Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Solomon Peña Cheered Trump on Jan. 6. Now He’s Accused of Targeting Democrats.

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      Solomon Peña, who lost his bid to become a New Mexico lawmaker, faces charges in a series of shootings. “He had a belief process that he was cheated,” the Albuquerque police chief said.ALBUQUERQUE — A former Republican candidate accused of orchestrating attacks on the homes of Democratic rivals cited the need to threaten “civil war” to achieve political change, according to police investigators, who said that a bullet fired in the attacks passed close enough to a sleeping girl to leave her face spattered with dust.The series of shootings in the wake of the November elections followed other episodes of politically motivated violence across the country in recent months — including an attack on the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and rattled the political establishment in New Mexico, where Democrats hold both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s office.After seeking a state legislative seat, Solomon Peña, 39, a supporter of Donald J. Trump who attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, refused to concede, despite losing by 48 percentage points to an incumbent in a district that has long voted for Democrats. He was arrested on Monday in connection with the shootings at the homes of four Democratic officials.“He had a belief process that he was cheated,” Chief Harold Medina of the Albuquerque Police Department said in an interview on Tuesday. The police filed a rash of charges against Mr. Peña, including criminal solicitation, attempted aggravated battery, shooting at an occupied dwelling, shooting from a moving vehicle and conspiracy.Mr. Peña, who previously served time in prison for burglary and other crimes, took part in at least one of the attacks himself, according to the criminal complaint in the case, trying to fire an AR-15 rifle at the home of Linda Lopez, a state senator.“To me, it’s very concerning, what his actions were, and the impact they could have on our democracy,” Chief Medina said. “He was trying to intimidate some of our elected officials.”A voter cast a ballot in Albuquerque in November. Mr. Peña refused to concede his race despite losing by 48 percentage points.Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesMr. Peña, who was still being held on Tuesday, could not be reached for comment, and it was unclear whether a lawyer was representing him in the case.It was uncertain how he came to be the only Republican candidate in the race for a state legislative seat representing part of Albuquerque. But when Democrats sought unsuccessfully to disqualify him from running, citing his criminal record, the spokesman for the state House Republican leadership came to Mr. Peña’s defense, insisting he should be allowed to run.He received 26 percent of the vote, against 74 percent for his opponent, election results showed.In a statement, the Republican Party of New Mexico said “these recent accusations against Solomon Peña are serious, and he should be held accountable if the charges are validated in court. We are thankful that nobody was injured by his actions. If Peña is found guilty, he must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”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.Mr. Peña’s arrest comes as concerns over political violence have grown after several high-profile incidents, including the attack on Paul Pelosi, a conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and stalking charges filed against an armed man at the Seattle home of Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington.Though there have been some notable attacks and threats of violence from people on the left, scholars who study political violence say that most violent episodes with a political bent in recent years have been committed by right-wing extremists or people with conservative-leaning views.Mr. Peña was in the crowd listening to Mr. Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021, according to videos collected by online sleuths, before Trump supporters attacked the Capitol in a bid to keep the president in power. There is no evidence, however, that Mr. Peña passed into a restricted area on the Capitol grounds or entered the building with the mob that day.Mr. Peña served nearly seven years in prison in New Mexico on charges including burglary and larceny, and then obtained an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of New Mexico after being released from prison in 2016.In July 2010, according to a lawsuit later filed by Mr. Peña, he was working in the cafeteria of the Lea County Correctional Facility when another inmate threw butter at him, and then head-butted him. Mr. Peña responded by gouging the attacker’s eyes before guards separated them.In his lawsuit, Mr. Peña claimed that several prison officials had violated his constitutional rights because he was fired from his kitchen job after the fight. In self-filed, handwritten court papers, he complained that “prison authorities want the prisoners to be stupid, uneducated and uninformed (and drug-addicted) so they can do whatever they want to the prisoners.”A judge dismissed Mr. Peña’s claims.The shootings that appeared to target Democratic officials began on Dec. 4, when someone fired eight rounds at the home of Adriann Barboa, a Bernalillo County commissioner, according to the Albuquerque police. On Dec. 8, shots were fired at the home of State Representative Javier Martinez. Three days later, on Dec. 11, a shooting targeted the home of another Bernalillo County commissioner, Debbie O’Malley. Then came the shooting at Ms. Lopez’s house in early January.State Senator Linda Lopez showed where bullets hit the garage door of her house in Albuquerque.Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal, via Associated PressMs. Lopez’s 10-year-old daughter told her mother after the shooting that she believed “a spider woke her up by crawling on her face,” the complaint against Mr. Peña said. But the next morning, Ms. Lopez found bullet holes in her home. “As it turned out, sheetrock dust was blown onto Linda’s daughter’s face and bed” from a bullet passing through her bedroom above her head, the complaint said.Investigators said in a statement after Mr. Peña was arrested on Monday that they had tied him to the men accused of carrying out the shootings through text messages he sent them “with addresses where he wanted them to shoot at the homes,” as well as cash he had paid them.In a text message that Mr. Peña sent to one of the accused gunmen in November, according to the criminal complaint, he highlighted a cryptic passage from a book that was unknown to investigators: “It was only the additional incentive of a threat of civil war that empowered a president to complete the reformist project.”That quote appears in the book “Stuffing the Ballot Box,” a 2002 academic study about fraud and electoral reform in Costa Rica.The belief that civil war is unavoidable in the United States or should be fought to protect conservative values has been a frequent rallying cry on the right in recent months, if not for years.Ms. Barboa, the county commissioner whose home was targeted in the first attack, said in an interview that