Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Princeton Student Charged With Attacking Officers During Jan. 6 Riot

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      Larry Giberson was part of a mob that fought with the police and he cheered on others who used weapons and pepper spray against officers, prosecutors said.A Princeton University student was charged on Tuesday with being part of a violent mob that assaulted law enforcement officers during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, federal prosecutors said.The student, Larry F. Giberson Jr., was among a group of rioters who pushed against a phalanx of officers defending the Capitol at a tunnel entrance, according to an affidavit filed by a federal agent. With Mr. Giberson at the front of the crowd as the confrontation unfolded, one officer was briefly crushed between the rioters and the tunnel doors, the affidavit says.Mr. Giberson, 21, waved other rioters into the tunnel and joined a second round of shoving against the officers, the affidavit says. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to start a chant of “Drag them out!” and cheered on others as they used weapons and pepper spray to attack the police guarding the tunnel, the affidavit says.Mr. Giberson was charged in a criminal complaint filed in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., with civil disorder, a felony, and several misdemeanors, including engaging in physical violence in a restricted building. He was arrested in Washington and released with conditions after an initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge.A Princeton University spokesman confirmed that Mr. Giberson, of Manahawkin, N.J., was enrolled as a member of this year’s graduating class.A university website lists Mr. Giberson as a James Madison Program undergraduate fellow for the 2022-23 academic year. The program, the website says, provides “a unique opportunity” for students to “pursue, outside of the classroom, academic interests related to politics, history, law and political thought.” Mr. Giberson could not be reached for comment. A lawyer representing him did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Giberson is among about 1,000 people to be charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, and one of more than 320 to be accused of assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers as supporters of former President Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol in a bid to disrupt the certification of President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.Mr. Giberson can 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 on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace shortly after 3 p.m. the day of the riot, the affidavit says.Once inside the tunnel, prosecutors said, Mr. Giberson and others tried to force their way in with a coordinated “heave-ho” pushing effort that left one officer crushed between a door and a rioter’s shield.Officers eventually gained temporary control of the tunnel and pushed out rioters, including Mr. Giberson, prosecutors said. As the mob continued its attack, Mr. Giberson stood by and watched as one officer was dragged into the crowd, assaulted and injured, they said.Federal investigators matched a photo of Mr. Giberson from the day of the riot with images posted on Instagram and the Princeton website, as well as with photos from his high school, the affidavit says.He was subsequently interviewed at the Princeton Police Department, where he acknowledged being the person seen in videos and photos from the scene of the riot, the affidavit says.The Daily Princetonian, a student newspaper, reported on Tuesday that Mr. Giberson publicly opposed the university’s decision in June 2020 to remove President Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public policy school and one of its residential colleges because of what Princeton leaders said were Mr. Wilson’s “racist thinking and policies.”“If our university can be intimidated by the transient impulses of the mob mentality to disregard their own esteemed standards,” Mr. Giberson wrote in an essay in The Princeton Tory, “what guarantee is there that the university will stand firm against those who would seek to undermine the nation, or indeed, humanity itself?”Sheelagh McNeill contributed research. More

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      The Vice President Question: The Stakes Are High

