Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Judge Rejects Trump Motion to Strike Jan. 6 Mentions From Federal Election Case

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      The ruling was a step toward allowing prosecutors to introduce evidence at trial that members of the mob that stormed the Capitol believed they were acting at Donald Trump’s instruction.The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election rejected on Friday a request by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to remove language from his indictment describing the role he played in the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The ruling by the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, was an initial step toward allowing prosecutors in the case to introduce evidence at trial that members of the mob that stormed the Capitol that day believed they were acting at Mr. Trump’s instruction.Last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Chutkan to strike any mention of the riot at the Capitol from the 45-page indictment filed against him this summer in Federal District Court in Washington. The lawyers argued that since none of the four charges in the case explicitly accused Mr. Trump of inciting the violence that day, any reference to the mob attack would be prejudicial and irrelevant.Prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, shot back that even if they had not filed formal incitement charges, the riot would be instrumental in their efforts to prove one of their central allegations: that Mr. Trump had plotted to obstruct the certification of the election that was taking place at a proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6.In court papers to Judge Chutkan, prosecutors called the Jan. 6 attack “the culmination” of Mr. Trump’s “criminal conspiracies” to overturn the election. They also suggested that they were poised to introduce video evidence of the riot and call witnesses at trial who could testify that they attacked police and stormed the Capitol after hearing Mr. Trump exhort them to “fight” in a speech he gave before the violence broke out.Mr. Trump’s lawyers have suggested that they will try in a future motion to keep Mr. Smith’s team from introducing evidence like that at the trial. If the lawyers end up taking that route, Judge Chutkan will have to make another ruling about whether the evidence is relevant and not prejudicial.Her decision to keep the references to the riot in the indictment came on the same day that a group of news organizations reiterated a request to televise the trial.Lawyers for the news organizations said Mr. Trump had sought to challenge the “very legitimacy” of the case, and they argued that a live broadcast was needed so people could view the trial firsthand.“Of all trials conducted throughout American history, this one needs the public trust that only a televised proceeding can foster,” lawyers for the organizations wrote.The nine-page brief by the media outlets — The New York Times, among them — was the last round of court papers expected to be filed to Judge Chutkan before she rules on whether to allow cameras at the trial, which is scheduled to begin in March.Lawyers for Mr. Trump, in a combative and misleading filing last week, compared the election interference case to “a trial in an authoritarian regime.” They told Judge Chutkan that it should be televised so that the public did not have to “rely on biased, secondhand accounts coming from the Biden administration and its media allies.”Within days, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel fired back that broadcasting the proceeding would not only violate longstanding federal rules of criminal procedure, but would also allow Mr. Trump, a former reality television star, to turn the trial into “a media event” with a “carnival atmosphere.”Lawyers for the media coalition said in their filing on Friday that it was “naïve to think that Trump’s trial will be anything other than a ‘media event.’”But the lawyers said that if the proceeding were broadcast live — in a “dignified, carefully managed” manner — it would permit the public to “see this trial firsthand” after Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked the government’s case as an act of pure political persecution.“The media coalition believes that the more people who see the trial in real time, the stronger the case for public acceptance of the result,” the lawyers wrote.The judge who is overseeing Mr. Trump’s trial in Fulton County, Ga., on local charges of tampering with that state’s election has already televised several key hearings and has vowed to broadcast the trial itself, which could take place as early as next summer. (Prosecutors in Georgia filed a motion seeking an Aug. 5 start date on Friday, though the presiding judge will ultimately set the trial date.)But the federal courts have stricter rules about cameras in the courtroom, and Judge Chutkan would have to set them aside to allow her trial to be broadcast live. More

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      Prosecutors Assail Trump’s Bid to Have Federal Election Case Dismissed