Mr. Peña had come to her home after the election to argue that it had been fraudulent. “He was aggressive and seemed to be acting erratic,” she recalled. “He claimed there was no way he could have lost, even though he lost in a landslide.”Ms. Barboa said that Mr. Peña seemed to have visited her home, as well as that of Ms. O’Malley, who was also targeted in the shootings, because the Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners certifies election results. The visit to Ms. Barboa’s home took place before the commission certified the results, she said. (Mr. Peña ran against another Democrat, Miguel Garcia, who does not appear to have been the subject of an attack.)Video surveillance from Ms. O’Malley’s home later showed Mr. Peña driving by in a black 2022 Audi — the same car that a witness saw speeding away from the area around Ms. O’Malley’s home when it was targeted on Dec. 11, the criminal complaint said.According to a confidential witness cited by the police in the complaint, Mr. Peña was not pleased that the first shooting attacks against Democratic officials were carried out late at night, when the politicians and their families might have already been sleeping, and that the shots were fired high up on the walls of some homes.“Solomon wanted the shootings to be more aggressive,” the witness told investigators, according to the complaint. In the last attack, on the home of Ms. Lopez on Jan. 3, the witness said that Mr. Peña and two gunmen he hired got into a stolen red truck and drove there.Mr. Peña was armed with an AR-15, but the gun seems to have jammed and did not fire correctly, according to the complaint. But other shots fired from the vehicle struck Ms. Lopez’s home, including the room where her daughter was sleeping.Shortly after the attack, police officers arrested Jose Trujillo, 21, at a traffic stop and found that shell casings at Ms. Lopez’s home matched a handgun confiscated from Mr. Trujillo, according to investigators. Officers detained Mr. Trujillo on an unrelated felony warrant and found that he was driving a car owned by Mr. Peña, the police said, adding that they also found a large amount of cash, more than 800 pills believed to be fentanyl and numerous firearms in the car.Chief Medina said Mr. Peña could face more charges as the police continued their investigation. “We continue to peel off layers, like an onion,” he said.Kirsten Noyes More

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      Kellyanne Conway’s View of Donald Trump

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      More from our inbox:Russia’s Aggression in UkraineI, Robot Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Case for (and Against) Donald Trump in 2024,” by Kellyanne Conway (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 15):A diversity of opinions and perspectives is a fantastic goal, and one reason I’ve been a longtime subscriber. Generally speaking, your opinion guest essays are well written and thoughtful and provide a point of view that makes one examine a topic with fresh eyes.The opinion from Ms. Conway is not that.Time and again she employs sloganeering to sling arrows at Democrats and non-Trumpists in an attempt to burnish the reputation of her former boss.She continues to attempt to turn neighbor against neighbor by perpetuating the othering of Trump detractors and the denial of Mr. Trump’s and her attacks on voting, democracy and simple decency.Hers is not another “opinion”; it is carefully crafted and intentional spin to appeal to people’s sense of grievance and to reaffirm the lies and misinformation they are so ready to believe.Her inclusion in your paper diminishes the quality of debate, and galvanizes a person America would be better off forgetting.Conn FishburnNashvilleTo the Editor:Kellyanne Conway opines that “when it comes to Donald J. Trump, people see what they wish to see,” and then goes on to demonstrate just that, never mentioning his blatant, willful, prolonged lying about the “stolen” 2020 election, which we now know not even he believes.Toss in the further elephants in the room — his central role in the Jan. 6 debacle, his fraudulent and shuttered foundation and university, the conviction of his family business entity’s C.F.O., and on and on, and it would appear that Ms. Conway is indeed a victim of the Trump Derangement Syndrome she decries.Even worse, she is clearly one who should know better, and even worse, likely does.Steve HeiligSan FranciscoTo the Editor:Talk about hedging your bets as a political forecaster and soft selling your qualifications for rehire! Kellyanne Conway’s well-composed essay on Donald Trump’s potential for 2024 felt like the needed equanimity, bipartisan advice and clear thinking the country needs.If Mr. Trump were smart he would rehire Ms. Conway as campaign manager for 2024, or at least pay close attention to her last sentences: “Success lies in having advisers who tell you what you need to know, not just what you want to hear. And in listening to the people, who have the final say.”Lisa BostwickSan FranciscoTo the Editor:Read Kellyanne Conway’s guest essay for what it really is — a job pitch to future Republican presidential candidates (conveniently name-dropped in the article).The pitch: If I could get a buffoon like Donald Trump elected and then get The New York Times to give me a full page to list his imaginary accomplishments, just think what I could do for you.Laura SchumacherSan DiegoTo the Editor:Kellyanne Conway writes: “Success lies in having advisers who tell you what you need to know, not just what you want to hear. And in listening to the people, who have the final say.”Since when has Donald Trump been known as a listener or as one who respects advisers who tell him what he needs to know?Mr. Trump’s overriding egotism and his self-infatuation prevent him from believing that anyone could know more about anything than The Donald himself.Ben MilesHuntington Beach, Calif.To the Editor:Thanks, Ms. Conway, for that delightful nostalgic stroll down the memory lane of alternative facts.Bruce LiptonNew YorkRussia’s Aggression in Ukraine Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Plundering Art, Russia Assaults Soul of Ukraine” (front page, Jan. 15):Like Nazi aggression in World War II, Russian aggression in Ukraine is an expression of absolute evil — a mixture of barbarism that knows no limits, genocide of both a people and their culture, and unremitting, centrally organized propaganda claiming that up is down, that black is white and that Russia is fighting a defensive war.Richard JoffeNew YorkI, RobotA robot prototype being developed by Yuhang Hu, a doctoral student in the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University, where engineers are exploring the possibility of self-aware robots.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Robot, Know Thyself” (Science Times, Jan. 10):Robots with consciousness is an oxymoron. Consciousness is a necessary ingredient to what is usually deemed the defining characteristic of being human: the ability to choose.Computers/robots do not have that ability. Their “choice” is limited to what programmers program them to do. Admittedly that may occur under circumstances not contemplated when the machines are programmed, but the machine’s progression toward making a decision is based on its programming, not on free choice.Steven GoldbergBrooklynTo the Editor:A truly conscious robot will cost a fortune to the company that develops it, but at that level of sophistication it may decide to work on unnecessary projects, or stop working altogether for the company, instead opting to work for a competitor.Kevin J. LongoPutnam, Conn.The writer is a science tutor. More

