Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Lawyers Who Investigated Trump Start Firm to Combat Threats to Democracy

      by

      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

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      A Jan. 6 Moment for Brazil

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Giuliani Receives Grand Jury Subpoena for Records Related to Trump

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      ¿Qué impulsó el ataque a la capital de Brasil?

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      What Drove the Brazil Riots? Mass Delusion and Conspiracy Theories

      by

      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

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Brazil Riot and Jan. 6 Attack Followed a Similar Digital Playbook, Experts Say

      by

      On TikTok and YouTube, videos claiming voter fraud in Brazil’s recent elections have been recirculating for days.On the WhatsApp and Telegram messaging services, an image of a poster announcing the date, time and location of the protests against the government was copied and shared over the weekend.And on Facebook and Twitter, hashtags designed to evade detection by the authorities were used by organizers as they descended onto government buildings in the capital, Brasília, on Sunday.One day after the thousands of people broke into government buildings to protest what they falsely claim was a stolen election, misinformation researchers are studying how the internet was used to stoke anger and to organize far-right groups ahead of the riots. Many are drawing a comparison to the Jan. 6 protests two years ago in the United States, where thousands broke into the Capitol building in Washington. In both cases, they say, a playbook was used in which online groups, chats and social media sites played a central role.“Digital platforms were fundamental not only in the extreme right-wing domestic terrorism on Sunday, but also in the entire long process of online radicalization over the last 10 years in Brazil,” said Michele Prado, an independent researcher who studies digital movements and the Brazilian far right.She said that calls for violence have been “increasing exponentially from the last week of December.”She and other misinformation researchers have singled out Twitter and Telegram as playing a central role in organizing protests. In posts on Brazilian Telegram channels viewed by The New York Times, there were open calls for violence against the left-wing Brazilian politicians and their families. There were also addresses of government offices for protesters to attack.In one image, which The Times found on more than a dozen Telegram channels, there was a call for “patriots” to gather in Brasília on Sunday to “mark a new day” of independence. Underneath many of the posters were details of gathering times for protesters.The hashtag “Festa da Selma” was also widely spread on Twitter, including by far-right extremists who had previously been banned from the platform, Ms. Prado said.A military police officer at a camp of Bolsonaro supporters in front of an Army facility on Monday.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesIn the months since Elon Musk took over Twitter, far-right figures from around the world have had their accounts reinstated as a general amnesty unless they violated rules again. Ms. Prado said that misinformation researchers in Brazil have been reporting the accounts to Twitter in hopes that the company takes action.Twitter and Telegram did not respond to requests for comment.Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said that the attacks Sunday were a “violating event” and that the company was removing content on its platforms that supported or praised the attacks on government buildings in Brazil.The protesters in Brazil and those in the United States were inspired by the same extremist ideas and conspiracy theories and were both radicalized online, Ms. Prado said. In both cases, she added, social media played a crucial role in organizing violent attacks. More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Speaker, Speaker, What Do You See? I See MAGA Looking at Me.

