for the Justice Department — directing it to put greater resources and emphasis on particular types of crimes or adopting certain positions before the Supreme Court — but should not get involved in specific criminal case decisions absent extraordinary circumstances, such as if a case has foreign policy implications.Since then, it has become routine at confirmation hearings for attorney general nominees to have senators elicit promises that they will resist any effort by the president to politicize law enforcement by intruding on matters of prosecutorial judgment and discretion.As the Republican Party has morphed in response to Mr. Trump’s influence, his attacks on federal law enforcement — which trace back to the early Russia investigation in 2017, the backlash to his firing of then-F.B.I. director James B. Comey Jr. and the appointment of Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel — have become enmeshed in the ideology of his supporters.Mr. Trump’s top rival for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, also rejects the norm that the Justice Department should be independent.Gov. Ron DeSantis has likewise argued that the Justice Department should be an extension of the executive branch.Kate Medley for The New York Times“Republican presidents have accepted the canard that the D.O.J. and F.B.I. are — quote — ‘independent,’” Mr. DeSantis said in May on Fox News. “They are not independent agencies. They are part of the executive branch. They answer to the elected president of the United States.”Several other Republican candidates acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents — as outlined in the indictment prepared by the special counsel, Jack Smith, and his team — was a serious problem. But even these candidates — including Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Vice President Mike Pence — have also accused the Justice Department of being overly politicized and meting out unequal justice.The most powerful conservative think tanks are working on plans that would go far beyond “reforming” the F.B.I., even though its Senate-confirmed directors in the modern era have all been Republicans. They want to rip it up and start again.“The F.B.I. has become a political weapon for the ruling elite rather than an impartial, law-enforcement agency,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of the conservative movement since the Reagan years. He added, “Small-ball reforms that increase accountability within the F.B.I. fail to meet the moment. The F.B.I. must be rebuilt from the ground up — reforming it in its current state is impossible.”Conservative media channels and social media influencers have been hammering the F.B.I. and the Justice Department for months since the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago, following a playbook they honed while defending Mr. Trump during the investigation into whether his campaign conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.Senator Tim Scott is among the other Republican presidential candidates who say the Justice Department is politicized.Travis Dove for The New York TimesOn its most-watched nighttime programs, Fox News has been all-in on attacks against the Justice Department, including the accusation, presented without evidence, that Mr. Biden had directed the prosecution of Mr. Trump. As the former president addressed his supporters on Tuesday night at his Bedminster club, Fox News displayed a split screen — Mr. Trump on the right and Mr. Biden on the left. The chyron on the bottom of the screen read: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”As president, Mr. Trump saw his attorney general as simply another one of his personal lawyers. He was infuriated when his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the Russia investigation — and then refused to reverse that decision to shut down the case.After firing Mr. Sessions, Mr. Trump believed he had found someone who would do his bidding in William P. Barr, who had been in the role during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. Mr. Barr had an expansive view of a president’s constitutionally prescribed powers, and shared Mr. Trump’s critical views of the origins of the Russia investigation.Under Mr. Barr, the Justice Department overruled career prosecutors’ recommendations on the length of a sentence for Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr., and sought to shut down a case against Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had already pleaded guilty. Both cases stemmed from the Russia investigation.But when Mr. Trump wanted to use the Justice Department to stay in power after he lost the election, he grew enraged when Mr. Barr refused to comply. Mr. Barr ultimately resigned in late 2020. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Trump visita la Pequeña Habana y recuerda la corrupción en América Latina

      by