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      Gary Hart: The “New Church Committee” Is an Outrage

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      To legitimize otherwise questionable investigations, Congress occasionally labels them after a previous successful effort. Thus, the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives’ proposed select committee, which plans to investigate the “weaponization of government,” is being described as “the new Church committee,” after the group of senators who investigated the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and other groups from 1975-76.As the last surviving member of the original Church committee, named after its chairman, the late Senator Frank Church of Idaho, I have a particular interest in distinguishing what we accomplished then and what authoritarian Republicans seem to have in mind now.The outlines of the committee, which Rep. Jim Jordan will assemble, remain vague. Reading between the rhetorical lines, proponents appear to believe agencies of the national government have targeted, and perhaps are still targeting, right-of-center individuals and groups, possibly including individuals and right-wing militia groups that participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionist attack on the Capitol.That is almost completely at odds with the purpose of the original Church committee, which was founded in response to widespread abuses by government intelligence agencies. While we sought to protect the constitutional rights and freedoms of American citizens, we were also bound to protect the integrity of the intelligence and security agencies, which were founded to protect those freedoms, too.Our committee brought U.S. intelligence agencies under congressional scrutiny to prevent the violation of the privacy rights of American citizens, and to halt covert operations abroad that violated our constitutional principles. Rather than strengthening the oversight of federal agencies, the new committee seems designed to prevent law enforcement and intelligence agencies from enforcing the law — specifically, laws against insurrectionist activity in our own democracy.It is one thing to intercept phone calls from people organizing a peaceful civil rights march and quite another to intercept phone calls from people organizing an assault on the Capitol to impede the certification of a national election.Rather than weaken our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the Church committee sought to restore their original mandates and increase their focus away from partisan or political manipulation. Our committee was bipartisan, leaning neither right nor left, and the conservative senators, including the vice chair, John Tower, Barry Goldwater, Howard Baker and others, took pains to prevent liberal or progressive members, including chairman Church, Philip Hart, Walter Mondale and me, from weakening our national security.They needn’t have bothered. We all understood, including me, the youngest member, that attacks on federal law enforcement and national security would not go down well among our constituents. Unlike in the 1970s, today’s threat to domestic security is less from foreign sources and more from homeland groups seeking to replace the constitutional order with authoritarian practices that challenge historic institutions and democratic practices.Among a rather large number of reforms proposed by the Church committee were permanent congressional oversight committees for the intelligence community, an endorsement of the 1974 requirement that significant clandestine projects be approved by the president in a written “finding,” the notification of the chairs of the oversight committees of certain clandestine projects at the time they are undertaken and the elimination of assassination attempts against foreign leaders.Despite the concern of conservatives at the time, to my knowledge, no significant clandestine activity was compromised and no classified information leaked as a result of these reforms in the almost half-century since they were adopted. In fact, the oversight and notification requirements, by providing political cover, have operated as protection for the C.I.A.Evidence was provided of the effectiveness of these reforms in the so-called Iran-contra controversy in 1985-87. The Reagan administration sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to finance covert operations in Nicaragua against its socialist government. Assigning accountability for this scheme proved difficult until a document authorizing it was located in the White House. President Reagan did not remember signing it; however, it bore his signature. This kind of accountability would not have been possible before our reforms were adopted.The rules of the Senate and the House establish what standing committees and what special committees each house may create. The House is clearly at liberty within those rules to create a committee to protect what it perceives to be an important element of its base. And if its purposes are ultimately to protect authoritarian interests, it is presumably free to do so and accept criticisms from the press and the public. It is outrageous to call it a new Church committee. Trying to disguise a highly partisan effort to legitimize undemocratic activities by cloaking it in the mantle of a successful bipartisan committee from decades ago is a mockery.Gary Hart is a former United States senator from Colorado and the author of, most recently, “The Republic of Conscience.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Lawyers Who Investigated Trump Start Firm to Combat Threats to Democracy

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      Mark F. Pomerantz, Carey R. Dunne and Michele Roberts, the former head of the N.B.A. players union, will launch a pro bono law firm, the Free and Fair Litigation Group.Last year, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne were leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Donald J. Trump’s business practices.Now, they have turned their attention to a broader phenomenon that they say the former president represents: threats to democracy in the United States.Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne, who resigned last year when the district attorney decided not to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump, said they have formed a pro bono law firm that aims to stem the tide of anti-democratic policies proliferating around the country. The firm — the Free and Fair Litigation Group, which opens its doors this week — is also led by Michele A. Roberts, the former head of the union that represents professional basketball players.All three founders have extensive experience as litigators, and they plan to defend policies they see as just and bring lawsuits challenging those they believe are undemocratic, the three founding partners said in an interview. Their work will initially focus on voting rights, gun control and free speech.