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      More from our inbox:Mike Pence, It’s Time ‘to Do the Right Thing’What Chris Rock Gets to BeStains Left on a Rare TextFamily Values? We Need to Talk About School Shootings. Illustration by Zisiga Mukulu/The New York Times; photograph by Leigh Vogel/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Voters Should Pick the Vice President,” by Greg Craig (Opinion guest essay, March 5):Mr. Craig’s article raises a larger question. The vice-presidential nominees of the two major parties are too often chosen largely or entirely because of their perceived ability to help elect their presidential running mate, rather than an apparent ability to act as president if needed.Considering the stakes, the main or sole criterion in selecting a vice-presidential nominee should be that person’s capacity to immediately and competently step into the president’s shoes, if required.Just in the last century, Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan all labored under the specters of age, infirmity or both. This clearly demonstrates the national interest in vice-presidential nominees having the qualifications, experience, health and ability to competently represent the country as a whole.If a vice-presidential nominee is also a plausible national candidate in her or his own right, all the better, and having a nominee of such stature should benefit his or her party and the ticket.Over the last 50 years, some vice presidents, such as Spiro Agnew (crook), Dan Quayle (lightweight) and Dick Cheney (unelectable) were unqualified, and Mike Pence seems marginal. Lyndon B. Johnson, Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Al Gore and Joe Biden were clearly qualified, reflecting positively on those who chose them.The question for whoever chooses vice-presidential nominees should always be “Can this person competently lead the country?” — not “Will this person help our party get elected?”Anders I. OuromVancouver, British ColumbiaTo the Editor:I’m very grateful for “Voters Should Pick the Vice President.” Greg Craig has raised perhaps the most significant and worrying issue, however delicate, of the Biden candidacy.Given the entirely realistic concerns over President Biden’s age and chances of dying in office in a second term (and I write as an 87-year-old in decent health), the choice of a running mate shouldn’t be a reflexive decision.It should be one requiring a great deal of thought, consultation and polling about who could handle the most demanding of offices in these difficult and perilous times — and whom a wide spectrum of Democratic voters see as the most convincing possibility as their next president.Barbara QuartNew YorkTo the Editor:As our octogenarian president ponders another presidential run, he needs to consider replacing his 2020 running mate. It’s a delicate subject, sure to arouse fierce opposition within the Democratic Party (however it’s accomplished).Forget loyalty, tradition or popularity. In 2024, the top priority for selecting the second-highest elected official in the country should be proven foreign policy experience.President Biden has an age problem that he can’t control. It will be a major campaign issue that will only place greater emphasis on who would be next in line for the presidency.Continued support for Ukraine (including maintaining the broad coalition of European and NATO nations forged by President Biden) and other brewing major-power standoffs demand a vice president with longstanding, first-rate diplomatic skills.Replace Kamala Harris with Susan Rice, the longtime diplomat and policy adviser. It’s time to dispel conventional wisdom and go bold.Carl R. RameyGainesville, Fla.Mike Pence, It’s Time ‘to Do the Right Thing’ Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Asks Judge to Block Pence’s Testimony to Grand Jury” (news article, nytimes.com, March 4):There is no doubt that former Vice President Mike Pence did the right thing (and his constitutional duty) by certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden.Now is the time for Mr. Pence to do the right thing by honoring the Justice Department’s subpoena to testify about his knowledge of the events before and after Jan. 6. Mr. Pence says he will fight the subpoena, citing specious legal arguments. But why?Mr. Pence, you know what former President Donald Trump did and did not do. Tell us. It is your duty as a citizen, and it is the right thing to do.William D. ZabelNew YorkThe writer is a lawyer, the chairman of Immigrant Justice Corps and the chairman emeritus of Human Rights First.To the Editor:Re “Pence Says That History Will Judge Trump” (news article, March 13):The shortcoming of former Vice President Mike Pence’s pronouncement that “history will hold Donald Trump accountable” for the former president’s lead in fomenting the violent Capitol insurrection is obvious.History’s verdict takes a long while, and it is rarely unanimous and subject to revisionism.Mr. Trump and his minions must pay the price now, and Mr. Pence should render an unequivocal verdict to that end, instead of punting into history.Justice delayed is justice denied, especially in this case.Lawrence FreemanAlameda, Calif.What Chris Rock Gets to Be Illustration by Shoshana Schultz/The New York Times; photograph by Kirill Bichutsky, via Netflix, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Chris Rock Looks Very Small Right Now,” by Roxane Gay (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, March 11):Chris Rock’s recent Netflix special certainly deserves critique, but Ms. Gay’s article gets one thing very wrong. As the target of another man’s violence, Mr. Rock is not responsible for entertaining us with his response to that attack, nor redeeming himself with the right joke.He gets to just be angry.Catherine HodesFlorence, Mass.Stains Left on a Rare TextTo glove, or not to glove? For rare book librarians, there’s no question. The best option is (almost) always clean, dry hands.Chris Ratcliffe/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:“For Rare Book Librarians, It’s Gloves Off. Seriously” (Arts, March 11) notes that stains left on a rare book tell us something about who has used it in the past.I was once privileged to see the original Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest extant Passover Haggadahs. It dates to the 14th century.I was deeply moved to see this ancient text. But what I remember best were the wine stains on some of the pages. Clearly, long before this book had become a priceless object listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World register, someone had used it at a Seder and had, as still happens in the 21st century, spilled their wine on it.Deborah E. LipstadtWashingtonThe writer is the professor of Holocaust history, currently on leave from Emory University.Family Values? We Need to Talk About School Shootings. Illustration by The New York Times; Photographs by Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “The Party of Family Values Should Truly Value Families,” by Patrick T. Brown (Opinion guest essay, March 9):The idea of a political “parents’ party” may be a good one, but the total absence of any discussion regarding school shootings is glaring. Republicans won’t be much of a parents’ party if they can’t figure out how to deal with an issue that parents and their children think about every day.Jeff WelchLivingston, Mont. More