      Los republicanos han comparado cada vez más los casos judiciales del expresidente con la corrupción y la opresión política en la región.Después de su comparecencia del martes, el expresidente Donald Trump visitó la Pequeña Habana, en Miami, en su más reciente intento de presentarse como un hombre perseguido por sus adversarios políticos.Fue un intento nada sutil de buscar la solidaridad de los latinos de Florida y de otros lugares.La visita de Trump al restaurante Versailles, un punto de referencia emblemático de la diáspora cubana, coincidió con la comparación, cada vez más frecuente, que hacen los republicanos de su caso con la corrupción y la opresión política en los países latinoamericanos.Afuera del juzgado federal de Miami donde se hizo la comparecencia, Alina Habba, abogada y vocera de Trump insinuó que él no era diferente de los disidentes políticos de Latinoamérica.“La persecución y enjuiciamiento de un opositor político importante es el tipo de cosas que se ven en dictaduras como Cuba y Venezuela. En esos sitios, es un lugar común que los candidatos rivales sean juzgados, perseguidos y encarcelados”, señaló.El día previo a su comparecencia, Trump afirmó que los latinos del sur de Florida se solidarizaban con él porque están familiarizados con los gobiernos que persiguen a sus adversarios.“En verdad pueden verlo mejor de lo que lo ven las demás personas”, dijo en una entrevista con Americano Media, un medio conservador en idioma español del sur de Florida.Trump ha contado con un apoyo relativamente fuerte entre las comunidades latinas, sobre todo en el sur de Florida. Eduardo A. Gamarra, profesor de Política y Relaciones Internacionales en la Universidad Internacional de Florida que también forma parte del Instituto de Estudios Cubanos, comentó que la narrativa urdida por Trump y sus partidarios, aunque falsa, era astuta.“Se ve reforzada por los medios locales, por mucho de lo que la campaña de Trump y otros republicanos están diciendo: que este gobierno, el de Biden, se está comportando como se comportan las repúblicas bananeras, así que eso ha resonado con mucha intensidad aquí. A nivel político, es buena, pero no es veraz”, afirmó el académico.Gamarra, quien nació en Bolivia, destacó que Trump también había intentado obtener el apoyo de los electores latinos al arremeter contra el socialismo y el comunismo. Lamentó la manera en que Trump y sus aliados habían mencionado a Latinoamérica en muchas ocasiones.“Es una narrativa muy poco afortunada. Creo que solo difunde los estereotipos existentes sobre Latinoamérica. Es mucho más complejo que solo la imagen de la república bananera”, dijo.La breve aparición de Trump en el restaurante fue la más reciente de él y de una larga lista de políticos que incluye a los expresidentes Bill Clinton y George W. Bush. En 2016, el restaurante recibió a Trump y a Rudy Giuliani juntos después del primer debate del exmandatario contra Hillary Clinton.Paloma Marcos, quien ha sido ciudadana estadounidense desde hace 15 años y es oriunda de Nicaragua, llegó al Versalles con una gorra de Trump y un letrero que decía “Estoy con Trump”.Comentó que muchos nicaragüenses como ella tenían afinidad por el expresidente, porque está contra el comunismo. También agregó que la gente como ella, así como los cubanos y venezolanos, habían visto que esa forma de gobierno destrozaba a sus países de origen.“Sabe él que siempre lo hemos apoyado acá. Los latinos estamos bien concientizados”, dijo Marcos. “Hemos podido quitarnos el velo, digamos, un despertar”.La reverenda Yoelis Sánchez, pastora en una iglesia local y oriunda de la República Dominicana, dijo que cuando le pidieron que fuera al restaurante Versalles a orar con Trump no dudó en acudir. Varias personas religiosas, entre evangélicas y católicas, oraban con él mientras su hija cantaba.Comentó que había orado “para que Dios le dé fortaleza y le ayude”, comentó. “Y que toda la verdad salga a la luz”. Y añadió que estaban “preocupados por el bienestar de él”.Sánchez, que vive en Doral, una ciudad que forma parte del condado de Miami-Dade y donde Trump tiene un club de golf, no era ciudadana en 2020. No quiso decir si planea votar por él en 2024.“No creo que haya venido porque le interese el voto latino solamente”, dijo. “Sino el voto de todas las personas que estamos de acuerdo en mantener los valores bíblicos”. Y añadió que como él, “los latinos de por sí nos identificamos con lo que es la familia, la vida”.Trump enfrenta acusaciones penales relacionadas con el mal manejo de documentos clasificados y la posterior obstrucción de los intentos de recuperarlos por parte del gobierno. En Estados Unidos no tiene precedentes el enjuiciamiento federal a un expresidente, pero muchos presidentes latinoamericanos han sido juzgados tras dejar el poder.El actual presidente de Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, pasó más de un año en la cárcel después de salir de la presidencia la primera vez. El año pasado, la expresidenta de Argentina, Cristina Fernández, fue sentenciada a seis años por corrupción. En Perú, Alejandro Toledo fue extraditado hace poco para enfrentar una acusación de soborno. El exmandatario, Alberto Fujimori, está cumpliendo una condena de 25 años en prisión.Arnoldo Alemán, de Nicaragua, es uno de los pocos expresidentes que fue arrestado en un caso de corrupción a pesar de que su propio partido estaba en el poder.“Es algo que se ve mucho en Latinoamérica, sobre todo en Perú y ahora en El Salvador”, comentó Mario García, un cliente habitual del Versailles a quien le hizo gracia ver a Trump en el restaurante. “Pero en nuestros países, en Latinoamérica, hay justificación porque lo roban todo” los presidentes, explicó García y afirmó que creía que el gobierno estaba persiguiendo a Trump porque no tiene “otra manera de detenerlo”.García señaló que no pensaba que Trump fuera al Versailles en busca de los votos de los latinos. “Los votos de aquí ya los tiene. Es muy bonito rodearse de cariño cuando a uno todo el mundo lo está atacando”.Maggie Haberman More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      After Trump’s 2nd Indictment, His 2024 Presidential Campaign Trudges On