“As I see it, we’re now faced with not just one politician, but really with a national movement that’s aimed at rolling back decades of rights and constitutional principles,” Mr. Dunne said.In the two years since Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen helped spark a violent riot at the Capitol, election denial has only grown within the Republican Party. Mr. Trump is once again a leading contender for president, and the House is in the hands of Republicans — many of whom voted against certifying President Biden’s election victory.Against that backdrop of deep political polarization, it remains to be seen how much of the new firm’s ambitious agenda can be accomplished, particularly if its cases reach a Supreme Court that has taken a sharp rightward turn.Michele Roberts, the former executive director of the N.B.A. players union, is an experienced litigator.Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesThe three founders will take no salary, and the firm will do all its work for free. They expect to hire a small staff of lawyers — no more than eight employees, including one who recently served as a federal prosecutor — and partner with a number of larger law firms. The firm, a nonprofit, will solicit outside donations from foundations and small donors alike.The new firm differs from larger groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice, which conduct lobbying and research in addition to their work in court, because of its singular focus on litigation.The venture was a product of serendipitous timing: three busy lawyers who found themselves with nothing on their dockets in the spring of last year.Ms. Roberts, an experienced litigator, had just retired as executive director of the N.B.A. Players Association. Mr. Pomerantz, a well-known defense lawyer who also served as the criminal division chief at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, came out of retirement in early 2021 to lead the district attorney’s investigation into Mr. Trump. He resigned in February of last year, as did Mr. Dunne, another prominent litigator who oversaw the Trump investigation and successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court twice in the fight over a subpoena for Mr. Trump’s tax returns.Although Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne had begun to present evidence to a grand jury about the former president’s business practices by early last year, the new district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, developed concerns about proving the case and decided not to seek to indict Mr. Trump at that time, prompting the resignations. The investigation, which began under the prior district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., is now continuing under Mr. Bragg, who also recently secured the conviction of Mr. Trump’s company.Carey Dunne won a Supreme Court decision that gave Manhattan prosecutors access to Donald Trump’s tax returns.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesWhile the new law firm currently has no plans to take on Mr. Trump directly, its mission was in some sense inspired by his influence over the Republican Party and the Supreme Court, to which he appointed three conservative justices.“Trump is obviously the poster boy for increased authoritarianism,” said Mr. Pomerantz, who has written a book about his time investigating Mr. Trump that Simon & Schuster announced on Wednesday would be published in February. “He personifies the problem, but he’s far from the only manifestation of the problem.”For his part, Mr. Trump has slammed Mr. Pomerantz publicly, calling him a “low-life attorney” who “is a ‘Never Trumper’ and a Hillary Clinton sycophant.”The firm’s first case involves gun control policies under attack in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year expanding the right to carry firearms outside the home. The firm is defending four Colorado towns, each with bans on carrying assault weapons in public, that were sued by a gun rights group after the court’s decision. The case is scheduled to go to trial this fall.Measures like Florida’s “Stop W.O.K.E.” law, which limits talk of race, gender and nationality in schools and the workplace, are also of interest at the new firm. It has begun examining the possibility of bringing a First Amendment lawsuit focused on similar laws in other states that prohibit diversity training in the workplace.The firm is also developing plans to challenge Florida’s arrest of a number of people with criminal histories who were able to register to vote in the 2020 election even though their past convictions should have barred them from doing so. Although criminal charges against some of those people have been dismissed, the firm is researching the possibility of suing the state for having violated the Voting Rights Act, arguing that the arrests discourage legal voting by people with criminal convictions.“It’s just disgraceful,” Ms. Roberts said, adding that the case had hit home for her as someone who is concerned with voting rights and with “legislative changes to election laws in various states.”To litigate the cases, the firm will turn for support to a roster of prominent law firms and advocacy groups.In the Colorado gun control case, the firm is working with Everytown for Gun Safety, the group founded by the former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, as well as Davis Polk, Mr. Dunne’s former firm. On the Florida voting rights case, they have met with a group called Protect Democracy, a nonprofit founded by lawyers from the Obama White House, as well as Paul Weiss, where Mr. Pomerantz was a partner for many years.Mark Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne led the Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry into Mr. Trump until they resigned last year.David Karp/Associated PressThe outside firms are providing their resources on a pro bono basis. The new firm’s board of directors will also include a number of boldfaced names from the criminal justice world, including Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a former general counsel at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office who was a Democratic candidate for Manhattan district attorney in 2021.Free and Fair’s executive director will be Danny Frost, a lawyer who served as a senior adviser and spokesman in the district attorney’s office under Mr. Vance, when Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz were working on the Trump investigation.Thus far, the firm has mostly accepted donations from friends and professional acquaintances but in the coming months will ramp up their fund-raising now that the I.R.S. has certified the firm as a nonprofit.Originally, the principals had expected that getting authorized for tax-exempt status would take half a year. Then they learned that they could make an emergency application to the I.R.S., “but only if what you’re providing is so desperately needed by the country that you can claim emergency treatment status,” Mr. Dunne said.They filed their application in October. Within 14 days, they had received the emergency approval. More

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      A Jan. 6 Moment for Brazil