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      Prosecutors said that Mr. Trump’s barrage of motions to have the case tossed out were full of “distortions and misrepresentations.”Federal prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to reject a barrage of motions filed last month by former President Donald J. Trump that sought to toss out the indictment charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said his claims were full of “distortions and misrepresentations.”In a 79-page court filing, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, went one by one through Mr. Trump’s multiple motions to dismiss the case and accused him and his lawyers of essentially trying to flip the script of the four-count indictment filed against him in August.“The defendant attempts to rewrite the indictment, claiming that it charges him with wholly innocuous, perhaps even admirable conduct, — sharing his opinions about election fraud and seeking election integrity,” James I. Pearce, one of the prosecutors, wrote, “when in fact it clearly describes the defendant’s fraudulent use of knowingly false statements as weapons in furtherance of his criminal plans.”When Mr. Trump first filed his motions to dismiss the case, they represented a breathtaking effort to reframe the various steps he took to remain in power after losing the election as something other than crimes.For example, Mr. Trump sought to portray his repeated efforts to use false claims that the election had been stolen as “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment. He similarly tried to recast his lies about the election as “opinions” that he tried to use to build support for his wide-ranging efforts to overturn the results of the race.But Mr. Pearce shot back on Monday for the Justice Department, saying that the First Amendment did not protect “criminal conduct” like using lies in a plot to defeat the will of the voters. He also wrote that Mr. Trump’s efforts to recast the meaning of the special counsel’s indictment in his own favor were “based on an inaccurate and self-serving characterization of the charges.”In a separate motion, Thomas P. Windom, another prosecutor on the case, rejected Mr. Trump’s arguments that the charges should be dismissed because they are part of a “selective and vindictive prosecution.”As part of their flurry of filings last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to paint the election interference case as “a retaliatory response” by President Biden to go after Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.The lawyers made those accusations even though the indictment had been brought by Mr. Smith, an independent special counsel, and after an extensive grand jury investigation.Mr. Windom responded to the claims by noting they were “spurious” and “contrived from two newspaper articles citing anonymous sources.” Appearing to get his back up, he also mounted an angry defense of his colleagues on Mr. Smith’s team.“The special counsel and career prosecutors in the special counsel’s office collectively have served in the Department of Justice for decades,” Mr. Windom wrote. “They have sworn oaths to support and defend the Constitution, and they have faithfully executed their prosecutorial duties in this case.”As part of his selective prosecution claims, Mr. Trump had argued that even though he was not the first candidate in U.S. history to have created alternate slates of electors to the Electoral College in an effort to win an election, he was the only one to have suffered criminal charges for having done so.Mr. Windom acknowledged that alternate slates had indeed been sparingly used going back to the time of Thomas Jefferson. But he maintained that “none of the historical examples the defendant points to involved deceitful and corrupt efforts” to “block the certification of the legitimate results of a presidential election.”In yet a third filing, prosecutors rebuffed Mr. Trump’s attempt to strike from the indictment any mention of the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. As part of their motions to dismiss, his lawyers had asked Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to remove all references to the Capitol attack from the case given that none of the charges explicitly accuses Mr. Trump of inciting the mob of his supporters that stormed the building.But writing for the government, Molly Gaston, a prosecutor in Mr. Smith’s office, asserted that Mr. Trump was “responsible for the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6” despite the lack of an incitement charge and that evidence about the attack was instrumental to the government’s case.“That day was the culmination of the defendant’s criminal conspiracies to overturn the legitimate results of the presidential election,” Ms. Gaston wrote.The series of filings on Monday was the second time Mr. Smith’s office has rebutted Mr. Trump’s attempts to have the election case thrown out before it goes to trial. Last month, they assailed his initial motion to dismiss, rejecting sweeping claims that he enjoys “absolute immunity” from prosecution because the indictment arose from actions he took while in the White House.Last week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Chutkan to put the case on hold entirely as she considered the immunity claims — another example of the former president’s long-running efforts to delay the proceeding for as long as possible.On Monday, Ms. Gaston asked Judge Chutkan to deny the request to pause the case.“The defendant has an established record of attempting to disrupt and delay the court’s carefully considered trial date and pretrial schedule,” she wrote. “Now the defendant has timed his motion to stay these proceedings for maximum disruptive effect.” More