      by

      On the calendar for the Republicans’ 2024 front-runner: rallies and primaries mixed with court dates.Donald J. Trump went to bed Tuesday night, on the eve of his 77th birthday, as a now twice-indicted former president and current front-runner for the Republican nomination for the White House in 2024.“Some birthday,” Mr. Trump grumbled on Tuesday as he visited Versailles, a popular Cuban coffee shop in Miami. “Some birthday.”He had just been arraigned on federal charges. His co-defendant was working as his valet. And he didn’t eat Cuban — he had McDonald’s. On his plane headed back to New Jersey from Miami, Mr. Trump ate the fast food while holding court with advisers and finishing edits on the speech he would soon deliver and mostly adhere to.The surreal scene that awaited him at his private club in Bedminster, N.J., was a blend somewhere between a summer garden wedding and a political victory party. There was an air of an almost post-arraignment celebration as women arrived in their finery: fuchsia and canary yellow dresses, embroidered Trump wares and heels. Men sported suits and red MAGA hats.Then Mr. Trump arrived. Visibly deflated after pleading not guilty for the second time in three months, his dry and low-energy resuscitation of his legal defense — even inflected with the usual references to Marxists, Communists and fascists — pleased his advisers but drew a relatively muted response from a crowd that had minutes earlier craned their phones for a shot of his motorcade.He had entered to the same track — “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood — that he has used as an entrance theme so many times before. On Tuesday, the chorus landed differently.Proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.“I did everything right,” Mr. Trump declared in his 30-minute speech, “and they indicted me.”When he finished, he barely lingered to take in the applause. He gave an obligatory fist pump and mouthed thanks to the crowd. Then he turned and went inside.All told, the day encapsulated the remarkable numbness to the extraordinary that has defined the Trump era. The former president entered federal court as a criminal defendant, and now faces hundreds of years in prison. The Republican front-runner’s early 2024 calendar now includes not only key caucuses and primaries but court dates. His rivals are at times contorting themselves while discussing his alleged crimes; one circulated a petition on Tuesday demanding they all promise to pardon him.During his speech, Mr. Trump pledged to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after President Biden and his family.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Trump’s appearance in a Miami courtroom was a humiliating moment for a New York businessman with a 40-year history of engaging in gamesmanship with prosecutors and regulators, viewing most every interaction as a transaction or something he could bluster his way through. By 2017, he had the armor of the presidency protecting him when the first special counsel investigating him, Robert S. Mueller III, began his work. And by 2021, as investigations began into his efforts to thwart the transfer of power, he had come to see another campaign as a shield against prosecutions.But that grandeur — and legal insulation — had vanished on Tuesday. Instead, Mr. Trump’s team tried to create the sense of a man still in power. In Bedminster, he spoke with the white columns of the main house of his New Jersey golf club behind him. The indictment became another backdrop for the ongoing Trump Show.He was comforted by a motley assortment of his most fervent supporters. They included former President Richard Nixon’s son-in-law; a former New York Police Department commissioner whom Mr. Trump pardoned in the final year of his presidency; and a former administration official whom Mr. Trump named as a representative to the National Archives.It was the National Archives that began the winding road that ended with Mr. Trump facing charges alleging that he had defied a subpoena and kept highly classified documents. The agency, which is in charge of preserving presidential records, spent most of 2021 trying to compel Mr. Trump to return boxes of materials that he had taken with him when he left the White House. So did some of his lawyers and advisers. When he finally returned 15 boxes in January 2022, archives officials discovered nearly 200 individual classified documents, and alerted the Justice Department.On Tuesday night in Bedminster, what amounted to a red-carpet MAGA crowd mingled to a carefree playlist of Trump-favored throwbacks: “Macho Man” by the Village People, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli, “We Will Rock You” by Queen, “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. Dozens of women wore matching red-white-and-blue