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      ‘History Will Hold Donald Trump Accountable’ for Jan. 6, Pence Says

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      At a Washington dinner event, Mike Pence criticized the president he served under as well as Republicans who are minimizing the Capitol riot.Former Vice President Mike Pence, delivering his strongest public rebuke yet to the president who made him his running mate, said on Saturday night “that history will hold Donald Trump accountable” for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which he called “a disgrace.”The annual Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington is usually a venue for lighthearted ribbing between political figures, government officials and the district’s media veterans, but Mr. Pence used the occasion on Saturday to dig into Mr. Trump at a moment when conservative media commentators and some Republicans in Congress have again tried to dismiss the seriousness of the Capitol riot.“Tourists don’t injure 140 police officers by sightseeing,” Mr. Pence said, according to media reports from the event, an implicit rebuke of the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and other conservatives who have used selective security camera footage to reframe the riot as a largely peaceful demonstration. Thousands of hours of that footage was released to Mr. Carlson by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California. “Tourists don’t break down doors to get to the speaker of the House or voice threats against public officials.”And Mr. Pence made his reprimand of Mr. Trump personal when he said, “President Trump was wrong; I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day. And I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”The timing of the remarks was significant. Mr. Trump and his ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, are the only two major, declared candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, but other potential challengers are edging closer. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is on a swing through early primary and caucus states, including Iowa and Nevada. Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, is on a “listening tour” in the same states. Mr. Pence is considering a run as well.But until Saturday, any rival jabs at the former president and presumed front-runner for the nomination have been implicit. Mr. Pence called him out by name, setting a new bar for other Republicans hoping to replace Mr. Trump as the party’s leader.Early this month, a group of men imprisoned for their participation in the Capitol attack released a song titled “Justice for All” — the national anthem interspersed with Mr. Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance — and House Republicans on the party’s right flank have started what they are calling an investigation into the treatment of such “political prisoners.”Mr. Pence was unsparing in his condemnation of such efforts, as well as the selective editing of thousands of hours of security footage.“The American people have a right to know what took place at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” he said. “But make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way.”He also jokingly hinted at his presidential ambitions.“I will wholeheartedly, unreservedly support the Republican nominee for president in 2024,” he said. “If it’s me.” More

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      Former N.Y.P.D. Officer Is Convicted of Taking Part in Capitol Riot