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      Clare Toeniskoetter and Rowan Niemisto and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicAfter Jair Bolsonaro lost October’s Brazilian presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, many believed that the threat of violence from the defeated leader’s supporters would recede. They were wrong. Mr. Bolsonaro had spent years sewing doubt and undermining Brazil’s election system, and last week, thousands of rioters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices. What happened — and how did Brazil get here?On today’s episodeJack Nicas, the Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times.Police officers inspecting riot damage at Brazil’s Supreme Court. On Sunday, supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the Capitol.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesBackground readingWhat drove a mass attack on Brazil’s capital? Mass delusion.The riots in Brazil had echoes of Jan. 6 in the United States. The comparison is inevitable and useful but here are some major differences. There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Jack Nicas More

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      Giuliani Receives Grand Jury Subpoena for Records Related to Trump

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      The subpoena to Rudolph W. Giuliani in November came as prosecutors have been examining the workings of former President Donald J. Trump’s fund-raising vehicle.WASHINGTON — Rudolph W. Giuliani, the lawyer who oversaw former President Donald J. Trump’s legal challenges to the 2020 election, has received a grand jury subpoena for records related to his representation of Mr. Trump, including those that detailed any payments he received, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday.The subpoena, which was sent in November, bore the name of a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. It predated the appointment of Jack Smith, the special counsel chosen to take over the Justice Department’s investigation of the roles that Mr. Trump and several of his aides and lawyers played in seeking to overturn the results of the election. It remained unclear, however, if Mr. Smith and his team have assumed control of the part of the inquiry related to Mr. Giuliani.As part of its investigation, the special counsel’s office has been examining, among other things, the inner workings of Mr. Trump’s fund-raising vehicle, Save America PAC. The records subpoenaed from Mr. Giuliani could include some related to payments made by the PAC, according to the person familiar with the matter.Several subpoenas issued in the past several months have asked for records concerning Save America PAC. The House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol also looked into Mr. Trump’s fund-raising operation during its own separate inquiry, and raised questions about whether it had duped donors through misleading appeals about election fraud.A longtime ally of Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani effectively ran the former president’s attempts to overturn his defeat in the presidential race and has for months been a chief focus of the Justice Department’s broad investigation into the postelection period. His name has appeared on several subpoenas sent to former aides to Mr. Trump and to a host of Republican state officials involved in a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.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.In one of its final acts, the Jan. 6 committee referred Mr. Giuliani and others, including Mr. Trump, for prosecution by the Justice Department. Still, the emergence of the subpoena, which was reported earlier by CNN, was the first time evidence had surfaced suggesting that Mr. Giuliani had become directly embroiled in the inquiry into the part that Mr. Trump played in the events leading up to Jan. 6.Mr. Giuliani’s subpoena was issued about two months after prosecutors blanketed more than 40 other figures from Mr. Trump’s White House with subpoenas. In 2021, the Justice Department seized Mr. Giuliani’s cellphones and computers as part of a separate investigation into his efforts to dig up dirt on Mr. Biden in Ukraine.While acting as Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Mr. Giuliani undertook an array of efforts on his behalf.He promoted a baseless conspiracy theory that a cabal of international actors had hacked into voting machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems and used them to rig the election for Mr. Biden — despite the fact that an internal memo from the Trump campaign had determined earlier that many of the outlandish claims about Dominion were untrue.Mr. Giuliani also made persistent claims that the voting had been marred by widespread cheating and irregularities at a series of informal legislative hearings in key swing states around the country. But when he personally appeared in court in Philadelphia to defend a lawsuit challenging the election, he acknowledged to the judge in the case that the suit had not alleged that fraud had actually occurred.Before his subpoena was issued, Mr. Giuliani had confronted an array of setbacks related to his work for Mr. Trump.He is facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion, alleging that he carried out “a viral disinformation campaign” about the company made up of “demonstrably false” allegations, in part to enrich himself through legal fees and his podcast.In June 2021, his law license was suspended after a New York court ruled he had made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while fighting the results of the 2020 election.He is also facing similar disciplinary charges by local bar officials in Washington. More

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      ¿Qué impulsó el ataque a la capital de Brasil?

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      Durante las últimas 10 semanas, los seguidores del expresidente de extrema derecha Jair Bolsonaro habían acampado afuera de la sede del ejército brasileño, exigiendo que los militares revirtieran las elecciones presidenciales de octubre. Y, durante las últimas 10 semanas, los manifestantes encontraron poca oposición por parte del gobierno.Luego, el domingo, muchos de los ocupantes del campamento salieron de sus carpas en Brasilia, la capital del país, condujeron algunos kilómetros y, al unirse cientos de otros manifestantes, invadieron el Congreso, el Supremo Tribunal Federal y las oficinas presidenciales.Para la mañana del lunes, las autoridades estaban barriendo el campamento. Desmantelaron las carpas, retiraron pancartas y detuvieron a 1200 de los manifestantes, llevándoselos en autobuses para interrogarlos.Por qué se había permitido que un campamento que exigía un golpe militar creciera durante más de 70 días era parte de un conjunto más amplio de preguntas que los funcionarios enfrentaban el lunes, entre ellas:¿Por qué se permitió que las protestas se acercaran tanto a las sedes del poder de Brasil? ¿Y por qué las fuerzas de seguridad habían sido superadas de tal manera que multitudes de manifestantes pudieron irrumpir fácilmente en las instalaciones gubernamentales?Más de mil partidarios del expresidente Jair Bolsonaro que supuestamente participaron en los disturbios estaban detenidos en Brasilia.