outfits and chanted “We love Trump!” in unison as Mr. Trump was airborne.The arraignment date happened to coincide with Mr. Trump’s first major fund-raiser, with those who had raised at least $100,000 invited to a “candlelight dinner” after his speech. The Trump campaign will be paying Mr. Trump’s private business in donor dollars for both events, a practice he has done for years.The crowd at the Bedminster event on Tuesday evening, which blended a summer garden wedding with a political victory party.Doug Mills/The New York TimesRobert Jeffress, an evangelical pastor in Dallas and an early supporter who said he would not “abandon” Mr. Trump, got a call from a staffer for the former president on Monday, asking him to attend. He said Mr. Trump’s supporters saw the charges as “political.”“I think they see this as Biden’s way of getting rid of his No. 1” opponent, he said, as music blared behind him.Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, missed votes in Washington to be there to cheer for Mr. Trump.The gathering in Bedminster and Mr. Trump’s not-quite impromptu cafe stop in Miami were reminiscent of how he handled the gravest political threat he faced in his first 2016 campaign: the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape. Back then, he immersed himself in a crowd of his supporters outside Trump Tower. Now, he did so both at his own property and in a friendly corner of a city where he will soon face trial.“You see where the people are,” Mr. Trump said after he was serenaded with a brief rendition of “Happy Birthday” at the Cuban cafe, called Versailles, where he also stopped to pose for a picture with a mixed martial arts fighter.He seemed determined to project nonchalance as much as defiance. His co-defendant and valet, Walt Nauta, continued to assist him throughout the day, even as the judge cautioned against the two men discussing the case, after traveling to court as part of Mr. Trump’s motorcade staff. Ever image-conscious, Mr. Trump had entered the courthouse in Miami out of the sightlines of cameras, and he avoided a mug shot and handcuffs for the second time.The act of indicting him, Mr. Trump said, “will go down in infamy.” And he pledged to appoint a “real special prosecutor” once he’s president again to go after President Biden and his family.“The seal is broken by what they’ve done,” he added. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Hillary Clinton’s Emails: A Nation Struggles to Unsubscribe

      by

      As Donald Trump made history by becoming the first former president to face federal charges, many Republicans tried to change the subject by renewing an eight-year-old controversy.It is the topic the nation just can’t delete from its political conversation: Hillary Clinton’s emails.In the days since Donald J. Trump became the first former U.S. president to face federal charges, Republicans across the ideological spectrum — including not only Mr. Trump and his allies, but also his critics and those who see prosecutors’ evidence as damaging — have insistently brought up the eight-year-old controversy.They have peppered speeches, social media posts and television appearances with fiery condemnations of the fact that Mrs. Clinton, a figure who continues to evoke visceral reactions among the Republican base, was never charged.The two episodes are vastly different legal matters, and Mrs. Clinton was never found to have systematically or deliberately mishandled classified information. Still, Republicans have returned to the well with striking speed, mindful that little more than the word “emails” can muddy the waters, broadcast their loyalties and rile up their base.“Lock her up,” chanted a woman at last weekend’s Georgia Republican Party state convention, where Mr. Trump sought to revive the issue of Mrs. Clinton’s email use. “Hillary wasn’t indicted,” he said in a speech at the event. “She should have been. But she wasn’t indicted.”Campaigning in North Carolina, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida bashed Mrs. Clinton’s email practices while being far more circumspect in alluding to Mr. Trump, his top rival for the Republican nomination.Even former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has made criticizing Mr. Trump a central theme of his presidential campaign, said on CNN recently that the Justice Department “is at fault for not charging Hillary Clinton,” while casting the facts laid out against Mr. Trump as “damning.”“The perception is that she was treated differently,” Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor, a 2024 presidential candidate and Trump critic, said in an interview on Monday. “Perception can become a reality very quickly.”Mr. Hutchinson, once a chief Clinton antagonist from former President Bill Clinton’s home state — he helped guide impeachment proceedings against Mr. Clinton — said he saw distinctions between Mrs. Clinton’s email episode and the charges Trump faced. But, he added, “If the voters say it’s relevant, it becomes relevant politically.”Taken together, the moment offers a vivid reminder of the ways the ghosts of the 2016 campaign continue to shape and scar American politics.