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      Sara Carpenter yelled at, pushed against and slapped the arms of police officers, all while wielding a tambourine, prosecutors said.A former New York City police officer was convicted this week of several crimes for her role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, during which, prosecutors said, she pushed against and slapped the arms of police officers, all while yelling and wielding a tambourine.A federal jury in Washington, D.C., found the retired officer, Sara Carpenter, guilty Thursday on seven felony and misdemeanor charges that included civil disorder, obstruction of official proceeding and entering or remaining in a restricted building or ground, according to court records.Ms. Carpenter, 53, is among about 1,000 people to be charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, prosecutors said. She and other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol that day in a bid to disrupt the certification of President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. The first person to be convicted, Guy Wesley Reffitt, was found guilty last March of obstructing Congress’s certification of the election results and other crimes.Security footage captured Ms. Carpenter, left, wielding a tambourine inside the Capitol. Department of JusticeMs. Carpenter was charged after security cameras captured her confronting a phalanx of officers as they guarded a hallway leading to the U.S. Senate chambers, prosecutors said. Despite having been told to leave the premises, she stayed for a half-hour, prosecutors said.At one point, prosecutors said, she could be heard yelling at the officers, “I’m an animal,” with a common vulgarity added for emphasis.When she finally left the building, prosecutors said, she was recorded on video saying: “The breach was made. It needs to calm down now. Congress needs to come out. They need to certify Trump as president. This is our house.”A lawyer for Ms. Carpenter, Michelle Gelernt, declined to comment on Friday. The New York Police Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry about Ms. Carpenter’s service as an officer. Ms. Carpenter is to be sentenced on July 14.About a day after the attack on the Capitol, the F.B.I. received an anonymous tip that Ms. Carpenter had called a relative and told that person that she had made it inside the Capitol and had been hit with tear gas, according to a criminal complaint. She was interviewed by federal officers about a week and a half later, on Jan. 18, the complaint says.Ms. Carpenter told investigators that she had left her home in New York and driven to Washington “on or about” the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, the complaint says. An E-ZPass tag attached to her vehicle confirmed that she had made the trip between 12 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Jan. 6, the complaint says.Once she got to Washington, Ms. Carpenter told investigators, she monitored Mr. Trump’s tweets to find out where to meet for the rally he had scheduled for Jan. 6 and then joined a large crowd of his supporters as it descended on the Capitol.Ms. Carpenter said that “she observed police yelling for individuals to get out, then pushing and shoving the crowd,” according to the complaint. She also told investigators that she had been trampled and pepper-sprayed.Using video that Ms. Carpenter provided and security camera footage from the building, investigators were able to track her movements through the Capitol. She also voluntarily turned over the tambourine she said she had carried inside the Capitol, the complaint says.Another former New York City police officer, Thomas Webster, was convicted last May for his role in the riot on charges that included assault. In September, Mr. Webster, who swung a metal flagpole at a Washington officer during the riot, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. More

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      Records Show Fox and G.O.P.’s Shared Quandary: Trump