      by

      Bret Stephens: Gail, remember “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” the unforgettable Lionel Shriver novel about a woman whose son murders his classmates? Maybe someone should write the sequel: “We Need to Talk About What They Did to Kevin.”Gail Collins: A book-length disquisition on Kevin McCarthy, Bret? I dunno. Always thought his strongest suit was that he was too boring to hate. But now that he’s apparently promised the Republican right wing everything but permission to bring pet ocelots to the House floor, I can see it.Bret: Too boring to hate or too pathetic to despise? I’ve begun to think of McCarthy almost as a literary archetype, like one of those figures in a Joseph Conrad novel whose follies make them weak and whose weakness leads them to folly.Gail: Love your literary allusions. But let’s pretend you’re in charge of the Republican Party — tell me what you think of him in general.Bret: A few honorable exceptions aside, the G.O.P. is basically split between reptiles and invertebrates. McCarthy is the ultimate invertebrate. He went to Mar-a-Lago just a short while after Jan. 6 to kiss the ring of the guy who incited the mob that, by McCarthy’s own admission, wanted to kill him. He hated Liz Cheney because of her backbone. But he quailed before Marjorie Taylor Greene because she has a forked tongue. He gave away the powers and prerogatives of the office of speaker in order to gain the office, which is like a slug abandoning its shell and thinking it won’t be stepped on. A better man would have told the Freedom Caucus holdouts to shove it. Instead, as a friend of mine put it, McCarthy decided to become the squeaker of the House.Gail: OK, Kevin is House squeaker forever.Bret: If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the whole spectacle has shown voters what they get for voting for this Republican Party.Gail: Hey, you’re still in charge of Republicans. Now that they’re sort of in command, do you have hopes they’ll make progress on your priorities, like controlling government spending? Without, um, failing to make the nation’s debt payments ….Bret: Buried in the noise about McCarthy’s humiliation is that his opponents had some reasonable demands. One of them was to give members of Congress a minimum of 72 hours to read the legislation they were voting on. Another was to limit bills to a single subject. The idea is to do away with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink spending packages that Congress has lately become way too fond of.Gail: Yeah, I can buy into that one.Bret: On the other hand, the idea that this Republican clown show is going to accomplish anything significant — particularly since doing so would require them to work with a Democratic president and Senate — is roughly the equivalent of Vladimir Putin leaving the vocation of vile despot to become a … cannabis entrepreneur. Not going to happen.So what do Democrats do?Gail: Well, one plus is that we don’t have to worry about the Republican House passing some terrible, nutty legislation since the Senate is there to put a halt to it. Interesting how much better obstruction looks when your party is doing the obstructing ….Bret: It’s almost — almost — enough to be grateful to people like Herschel Walker and Blake Masters for being such deliriously awful candidates.Gail: When it comes to positive action, like keeping the government running, I’d like to think the moderate Dems and the moderate Republicans could get together and come to some agreement on the basics. Do you think there’s a chance?Bret: What was the name of that Bret Easton Ellis novel? “Less Than Zero.” Bipartisanship became a four-letter word for most Republicans sometime around 2012. If we can avoid another useless government shutdown, I’ll consider it a minor miracle.On the other hand, all this is good for Democrats. In our last conversation, I predicted that McCarthy wouldn’t win the speakership and that Joe Biden would decide against a second term. I was wrong on the first. Now I’m beginning to think I was also wrong on the second, in part because Republicans are in such manifest disarray. What is your spidey sense telling you?Gail: Yeah, Biden knows 80 is old for another run, but the chance to take on Donald Trump again is probably going to be irresistible.Bret: Assuming it’s going to be Trump, which, increasingly, I doubt.Gail: You really think it’s going to be Ron DeSantis? My theory is that if the field opens up at all, there’ll be a swarm of Republican hopefuls, dividing the Trump opposition.Bret: It’ll be DeSantis or you can serve me a platter of crow. Never mind that Trump still managed to seal the deal for McCarthy’s speakership by winning over a few of the last holdouts. It still took him 15 ballots.Gail: But about Biden — if he did drop out, Democrats would have to figure out what to do about Kamala Harris. A woman, a minority, with the classic presidential training job. Yet a lot of people haven’t found her all that impressive as a potential leader.My vote would be for him to announce he’s not running instantly, and let all the other potential heirs go for it.Bret: How do you solve a problem like Kamala? My initial hope was that she’d grow into the job. That hasn’t seemed to happen. My second hope was that Biden would give her a task in which she’d shine. Didn’t happen either. My third hope was that Biden would ask her to fill Stephen Breyer’s seat on the Supreme Court and then nominate Gina Raimondo or Pete Buttigieg to the vice presidency, setting either of them up to be the front-runner in ’24 or ’28. Whoops again. Now Dems are saddled with their own version of Dan Quayle, minus the gravitas.Gail: Not fair to compare her to Dan Quayle. But otherwise OK with your plan. Go on.Bret: I also think Biden should announce he isn’t going to run, both on account of his age and the prospect of running against someone like DeSantis. But the argument is harder to make given the midterm results, Republican chaos, the sense that he’s defied the skeptics to pass a lot of legislation and the increasingly likely prospect that Ukraine will prevail over Russia this year and give him a truly historic geopolitical win.I just hope that if he does run, he switches veeps. It would … reassure the nation.Gail: So happy to hear you’re on a Biden fan track. Does that apply to his new plan for the Mexican border, too?Bret: Not a Biden fan, exactly, though I do root for a successful presidency on general principle. As for the border plan, the good news is that he finally seems to be recognizing the scale of the problem and promising tougher enforcement. It’s also good that he’s doing more for political refugees from oppressive countries like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.Gail: And next …Bret: The right step now is to start pushing for realistic bipartisan immigration reform that gives Republicans more money for border wall construction and security in exchange for automatic citizenship for Dreamers, an expanded and renewable guest-worker visa that helps bring undocumented workers out of the shadows and a big increase in the “extraordinary ability” EB-1 visas for our future Andy Groves and Albert Einsteins. What do you think?Gail: I was waiting for you to get to the border wall itself, which we disagree about. Terrible symbol, awful to try to maintain and not always effective.Bret: All true, except that it paves the way for a good legislative compromise and can save lives if it deters dangerous border crossings.Gail: Moneywise, the border states deserve increased federal aid to handle their challenges. A good chunk should go to early childhood education, which would not only help the new arrivals but also local children born into non-English-speaking families.The aid should also go to states like New York that are getting busloads of new immigrants — some from those Arizona and Texas busing plots, but a good number just because they’re the newcomers’ choice destination.I believe there was a bipartisan plan hatched in the House that included citizenship for Dreamers — an obvious reform that, amazingly, we haven’t yet achieved. But bipartisan plans aren’t doing real well right now.Bret: It’s still worth a shot. I’m sorry Biden didn’t invest the kind of political capital into immigration reform that he did into the infrastructure and climate change bills. And if Republicans wind up voting down funding for a border wall out of spite for Dreamers, I can’t see how that helps Republicans or hurts Democrats. Supporting them seems like smart politics at the very minimum.Before we go, Gail, one more point of note: We just passed the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. I was happy to see Biden honor the heroes of that day at a White House ceremony. Also happy to see the Justice Department continue to prosecute hundreds of cases. And appalled to watch Brazil’s right-wing loons try to imitate the Jan. 6 insurrectionists by storming their own parliament. Any suggestions for going forward?Gail: Well, what we really need to see is an effort by Republicans, some of whom were endangered themselves during the attack, but virtually none of whom have shown any interest in revisiting that awful moment — only one member of the party showed up for that ceremony.Now that Kevin McCarthy has his job in hand, let’s see him call for a bipartisan committee to come up with some suggestions. Ha ha ha.Sorry — don’t want to end on a snippy note.Bret: Not snippy at all. Truthful. We could start by requiring a civics course for all incoming members of Congress. Maybe some of them might learn that their first duty is to the Constitution, not to themselves.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