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      Trump 14th Amendment Disqualification Trial: What to Know About the Colorado Case

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      The lawsuit in Denver is one of several across the country arguing that former President Donald J. Trump is ineligible to hold office again.The continued existence of former President Donald J. Trump’s 2024 campaign is being litigated this week in an unassuming courtroom in Colorado.The trial stems from a lawsuit brought by voters in the state who argue that Mr. Trump is ineligible to hold office under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution because of his actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. And the Colorado disqualification case isn’t isolated. Oral arguments stemming from a similar suit, in Minnesota, were held on Thursday.Here is a look at the Colorado case and beyond.What is the background on the Colorado lawsuit?It was filed in September in a state district court in Denver by six Colorado voters — four Republicans and two independents — who are suing with the help of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.These voters argue that Mr. Trump’s presence on the Republican primary ballot next year would harm them by siphoning support from their preferred candidates and, if he won the nomination, by depriving them of the ability “to vote for a qualified candidate in the general election.”They are demanding that the Colorado secretary of state not print Mr. Trump’s name on the ballot, and are asking the court to rule that Mr. Trump is disqualified in order to end any “uncertainty.”What is the 14th Amendment, and what does it say?The Colorado case specifically concerns Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says:No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.The central questions are whether the 14th Amendment applies to the presidency; whether Mr. Trump’s behavior before and on Jan. 6 constitutes “engaging in insurrection or rebellion against” the Constitution; and whether election officials or the courts can deem a person ineligible under Section 3 without specific action by Congress identifying that person.Constitutional experts have emphasized in interviews with The New York Times that the answers to these questions are not simple or self-evident.In public writings, some scholars have argued that Mr. Trump is ineligible. In an academic article, the conservative law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen concluded: “It is unquestionably fair to say that Trump ‘engaged in’ the Jan. 6 insurrection through both his actions and his inaction.” Others have argued the opposite, with the law professors Josh Blackman and Seth Barrett Tillman saying in a recent draft paper that they see “no sound basis” for Mr. Baude’s and Mr. Paulsen’s conclusions.What is the plaintiffs’ side saying?From Monday through Wednesday, lawyers for the plaintiffs — the six Colorado voters — called seven witnesses:Daniel Hodges, a Washington, D.C., police officer, and Winston Pingeon, a Capitol Police officer, who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6. They testified that rioters had come equipped with tactical gear and had made it clear that they believed themselves to be acting on Mr. Trump’s behalf. On cross-examination, lawyers for Mr. Trump sought to distance him from the rioters, noting that the officers could not know that any individual rioter had heard his speech.Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, who said lawmakers had read Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts during the attack and saw them as connected “to our own safety in the chamber and also the integrity of the proceedings.” On cross-examination, lawyers for Mr. Trump quoted Mr. Swalwell’s own Twitter post urging Democrats to “fight” against abortion restrictions and asked if that was a call for violence; Mr. Swalwell said no.William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University and an expert on presidential authority in national security. He testified that Mr. Trump could have deployed National Guard troops without a request or permission from local officials.Peter Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University and an expert on political extremism. He testified that the far right used “doublespeak” — language that insiders understood to be calling for violence but that maintained plausible deniability. For years, he said, Mr. Trump built credibility with members of groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, such that they saw him as an ally speaking to them in that way.Gerard Magliocca, a law professor at Indiana University and an expert on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. He said that when the amendment was ratified, “insurrection” was understood to refer to “any