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesEl ministro de Justicia de Brasil, Flávio Dino, indicó que varias agencias de seguridad se habían reunido el viernes para prepararse ante la posibilidad de violencia en las protestas previstas para el domingo. Pero, dijo, la estrategia de seguridad urdida en la reunión, que incluía mantener a los manifestantes alejados de los principales edificios estatales, para el domingo había sido parcialmente abandonada y había muchos menos agentes de la ley de lo previsto.“El contingente policial no fue lo que se había acordado”, dijo, y añadió que no estaba claro por qué se habían cambiado los planes.Algunos en el gobierno federal culpaban al gobernador de Brasilia, Ibaneis Rocha, y sus funcionarios, dando a entender que habían sido negligentes o cómplices en la falta de personal de las fuerzas de seguridad alrededor de las protestas.El domingo por la noche, Alexandre de Moraes, juez del Supremo Tribunal Federal, suspendió a Rocha de su cargo como gobernador durante al menos 90 días, argumentando que el levantamiento “solo podía ocurrir con el consentimiento, e incluso la participación efectiva, de las autoridades de seguridad e inteligencia”.Independientemente de los fallos de seguridad que hayan ocurrido, los disturbios del domingo dejaron al desnudo de forma sorprendente el principal desafío que enfrenta la democracia de Brasil. A diferencia de otros intentos por derrocar gobiernos en la historia de América Latina, los ataques del domingo no fueron ordenados por un solo gobernante autoritario o un ejército decidido a tomar el poder, sino que más bien fueron impulsados por una amenaza más insidiosa y arraigada: un engaño masivo.Agentes de la policía militar desmantelando un campamento utilizado por seguidores de Bolsonaro frente a una sede del ejército en Río de JaneiroDado Galdieri para The New York TimesMillones de brasileños parecen estar convencidos de que las elecciones presidenciales de octubre estuvieron amañadas en detrimento de Bolsonaro, a pesar de que las auditorias y los análisis realizados por expertos no han hallado nada de ese tipo. Dichas creencias en parte son producto de años de teorías conspirativas, afirmaciones engañosas y falsedades explícitas que Bolsonaro y sus aliados propagaron al afirmar que el sistema de votación totalmente electrónico de Brasil estaba plagado de fraude.Los partidarios de Bolsonaro han estado repitiendo las afirmaciones durante meses, y luego las ampliaron con nuevas teorías de conspiración transmitidas en chats grupales de WhatsApp y Telegram, muchos de los cuales se enfocaron en la idea de que el software de las máquinas de votación electrónica fue manipulado para hacer fraude a la elección. El domingo, los manifestantes se pararon en el techo del Congreso con una pancarta que tenía una sola exigencia: “Queremos el código fuente”.La mañana del lunes, Orlando Pinheiro Farias, de 40 años, salía del campamento de manifestantes y dijo que había ingresado a los despachos presidenciales el domingo junto a otros compañeros en busca de documentos relacionados con “las investigaciones del código fuente, que legitiman que Jair Messias Bolsonaro es el presidente de Brasil”.Recitó varias siglas gubernamentales e investigaciones secretas sobre las que había leído en internet, y luego dijo que tenía que volver a su tienda de campaña para recuperar una bandera brasileña que se había robado del edificio.Los delirios sobre las elecciones también se extendían a las explicaciones de muchos manifestantes sobre lo que había sucedido en los disturbios. Las personas que salían del campamento el lunes por la mañana, con colchones de aire enrollados, cables de extensión y taburetes, tenían un mensaje claro: los partidarios de Bolsonaro no habían saqueado los edificios. Más bien, dijeron, los que causaron el daño eran izquierdistas radicales disfrazados, empeñados en difamar a su movimiento.Trabajadores de la oficina presidencial durante la limpieza del lunesVictor Moriyama para The New York Times“¿Escuchaste alguna vez del Caballo de Troya?”, preguntó Nathanael S. Viera, de 51 años, que había viajado más de 1400 kilómetros para participar en las protestas del domingo. “Los infiltrados fueron y armaron todo y la maldita prensa le mostró a la nación brasileña que nosotros los patriotas somos vándalos”.Las escenas del domingo —manifestantes de derecha envueltos en la bandera nacional deambulando por los pasillos del poder— resultaban sorprendentemente similares a las del asalto al Capitolio de los Estados Unidos el 6 de enero, al igual que las creencias confusas que llevaron a los manifestantes en ambos países a invadir edificios federales y a filmarse mientras lo hacían.“A Donald Trump lo sacaron con una elección amañada, sin duda, y en aquel momento lo sacaron y yo dije ‘al presidente Bolsonaro lo van a derrocar’”, dijo Wanderlei Silva, de 59 años, trabajador hotelero retirado que estaba el lunes afuera del campamento.Silva hallaba sus propias similitudes entre los disturbios del domingo y los del 6 de enero de 2021. “Los demócratas armaron eso e invadieron el Capitolio”, dijo. “Igual que aquí lo armaron”.Durante mucho tiempo, Brasil se ha visto a sí mismo como un país similar a Estados Unidos: diverso y vasto, rico en recursos naturales, distribuido en una colección de estados federales y gobernado por un gobierno federal fuerte. Pero su tumultuosa historia política nunca imitó verdaderamente el sistema estadounidense, hasta los últimos años.“Sin Trump no habría Bolsonaro en Brasil. Y sin la invasión al Capitolio no habría la invasión que vimos ayer”, dijo Guga Chacra, comentarista en la mayor cadena de televisión de Brasil, quien vive en Nueva York y monitorea la política en ambos países. “El bolsonarismo intenta copiar al trumpismo y los seguidores de Bolsonaro en Brasil intenta copiar lo que hacen los seguidores de Trump en Estados Unidos”.Incluso una descripción de las elecciones presidenciales de Brasil de 2022 se lee como un resumen de las elecciones estadounidenses de 2020: un mandatario populista de extrema derecha con gusto por los insultos y tuits improvisados contra un contrincante septuagenario de izquierda que se postula con su probada trayectoria política y una promesa de unir a una nación dividida.El lunes, en las afueras del Supremo Tribunal FederalVictor Moriyama para The New York TimesPero lo que pasó después de cada elección fue distinto.Si bien el expresidente Donald Trump luchó para revertir los resultados y llamó a sus seguidores a descender al Capitolio el 6 de enero, Bolsonaro de hecho se había rendido y marchado a Florida para cuando sus votantes entraban a la fuerza a las oficinas que había ocupado alguna vez.Según dijo su esposa en redes sociales, Bolsonaro pasó parte del lunes en un hospital de Florida debido a dolores abdominales derivados de un apuñalamiento que sufrió en 2018. Bolsonaro planea quedarse en Florida durante las próximas semanas o meses, con la esperanza de que se enfríen las investigaciones en Brasil sobre su actividad como presidente, según un amigo.Ned Price, el vocero del Departamento de Estado de EE. UU., no quiso hacer comentarios sobre el estatus de la visa de Bolsonaro, aludiendo a las leyes de privacidad. Pero indicó que se esperaba que cualquier persona que ingresara al país con una visa diplomática y que “ya no esté involucrada en asuntos oficiales en nombre de su gobierno” saliera del país o solicitara otro tipo de visa dentro de 30 días.