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      Fox hosts and executives privately mocked the former president’s election fraud claims, even as the network amplified them in a frantic effort to appease viewers.“Do we have enough dead people for tonight?”It was a week after the 2020 elections, and Tucker Carlson — along with Fox News executives and other hosts — had watched with panic as Fox viewers, furious and disbelieving at President Donald J. Trump’s defeat, began to turn against the top-rated network. The viewers believed Mr. Trump’s claims that a widespread conspiracy of voter fraud was behind his loss. And as Mr. Carlson’s nightly 8 p.m. hour approached, the host pushed his producers to give the viewers what they wanted.He demanded examples of dead people voting in Nevada or Georgia, even offering to call the Trump campaign personally to ask for help. That night, he trumpeted the evidence, borrowed from a Trump campaign news release: Four allegedly dead Georgians had cast ballots. Within days, though, the campaign’s spoon-fed examples began to fall apart. Three of the dead Georgians were actually alive. And Mr. Carlson was forced to partly retract his allegations, while insisting to viewers that “a whole bunch of dead people did vote.”Mr. Carlson told his viewers on Nov. 11, 2020, that dead people had cast ballots.Mr. Carlson’s frantic effort to appease angry Fox viewers, revealed in texts and emails released as part of a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, underscore the central quandary faced both by Fox and the Republican Party in the wake of Mr. Trump’s defeat and still today, as the former president mounts another campaign for the White House.Like the Republican Party more broadly, Fox wants and needs the support of Trump fans, who both dominate party primaries and form the core of Fox’s viewership. And like the party, Fox has found it difficult to quit Mr. Trump even as his manic efforts to relitigate his defeat have hobbled the party in subsequent elections.Fox News has been the most trusted and watched source of information for conservative America for decades, and its frequent symbiosis with the Republican Party is well established. But the internal documents released in recent days have provided an unprecedented glimpse into network decision-making as its dual imperatives — to keep its base audience of conservatives satisfied and meet its promise to maintain journalistic standards of fairness and factuality — came into conflict as never before.No figure is more central to that conflict than Mr. Carlson. Ever since taking over Fox’s 8 p.m. hour in 2017, Mr. Carlson had maintained a carefully calibrated distance from Mr. Trump, using inflammatory segments about a border invasion and the “replacement” of native-born Americans by immigrants to appeal to Mr. Trump’s base — while minimizing how often he discussed Mr. Trump, whom he regarded as erratic and undisciplined. “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Mr. Carlson texted with staff members in early January 2021, adding, “I hate him passionately.”But in the months after the Jan. 6 attacks, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” doubled down on a pro-Trump narrative that both Mr. Carlson and his bosses knew was rooted in a lie. According to a New York Times analysis, in 2021 nearly half of Mr. Carlson’s shows — more than 100 episodes — featured segments downplaying the Capitol riot, casting the insurrectionists as innocent citizens seeking legitimate redress for election fraud, and suggesting the riot itself was a “false flag” operation orchestrated by federal law enforcement to entrap Trump supporters.His efforts to rewrite the events of Jan. 6 again took center stage this week, just as reams of emails, texts and deposition transcripts from the Dominion suit revealed that the network’s hosts and executives knew they were peddling lies to their own viewers.On his show this week, Mr. Carlson once more recast the violent attack that took place in January 2021 as a largely peaceful protest, this time using previously unreleased surveillance footage provided to his show by the new Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Mr. McCarthy, whose campaign for the speakership was backed by Mr. Trump, provided the footage after Mr. Carlson suggested on his show that releasing the tapes would help Mr. McCarthy overcome conservative resistance to his bid.On Mr. Carlson’s show on Monday, he described the Jan. 6 riot as a largely peaceful protest.On air, Mr. Carlson accused a Democratic-led congressional committee of misleading the public about what really happened. “Committee members lied about what they saw, and then hid the evidence from the public,” Mr. Carlson charged.News outlets and fact checkers found the broadcast rife with inaccuracies and false claims. Republicans in the House, among whom loyalty to Mr. Trump remains strong, defended Mr. Carlson’s segment. But Republicans in the Senate — currently controlled by Democrats, after Trump-backed candidates went down to defeat in the 2022 elections — attacked the powerful Fox host in unusually blunt terms.“It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader.In the pretrial public relations maneuvering, Fox News has accused Dominion of using its court filings to share selective and out-of-context portions of internal text messages to “smear Fox News,” part of a broader effort to “silence the press” through a winning verdict. In a statement, a network spokeswoman said, “Fox News will continue to fiercely protect the free press as a ruling in favor of Dominion would have grave consequences for journalism across this country.” In defending Mr. Carlson’s coverage of Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims, Fox executives have also pointed to Mr. Carlson’s on-air criticism of a lawyer behind some of the most outrageous voter fraud charges, Sidney Powell.Documents released in the Dominion lawsuit illustrate in vivid detail Fox’s complex relationship with the Republican Party, with the network serving variously as custodian, enforcer and powerful interest group in its own right.Senator Mitch McConnell pushed back against Mr. Carlson’s characterization of the Capitol attack.