Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      House Jan. 6 Panel Faces Key Decisions as It Wraps Up Work

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      The committee investigating what led to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its first hearing since July on Wednesday, entering the final stage of its inquiry.WASHINGTON — A day before resuming its televised hearings and with only months remaining before it closes up shop, the House Jan. 6 committee is wrangling over how best to complete its work, with key decisions yet to be made on issues that could help shape its legacy.The panel, whose public hearings this summer exposed substantial new details about former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, must still decide whether to issue subpoenas to Mr. Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.It has yet to settle on whether to enforce subpoenas issued to Republican members of Congress who have refused to cooperate with the inquiry, or what legislative recommendations to make. It must still grapple with when to turn its files over to the Justice Department, how to finish what it hopes will be a comprehensive written report and whether to make criminal referrals. It cannot even agree on whether Wednesday’s hearing will be its last.The panel has not disclosed the topics it intends to cover in the 1 p.m. hearing, its first since July. But it is still working to break new ground with its investigation.It recently had a breakthrough when Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, agreed to a voluntary interview about her role in seeking to keep Mr. Trump in office. That interview is expected to take place within weeks.The committee also issued a subpoena to Robin Vos, the Republican House speaker in Wisconsin whom Mr. Trump tried to pressure as recently as July to overturn the 2020 election, suggesting that the panel tracked Mr. Trump’s activities long after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and his departure from office two weeks later. (Mr. Vos has sued to try to block the committee’s subpoena.)“Our hearings have demonstrated the essential culpability of Donald Trump, and we will complete that story,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee.But the committee has debated whether and how to highlight certain information related to the Jan. 6 attack. For instance, some members and staff have wanted to hold a hearing to highlight the panel’s extensive work investigating the law enforcement failures related to the assault, but others have argued that doing so would take attention off Mr. Trump.And it has struggled in recent weeks with staff departures and is facing public criticism from a former aide, Denver Riggleman, who says it has not been aggressive enough in pursuing connections between the White House and the rioters.The final stages of its planned 18 months of work are playing out against a shifting political climate. Polls suggest that Democrats could lose control of the House in November’s midterm elections. Mr. Trump is showing every intention of seeking the presidency again, and the committee’s Republican vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who lost her primary in August, appears to be positioning herself as the party’s anti-Trump White House candidate for 2024, with the panel’s conclusions as part of her platform.Ms. Cheney on Saturday seemed to contradict other committee members by describing this week’s hearing as unlikely to be the last. Other members, including the committee’s chairman, have said it would likely be their final presentation.With that backdrop, Wednesday’s hearing could be seen as the first step in the closing stages of the committee’s work.“What they have to do is strategic,” said Norman L. Eisen, who was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, including for the first impeachment and trial of Mr. Trump. “The first part of the end game is to close the deal with the American people.”The panel set high expectations for itself by revolutionizing what a congressional hearing could look like. Preparing for the hearing on Wednesday has consumed the committee’s focus in recent weeks..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“They’ve pretty uniformly met and exceeded expectations,” Mr. Eisen said. “And when you’ve done that eight times, that suggests that you know what you’re doing. I suspect part of the reason that they took a lengthy hiatus — and by all reports worked very hard over the summer — was to be able to come back in September with a bang.”To some degree, the committee is now competing for attention with other investigations into Mr. Trump and his allies. The New York attorney general has filed a sweeping fraud suit against Mr. Trump and his family. Prosecutors in Georgia are conducting grand jury interviews about efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss there. And the Justice Department is now conducting criminal inquiries into both the events that led to the Jan. 6 attack and Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents he took with him upon leaving the White House.To help with its end game, the panel has quietly rehired John Wood, a former federal prosecutor who is close to Ms. Cheney. Before he left the panel for a brief, unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate in Missouri, Mr. Wood led the committee’s “Gold Team,” which investigated Mr. Trump and his inner circle.It has also expanded its number of staff members from about 50 up to 57, according to Congress’s latest financial data, and has spent about $5.3 million over its first year in existence.But at the same time, the committee has had five staff members put in resignation notices in recent weeks. Among them is Amanda Wick, a former federal prosecutor who was featured in a committee hearing and led the panel’s “Green Team,” which investigated the money trail connected to Jan. 6, including political donations and the funding of the rallies that preceded the violence.The hearing on Wednesday is expected to feature new video of the Jan. 6 attack and also new clips of some of the committee’s hundreds of interviews with witnesses.Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, said the panel would focus some of its energy on ongoing threats to democracy, such as 2020 election deniers gaining power over election systems.“We have found additional information,” Ms. Lofgren said. “We worked throughout the summer.”The panel’s investigators pursued a number of topics this summer, traveling to Copenhagen, for example, to review footage shot by a documentary film crew of the political operative and Trump confidant Roger J. Stone Jr. Committee members have hinted that some of that material could turn up in Wednesday’s hearing.They held closed-door interviews with senior Trump administration officials in an effort to uncover more about the period between Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters attacked Congress, and Jan. 20, when President Biden was sworn in, including talks about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office.The panel at one point considered inviting generals who worked for Mr. Trump to deliver firsthand accounts of his behavior. (The idea has not moved forward.)Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said the panel recently received a trove of documents from the Secret Service in response to a subpoena it issued after the news that agents’ text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, had been lost.A spokesman for the agency said the Secret Service provided a “significant level of detail from emails, radio transmissions, Microsoft Teams chat messages and exhibits that address aspects of planning, operations and communications surrounding January 6th.” But the spokesman said the documents did not include any additional text messages, such as those sought by the committee that were erased during an upgrade of phones.Members of the committee had originally seen their investigation, and the possibility of a criminal referral, as a way of putting pressure on the Justice Department to pursue a criminal case. But with federal prosecutors now investigating elements of Mr. Trump’s efforts to retain power despite losing at the ballot box, the House committee is considering a new suggestion for the information it uncovered about Mr. Trump and his allies raising money by promoting baseless assertions about election fraud: making a referral to the Federal Election Commission, a largely toothless body that can weigh abuses of campaign finance laws.“F.E.C. would be a good possibility,” Mr. Thompson said. “Obviously we looked seriously at some of the fund-raising that went on around Jan. 6.”Members have also been discussing what legislative recommendations they should make. Last week, to close off the possibility of another president trying to have a vice president block the certification by Congress of the Electoral College results, Ms. Cheney and Ms. Lofgren introduced an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act, which quickly passed the House. (A somewhat different version is awaiting action in the Senate.)Members are also discussing reforms to the Insurrection Act, legislation related to the 14th and 25th amendments and regulation of militia groups. Members also are likely to recommend improvements to Capitol security.Not all the panel’s recommendations have found agreement. Mr. Raskin, for instance, has pushed for recommending the Electoral College be eliminated, but that idea has been met with resistance from Ms. Cheney and others and is unlikely to be included in the final recommendations.Maggie Haberman More