public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the execution of the law,” and “engaged” meant “any voluntary act in furtherance of an insurrection, including words of incitement.”Hilary Rudy, a deputy elections director in the Colorado secretary of state’s office. She testified that the secretary of state had a legal obligation to grant ballot access only to qualified candidates, that courts could play a legitimate role in determining who was qualified, and that the office would abide by whatever the court decided.The plaintiffs’ lawyers plan to call one additional witness Friday afternoon.What is Trump’s side saying?As of Thursday, lawyers for Mr. Trump had called six witnesses:Kashyap Patel, a former chief of staff at the Defense Department. He testified that Mr. Trump had pre-emptively authorized the deployment of 10,000 to 20,000 National Guard troops to keep the peace on Jan. 6, and that they were absent because the mayor of Washington had not requested them. Under cross-examination, Mr. Patel said he did not know of any document showing Mr. Trump’s authorization.Katrina Pierson, a former spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, who described internal disagreements over who should speak at Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 rally. She testified that Mr. Trump nixed most of the planned speakers, including the most incendiary ones. She also said he had expressed a desire for 10,000 National Guard troops.Amy Kremer, an organizer of the Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse, called the rally attendees “freedom-loving citizens” and “happy warriors,” and said she had seen no indication of violence or violent intent while Mr. Trump was speaking. Under cross-examination, she acknowledged that she had been inside the area that required magnetometer scans, and that she would not have seen anything that happened outside that area.Thomas Van Flein, general counsel and chief of staff to Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona. He testified that the rally crowd was peaceful, but acknowledged that he had left before Mr. Trump spoke.Tom Bjorklund, who is the treasurer of the Colorado Republican Party but testified as a private citizen, attended Mr. Trump’s speech and then went to the Capitol, where he witnessed the riot but did not enter the building himself. He said in the first part of his testimony that he had not seen any violence from Trump supporters. Later, he said he had watched people break windows, but advanced the conspiracy theory that it was a false-flag operation by “antifa.” He also said he had understood Mr. Trump’s “instructions” to be for peaceful protest.Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, testified that he believed the Jan. 6 committee’s report — which the plaintiffs have frequently cited as evidence in their case — was one-sided in its assessment of Mr. Trump’s “culpability” in the attack.Mr. Trump’s team plans to call one more witness Friday morning: an expert who will offer a different interpretation from Professor Magliocca’s of the wording in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.What has the judge said?Before the trial began on Monday, Mr. Trump’s team made several motions to dismiss the case. Judge Sarah B. Wallace, who is overseeing the trial, rejected them.On Wednesday, after the plaintiffs had finished calling most of their witnesses, Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested a “directed verdict” — a conclusion, before the defense had called any witnesses, that no legally sufficient basis existed for the plaintiffs to prevail. They argued that even if the plaintiffs’ claims were accepted as fact, that would not legally justify disqualifying Mr. Trump. His words, they said, did not meet the Supreme Court’s standard for incitement and therefore were protected by the First Amendment.Judge Wallace denied the request, but emphasized that her denial should not be construed as a ruling on the legal questions involved — including whether Mr. Trump had “engaged in insurrection” as the 14th Amendment meant that phrase, and whether the First Amendment limited how the 14th could be applied.Rather, she said she was denying the request because in order to grant it, “I would have to decide many legal issues that I am simply not prepared to decide today.”What happens next?It is not clear how long it will take for Judge Wallace to rule after the trial ends on Friday.However, the trial is being conducted under an expedited process with the goal of having a final resolution before a January deadline for the Colorado secretary of state to certify who is on the primary ballot — and everyone involved understands that her initial ruling needs to come with enough time for appeals to be resolved, too.The United States Supreme Court is expected to have the final say.Chris Cameron More