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressDuring the election, Dominion has alleged, Fox’s chief, Rupert Murdoch, personally gave Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, a preview of at least one Biden campaign ad. After the election, Mr. Murdoch called Mr. McConnell and asked him to lobby other Republican senators to avoid endorsing Mr. Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud. At moments, Mr. Murdoch and a top editor at the Murdoch-owned New York Post discussed editorials intended to encourage Mr. Trump to accept his defeat gracefully, seemingly in hopes of avoiding further damage to the party.In mid-November 2020, Mr. Murdoch emailed Fox’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, explaining the need for Fox to reorient away from Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories and focus on the Georgia special senate elections, with Fox “helping any way we can.”Top Fox personnel agonized over the difficulty of escaping Mr. Trump’s influence over their own audience. “This day of reckoning was going to come at some point — where the embrace of Trump became an albatross we can’t shake right away if ever,” Dana Perino, a prominent Fox host, wrote to a friend in November 2020.Yet the shoals they were trying to navigate had been in no small part laid by Mr. Carlson, one of Fox’s most-watched hosts. Though the newly released messages show Mr. Carlson expressing skepticism in his private emails about the extent of “voter fraud,” he had been an early and energetic promoter of the doubt Mr. Trump was trying to sow.Within 24 hours of the polls closing, he declared that the election had been “seized from the hands of voters,” and that the final results would finally be determined by “lawyers and courts and clearly corrupt, big-city bureaucrats.” Americans “will never again accept the results of a presidential election,” he predicted.After the major networks declared Mr. Biden president-elect, Mr. Carlson reminded his viewers that troubling questions remained: “We don’t know how many votes were stolen on Tuesday night; we don’t know anything about the software that many say was rigged,” he said. His audience members, he said, were being played for suckers: “They knew you were coming. They laughed at you when you left.”But behind the scenes, Mr. Carlson and his producers were among those scoffing.In the days before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, they discussed their intense hopes that Mr. Trump would soon leave the political scene. They mocked his plans to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s win and raged at how Mr. Trump’s lawyers had undermined their own arguments about fraud with sweeping conspiracy theories and debunked allegations.Two weeks after the election, Mr. Carlson, his executive producer and a top Fox executive named Ron Mitchell traded texts about a news conference at which one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, unspooled a litany of debunked allegations while hair dye dripped down his face. “I don’t see how to cover this,” Mr. Mitchell wrote. (That night, Mr. Carlson devoted his opening monologue to the news conference, carefully asserting that Mr. Giuliani “did raise legitimate questions and in some cases, he pointed to what appeared to be real wrongdoing.”)Mr. Carlson has claimed to “never look at the ratings” for his show. But Dominion texts show Mr. Carlson, his bosses and his fellow hosts obsessing over them. Within weeks of the election, it became clear to them that Fox viewers badly wanted them to focus on supposed evidence of voter fraud.“Tucker wrote me and Laura and said last nights numbers were a disaster,” Sean Hannity wrote to Fox producers in late November 2020, referring to Mr. Carlson and Laura Ingraham. (His executive producer, Robert Samuel, noted that the previous week’s most highly rated programming minutes “were on the voting irregularities.”) Mr. Carlson had also texted the two other hosts about ratings earlier that month, joking that an angry Fox viewer who had ranted against the network on Twitter would get “way better numbers than what we have” and warning Mr. Hannity that “the 7:00 was third last night,” referring to the time slot immediately preceding his own.As Mr. Carlson’s broadcast was coming to an end on Nov. 10, a Fox staff member warned the host that he was being attacked on Twitter for not covering allegations of voter fraud. “It’s all our viewers care about right now,” the staff member wrote. Mr. Carlson replied that it had been a “mistake” but that “I just hate” the topic.That night and the next morning, Mr. Carlson and the unnamed colleague brainstormed how to get into the story, trading links and tweets, eventually seizing on a local news report in Nevada suggesting a woman who had died in 2017 had voted there in November. (An investigation later determined that the woman’s husband, a Republican, had used her ballot to vote twice, then claimed her ballot had been stolen.) They debated whether they could “get up to five examples of specific names of dead people that voted,” and reached out to Jason Miller, a Trump campaign official, asking for evidence that they could then present on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”“Obviously they need to do whatever they can to help us,” Mr. Carlson told his Fox colleague.On the afternoon of Nov. 11, as the next evening’s broadcast approached, the staff member texted Mr. Carlson again.“Have you seen last night’s numbers?” the staff member wrote, adding, “It’s a stupid story but this is all the viewers are into right now.”Mr. Carlson replied: “I noticed.”Julie Tate More