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, campaigning in North Carolina, criticized Mrs. Clinton’s email practices.Kate Medley for The New York Times“There are few politicians on the Democratic side of the aisle that raise the ire of Republicans more than Hillary Clinton,” said Neil Newhouse, a veteran Republican pollster.Mrs. Clinton and her supporters, of course, have not forgotten the email saga. After Mr. Trump’s indictment, the episode to many of them serves as a symbol of a political system and a mainstream news media often focused on the superficial at the expense of the substantive.Clinton backers now make light of what they view as comparatively flimsy and unproven accusations she faced about her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. And some relish the fact that the man who crowed about “Crooked Hillary” finds himself facing a range of serious charges and the prospect of prison if he is convicted.Speaking on Monday with the hosts of the “Pod Save America” podcast at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Mrs. Clinton laughed when a host noted the tendency of some Republicans to make parallels to her emails.“When in doubt, right?” she said. “I do think it’s odd, let’s just say, to the point of being absurd, how that is their only response. You know, they refuse to read the indictment, they refuse to engage with the facts.”On Friday, Mrs. Clinton posted an edited photo of herself on Instagram wearing a black baseball hat that reads, in pink letters, “BUT HER EMAILS.” That three-word phrase has become something of a shorthand among Democrats for frustration at the grief she received for how she handled classified correspondence compared with the blowback Mr. Trump confronted for all the legal and ethical norms he busted while in office.She included a link to buy the hat for $32 on the website of her political group. (Asked about that decision, Nick Merrill, who served as a longtime spokesman for Mrs. Clinton and remains an adviser, replied, “We’re seven years past what was widely viewed as, at worst, a stupid mistake. And reminding people that a piece of merchandise exists in order to raise money to preserve our democracy is something I’m very comfortable with.”)Substantively, there are many clear differences between the episodes.A yearslong inquiry by the State Department into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server found that while it increased the risk of compromising classified information, “there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.”The indictment against Mr. Trump, by contrast, accuses him of not only mishandling sensitive national security documents found at his Mar-a-Lago club, but also willfully obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. He has been charged with 37 criminal counts related to issues including withholding national defense information and concealing possession of classified documents.Robert K. Kelner, a Republican lawyer and Trump critic who is a partner in the white-collar defense and investigations practice group at Covington & Burling, said Mr. Trump most likely would not have been indicted had he cooperated with the government’s requests to return classified documents he took from the White House.“There were lots of things to criticize about the way the Hillary Clinton investigation was handled — none of which, however, in any way to my mind, suggests that the case against Donald Trump is unfounded,” Mr. Kelner said.Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted Mr. Trump, seemed to anticipate efforts to bring up Mrs. Clinton’s emails. The indictment cited five statements Mr. Trump made during his 2016 campaign about the importance of protecting classified information.“Hillary wasn’t indicted,” Donald J. Trump said in a speech in Georgia. “She should have been. But she wasn’t indicted.”Jon Cherry for The New York TimesFor veterans of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, the Republican attempt to resurface their old boss’s email server to defend Mr. Trump’s storage of boxes of classified documents in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom and other places would be comical had their 2016 defeat not been so painful.“The best evidence that Trump’s actions are completely indefensible is the Republican Party’s non-attempt to defend it and instead rehash seven-year-old debunked attacks on somebody who is no longer even in politics,” said Josh Schwerin, a former Clinton campaign spokesman who for years after the 2016 election had a recording of Mr. Trump saying his name as his voice mail greeting.Mr. Merrill said that if there was a single word for “particularly acute hypocrisy,” it would apply to Republicans now.For Republicans, “whether you believe she was cavalier, or you believe that she should be tried for treason for the risky position she put Americans in by sending correspondence about yoga or whatever,” he said, “Donald Trump has done the most severe possible thing. It’s not a close call with him.”Trump acolytes are now delighting at the prospect of reviving one of their favorite boogeywomen.