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      Man Who Stormed Capitol as Princeton Student Gets 2-Month Prison Term

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      Larry Giberson was a sophomore studying political science when he joined the riot in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.A 22-year-old New Jersey man was sentenced to two months in prison on Wednesday for taking part, as a Princeton University student, in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.The man, Larry F. Giberson Jr., pleaded guilty in July to civil disorder, a felony, after federal prosecutors charged him with that crime and several misdemeanors, according to court records. At the riot, according to a federal agent’s affidavit, Mr. Giberson cheered on others as they used weapons and pepper spray to attack the police officers guarding a tunnel and tried, unsuccessfully, to start a chant of “Drag them out!” among other actions.The misdemeanors were dismissed as part of Mr. Giberson’s plea agreement, court records show. He was also sentenced to six months of supervised release under home detention.Larry Gibersonvia FBIBefore being sentenced, Mr. Giberson, of Manahawkin, N.J., expressed remorse in court for what he called his “careless and thoughtless actions,” The Associated Press reported.“I don’t believe my defining moment was there on the Lower West Terrace,” he said, referring to the section of the Capitol he had entered, according to The A.P. “Instead, I believe my defining moment is now, standing before you.”He was sentenced by Judge Carl J. Nichols of U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., who was appointed to the federal bench by Mr. Trump. Judge Nichols called Mr. Giberson’s actions “reprehensible” and said the two-month sentence was “something of a break,” The A.P. reported.“I do believe that his expressions of remorse, generally and then again today, are candid and truthful,” the judge said. “That’s important to me.”The maximum sentence for civil disorder is five years. Prosecutors had argued in court filings for a prison term of 11 months to be followed by three years of supervised release. The office declined to comment on Mr. Giberson’s sentence.Charles Burnham, Mr. Giberson’s lawyer, had sought a sentence that did not include prison time or supervised release. Mr. Burnham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mr. Giberson graduated from Princeton in May, Mr. Burnham wrote in a court filing. The Daily Princetonian, a student newspaper, reported in July that Mr. Giberson had earned a bachelor’s degree in politics and certificates in values and public life and French.It is unclear whether Princeton took any action against Mr. Giberson as a result of his arrest. A university spokesman did not respond to an email inquiry on Wednesday.Mr. Giberson is one of more than 1,100 people who have been charged with crimes stemming from the Capitol riot amid an investigation that is continuing, according to the Justice Department. More than 400 have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement authorities.He was among a group of rioters who pushed against a phalanx of officers defending the Capitol at a tunnel entrance on the Lower West Terrace, according to an affidavit filed by a federal agent. With Mr. Giberson at the front of the crowd, one officer was briefly crushed between the rioters and the tunnel doors, the affidavit says.Mr. Giberson had traveled to Washington with his mother for the “Stop the Steal” rally that day after seeing Mr. Trump’s social media post urging his supporters to descend on the city to protest Congress’s imminent certification of President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election, court records show.Mr. Burnham, Mr. Giberson’s lawyer, wrote in a court filing that his client had not been motivated to come to Washington because of “membership in radical groups” or a belief in “online conspiracy theories.”Rather, Mr. Burnham wrote, Mr. Giberson had “studied the issues surrounding the 2020 election and concluded that state actors had interfered with the electoral process in unconstitutional ways.”Mr. Giberson and his mother became separated after making their way to the Capitol from the rally, court records show. After entering the tunnel and joining the push against the officers, he waved other rioters in and joined a second round of shoving against the officers, the federal agent’s affidavit says.Mr. Giberson could be seen in publicly available video footage wearing a blue “Make America Great Again” cap on his head and a Trump flag around his neck and climbing toward the tunnel entrance, the affidavit says.Federal investigators matched a photo of Mr. Giberson from the day of the riot with images posted on social media and the Princeton website, as well as with photos from his high school, the affidavit says. He was arrested in March.There is no record of his mother’s having been charged in connection with the Capitol riot. More

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      Mike Pence Drops Out of 2024 Presidential Race