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      The Inside Joke That Became Trump’s Big Lie

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      Donald Trump’s so-called big lie is not big because of its brazen dishonesty or its widespread influence or its unyielding grip over the Republican Party. It is not even big because of its ambition — to delegitimize a presidency, disenfranchise millions of voters, clap back against reality. No, the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election has grown so powerful because it is yoked to an older deception, without which it could not survive: the idea that American politics is, in essence, a joke, and that it can be treated as such without consequence.The big lie depends on the big joke. It was enabled by it. It was enhanced by it. It is sustained by it.When politicians publicly defend positions they privately reject, they are telling the joke. When they give up on the challenge of governing the country for the rush of triggering the enemy, they are telling the joke. When they intone that they must address the very fears they have encouraged or manufactured among their constituents, they are telling the joke. When their off-the-record smirks signal that they don’t really mean what they just said or did, they are telling the joke. As the big lie spirals ever deeper into unreality, with the former president mixing election falsehoods with call-outs to violent, conspiratorial fantasies, the big joke has much to answer for.Recent books like “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell” by a former Republican operative and campaign consultant, Tim Miller, and “Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission” by The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich place this long-running gag at the center of American politics. The big joke drains language of meaning, divorces action from responsibility and enables all manner of lies. “Getting the joke” means understanding that nothing you say need be true, that nobody expects it to be true — at least nobody in the know. “The truth of this scam, or ‘joke,’ was fully evident inside the club,” Leibovich writes. “We’re all friends here. Everyone knew the secret handshake, spoke the native language, and got the joke.”Without the big joke, the big lie would not merit its adjective. Its challenge to democracy would be ephemeral, not existential.The chroniclers of Donald Trump’s election lie typically seek out an origin story, a choose-your-own adventure that always leads to the Capitol steps on Jan. 6, 2021. In his book, “The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020,” Politico’s Jonathan Lemire pinpoints an August 2016 campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio, during which Trump first suggested that the contest against Hillary Clinton would be rigged against him. This, Lemire writes, was when “the seeds of the big lie had been planted.”Tim Alberta of The Atlantic starts six months earlier, when Trump accused Senator Ted Cruz of Texas of cheating in the Iowa caucuses. “That episode was a bright red, blinking light foreshadowing everything that was to come,” Alberta told PBS Frontline. In “The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party,” the Washington Post columnist (and my former colleague) Dana Milbank offers a far longer accumulation of lies from the right: The notion that Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in the death of the White House lawyer Vince Foster, the illusions behind President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the birther concoctions, the death-panel ravings — all building toward the big one. “The G.O.P.’s quarter-century war on facts had come to this, a gargantuan fabrication aimed at discrediting democracy itself,” Milbank sums up. And Leibovich quotes Representative Adam Schiff’s view of how his House colleagues slowly submitted to Trump’s fantasies. “It’s one small lie, followed by a demand for a bigger lie and a bigger concession, a bigger moral lapse, until, you know, these folks that I admired and respected, because I believe that they believe what they were saying, had given themselves up so completely to Donald Trump.”Such accounts reflect the common understanding that the big lie is really all the little lies we told along the way — a cycle of deceit and submission, culminating in a myth so powerful that it transcends belief and becomes a fully formed worldview. Lemire notes how Trump’s assertion that he had been wiretapped by President Barack Obama during the 2016 campaign seemed like a pretty gargantuan lie at the time, one that Trump tweeted “without any evidence.” (Journalists love to note that the former president utters falsehoods “without evidence,” an adorable euphemism for “making stuff up.”) But even this one dissipates in the wake of the big lie. After “big,” the term “unprecedented” may be the election lie’s most common descriptor.But it is not without precedent. After all, what was birtherism if not the same lie? Its underlying racism rendered the grotesque theory about Obama’s birthplace especially repugnant, but the basic assertion is familiar: that a president whom the American people lawfully chose is not legitimate, is something less than the real thing.The 2020 election lie is not bigger than birtherism. History should not remember the effort to delegitimize Obama’s presidency as just another rung on the ladder toward the big lie. The lies are akin even in their power of persuasion. Leibovich recalls how in 2016, 72 percent of Republicans said they believed Trump’s lies about Obama’s background. This figure is comparable with the 71 percent of Republicans who said in late 2021 that they believed President Biden was not a fully legitimate president. And much as support for the 2020 election lie provides a loyalty test in the Trumpified Republican Party, a willingness to believe the worst of Obama was a near-requirement in the party during his presidency. “A testing ground for Republican squishiness was how strongly, and how bitterly, one opposed Obama,” the historian Nicole Hemmer recalls in her new book, “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s,” on the rise of the post-Reagan right. “To match the response of the party’s base, politicians would need to reflect the emotions gripping it.” And they did.For Hemmer, the Republican Party’s evolution from the party of Reagan to the party of Trump began with Pat Buchanan, the White House aide, television pundit and authoritarian-curious presidential candidate who “fashioned grievance politics into an agenda,” she writes — a program that emphasized identity, immigration and race as its battlegrounds. For Milbank, it was Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and the “savage politics he pioneered” in advance of the Republican Revolution of 1994. “There was nobody better at attacking, destroying, and undermining those in power,” Milbank writes. Gingrich made compromise a thought crime and labeled his opponents as sick and traitorous, tactics that should also sound familiar.You needn’t pick between Buchanan and Gingrich — it’s enough to say that Buchanan gave the modern Republican Party its substance and Gingrich provided its style. (I imagine they’d both be honored by the distinctions.) When Trump dispatched his supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6, telling them to “fight like hell,” urging them to preserve a country that was slipping away, calling them patriots who could take back an election stolen by the radical left, he was channeling both men. The big lie is part of their legacy, too.In his j’accuse-y yet semi-confessional “Why We Did It,” Miller, now a writer at large for the anti-Trump conservative forum The Bulwark, tries to grasp why his old colleagues followed Trump all the way to his rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6. “I needed to figure out where our parting had started,” he writes. Miller grasps the futility of seeking a single origin story — “I’m sure a student of history might be able to trace it back to the Southern Strategy or Lee Atwater or, hell, maybe even Mark Hanna (give him a Google),” Miller writes — but he does hazard some explanations. He points to Republicans’ ability to compartmentalize concerns about Trump. Their unquenchable compulsion to be in the mix. Their self-serving belief that they could channel dark arts for noble purposes. Their desire to make money. (Miller acknowledges his own paid work helping the confirmation of Scott Pruitt as Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator, a stint that makes Miller more of a Barely Trumper than a Never Trumper.) Most of all, his old colleagues succumbed to Trump because they believed they were playing “some big game devoid of real-world consequences.”Miller lingers on this game — the amoral world of tactics, messaging and opposition research, the realm of politics where facts matter less than cleverness and nothing matters more than