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      Election Deniers Running for Office

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      More from our inbox:The Trump Subpoena Is a MistakeAbduction of Ukrainian Children: An ‘Insidious’ Russian PlaybookBerlusconi’s Affection for Putin‘Stop Eating Animals’ The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “2020 Election Skeptics Crowd the Republican Ticket Nationwide” (front page, Oct. 15):It is inevitable that many Republican election deniers running for office in November will be elected, especially in red states and districts, but I am just as worried about the election deniers who will lose.Will they accept their losses or, like Donald Trump, refuse to concede and charge that their election was rigged? Even worse, and again emulating Mr. Trump, will they incite their supporters to storm the offices where votes are being tabulated and/or where elections are being certified? This could be especially problematic in districts and states that take a long time to count absentee and mail-in ballots.Democracy requires that losers accept their losses. Unfortunately, 2020 election deniers care more about winning at any price than they do about democracy. I envision violence breaking out at county election boards and state offices from Maine to California. I just hope that local police departments are better prepared than the Capitol Police were on Jan. 6.Richard KaveshNyack, N.Y.The writer is a former mayor of Nyack.To the Editor:The number of election skeptics running should not come as a surprise to anyone. When we allow partisan politicians to gerrymander their states into electorally “safe” districts, the real voting occurs in the primaries. Extremists tend to win in the primaries, so this system almost guarantees that extremists, from both ends of the political spectrum, will be elected.When we send extremists of the left and the right to Washington, no one should be surprised that the process of compromise, so essential for good government, is impossible for them.Until the Supreme Court bars partisans from the electoral mapping process, America will remain stuck in a political quagmire of its own making. In recent times partisans have been barred from this process in countries such as Canada, Britain and Australia. Why can’t we take the same step in America?James TysonTrenton, N.J.To the Editor:In the midst of Covid, America significantly relaxed its voting formalities for 2020, with unrequested mail-in ballots; unsupervised, 24-hour drop boxes; and no-excuse-needed absentee voting. When the G.O.P. suggests that lax voting procedures harmed electoral integrity, they are charged with threatening American democracy. Yet when the G.O.P. attempts to restore pre-Covid voting formalities, the Democrats histrionically scream that American democracy is being threatened by Jim Crow voter suppression.The Times not only fails to challenge this specious Democratic assertion, but also joins the charge.Mike KueberSan AntonioTo the Editor:It seems that there has been one essential question left unasked in this challenging time period for our republic. I would suggest directing it to each and every election-denying Republican who was “elected” on that very same 2020 ballot:If the 2020 election was ripe with fraud, as you claim, and Donald Trump was cheated at the polls, then please explain how your election to office on the very same ballot managed to avoid being tainted as well.I expect the silence to be deafening.Adam StolerBronxTo the Editor:I object to The Times’s use of the term “skeptics” to describe Republican candidates who claim that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. Please leave “skeptic” to its proper uses. No one would say a politician who claimed that 2 + 2 = 13 million is a “math skeptic.” There are plenty of suitable words in the dictionary, including “liar” and “loon.”William Avery HudsonNew YorkThe Trump Subpoena Is a MistakeFormer President Donald J. Trump’s legal team could also invoke executive privilege in an attempt to ward off the subpoena.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Is Subpoenaed, Setting Up Likely Fight Over His Role on Jan. 6” (front page, Oct. 22):The decision by the House Jan. 6 committee to subpoena former President Donald Trump to testify is a mistake.Even if he agrees to appear before the committee, Mr. Trump’s behavior is predictable. Based on his inability to accept defeat, and his view of disagreement as something personal that warrants lashing out at the other party, we can expect him to approach the committee as an enemy, deserving nothing but contempt.Based on his past and continuing behavior, we can expect him to be nasty, offensive and obnoxious. Attempting to belittle the committee members individually and as a group, he would make a mockery of the proceedings. Nothing of substance would be accomplished, except to place his personality on public display, which continues to delight his supporters.So the committee should avoid the futile effort and potential embarrassment, and refrain from trying to have Mr. Trump appear before it.Ken LefkowitzMedford, N.J.Abduction of Ukrainian Children: An ‘Insidious’ Russian PlaybookA broken window at a hospital in March in Mariupol, Ukraine. Russian officials have made clear that their goal is to replace any childhood attachment to home with a love for Russia.Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Taken by Russia, Children Become the Spoils of War” (front page, Oct. 23):The abduction of Ukrainian children into Russian families is more than “a propaganda campaign presenting Russia as a charitable savior.” It follows an insidious playbook used by Soviet leaders after their 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.Thousands of Afghan children were abducted to the Soviet Union to be given a Communist education, so that a new generation of Afghans would be trained to lead a Soviet-sponsored Afghanistan. In 1989, however, Soviet troops were forced from Afghanistan, unable to prevail against Afghans fiercely defending their homeland.Vladimir Putin may very well be repeating past practices, hoping to brainwash Ukrainian children into a love for Russia, and thus preparing them to lead a Russian-dominated Ukraine.But he should learn other lessons from the past instead: that people defending their country are not easily defeated, and that the Soviet failure in Afghanistan upended the Soviet leadership and, ultimately, the Soviet Union itself.Jeri LaberNew YorkThe writer is a founder of Human Rights Watch and the former director of its Europe and Central Asia division.Berlusconi’s Affection for Putin Vladimir Rodionov/SputnikTo the Editor:