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      The former vice president said he would end his bid in a surprise announcement at a gathering of Jewish Republican donors. “It’s become clear to me that this is not my time,” he said.Former Vice President Mike Pence, who spent four years dutifully serving President Donald J. Trump but refused to carry out Mr. Trump’s demand that he block the 2020 election results, ended his presidential bid on Saturday, with a final appeal for his party to return to conservative principles and resist the “siren song of populism.”The surprise announcement came at the end of his remarks before a crowd of Jewish Republican donors in Las Vegas, and was met with gasps. Mr. Pence had received a standing ovation, opening his speech with a full-throated endorsement of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.Then he pivoted to a more “personal note,” saying that after much prayer and deliberation, he had decided to drop out of the race.“It’s become clear to me that this is not my time,” he told the crowd of 1,500, promising to “never leave the fight for conservative values.”Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations and a crowd favorite, opened her address to the group with praise for Mr. Pence, adding several lines to her prepared remarks.“He’s been a good man of faith. He’s been a good man of service. He has fought for America and he has fought for Israel,” she said. “We all owe him a debt of gratitude.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please More

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      Could Mike Johnson, the New House Speaker, Undermine the 2024 Election?

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      The Louisiana Republican played a pivotal role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But his elevation to the top post in the House does not give him special powers in the certification process if he tries again.Ever since Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana assumed office on Wednesday, a question has been on Democrats’ minds: Could the elevation of Mr. Johnson, who worked in league with former President Donald J. Trump in trying to undermine the 2020 election results, allow him to succeed in 2024 where he failed the last time?The speakership, which is second in line to the presidency, comes with broad powers over the functioning of the House. And Mr. Johnson, a constitutional lawyer whose stature in his party has grown with his election to the top post, could try again to interfere. But there are several reasons that Mr. Johnson’s new job alone would not allow him special powers to overturn the will of the voters unilaterally.Here’s how it works.The vice president, not the speaker, presides over Congress’s counting of electoral votes.When Mr. Trump was attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, his pressure campaign focused on his own vice president, Mike Pence, who was presiding over the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, to count the electoral votes. Mr. Trump encouraged Mr. Pence to throw out legitimate votes in favor of false slates of electors, a move Mr. Pence said was unconstitutional.Vice President Kamala Harris is in line to preside over the joint session on Jan. 6, 2025, when Congress will meet in a joint session to certify the results of the 2024 election. The speaker has no special role in the proceedings.Johnson may not even be speaker by then.Mr. Johnson, 51, just became speaker, but his term will expire before Jan. 6, 2025.Should Democrats prevail in the House in the 2024 election — an outcome many analysts see as a strong possibility — a Democrat would take over control of the chamber, likely the current minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York.Should Republicans hold the House, Mr. Johnson would need to win another leadership election among his party. Given how raucous the Republican conference has been in recent months, that’s not a sure thing either.The Electoral Count Reform Act has tightened safeguards.In the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s attempt to cling to power, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, passed a reform bill to try to ensure no similar plan could be carried out in the future.The new law makes clear that a vice president’s role in counting electoral votes is “solely ministerial,” with no power to reject electors. It also requires that one-fifth of both the House and Senate sign on before any objection to state’s electors can be heard. The law also limits the grounds for objections.Republicans who defend Mr. Johnson’s actions related to the 2020 election note that Democrats have objected to certain states’ electors during previous congressional certifications. But they have never done so as part of an organized campaign directed by their candidate, with false slates of electors being put forward and a violent mob assembled at the Capitol demanding that the election results be reversed. Mr. Johnson could still attempt to undermine the election.While Mr. Johnson cannot unilaterally overturn the 2024 election, he could attempt other extreme steps to try to interfere with certification.For example, Mr. Johnson could use the power of his bully pulpit and his status as a party leader to organize Republican lawsuits or pressure state boards of elections to throw out legitimate votes. He could attempt to refuse to seat new Democratic members of the House.“His main power would be as party leader,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, who served on the House Jan. 6 committee.Mr. Johnson also could demand that Republicans in Congress vote as a bloc on Jan. 6, 2025, against certifying election results. But he would need 20 percent of both chambers to agree to object, and then a majority of both chambers to vote to sustain the objection.Should that occur, the presidential election could fall to a contingent election of the House, in which state delegations would decide who became the next president. Such a scenario — in which the House selected a president who had lost at the ballot box — would almost certainly end up in the courts.Those who have studied the reforms to the Electoral Count Act see it as highly unlikely that Mr. Johnson could lead enough Republicans in both chambers against the will of the voters.“The election deniers are far from having 51 votes in the United States Senate, and that’s not going to change for many, many years,” said Norman L. Eisen, who was a special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee and testified on the need for reform legislation. “Fortunately, the Electoral Count Reform Act has closed off many of the avenues that would be available to mischief makers. But given his history, we will have to be on our guard.” More