results. He once thought of it as winning the race, being a killer, just a dishonest buck for a dishonest day’s work. “Practitioners of politics could easily dismiss moralistic or technical concerns just by throwing down their trump card: ‘It’s all part of the Game,’” Miller writes. He has a nickname for the comrades so immersed in the game that they are oblivious to its consequences: the LOL Nothing Matters Republicans. “The LOLNMRs had decided that if someone like Trump could win, then everything that everyone does in politics is meaningless.”The big lie thrives on LOL Nothing Matters.What Miller calls “the game” becomes “the joke” in Leibovich’s book, the depressing tale of the high-level supplicants who surrounded Trump during his presidency and continue to grovel in what they hope will be an interregnum. If the purely transactional nature of Washington power was the subject of Leibovich’s 2013 best seller, “This Town,” the mix of mendacity and subservience behind every transaction is the theme of his latest work. Reince Priebus, during his incarnation as Republican National Committee chairman before his six-month sojourn as Trump’s White House chief of staff, explained to Leibovich that of course, he got the joke. “This was his way of reassuring me that he understood what was really happening beyond his surface niceties about unity, tolerance, grace, or the idea that Trump could ever ‘pivot,’” Leibovich writes. In other words, don’t take his words seriously. “He got the joke and knew that I did, too.”The platonic ideal of the big joke was immortalized in The Washington Post the week after the 2020 election, uttered by an anonymous senior Republican official reflecting on Trump’s election claims. “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change. He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20.” It was wrong in so many ways — the downside would prove enormous, the believers would become legion, the plotting was underway.The big lie is that the election was stolen; the big joke is that you can prolong that lie without consequence. The former is a quest for undeserved power; the latter is an evasion of well-deserved responsibility.Other renditions of the big joke were more subtle. A few days after the election, a reporter asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo if the State Department was preparing to work with the Biden team to facilitate a “smooth transition” of power. “There will be a smooth transition,” Pompeo responded, making the slightest of pauses before adding, “to a second Trump administration.” He then chuckled, a possible signal that he was aware of the truth, and that he “hoped that perhaps everyone understood his position,” Leibovich writes.Pompeo got the big joke about the big lie. Yet the man charged with representing American values to the world still felt he had to tell both.Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of 10 Republican House members to vote in favor of Trump’s second impeachment, says the joke is well understood among his party colleagues. “For all but a handful of members, if you put them on truth serum, they knew that the election was fully legitimate and that Donald Trump was a joke,” Kinzinger told Leibovich. “The vast majority of people get the joke. I think Kevin McCarthy gets the joke. Lindsey gets the joke. The problem is that the joke isn’t even funny anymore.” Humoring Trump has grown humorless.There was a time when even Trump grappled with the truth. Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as communications director in the Trump White House, told PBS’s “Frontline” that the president admitted defeat in the days after the election was called for Biden. “There was one moment where in this period he was watching Joe Biden on TV and says, ‘Can you believe I lost to this (blank) guy?’”But what once may have sounded like a rhetorical lament — can you believe I lost? — now seems like a challenge to anyone questioning the big lie. Can you believe I lost? There is only one acceptable answer. In his rally last weekend in Youngstown, Ohio, Trump reiterated his commitment to the lie. “I ran twice. I won twice,” he declared. For a moment, when bragging about how many more votes he won in 2020 than in 2016, the veil almost fell. “We got 12 million more and we lost,” Trump said, before recovering. “We didn’t lose,” he continued. “We lost in their imagination.” It was a classic Trumpian projection: The lie is true and the truth is fake.The big lie appeared to crescendo on Jan. 6, 2021. The big joke, however, was retold during the early hours of Jan. 7, when the election results were certified, with 147 Republican lawmakers — more than half of the total — having voted to overturn them. As Milbank puts it, “once you’ve unhitched yourself from the truth wagon, there’s no limit to the places you can visit.” You can use exaggerated warnings of voter fraud to justify state-level initiatives tightening ballot access. (Lemire warns that the big lie has “metastasized” from a rallying cry into the “cold, methodical process of legislation.”) You can select election deniers to carry the party banner in midterm contests. And yes, you can visit the Capitol on the day the voters’ will is being affirmed, trash the place and tell yourself, as the Republican National Committee suggested, that you’re engaging in “legitimate political discourse.”The R.N.C.’s statement, part of a resolution censuring Kinzinger and Representative Liz Cheney for participating in the House’s Jan. 6 investigation, seemed to rebrand the assault as an exercise in civic virtue. The R.N.C. soon backtracked, professing that the resolution had not endorsed the violence at the Capitol.In a perverse sense, though, the R.N.C. was right. Not about the rioters, but about the discourse. Political debate has become so degraded that it includes every kind of offense, be it anonymous officials humoring the former president, QAnon conspiracists exalting him or frenzied die-hards perpetrating violence on his behalf. Together, the big joke and the big lie have turned the nation’s political life into a dark comedy, one staged for the benefit of aggrieved supporters who, imagining that the performance is real and acting on that belief, become its only punchline.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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      Virginia Thomas Agrees to Interview With Jan. 6 Panel

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      The committee has sought for months to interview Ms. Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, about her involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas and a conservative activist who pushed to overturn the 2020 election, has agreed to sit for an interview with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The development could represent a breakthrough for the committee, which for months has sought to interview Ms. Thomas, who goes by Ginni, about her communications with a conservative lawyer in close contact with former President Donald J. Trump.“I can confirm that Ginni Thomas has agreed to participate in a voluntary interview with the committee,” her lawyer, Mark Paoletta, said in a statement. “As she has said from the outset, Mrs. Thomas is eager to answer the committee’s questions to clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election. She looks forward to that opportunity.”Her cooperation was reported earlier by CNN. A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.The committee requested an interview with Ms. Thomas in June, after it emerged that she had exchanged text messages with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, in which she urged on efforts to challenge Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the 2020 election. She also pressed lawmakers in several states to fight the results of the election.But it was Ms. Thomas’s interactions with John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who pushed Vice President Mike Pence to block or delay the certification of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021, that has most interested investigators.“We are specifically investigating the activities of President Trump, John Eastman and others as they relate to the Constitution and certain other laws, including the Electoral Count Act, that set out the required process for the election and inauguration of the president,” the committee’s leaders — Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming — wrote to Ms. Thomas. “The select committee has obtained evidence that John Eastman worked to develop alternate slates of electors to stop the electoral count on Jan. 6.”The panel obtained at least one email between Ms. Thomas and Mr. Eastman after a federal judge ordered Mr. Eastman to turn over documents to the panel from the period after the November 2020 election when he was meeting with conservative groups to discuss fighting the election results.That same judge has said it is “more likely than not” that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman committed two felonies as part of the effort, including conspiracy to defraud the American people.Mr. Paoletta has argued that the communications between Ms. Thomas and Mr. Eastman contain little of value to the panel’s investigation.Ms. Thomas’s cooperation comes as the Jan. 6 committee is entering its final months of work after a summer of high-profile hearings and preparing an extensive report, which is expected to include recommendations for how to confront the threats to democracy highlighted by the riot and Mr. Trump’s drive to overturn the election. Mr. Thompson, the chairman of the panel, said the next and likely final hearing would take place on Sept. 28.“We have substantial footage of what occurred that we haven’t used; we’ve had significant witness testimony that we haven’t used,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “This is an opportunity to use some of that material.” More