“Republicans believe there’s been an unequal application of justice,” said former Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who as chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigated myriad Clinton episodes leading up to the 2016 election. He added, “What is it that Donald Trump did that was worse than Hillary Clinton? Nothing, nothing, nothing.”Timothy Parlatore, a criminal defense lawyer who quit the Trump legal team last month, said he did not believe that Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump or President Biden — who has cooperated with a special counsel’s investigation into his own handling of classified documents after his tenure as vice president — should have been charged for their handling of classified information.Mr. Trump’s Justice Department had four years to prosecute Mrs. Clinton and did not. Mr. Parlatore said that Mr. Trump no longer saw her as a threat — and instead called for an investigation into Mr. Biden and his son.“Here is a big difference,” Mr. Parlatore said. “The Trump administration wasn’t looking at Hillary as being a presidential candidate. The Biden administration is looking at Trump in a different way.”In Boston, Rebecca Kaiser, a political consultant, has worn her “BUT HER EMAILS” hat regularly since she received it as a gift.Sophie Park for The New York TimesFor now, the most devoted Clinton supporters are following her lead and wearing “BUT HER EMAILS” hats as a badge of honor. They appeared in recent days at dog parks, soccer tournaments and Pride events as a sort of celebration of Mr. Trump’s comeuppance.In Boston, Rebecca Kaiser, a political consultant, has worn her “BUT HER EMAILS” hat regularly since she received it as a gift the day before Mr. Trump was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in Manhattan in April.Since then, at Little League and soccer games, the supermarket, the beach and during dates with her wife, Ms. Kaiser has sported the black hat with pink letters, which she said served as a conversation starter about an election that many other Democrats would rather forget.“There are definitely people who notice the hat and very quickly avert their eyes,” Ms. Kaiser said. “There are other people who look at the hat and just roll their eyes. And honestly, I think there are a good amount of people who have no idea what it’s referencing.”Anjali Huynh More

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis Backhandedly Defends Trump After Indictment

      by

      Visitors from a foreign planet might think Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida had been delivered a tremendous gift this week when his main presidential rival was charged with mishandling the country’s national security secrets.But as Mr. DeSantis’s latest speech showed, this is a turn of events he will need to beware.In an address to Republicans in North Carolina on Friday night, his first public remarks since the unsealing of federal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. DeSantis trod carefully and danced quickly past the subject.Previewing how he might criticize the Justice Department’s case without letting Mr. Trump entirely off the hook, he offered a somewhat backhanded defense of the now twice-indicted former president — whose loyal followers Mr. DeSantis is seeking to avoid angering — by drawing on his own experiences as a Navy lawyer.Seeming to muse aloud, Mr. DeSantis asked what the Navy would have done to him had he taken classified documents while in military service. “I would have been court-martialed in a New York minute,” he said, in a riff on Mr. Trump’s hometown.While Mr. DeSantis made his remark in reference to the fact that Hillary Clinton did not face charges over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, his comments could just as easily have applied to Mr. Trump. And they suggested that he believed both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton should have faced charges — or neither.“Is there a different standard for a Democrat secretary of state versus a former Republican president?” he asked. “I think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let’s enforce it on everybody and make sure we all know the rules.”(A yearslong inquiry by the State Department found that Mrs. Clinton had not deliberately or systemically mishandled classified information.)The nature of Mr. Trump’s federal indictment, which emerged in full view on Friday, left Mr. DeSantis and several other Republican presidential contenders ever more wobbly on the tightrope they are walking, trying to defend a rival accused of cavalierly and illegally keeping sensitive documents about U.S. nuclear programs and the country’s vulnerabilities to military attack.Many of these candidates now find themselves in the difficult position of rallying around Mr. Trump even as they seek to differentiate themselves from his legacy while he continues to dominate them in the polls.“This is not how justice should be pursued in our country,” Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador, said on Twitter. “The American people are exhausted by the prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics.”Such caution struck a sharp contrast with the two Republican candidates most willing to criticize Mr. Trump.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey called the indictment “devastating,” telling CNN that “the facts that are laid out here are damning.” And in an interview with The New York Times, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas pushed back against claims that Mr. Trump was being treated unfairly and reiterated his belief that he should drop out of the race.