“Si un individuo no tiene bases para estar en Estados Unidos, dicho individuo es sujeto de ser expulsado”, dijo Price.En un discurso grabado en los últimos días de su presidencia, Bolsonaro dijo que había intentado y fracasado en usar la ley para anular las elecciones de 2022, y sugirió que sus seguidores deberían seguir adelante. “Vivimos en una democracia o no”, dijo. “Nadie quiere una aventura”. El domingo, publicó un mensaje en Twitter condenando la violencia.Pero sus años de retórica contra las instituciones democráticas de Brasil, y su estrategia política de infundir miedo a la izquierda entre sus seguidores, ya habían dejado una marca imborrable.Entrevistas con manifestantes realizadas en semanas recientes parecían mostrar que el movimiento de Bolsonaro avanzaba sin él. Ahora es impulsado por creencias profundamente arraigadas entre muchos brasileños de derecha según las cuales las élites políticas amañaron el voto para instalar como presidente a Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a quien consideran un comunista que convertirá a Brasil en un estado autoritario como Venezuela.El presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva en reunión con integrantes del Supremo Tribunal y el Congreso el lunesVictor Moriyama para The New York TimesLula, el nuevo presidente, es un izquierdista pero no un comunista. Y los expertos de seguridad independientes dijeron que no había pruebas de irregularidades en las votaciones de 2022. Un análisis aparte realizado por el ejército de Brasil solo halló una posible vulnerabilidad en el sistema de votación de Brasil, que es completamente digital. Dicha vulnerabilidad requeriría la coordinación de numerosos funcionarios electorales, un escenario que según los expertos en seguridad era extremadamente improbable.Lula, que había hecho campaña para unificar a un país dividido, se enfrenta ahora a la investigación y el enjuiciamiento de muchos de los seguidores de sus oponentes políticos apenas a una semana de haber juramentado. Las autoridades indicaron que, hasta el lunes por la noche, alrededor de 1500 manifestantes habían sido detenidos y que serían retenidos al menos hasta terminar la investigación.El lunes, Lula habló con el presidente Joe Biden, quien le transmitió “el apoyo inquebrantable de Estados Unidos para la democracia de Brasil y la libre voluntad del pueblo brasileño”, según funcionarios de la Casa Blanca. Biden invitó a Lula a la Casa Blanca para principios de febrero. (Con Bolsonaro le tomó más de 18 meses llevar a cabo un encuentro en una cumbre en Los Ángeles).En un discurso televisado la noche del lunes, Lula dijo que su gobierno procesaría a quienquiera que haya atacado la democracia de Brasil el domingo. “Ellos quieren un golpe de Estado y golpe no habrá”, dijo. “Tienen que aprender que la democracia es lo más complicado que podemos hacer, porque nos exige aguantar a los demás, nos exige convivir con los que no nos caen bien”.Él y muchos de los principales funcionarios del gobierno de Brasil luego fueron caminando juntos desde los despachos presidenciales hasta el Supremo Tribunal Federal, cruzando la misma plaza que un día antes estaba atestada de turbas que pedían derrocar a su gobierno.El Supremo Tribunal Federal de Brasil el lunesVictor Moriyama para The New York TimesAna Ionova, More

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      What Drove the Brazil Riots? Mass Delusion and Conspiracy Theories

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      For the past 10 weeks, supporters of the ousted far-right President Jair Bolsonaro had camped outside Brazilian Army headquarters, demanding that the military overturn October’s presidential election. And for the past 10 weeks, the protesters faced little resistance from the government.Then, on Sunday, many of the camp’s inhabitants left their tents in Brasília, the nation’s capital, drove a few miles away and, joining hundreds of other protesters, stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential offices.By Monday morning, the authorities were sweeping through the encampment. They dismantled tents, tore down banners and detained 1,200 of the protesters, ferrying them away in buses for questioning.Why an encampment demanding a military coup was allowed to expand for over 70 days was part of a larger set of questions that officials were grappling with on Monday, among them:Why were protests allowed to get so close to Brazil’s halls of power? And why had security forces been so outnumbered, allowing throngs of protesters to easily surge into official government buildings?More than a thousand supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro alleged to have taken part in the unrest were being detained in Brasília.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesBrazil’s justice minister, Flávio Dino, said various security agencies had met on Friday to plan for possible violence in the planned protests on Sunday. But, he said, the security strategy hatched in that meeting, including keeping protesters away from the main government buildings, was at least partly abandoned on Sunday and there were far fewer law enforcement officers than had been anticipated.“The police contingent was not what had been agreed upon,” he said, adding that it was unclear why plans had changed.Some in the federal government blamed the governor of Brasília, Ibaneis Rocha, and his deputies, suggesting that they had been either negligent or complicit in understaffing the security forces around the protests.Late Sunday, Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice, suspended Mr. Rocha from his job as governor for at least 90 days, saying that the upheaval “could only occur with the consent, and even effective participation, of the security and intelligence authorities.”Whatever security lapses may have occurred, Sunday’s riot laid bare in shocking fashion the central challenge facing Brazil’s democracy. Unlike other attempts to topple governments across Latin America’s history, the attacks on Sunday were not ordered by a single strongman ruler or a military bent on seizing power, but rather were fueled by a more insidious, deeply rooted threat: mass delusion.Military police officers dismantling a camp used by Bolsonaro supporters in front of an army facility in Rio de Janeiro.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesMillions of Brazilians appear to be convinced that October’s presidential election was rigged against Mr. Bolsonaro, despite audits and analyses by experts finding nothing of the sort. Those beliefs are in part the product of years of conspiracy theories, misleading statements and explicit falsehoods spread by Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies claiming Brazil’s fully electronic voting systems are rife with fraud.Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters have been repeating the claims for months, and then built on them with new conspiracy theories passed along in group chats on WhatsApp and Telegram, many focused on the idea that the electronic voting machines’ software was manipulated to steal the election. On Sunday, protesters stood on the roof of Congress with a banner that made a single demand: “We want the source code.”Walking out of the protest encampment on Monday morning, Orlando Pinheiro Farias, 40, said he had entered the presidential offices on Sunday with fellow protesters to find documents related to “the investigations into the source code, which legitimize that Jair Messias Bolsonaro is the president of Brazil.”He rattled off several government acronyms and secret investigations that he had read about on the internet, and then said that he had to go back to his tent to retrieve a Brazilian flag he had stolen from the building.Delusions over the election extended to many protesters’ explanations of what had happened in the riots. People filing out of the encampment on Monday morning, carrying rolled-up air mattresses, extension cords and stools, each had a clear message: Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters had not ransacked the buildings. Rather, they said, those causing the damage were radical leftists in disguise, bent on defaming their movement.Employees of the presidential office during the clean-up on Monday.Victor Moriyama for The New York Times“Have you ever heard of the Trojan Horse?” said Nathanael S. Viera, 51, who had driven 900 miles to take part in the protests on Sunday. “The infiltrators went in and set everything up, and the damn press showed the Brazilian nation that we patriots are the hooligans.”The scenes on Sunday of right-wing protesters draped in their national flag roaming through the halls of power were strikingly similar to those from the Jan. 6 storming of the United States Capitol, and so were the confused beliefs that drove protesters in both countries to invade federal buildings and film themselves doing so.“Donald Trump was taken out with a rigged election, no question about it, and at the time he was taken out, I said, ‘President Bolsonaro is going to be taken down,’” said Wanderlei Silva, 59, a retired hotel worker standing outside the encampment on Monday.Mr. Silva saw his own similarities between the riots on Sunday and those on Jan. 6, 2021. “The Democrats staged that and invaded the Capitol,” he said. “The same way they staged it here.”Brazil has long seen itself in the mold of the United States: a sprawling, diverse country rich in natural resources, spread across a collection of independent states and governed by a strong central government. But its tumultuous political history never truly mimicked the American system, until the past several years.“If there was no Trump, there would be no Bolsonaro in Brazil. And if there was no invasion of the Capitol, there wouldn’t have been the invasion we saw yesterday,” said Guga Chacra, a commentator for Brazil’s largest television network, who lives in New York and tracks politics in both countries. “Bolsonarismo tries to copy Trumpism, and Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil try to copy what Trump supporters do in the United States.”Even a description of Brazil’s 2022 presidential election reads like a summary of the 2020 American one: a far-right populist incumbent with a penchant for insults and off-the-cuff tweets against a septuagenarian challenger on the left running on his proven political track record and a promise to unite a divided nation.Outside the Federal Supreme Court on Monday.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesBut the election’s aftermath was different.While former President Donald J. Trump fought to overturn the results and urged his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Bolsonaro had effectively given up and decamped for Florida by the time his voters were forcing their way into the offices he once occupied.Mr. Bolsonaro spent part of Monday in the hospital in Florida, dealing with abdominal pains stemming from a stabbing he suffered in 2018, his wife said on social media. Mr. Bolsonaro is planning to stay in Florida for the next several weeks or months, hoping investigations in Brazil into his activity as president will cool off, according to a friend. Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, would not comment specifically on Mr. Bolsonaro’s visa status, citing privacy laws. But he said that any person who came to the United States under a diplomatic visa and who “is no longer engaged in official business on behalf of their government” was expected either to depart the country or request a different type of visa within 30 days.“If an individual has no basis on which to be in the United States, an individual is subject to removal,” Mr. Price said.In a recorded address in the final days of his presidency, Mr. Bolsonaro said that he had tried and failed to use the law to overturn the 2022 election, and suggested that his supporters should now move on. “We live in a democracy or we don’t,” he said. “No one wants an adventure.” On Sunday, he posted a message on Twitter, criticizing the violence.But his years of rhetoric against Brazil’s democratic institutions — and his political strategy of instilling fear of the left in his supporters — had already left an indelible mark.Interviews with protesters in recent weeks appeared to show that Mr. Bolsonaro’s movement was moving beyond him. It is now driven by deeply held beliefs among many right-wing Brazilians that political elites rigged the vote to install as president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom they regard as a communist who will turn Brazil into an authoritarian state like Venezuela.President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva meeting with members of the Supreme Court and the National Congress on Monday.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesMr. Lula, the new president, is a leftist but is not a communist. And independent security experts said there was no evidence of irregularities in the 2022 vote. A separate analysis by Brazil’s military found just one potential vulnerability in Brazil’s fully digital voting system, which would require the coordination of multiple election officials to exploit, a scenario that security experts said was extremely unlikely.Mr. Lula, who had campaigned on unifying the divided nation, is now faced with investigating and prosecuting many of his political opponents’ supporters just a week into his presidency. The authorities said that roughly 1,500 protesters had been detained by Monday evening, and that they would be held until at least the investigation was finished.On Monday, Mr. Lula spoke with President Biden, who conveyed “the unwavering support of the United States for Brazil’s democracy and for the free will of the Brazilian people,” White House officials said. Mr. Biden invited Mr. Lula to the White House in early February. (It took more than 18 months for him to meet with Mr. Bolsonaro at a summit in Los Angeles.)In a televised speech on Monday night, Mr. Lula said that his government would prosecute anyone who had attacked Brazil’s democracy on Sunday. “What they want is a coup, and they won’t have one,” he said. “They have to learn that democracy is the most complicated thing we do.”He and many of Brazil’s top government officials then walked together from the presidential offices to the Supreme Court, crossing the same plaza that a day before was thronged with mobs calling for the overthrow of his government.Brazil’s Supreme Court on Monday.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesReporting was contributed by Ana Ionova, More