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      House Passes Overhaul of Electoral Count, Moving to Avert Another Jan. 6 Crisis

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      WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday took the first major step to respond to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, voting mostly along party lines to overhaul the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, the law that former President Donald J. Trump tried to exploit that day to overturn his defeat.The bill was the most significant legislative answer yet to the riot and the monthslong campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the 2020 presidential election, but it also underscored the lingering partisan divide over Jan. 6 and the former president’s continuing grip on his party.It cleared a divided House, passing on a 229 to 203 vote. All but nine Republicans opposed the measure, wary of angering Mr. Trump and unwilling to back legislation co-written by Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and a leader of the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 and what led to them.The partisan division could complicate future negotiations with the Senate, which is moving ahead with its own bipartisan version of the legislation that differs from the House bill in some significant respects. Lawmakers now say they do not expect final approval before Congress returns for a lame-duck session after the Nov. 8 midterm elections.The legislation is aimed at updating the law that governs Congress’s counting of the electoral votes cast by the states, the final step under the Constitution to confirm the results of a presidential election and historically a mostly ceremonial process. Democrats said that the aftermath of the 2020 election — in which Mr. Trump and his allies’ attempts to throw out legitimate electoral votes led to the violent disruption of the congressional count by his supporters on Jan. 6 — made clear that the statute needed to be changed.“These are common-sense reforms that will preserve the rule of law for all elections moving forward,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Rules Committee. “Time is running out before the next election.”One key provision in the bill, which is also contained in the Senate proposal, would clarify that the role of the vice president, who by law presides over the counting of the ballots in his capacity as president of the Senate, is strictly ministerial. After the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his advisers tried but failed to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to accept electoral votes from states where Trump was falsely claiming victory.The measure also would raise the threshold substantially for Congress to consider an objection to a state’s electoral votes, requiring that at least one-third of the House and Senate sign on to such a challenge, up dramatically from the one member of each chamber that is now required. The Senate proposal has a lower threshold, requiring one-fifth of the House and Senate to agree.Members of both parties have raised objections in recent elections, though none have been sustained by a majority of the House and Senate. The House bill would also more narrowly define the grounds for an objection to those with a defined constitutional basis.“Ultimately, this bill is about protecting the will of the American voters, which is a principle that is beyond partisanship,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who leads the Administration Committee and introduced the measure with Ms. Cheney. “The bottom line is if you want to object to the vote, you’d better have your colleagues and the Constitution on your side.”Passage of the bill comes as the Jan. 6 committee is wrapping up its work after a summer of high-profile hearings and preparing an extensive report, which is expected to include recommendations for how to confront the threats to democracy raised by the riot and Mr. Trump’s drive to overturn the election. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the panel, said the next and likely final hearing would take place on Sept. 28.“We have substantial footage of what occurred that we haven’t used; we’ve had significant witness testimony that we haven’t used,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “This is an opportunity to use some of that material.”The legislation was also a direct response to Mr. Trump’s efforts to orchestrate the submission of fake slates of electors in states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. It would require that states choose their electors under laws in place before the election, a provision intended to prevent states from reversing course if they do not like the result. And the bill would allow candidates to sue state officials if they failed to submit their electors or certified electors that did not match the election results..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.It also would lay out the circumstances in which a federal judge could extend an election following a catastrophe and force election officials to count ballots or certify an election if they refused to do so.Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, sponsored the bill along with Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California.Kim Raff for The New York TimesRepublicans said the legislation represented a renewed Democratic attempt to exert more federal control over elections that are usually the responsibility of state officials and courts.Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, called it “another attempt to federalize elections at the expense of states.” Other Republicans accused Democrats of rushing the legislation to the floor without review by the appropriate committees or engaging Republicans.They also accused Democrats of using the bill to take aim at Mr. Trump, portraying the legislation as an extension of the work of the special committee investigating Jan. 6, which most House Republicans denounce as a partisan exercise aimed at blaming Mr. Trump for the assault on the Capitol.“This is nothing more than an attack on President Trump and the 2020 election, an attack on a man who has not been in office for nearly two years,” said Representative Guy Reschenthaler, Republican of Pennsylvania.Lawmakers said the legislation’s close association with Ms. Cheney led House Republicans to abandon it in large numbers. Her aggressive criticism of Mr. Trump prompted Republicans to remove her from a party leadership position in May last year, and she lost her re-election primary last month.But Ms. Cheney noted strong support for the measure from conservative jurists and analysts and called on Republicans to embrace it.“If your aim is to prevent future efforts to steal elections, I would respectfully request that conservatives should support this bill,” she said on the House floor. “If instead your aim is to leave open the door for elections to be stolen in the future, you might decide not to support this or any other bill to address the Electoral Count Act.”Leaders of the bipartisan group behind the Senate bill, which was made public in July, were surprised by the sudden House action on the legislation just days after it was introduced and after months with few details on how the House was proceeding. Backers of the Senate bill said the House approach could lead to more election lawsuits, a prospect that could increase Republican opposition. But they remained hopeful the bills could be reconciled.“We can work together to try to bridge the considerable differences,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and one of the chief authors of the Senate bill. “But it would have been better if we had been consulted prior to the House sponsors deciding to drop their bill.”The Senate Rules Committee is scheduled to consider that chamber’s version next week. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the panel, is preparing a new version that incorporates changes sought by election experts and other lawmakers in hopes of enhancing its chances of approval. The legislation so far has at least 10 Republican backers, meaning it could overcome a G.O.P. filibuster if all Democrats supported it.Despite the differences, supporters of the legislation said it needed to become law.“Failure is not an option,” said Representative Pete Aguilar of California, a member of the Democratic leadership and the Jan. 6 panel. “We’ve got to put a piece of reform on the president’s desk. We’ve got to protect democracy.”Luke Broadwater More

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      ¿Cuáles son las seis investigaciones que enfrenta Trump?