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Many Republicans Against McCarthy Sought to Overturn 2020 Election

      by

      WASHINGTON — They helped lead the efforts to keep former President Donald J. Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election. They refused to certify that President Biden was the rightful winner. They spread lies that helped ignite a mob of Trump supporters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. On Friday, the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, many of the same hard-right lawmakers who served as top lieutenants to Mr. Trump during the buildup to the assault spent the day blocking the bid of Representative Kevin McCarthy of California to be speaker and extracting major concessions from him. While some had received subpoenas in the Jan. 6 investigations and were later referred to the House Ethics Committee, their power showed they were far from outcasts and had paid little price for their actions. Among the ringleaders in both the effort to block Mr. McCarthy and the push to overturn the 2020 election were Representative Scott Perry, the leader of the far-right Freedom Caucus, and Representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona. (On Friday, Mr. Gosar and Mr. Perry swung behind Mr. McCarthy after he caved to their demands to dilute the power of the post he is seeking and to give their faction more sway in the House.)Other hard-right holdouts who for days have refused to vote for Mr. McCarthy were Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Andy Harris of Maryland. All three met with Mr. Trump or White House officials as they discussed how to fight the election results, according to evidence gathered by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. 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. Harris flipped his vote to support Mr. McCarthy on Friday afternoon, but Ms. Boebert and Mr. Gaetz remained against him.) Democrats made sure to single out the group.“This January 6th anniversary should serve as a wake-up call to the G.O.P. to reject M.A.G.A. radicalism — which keeps leading to G.O.P. failures,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, wrote on Twitter. “But the pandemonium wrought by House Republicans this week is one more example of how M.A.G.A. radicalism is making it impossible for them to govern.” No one in the hard-right group attended what was billed as a bipartisan ceremony on Capitol Hill to mark the anniversary. Only one Republican of any stripe turned up: Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a former F.B.I. agent who is the co-chairman of the centrist Problem Solvers Caucus. The ceremony opened with a moment of silence for House members on the steps of the Capitol to honor the Capitol Police officers who died in the year after the attack.“We stand here with our democracy intact because of those officers,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top Democrat in the House, as tears welled up in some House members’ eyes. Witnesses who testified before the House investigative committee, including police officers who defended the Capitol, were honored at the White House, including Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, and Harry Dunn, Caroline Edwards, Aquilino Gonell, and Eugene Goodman of the U.S. Capitol Police. Mr. Perry, who was one of the main architects behind a plan to install Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, as the acting attorney general after he appeared sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s false allegations of widespread voter fraud, said Friday that he fought Mr. McCarthy’s nomination for speaker until he could extract concessions from him to give the House Freedom Caucus and rank-and-file Republicans more influence over leadership. “This place is broken,” Mr. Perry said. “We weren’t going to move from that position until the change is made.” Mr. Biggs, who was still holding out against Mr. McCarthy on Friday afternoon, was involved in a range of organizational efforts in 2020, including meetings aimed at attracting protesters to Washington on Jan. 6, according to the House Jan. 6 committee. Mr. Gosar, who voted against Mr. McCarthy on multiple ballots but changed his vote to support him on Friday, spread numerous lies about the 2020 election and spoke at “Stop the Steal” rallies arranged by Ali Alexander, a prominent organizer. The House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack has referred Mr. Perry and Mr. Biggs to the Ethics Committee for refusing to comply with its subpoenas. Not every Republican involved in blocking Mr. McCarthy’s ascension was among those who voted against certifying Mr. Biden’s victory.Representative Chip Roy of Texas started out as an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election but gradually grew alarmed about the push to invalidate the results and ultimately opposed Mr. Trump’s bid to get Congress to overturn them on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Roy, an initial holdout against Mr. McCarthy, led negotiations to try to bring about a deal that would make Mr. McCarthy the speaker in exchange for changes to House rules.“We believe that there ought to be fundamental changes about and limits on spending after the massive bloated omnibus spending bill in December,” Mr. Roy said, referring to the $1.7 trillion government funding package passed by Congress last month. “And so we’ve talked about those. We’ve put a lot of those things in place.” More