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      Tucker Carlson’s Private Contempt for Trump: ‘I Hate Him Passionately’

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      The Fox host’s private comments, revealed recently in court documents, contrast sharply with his support of conservatives on his show.Documents released in recent weeks as part of a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems have revealed extraordinary private communications and depositions from the network’s star hosts and executives. In those statements, many of them expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.Regardless of the outcome of the case, which is scheduled to go to trial in April, one host in particular — Tucker Carlson — appears to have a tricky road to navigate with his audience. In his private messages, Mr. Carlson, who generally provides strong support of Republicans on the air, repeatedly showed contempt for Mr. Trump and some of his closest aides.In a statement, Fox News said the fact that Dominion was using the contents of the legal filings “to twist and even misattribute quotes to the highest levels of our company is truly beyond the pale.”Here are five examples of Mr. Carlson’s views on Mr. Trump from the documents:Nov. 6, 20201. On Trump’s Business HistoryAs votes were being counted in the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Carlson texted with his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, fretting about viewers turning away from Fox News after the network called Arizona for President Biden.Alex Pfeiffer: Trump has a pretty low rate at success in his business ventures.Tucker Carlson: That’s for sure. All of them fail. What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that.Nov. 10, 20202. On Trump’s Plan to Skip Biden’s InaugurationA staff member texted Mr. Carlson to say they’d heard Mr. Trump was planning not to attend the inauguration, an important symbol of the peaceful transfer of power.Carlson: I’d heard that about the inauguration. Hard to believe. So destructive.Carlson: It’s disgusting. I’m trying to look away.Nov. 23, 20203. On His Interactions With Trump’s Team Over Sidney Powell, a Trump LawyerMr. Carlson texts with the Fox News host Laura Ingraham about Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Mr. Trump and one of the biggest promoters of the unfounded election fraud claims.Carlson: I had to try to make the WH disavow her, which they obviously should have done long before.Laura Ingraham: No serious lawyer could believe what they were saying.Carlson: But they said nothing in public. Pretty disgusting. And now Trump, I learned this morning, is sitting back and letting them lose the senate. He doesn’t care. I care.Jan. 4, 20214. On His Desire to Move On From TrumpMr. Carlson texts with members of his staff, two months after the 2020 election and two days before the insurrection at the Capitol building, about looking forward to not having to cover Mr. Trump.Carlson: We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.Carlson: I hate him passionately.Jan. 7, 20215. On the Aftermath of the Capitol RiotsAfter the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Carlson texts with Mr. Pfeiffer about Mr. Trump’s culpability in the insurrection and how to deal with viewers who still support him. It was two weeks before the inauguration of President Biden.Carlson: Trump has two weeks left. Once he’s out, he becomes incalculably less powerful, even in the minds of his supporters.Carlson: He’s a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us. I’ve been thinking about this every day for four years.Pfeiffer: You’re right. I don’t want to let him destroy me either. [REDACTED]. The Trump anger spiral is vicious.Carlson: That’s for sure. Deadly. It almost consumed me in November when Sidney Powell attacked us. It was very difficult to regain emotional control, but I knew I had to. We’ve got two weeks left. We can do this.

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      Trump, Vowing ‘Retribution,’ Foretells a Second Term of Spite

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      In a speech before his supporters, the former president charged forward in an uncharted direction, talking openly about leveraging the power of the presidency for political reprisals.Donald J. Trump has for decades trafficked in the language of vengeance, from his days as a New York developer vowing “an eye for an eye” in the real estate business to ticking through an enemies ledger in 2022 as he sought to oust every last Republican who voted for his impeachment. “Four down and six to go,” he cheered in a statement as one went down to defeat.But even though payback has long been part of his public persona, Mr. Trump’s speech on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference was striking for how explicitly he signaled that any return trip to the White House would amount to a term of spite.“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice,’” Mr. Trump told the crowd in National Harbor, Md. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”He repeated the phrase for emphasis: “I am your retribution.”Framing the 2024 election as a dire moment in an us-versus-them struggle — “the final battle,” as he put it — Mr. Trump charged forward in an uncharted direction for American politics, talking openly about leveraging the power of the presidency for political reprisals.His menacing declaration landed differently in the wake of the pro-Trump mob’s assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a last-ditch effort to keep him in power. The notion that Mr. Trump’s supporters could be spurred to violence is no longer hypothetical, as it was in 2016 when he urged a rally audience to “knock the crap out of” hecklers. The attack on the Capitol underscored that his most fanatical followers took his falsehoods and claims of victimhood seriously — and were willing to act on them.Mr. Trump’s speech was laced with allusions to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, so far the chief threat to his winning another nomination. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWhile Mr. Trump has long walked up to a transgressive line, he has often managed to avoid unambiguously crossing it, leaving his intentions just uncertain enough to allow his supporters to say he is being mistreated or misinterpreted.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said the speech was “a call to political action to defeat the Democrats who have put their collective boot on the throats of Americans,” adding, “Anyone who thinks otherwise is either being disingenuous or is outright lying because they know President Trump continues to be a threat to the political establishment.”But John Bolton, a national security adviser under Mr. Trump who later broke publicly with him, had little doubt what the former president meant on Saturday. “I think he’s talking about retribution he would exact on people who would cross him,” said Mr. Bolton, who also served as ambassador to the United Nations. The reference was not about Mr. Trump’s supporters, Mr. Bolton said, but about Mr. Trump himself.“It would be, first and foremost, getting back at the people he thinks deserve some kind of punishment for not doing what he tells them to do,” Mr. Bolton said. “And it’s a big group of people.”Who’s Running for President in 2024?Card 1 of 7The race begins. More