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      Sin el poder de la presidencia, el exmandatario enfrenta a una multitud de fiscales y abogados que lo investigan a él y a sus asociados.WASHINGTON — La oficina que el expresidente Donald Trump instaló en el segundo piso de su propiedad de Mar-a-Lago, en Florida, en parte es una réplica del Despacho Oval y también es un homenaje a su paso por la verdadera Casa Blanca.Durante una visita el año pasado, sobre la pared se veían seis de sus fotografías favoritas, incluidas aquellas donde aparece con la reina Isabel II y Kim Jong-un. También se podían ver algunas monedas de membresía, una placa conmemorativa de su muro fronterizo y un retrato del expresidente hecho con casquillos de bala, regalo de Jair Bolsonaro, a quien llaman el Trump de Brasil.Esa oficina se ha convertido en la fortaleza de Trump en el exilio y en su sala de guerra, el cuartel general del extenso conflicto con las investigaciones que ha llegado a consumir la etapa posterior a su presidencia. Se trata de una guerra en varios frentes, con campos de batalla en Nueva York, Georgia y la capital del país, con una lista cambiante de abogados y una ventisca de acusaciones de irregularidades que son difíciles de seguir.Nunca antes un expresidente se había enfrentado a un conjunto de investigaciones federales, estatales y del Congreso tan amplio como el de Trump, quizá son las consecuencias de una carrera empresarial y, al final, política que ha vivido al límite o tal vez por encima de cualquier límite. Ya sea en relación con sus prácticas empresariales engañosas, sus esfuerzos por anular unas elecciones democráticas o su negativa a entregar documentos gubernamentales confidenciales que no le pertenecían, los diversos problemas jurídicos de Trump se derivan de la misma sensación de que las normas que los demás deben cumplir no aplican para él.El relato de cómo llegó a este punto es único en la historia y bastante predecible. Desde hace medio siglo, Trump ha evadido investigaciones y problemas legales, desde que el Departamento de Justicia demandó a su empresa familiar por discriminación racial y a través de las innumerables investigaciones que le siguieron a lo largo de los años. Cuenta con un notable historial de esquivar los peores resultados, pero es posible que ahora esté enfrentando tantas investigaciones que la salida sea incierta.Su visión del sistema legal siempre ha sido transaccional: es un arma para ser utilizada, ya sea por él o en su contra, y rara vez se ha sentido intimidado por las citaciones y declaraciones juradas que conmocionarían a cualquier persona menos acostumbrada a los litigios. En el aspecto civil, ha estado involucrado en miles de juicios con socios comerciales, proveedores y otros, muchos de los cuales lo demandaron porque se negó a pagar sus cuentas.Mientras era presidente, una vez explicó su visión del sistema legal a algunos colaboradores, diciendo que acudiría a los tribunales para intimidar a los adversarios porque solo amenazar con demandar no era suficiente.“Cuando amenazas con demandar, no hacen nada”, le dijo Trump a sus asistentes. “Dicen: ‘¡Psshh!’. Y siguen haciendo lo que quieren”, afirmó mientras agitaba su mano en el aire. “Pero, cuando los demandas, dicen: ‘¡Oooh!’, y se conforman. Es tan fácil como eso”, dijo con una mueca.Cuando, siendo presidente, comenzó a perder batallas jurídicas con regularidad arremetió contra el sistema de justicia. En un momento dado, cuando el Tribunal de Apelaciones del 9º Circuito, un tribunal liberal por tradición con sede en California, falló en contra de una de sus políticas, exigió a sus asesores que se deshicieran del tribunal. “Cancelémoslo”, dijo, como si se tratara de un acto de campaña y no de un sistema judicial establecido por ley. Si para ello es necesario redactar una legislación, que se haga un proyecto de ley para “deshacernos” de los jueces, dijo, utilizando un improperio.Pero sus asistentes lo ignoraron y ahora que no tiene el poder de la presidencia debe enfrentarse a una serie de fiscales y abogados que lo tienen a él, y a sus socios, en la mira. Algunas de las cuestiones son añejas, pero muchas de las semillas de su actual peligro jurídico se plantaron en los frenéticos últimos días que pasó en el cargo, cuando trató de anular la voluntad de los electores y aferrarse al poder mediante una serie de mentiras sobre un fraude electoral inexistente.Es bastante comprensible que muchos estadounidenses hayan perdido el hilo de todas las investigaciones en medio del torbellino de mociones, audiencias y sentencias de las últimas semanas. Pero, en esencia, son estas.Estado de Nueva YorkMucho antes de llegar a la presidencia, se puede decir que Trump, en muchos sentidos, se tomaba a la ligera sus negocios. La pregunta es si violó la ley de alguna manera. Durante años, según sus propios socios, infló el valor de varias propiedades para obtener préstamos.Durante más de tres años, Letitia James, la fiscala general del estado de Nueva York, ha analizado sus prácticas comerciales para determinar si constituyeron fraude. Cuando citó a Trump para que testificara, él invocó más de 400 veces el derecho que otorga la Quinta Enmienda para no responder preguntas con base en que sus respuestas podrían incriminarlo.Trump ha atacado a James con el argumento de que es una demócrata partidista que lo persigue por motivos políticos. Durante su candidatura de 2018, ella criticó a Trump sin rodeos, dijo que era un “presidente ilegítimo” y sugirió que los gobiernos extranjeros canalizaron dinero a las propiedades inmobiliarias de su familia, lo que caracterizó como un “patrón y práctica de lavado de dinero”.Hace poco, los abogados de Trump trataron de llegar a un acuerdo en el caso, lo que podría indicar la preocupación que sienten por su riesgo jurídico, pero James rechazó su oferta. Debido a que su investigación es civil, y no penal, ella tendría que decidir si sus hallazgos justifican una demanda en la que se acuse de fraude al expresidente.ManhattanLa fiscalía de distrito de Manhattan, ahora a cargo de Alvin L. Bragg, se ha ocupado de algunos de esos asuntos como parte de una investigación penal y está a punto de llevar a juicio a partir del 24 de octubre a la Organización Trump, la empresa familiar del expresidente, por cargos de fraude y evasión fiscal.Allen H. Weisselberg, el director de finanzas de toda la vida de la Organización Trump, se declaró culpable de 15 delitos graves y admitió que se asoció ilegalmente con la empresa para implementar un plan con la finalidad de evadir impuestos sobre lujosas prebendas. Como parte de su acuerdo de culpabilidad, Weisselberg está obligado a testificar en el próximo juicio. Pero Trump no es acusado en ese juicio y Weisselberg se negó a cooperar con la investigación más extensa.Allen Weisselberg, quien durante mucho tiempo fue el director financiero de la Organización Trump, se declaró culpable de 15 delitos graves relacionados con su trabajo en la empresa.Jefferson Siegel para The New York TimesPero después de que Bragg asumió el cargo en enero, le dijo al equipo que trabajaba en la investigación que estaba escéptico ante la posibilidad de que tuvieran pruebas suficientes para condenar al propio Trump. Eso hizo que los dos fiscales que dirigían la investigación renunciaran, y uno dijo en su carta de renuncia que el expresidente era “culpable de numerosos delitos graves” y que era “una grave falta de justicia” no hacerlo responsable.GeorgiaEl 2 de enero de 2021, Trump se puso en un posible riesgo jurídico en el estado de Georgia cuando llamó a Brad Raffensperger, el secretario de Estado, y le exigió “encontrar 11.780 votos”, los suficientes para cambiar el resultado y arrebatarle el estado a Joe Biden. Durante la llamada, Trump le advirtió a Raffensperger, quien es republicano, que enfrentaba un “gran riesgo” si no lograba