“To pejoratively say this is the result of a political prosecution is not in service to our justice system,” Mr. Hutchinson said, adding, “It would be doing a disservice to the country if we did not treat this case seriously.”Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the investigation, urged the public on Friday to understand the “scope and gravity” of the charges.Mr. Trump is expected to appear in Federal District Court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon to face charges including willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice. On his Truth Social website, the former president called Mr. Smith “deranged.”Some voters who attended Mr. DeSantis’s speech in Greensboro, N.C., suggested they were growing weary of the controversy surrounding Mr. Trump, even as they expressed a belief that the charges were politically motivated. (Mr. Trump also faces charges in state court in New York for his alleged role in paying hush money to a porn star.)“Even if he gets elected again, they’re never going to leave him alone. So what’s the point?” said Mary Noble, 70, who voted twice for Mr. Trump but has not made up her mind in the 2024 primary. “He’ll never be effective. That’s my fear.”Tom Wassel, who sells air pollution control equipment and also supported Mr. Trump in both previous elections, did not mind that Mr. DeSantis had touched on the indictment only briefly, and not very forcefully.“I want him to talk about what he’s going to run on,” Mr. Wassel, 70, said.Beyond Mr. Christie and Mr. Hutchinson, Republicans running for president were largely supportive of Mr. Trump, with some arguing that the prosecution amounted to an extraordinary and unfair political vendetta and one going so far as to bluntly promise to pardon him.Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who has positioned himself to secure the backing of Mr. Trump’s supporters if the former president’s legal problems derail his political comeback, said, “I commit to pardon Trump promptly on Jan. 20, 2025.”In a radio interview on Friday before the indictment was unsealed, former Vice President Mike Pence seemed to contrast Mr. Trump’s conduct with his own diligent return of classified documents to the National Archives. But he added that he was “deeply troubled to see this indictment move forward” and took a swipe at what he called “years of politicization” of the Justice Department.Meanwhile, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the Republican nominee for president in 2012 and a leading critic of Mr. Trump, was one of the few G.O.P. officeholders to condemn him, saying the former president had “brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents, but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so.”Jonathan Weisman More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      The Trump Indictment: A Changed Landscape

      by

      More from our inbox:Our Failure to Support New Parents and BabiesThe indictment followed criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump in a hush-money case brought by local prosecutors in New York.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Is Indicted Over Classified Files” (front page, June 9):The indictment of Donald Trump heralds a new chapter in American history. His trial could come sometime next year during the Republican primary season. He will continue to tell his followers that he has done nothing wrong and that this is all part of a vendetta by the Washington elite.His followers will continue to support him. If he is found guilty in any of his trials, he will appeal. If he is nominated, the appeals process will play out during the election campaign. He could be elected and then have a guilty verdict upheld as he is about to be sworn into office.Mr. Trump and the special counsel Jack Smith serve as the protagonists in the first act of a Shakespearean tragedy. The full effects on America of Mr. Smith’s essential action will not be known until the final act.Sidney WeissmanHighland Park, Ill.To the Editor:Is no one above the law? We are about to find out. The stakes couldn’t be higher if the country hopes to remain a legitimate democracy.Tom McGrawGrand Rapids, Mich.To the Editor:The indictment of Donald Trump on federal criminal charges might improve his odds of receiving the Republican nomination, but it almost certainly means that if nominated, he would lose the general election.It may increase the sympathy and anger of millions of his hard-core supporters. They will give him even more money to run and turn out in even greater numbers in the primaries, but it will not persuade many, if any, supporters of President Biden to vote against him in November 2024.This is not yet a banana republic. The greater number of Americans who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 will continue to believe that this and future indictments are legitimate.Even if Mr. Trump manages to beat all the charges against him, he has been further disgraced by all these legal battles. And the effect of the indictments after the lessons of the Jan. 6 hearings will bring new voters, particularly first-time voters, to Mr. Biden.If he remains healthy, President Biden wins again.Allen