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      Mike Johnson’s Speakership Reveals GOP’s Trump Loyalty Test

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      The developments on Capitol Hill highlighted the extent to which one of the greatest sins inside the Republican Party is to have certified Joseph R. Biden’s victory.Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana had just survived a closed-door vote to end a tumultuous period of paralysis without a House speaker on Tuesday night and was celebrating with smiling and exhausted Republican colleagues.“Democracy is messy sometimes,” he said, “but it is our system.”But moments later, Mr. Johnson was confronted at a news conference about his own past role in American democracy, when he worked in alliance with former President Donald J. Trump to block the certification of the 2020 election.Boos rang out at the reporter’s inquiry. Mr. Johnson closed his eyes and shook his head. “Shut up! Shut up!” one congresswoman shouted. “Next question,” Mr. Johnson said. Only hours earlier, the speakership bid of another candidate, Tom Emmer, the majority whip, had been felled amid a lobbying blitz from Mr. Trump himself. Among Mr. Emmer’s apparent apostasies: certifying President Biden’s election. His tenure as speaker designate lasted only four hours.Then, on Wednesday, when Representative Pete Aguilar, a Democrat, chastised Mr. Johnson for leading efforts to reject the Electoral College votes on the House floor in 2020, one Republican lawmaker shouted back, “Damn right!”The back-to-back-to-back developments on Capitol Hill underscored not only the extent to which loyalty to Mr. Trump has become a prerequisite to taking power in today’s Republican Party, but also how — two and half years after a riot that left the Capitol covered with blood and broken glass — the greater sin inside the G.O.P. is to have stood with the voters that day and certified the election of Joseph R. Biden.“Bottom line is the Trump wing of the House is dominant and has been dominant for some time,” said former Representative Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania. Mr. Dent called Mr. Johnson “affable” and “bright” but said the political takeaway was clear: “A member of the Trump populist wing is now speaker.”Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump ally who filed the motion that took down former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, beamed, “This is what victory feels like,” celebrating Mr. Johnson’s rise on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on Wednesday before the official floor vote. Mr. Gaetz called him “MAGA Mike Johnson” — the same moniker that the Biden campaign used hours later.At a New York courthouse, where he and his company are on trial for financial fraud, Mr. Trump himself praised Mr. Johnson. “I think he’s going to be a fantastic speaker,” the former president said Wednesday.The internal politics of House Republicans do not revolve solely around Mr. Trump. The former president had publicly backed Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio for speaker earlier this month, only to see him blockaded by a more moderate faction in the conference.But the end of the three-week paralysis shows that the party remains yoked to the former president’s election denialism, with Mr. Johnson’s selection by his Republican colleagues coming on the same day that one of Mr. Trump’s former lawyers tearfully pleaded guilty in a Georgia racketeering case related to Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election.“If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these postelection challenges,” said Jenna Ellis, a once-combative Trump attorney who is now cooperating with Mr. Trump’s prosecutors. Prosecutors struck deals with two other Trump figures, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, in the last week.It was a different story on Capitol Hill.With Mr. Trump dominating polls in the 2024 presidential primary — and even his top rivals staying relatively silent on his election fraud falsehoods — the party appears content to look past the fact that many of the party’s most prominent election deniers lost in key swing states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania in the 2022 midterm elections.For many Republicans, the primary victories that preceded those defeats are as politically significant. Last year, Mr. Trump sought to methodically cleanse the party of his critics, especially those who had voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6 riot. He mostly succeeded: Only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him survived.In contrast, Mr. Johnson served on Mr. Trump’s impeachment defense team. And before that he recruited House Republicans to sign onto a legal brief to object to the outcome of the 2020 election. When that failed, he had played a key role in articulating a rationale for Republican lawmakers to oppose certification of the 2020 results on the floor. His guidance did not directly echo Mr. Trump’s wild allegations and was narrower in scope, but it led to the same final vote.“We know now it’s too high of a hurdle to be directly criticized by Donald Trump” and still become speaker, said Kevin Sheridan, a veteran Republican strategist. Referring to Mr. Johnson, he added, “He seems to have found the right temperature for the porridge so far.”But Jenna Lowenstein, executive director of Informing Democracy, a nonprofit devoted to vote counting and election certification, said she was “very concerned” about Mr. Johnson’s ascent.“As a member of the House, Johnson was willing to use the powers of his office to try to obstruct a fair election and interfere with certification,” she said. “And we have to assume he would do the same with the broader powers of the speakership.”Mr. Johnson has served as vice chairman of the Republican conference and was previously the chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee. He is initially expected to be a more policy-minded leader than Mr. McCarthy, who was best known for his backslapping personality. Mr. McCarthy also objected to certifying the election and visited Mr. Trump in Mar-a-Lago only weeks after the attack on the Capitol, in a trip that was widely seen to restore some legitimacy to the former president.An evangelical Christian, Mr. Johnson has vocally opposed abortion and gay marriage. (During the roll call vote in which he was elected as speaker, Representative Angie Craig, Democrat of Minnesota, pointedly declared, “Happy wedding anniversary to my wife!” to Democratic applause.) Democrats were quick to highlight some of his hard-line stances.Elected to the House in 2016, the same year that Mr. Trump won the presidency, Mr. Johnson, a former constitutional law attorney, will have the least years of House experience of any speaker in many decades. But he is representative of the wave of House Republicans who have served in Washington only since the party was reshaped by Mr. Trump — and who are now a majority of the conference.“If you don’t have a coup on your résumé,” Charlie Sykes, the Trump-tired editor in chief of The Bulwark, wrote in a column about the speakership fight, “don’t bother to apply.” More