encontrar esos votos, una amenaza implícita que el georgiano desafió.Los aliados de Trump también intentaron presionar a los funcionarios estatales para que cambiaran los resultados y, como hicieron en otros estados clave que ganó su opositor, trataron de armar una lista de electores falsos para enviarlos a Washington para que votaran en el Colegio Electoral a favor del presidente derrotado en lugar de Biden, que ganó el voto popular en Georgia.Fani T. Willis, la fiscala de distrito del condado de Fulton, inició una amplia investigación y presionó para obtener la declaración del senador republicano de Carolina del Sur Lindsey Graham e informó a Rudy Giuliani, el abogado del expresidente, que también es parte de su investigación.Willis parece estar construyendo un posible caso de asociación delictiva para cometer fraude electoral o chantaje mediante un esfuerzo coordinado para socavar las elecciones. Además de Giuliani, se ha informado a múltiples aliados del expresidente que también se les investiga, incluido el presidente del partido estatal y los miembros de la lista de electores falsos.Trump ha subestimado a Willis, una demócrata que fue elegida en la misma votación de 2020 en la que él perdió, diciendo que su investigación es, en palabras de un portavoz el año pasado, “simplemente el último intento de los demócratas para sumar puntos políticos al continuar con su cacería de brujas contra el presidente Trump”.CongresoLa Comisión de la Cámara de Representantes que investiga el ataque al Capitolio del 6 de enero de 2021, compuesta por siete demócratas y dos republicanos, ha hecho más por exponer un posible caso penal contra Trump en el espacio público que cualquiera de las personas que investigan al expresidente.En su serie de audiencias celebradas a lo largo del verano, que podrían reanudarse el 28 de septiembre, los asesores de Trump rindieron testimonio e indicaron que se le informó en varias ocasiones que las elecciones de 2020 no habían sido robadas, que lo que estaba diciendo a la opinión pública no era cierto, que no había fundamentos para impugnar el resultado e incluso que la multitud que convocó el 6 de enero incluía a algunas personas armadas.La comisión documentó los amplios esfuerzos de Trump para aferrarse al poder: cómo presionó no solo a Raffensperger, sino a funcionarios en varios estados para que cambiaran los resultados, cómo contempló declarar la ley marcial y apoderarse de máquinas electorales, cómo trató de obligar al Departamento de Justicia para que interviniera aun cuando se le dijo que no había motivos, cómo conspiró con aliados del Congreso para llevar electores falsos a la votación del Colegio Electoral y en última instancia cómo trató de obligar a su propio vicepresidente a bloquear la victoria de Biden.La comisión no tiene facultades para iniciar un proceso judicial, pero acudió a los tribunales para hacer cumplir citatorios para testificar e hizo que el Departamento de Justicia emitiera cargos por desacato al Congreso en contra de Steve Bannon y Peter Navarro, dos exaliados de Trump. Bannon fue condenado y espera su sentencia; Navarro solicitó al tribunal que desestimara su caso.Sin embargo, aunque los legisladores no pueden acusar a Trump, están debatiendo si deben recomendar al Departamento de Justicia que lo haga. Eso tiene poco significado sustantivo, pero incrementaría la importancia del fiscal general Merrick Garland.Fani T. Willis, la fiscala de distrito del condado de Fulton, ha hecho una amplia investigación.Nicole Craine para The New York TimesStephen Bannon, exasesor de Trump, fue declarado culpable de desacato al Congreso.Jefferson Siegel para The New York TimesEl 6 de eneroEn muchos sentidos, Garland sigue siendo el mayor misterio a medida que Trump busca obstaculizar a los investigadores. Garland, un exfiscal y juez de apelación ecuánime y bastante respetado, no ha dicho mucho para dar pistas, pero es evidente que su departamento está siguiendo múltiples líneas en su investigación sobre lo que ocurrió antes del 6 de enero y ese día.El departamento ha entrevistado o llevado ante un gran jurado a exasistentes de la Casa Blanca, como Pat A. Cipollone y Marc Short; también incautó los teléfonos o dispositivos electrónicos de aliados de Trump como John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark y Mike Lindell y hasta de un miembro del Congreso y en fechas recientes envió cerca de 40 citatorios a exasesores de la Casa Blanca, entre los cuales se encuentran Stephen Miller y Dan Scavino, además de otros personajes cercanos al expresidente.Tras pasar buena parte de los últimos 18 meses procesando a cientos de seguidores de Trump que ingresaron por la fuerza al Capitolio, parece que el equipo de Garland está analizando varios ángulos, incluido el plan de los electores falsos, la operación de recaudación de fondos de Trump mientras promovía afirmaciones falsas sobre el fraude electoral y la intervención del presidente mismo para tratar de anular las elecciones.Lo que no está claro es si Garland ya tiene una teoría del caso. Si bien las citaciones indicaban que los investigadores estaban analizando, entre otras cosas, los intentos de “obstruir, influir, impedir o retrasar” la certificación de las elecciones presidenciales, el departamento aún tiene que acusar a las personas cercanas a Trump y, por lo tanto, no ha presentado ninguna conclusión legal sobre las acciones tomadas por su oficina.Una persona que aún no sabe si será citada es el mismo Trump, pero sigue siendo una posibilidad. Con el fin de prepararse para el día en que los investigadores se presenten en su puerta, Trump ha estado buscando abogados que lo representen, ya que muchos de sus abogados anteriores ya no quieren involucrarse con él o tienen que enfrentar sus propios problemas legales.Los documentos clasificadosComo si Trump ya no estuviese expuesto a suficientes problemas jurídicos por los sucesos acaecidos durante sus últimos días en el cargo, al irse de la Casa Blanca tomó decisiones que también le han causado problemas.La última amenaza para el expresidente se deriva de su insistencia en llevarse a casa miles de documentos propiedad del gobierno, incluidos cientos que están marcados con varias designaciones de clasificado, además no los devolvió todos cuando se lo pidieron.El equipo de Garland ha indicado en documentos judiciales que no solo está analizando los cargos penales relacionados con el mal manejo de documentos clasificados, sino, además, la obstrucción de la justicia. Un abogado de Trump firmó un documento que afirmaba que su cliente había devuelto todos los documentos clasificados en su poder, lo cual se comprobó que era falso cuando los agentes del FBI allanaron Mar-a-Lago y encontraron cajas de esos documentos. Los investigadores indicaron que los archivos tal vez fueron escondidos y los cambiaron de ubicación en vez de entregarlos.En el caso de los documentos, la estrategia jurídica de Trump se parece al método que ha empleado a lo largo de los años: encontrar maneras de retrasar y despistar a sus adversarios. Al convencer a una jueza federal, a la que confirmó en el puesto durante los últimos días de su presidencia, para que impidiera que los investigadores usaran los documentos recuperados mientras los analiza un inspector especial, les ató las manos a los fiscales por el momento.Pero eso puede no durar para siempre. La semana pasada dijo que “no me puedo imaginar ser acusado”, pero admitió que “siempre es una posibilidad” porque los fiscales están “simplemente enfermos y trastornados”. Y afirmó que desclasificó los papeles que tomó, aunque no hay registro de eso.Pero su estrategia real es clara: esta es una batalla tanto política como legal, y advirtió sombríamente que habría “grandes problemas” si lo acusaban porque sus partidarios, “simplemente no lo soportarían”.Cuando el locutor de radio Hugh Hewitt le dijo que sus críticos interpretarían eso como incitar a la violencia, Trump dijo: “Eso no es incitar. Solo digo mi opinión. No creo que la gente de este país lo toleraría”.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe de la Casa Blanca y ha cubierto a los últimos cinco presidentes para el Times y The Washington Post. Es autor de siete libros, el más reciente The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, coescrito con Susan Glasser, que se publicará en septiembre. @peterbakernyt • Facebook More