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      Trump Says He Would Stay in 2024 Race if Indicted

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      Donald Trump says he “wouldn’t even think about” dropping out of the race for the White House if he’s indicted. The former president has increasingly used his campaign as a cudgel against investigators.OXON HILL, Md. — Former President Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he would not drop out of the 2024 presidential race if he was indicted in one of several investigations he is facing.Mr. Trump made the comments to a group of conservative media before his speech to the Conservative Political Action Coalition conference in National Harbor, Md. It was the first time Mr. Trump spoke publicly about how he would respond if he was indicted while actively seeking the presidency, an event that would roil the 2024 campaign.Mr. Trump is facing two state investigations — one in New York City and one in Fulton County, Ga. — as well as two federal investigations led by Jack Smith, a special prosecutor. Mr. Smith is investigating Mr. Trump’s attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power after losing the 2020 election, as well as Mr. Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents and presidential material at his private club, Mar-a-Lago.The precise status of the efforts is unclear, but the two state investigations are believed to be in advanced stages.Mr. Trump was definitive when asked Saturday whether he would stay in the race if one of the prosecutors brought an indictment. “Oh absolutely. I wouldn’t even think about leaving,” he said, adding that he believed an indictment would increase his poll numbers.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.It isn’t unusual for a candidate who is facing legal problems to say they will stay in a race regardless of whether they are prosecuted or to claim that an investigation is politically motivated. But it is uncharted territory for a former president running as the poll leader in primaries to intertwine a candidacy with a defense against investigations.Several people close to Mr. Trump have said he believes his presidential campaign can be used as a cudgel to hit back against the prosecutors. In his remarks on Saturday, Mr. Trump repeatedly cast the prosecutors as corrupt and politically motivated, citing no evidence. As he has for years, he cast the investigations not as result of his own actions, but as an effort to silence the voices of his supporters..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“I am your warrior. I am your justice,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, before appearing to promise payback if elected to a new term. “And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”He went on to describe the campaign in stark, nearly apocalyptic terms: “This is it, either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country.”Mr. Trump insisted he became a target once he joined politics.“I didn’t know the word ‘subpoena,’” said Mr. Trump, who has sued and been sued hundreds and hundreds of times in civil courts and was first investigated by federal officials in the 1970s in Brooklyn.Mr. Trump explicitly tried to link his candidacy with the status of potential prosecutions. “Every time the polls go up higher and higher, the prosecutors get crazier and crazier,” he said.In reality, the Jan. 6 riot, during which Mr. Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol, had a damaging effect on Mr. Trump’s poll numbers. His support also fell in the weeks after the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago in August to recover documents. Mr. Trump’s aides claimed they had performed a diligent search in response to a grand jury subpoena. Some of the material the F.B.I. found was among the most secret information the government had.Mr. Trump’s remarks on Saturday were only his latest attempt to embrace the Capitol riot and his supporters who participated.Over the summer, Mr. Trump met with Cynthia Hughes, the founder of the Patriot Freedom Project, one of the largest legal defense funds for people charged in connection with the attack, according to three people familiar with the project.The meeting led to a video statement of support from Mr. Trump that was played at an event the group held in Washington in December. Several people connected to the Patriot Freedom Project were ultimately disappointed that Mr. Trump personally donated only $10,000 to the organization.Mr. Trump also contributed to a song released this week on streaming services called “Justice for All” that featured several Jan. 6 defendants who were being held in a jail in Washington before their trials. In the song, Mr. Trump can be heard reciting the “Pledge of Allegiance” as the group of 20 or so inmates, calling themselves the J6 Prison Choir, sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which they do nightly at the jail.Alan Feuer More