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      in Elections

      La retórica de Donald Trump se ha vuelto más amenazadora. Se puede hacer algo

      by

      La vida de Donald Trump ha sido una clase magistral de evasión de consecuencias.Seis de sus empresas han sido declaradas en bancarrota, pero él sigue siendo aclamado como un visionario de los negocios. Se ha casado tres veces, pero sigue siendo amado por los evangélicos. Ha pasado por dos juicios políticos, pero sigue siendo uno de los principales candidatos a la presidencia de Estados Unidos. Durante años, los críticos de Trump han creído que llegaría un momento de rendición de cuentas, a consecuencia, por ejemplo, de alguna pesquisa de Bob Woodward o una investigación Robert Mueller. Pero luego llegaba la decepción.Ahora Trump pasa por otro momento de aparente peligro al empezar a enfrentarse a sus acusadores en procedimientos judiciales, penales y civiles. Aún faltan meses para que se conozcan los veredictos de estos casos, pero él está reaccionando con la aparente confianza de que las consecuencias de sus acciones, como siempre, no lo perjudicarán. Pero es igual de importante preguntarse cómo afectará a otros la respuesta de Trump a su último aprieto, especialmente a quienes ahora son objetivo de su indignación.En las últimas semanas, los jueces del caso de fraude civil de Trump en Nueva York y de su proceso penal en Washington han emitido órdenes de silencio limitadas que le prohíben intentar intimidar a testigos y otros participantes en los juicios. (El viernes, Trump fue multado por violar una de esas órdenes). Si Trump las acata —algo que no es seguro—, las directivas no prohíben la gran variedad de amenazas y ataques que Trump ha hecho y da señales de que seguirá haciendo. El discurso actual del expresidente es una amenaza inminente para sus objetivos y quienes los rodean.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please More