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      Inside the Completely Legal G.O.P. Plot to Destroy American Democracy

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      .fallbackimg:before { content: “”; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; background-image: url(”); opacity: 0.5; background-size: cover; background-position: center; } #bgvideo{ opacity: 0.5; } .mobile-only{ display:block; } .desktop-only{ display:none; } h1.headline.mobile-only{ margin-bottom: 10px; } @media screen and (min-width: 740px){ .fallbackimg:before{ background-image: url(”); opacity: 0.5; } #bgvideo{ opacity: 0.5; } .mobile-only{ display:none; } […] More

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      Where 6 Investigations Into Donald Trump Stand

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      The former president finds himself without the power of the presidency, staring at a host of prosecutors and lawyers who have him and his associates in their sights.WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump has set up his office on the second floor of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida as part replica of the Oval Office and part homage to his time in the real White House.On the wall during a visit last year were six favorite photographs, including ones with Queen Elizabeth II and Kim Jong-un. On display were challenge coins, a plaque commemorating his border wall and a portrait of the former president fashioned out of bullet casings, a present from Jair Bolsonaro, the so-called Trump of Brazil.This has become Mr. Trump’s fortress in exile and his war room, the headquarters for the wide-ranging and rapidly escalating conflict with investigators that has come to consume his post-presidency. It is a multifront war, with battlefields in New York, Georgia and the nation’s capital, featuring a shifting roster of lawyers and a blizzard of allegations of wrongdoing that are hard to keep straight.Never before has a former president faced an array of federal, state and congressional investigations as extensive as Mr. Trump has, the cumulative consequences of a career in business and eventually politics lived on the edge, or perhaps over the edge. Whether it be his misleading business practices or his efforts to overturn a democratic election or his refusal to hand over sensitive government documents that did not belong to him, Mr. Trump’s disparate legal troubles stem from the same sense that rules constraining others did not apply to him.The story of how he got to this point is both historically unique and eminently predictable. Mr. Trump has been fending off investigators and legal troubles for a half century, since the Justice Department sued his family business for racial discrimination and through the myriad inquiries that would follow over the years. He has a remarkable track record of sidestepping the worst outcomes, but even he may now find so many inquiries pointing in his direction that escape is uncertain.His view of the legal system has always been transactional; it is a weapon to be used, either by him or against him, and he has rarely been intimidated by the kinds of subpoenas and affidavits that would chill a less litigious character. On the civil side, he has been involved in thousands of lawsuits with business partners, vendors and others, many of them suing him because he refused to pay his bills.While president, he once explained his view of the legal system to some aides, saying that he would go to court to intimidate adversaries because just threatening to sue was not enough.“When you threaten to sue, they don’t do anything,” Mr. Trump told aides. “They say, ‘Psshh!’” — he waved his hand in the air — “and keep doing what they want. But when you sue them, they go, ‘Oooh!’” — here he made a cringing face — “and they settle. It’s as easy as that.”When he began losing legal battles as president with regularity, he lashed out. At one point when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a traditionally liberal bench based in California, ruled against one of his policies, he demanded that aides get rid of the court altogether. “Let’s just cancel it,” he said, as if it were a campaign event, not a court system established under law. If it required legislation, then draft a bill to “get rid” of the judges, he said, using an expletive.But his aides ignored him and now he finds himself without the power of the presidency, staring at a host of prosecutors and lawyers who have him and his associates in their sights. Some of the issues at hand go back years, but many of the seeds for his current legal jeopardy were planted in those frenetic final days in office when he sought to overturn the will of the voters and hold onto power through a series of lies about election fraud that did not exist.What to Know About the Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      Trump’s Lawyers Could Face Legal Troubles of Their Own

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      Several of the former president’s lawyers are under scrutiny by federal investigators amid squabbling over competence.To understand the pressures, feuds and questions about competence within former President Donald J. Trump’s legal team as he faces potential prosecution on multiple fronts, consider the experience of Eric Herschmann, a former Trump White House lawyer who has been summoned to testify to a federal grand jury.For weeks this summer, Mr. Herschmann tried to get specific guidance from Mr. Trump’s current lawyers on how to handle questions from prosecutors that raise issues of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.After ignoring Mr. Herschmann or giving him what he seemed to consider perplexing answers to the requests for weeks, two of the former president’s lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and John Rowley, offered him only broad instructions in late August. Assert sweeping claims of executive privilege, they advised him, after Mr. Corcoran had suggested that an unspecified “chief judge” would ultimately validate their belief that a president’s powers extend far beyond their time in office.Mr. Herschmann, who served on Mr. Trump’s first impeachment defense team but later opposed efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, was hardly reassured and sounded confused by the reference to a chief judge.