SmithSalisbury, Md.To the Editor:Journalists need to get to the meat of the Republicans’ support of Donald Trump’s behavior in the classified documents case and ask them the following questions:Are you saying you do not trust the Florida grand jury, made up of ordinary citizens from a state that twice voted for Mr. Trump? The prosecutor presents the facts, but the grand jurors vote on whether to indict. Do you really think all of them are on an anti-Trump witch hunt?Why are you making judgments about this case when you don’t know the charges or the facts? It sounds as if you are advocating for Mr. Trump to be able to break the law at will with no consequences; do you deny that?Stop allowing Republican politicians to hide behind specious arguments bereft of facts or even common sense. They are spouting anti-democratic nonsense, and the press should be exposing them for what they are.Jean PhillipsFlorence, Ore.To the Editor:In all the discussions, among all the various talking heads, about the various aspects of this new criminal indictment, one significant factor has been overlooked.At no time, during any judicial proceedings, will Donald Trump ever take the witness stand. It will never happen.Stuart AltshulerNew YorkTo the Editor:It is vital that Donald Trump’s trial be scheduled to start no later than four months after his arraignment, so that the trial can be finished well before the Iowa caucuses. This can be done by actions of the judge assigned to the case immediately after the arraignment, setting strict time limits for all pretrial matters.Both parties have experienced attorneys who can promptly complete pretrial matters, including discovery and pretrial motions, within that four-month period so that the trial can end well before the voters have to make their decisions.Robert LernerMilwaukeeThe writer is a retired lawyer who tried many cases in federal courts as a prosecutor or as a defense attorney.To the Editor:Jack Smith, all I can say is thank you. Thank you for believing in our country. Thank you for trying to uphold our democracy. Thank you for your courage.I have tears in my eyes. You have restored my hope. Grateful. Stay well.Dody Osborne CoxGuilford, Conn.Our Failure to Support New Parents and Babies Shuran Huang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Risk to Mothers Lasts a Full Year After Childbirth” (front page, May 28) and “A 3-Month-Old Baby Was Found Dead Near a Bronx Expressway” (nytimes.com, May 29):As a midwife working with pregnant people and new parents, I found these articles — about increasing rates of maternal mortality from hypertension, mental illness and other causes and about parents charged with murder or reckless endangerment — heartbreaking.This represents the total failure of our society to support pregnant people and new parents. After receiving only rudimentary maternity services with limited access to care, new parents are turned out of the medical system without proper follow-up and support. Our health care system has not responded to the increasing challenges of parenting in the modern world, leaving parents and children to face preventable dangers.Patient-centered care in pregnancy and improved postpartum services could prevent the suffering and deaths through early identification of risks and swift intervention. Access to care is far too limited.There has been enough hand-wringing about our horrible statistics. We need immediate investment in maternity services, expanded access to obstetric and midwifery care, mental health services, postpartum care and support for new parents.How many more deaths will it take for us to invest in the well-being and safety of our parents and children?Laura WeilSan FranciscoThe writer is an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.To the Editor:Our nation’s failure to properly care for expectant and new mothers and their babies speaks to a larger problem: Our health care system is siloed and focused on delivering urgent services. We treat pregnancy as an event, focused on a safe delivery and a healthy baby and mother, and our systems respond to problems only when they arise.There is a pressing need to address increasing maternal and infant morbidity and mortality — and the many other health issues across the country that are rapidly getting worse — by considering the entirety of factors that make up a person’s health and well-being. We need to spend more time upstream, creating the vital conditions that are key to good health and well-being, like a healthy environment, humane housing, meaningful work and sufficient wealth.If we increase our investments in order to create the conditions people need to thrive, we can build the long-lasting change that is needed to prevent many serious health problems. This is much harder than treating a single person presenting in the emergency room, but it is a much smarter investment for our long-term health and well-being.Alan LieberMorristown, N.J.The writer is chief operating officer and chief health care strategist for the Rippel Foundation, which is working to rethink systems that have an impact on health and well-being. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      How Jack Smith Can Succeed in His Case Against Trump

      by

      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