“I will not rely on your say-so that privileges apply here and be put in the middle of a privilege fight between D.O.J. and President Trump,” Mr. Herschmann, a former prosecutor, responded in an email, referring to the Justice Department. The exchange was part of a string of correspondence in which, after having his questions ignored or having the lawyers try to speak directly with him on the phone instead, Mr. Herschmann questioned the competence of the lawyers involved.The emails were obtained by The New York Times from a person who was not on the thread of correspondence. Mr. Herschmann declined to comment.Mr. Herschmann’s opinion was hardly the only expression of skepticism from current and former allies of Mr. Trump who are now worried about a turnstile roster of lawyers representing a client who often defies advice and inserts political rants into legal filings.Mr. Trump’s legal team just won one round in its battle with the Justice Department over the seizure of documents from his residence and private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, and it is not clear whether he will face prosecution from the multiple federal and state investigations swirling around him even as he weighs another run for the presidency.Mr. Trump has also just brought on a well-regarded lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, the former solicitor general of Florida, to help lead his legal team, after being rejected by a handful of others he had sought out, including former U.S. attorneys with experience in the jurisdictions where the investigations are unfolding.Mr. Kise agreed to work for the former president for a $3 million fee, an unusually high retainer for Mr. Trump to agree to, according to two people familiar with the figure. Mr. Kise did not respond to an email seeking comment.But Mr. Trump’s legal team has been distinguished in recent months mostly by infighting and the legal problems that some of its members appear to have gotten themselves into in the course of defending him.In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, Taylor Budowich, said that “the unprecedented and unnecessary weaponization of law enforcement against the Democrats’ most powerful political opponent is a truth that cannot be overshadowed and will continue to be underscored by the vital work being done right now by President Trump and his legal team.”Two members of the Trump legal team working on the documents case, Mr. Corcoran and Christina Bobb, have subjected themselves to scrutiny by federal law enforcement officials over assurances they provided to prosecutors and federal agents in June that the former president had returned all sensitive government documents kept in his residence and subpoenaed by a grand jury, according to people familiar with the situation.That assertion was proved to be untrue after the search of Mar-a-Lago in August turned up more than 100 additional documents with classification markings..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Investigators are seeking information from Ms. Bobb about why she signed a statement attesting to full compliance with the subpoena, and they have signaled they have not ruled out pursuing a criminal inquiry into the actions of either Ms. Bobb or Mr. Corcoran, according to two people briefed on the matter.The attestation was drafted by Mr. Corcoran, but Ms. Bobb added language to it to make it less ironclad a declaration before signing it, according to the people. She has retained the longtime criminal defense lawyer John Lauro, who declined to comment on the investigation.It is unclear whether the authorities have questioned Ms. Bobb yet or whether she has had discussions with Mr. Trump’s other lawyers about the degree to which she would remain bound by attorney-client privilege.Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Rowley did not respond to emails seeking comment.Mr. Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor and insurance lawyer, represented the former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon in his recent trial for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. In that case, Mr. Bannon claimed he believed he had immunity from testimony because of executive privilege; Mr. Trump later said he would not seek to invoke executive privilege for Mr. Bannon.Mr. Corcoran, the son of a former Republican congressman from Illinois, has told associates that he is the former president’s “main” lawyer and has insisted to colleagues that he does not need to retain his own counsel, as Ms. Bobb has.But several Trump associates have said privately that they believe Mr. Corcoran cannot continue in his role on the documents investigation. That view is shared by some of Mr. Trump’s advisers, who have suggested Mr. Corcoran needs to step away, in part because of his own potential legal exposure and in part because he has had little experience with criminal defense work beyond his stint as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. attorney in Washington more than two decades ago.Mr. Trump has at least 10 lawyers working on the main investigations he faces. Mr. Corcoran, Ms. Bobb and Mr. Kise are focused on the documents case, along with James M. Trusty, a former senior Justice Department official. Three lawyers on the team — Mr. Corcoran, Mr. Rowley and Timothy Parlatore — represent other clients who are witnesses in cases related to Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power.To the extent anyone is regarded as a quarterback of the documents and Jan. 6-related legal teams, it is Boris Epshteyn, a former campaign adviser and a graduate of the Georgetown University law school. Some aides tried to block his calls to Mr. Trump in 2020, according to former White House officials, but Mr. Epshteyn now works as an in-house counsel to Mr. Trump and speaks with him several times a day.Mr. Epshteyn played a key role coordinating efforts by a group of lawyers for and political allies of Mr. Trump immediately after the 2020 election to prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr. from becoming president. Because of that role, he has been asked to testify in the state investigation in Georgia into the efforts to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory there.Mr. Epshteyn’s phone was seized by the F.B.I. last week as part of the broad federal criminal inquiry into the attempts to overturn the election results and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. That prompted alarm among some of Mr. Trump’s allies and advisers about him remaining in a position of authority on the legal team.It is not clear how much strategic direction and leadership Mr. Kise may provide. But he is joining a team defined by warring camps and disputes over legal issues.In his emails to Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Rowley, Mr. Herschmann — a prominent witness for the House select committee on Jan. 6 and what led to it — invoked Mr. Corcoran’s defense of Mr. Bannon and argued pointedly that case law about executive privilege did not reflect what Mr. Corcoran believed it did.Mr. Herschmann made clear in the emails that absent a court order precluding a witness from answering questions on the basis of executive privilege, which he had repeatedly implored them to seek, he would be forced to testify.“I certainly am not relying on any legal analysis from either of you or Boris who — to be clear — I think is an idiot,” Mr. Herschmann wrote in a different email. “When I questioned Boris’s legal experience to work on challenging a presidential election since he appeared to have none — challenges that resulted in multiple court failures — he boasted that he was ‘just having fun,’ while also taking selfies and posting pictures online of his escapades.”Mr. Corcoran at one point sought to get on the phone with Mr. Herschmann to discuss his testimony, instead of simply sending the written directions, which alarmed Mr. Herschmann, given that Mr. Herschmann was a witness, the emails show.In language that mirrored the federal statute against witness tampering, Mr. Herschmann told Mr. Corcoran that Mr. Epshteyn, himself under subpoena in Georgia, “should not in any way be involved in trying to influence, delay or prevent my testimony.”“He is not in a position or qualified to opine on any of these issues,” Mr. Herschmann said.Mr. Epshteyn declined to respond to a request for comment.Nearly four weeks after Mr. Herschmann first asked for an instruction letter and for Mr. Trump’s lawyers to seek a court order invoking a privilege claim, the emails show that he received notification from the lawyers — in the early morning hours of the day he was scheduled to testify — that they had finally done as he asked.His testimony was postponed.Michael S. Schmidt More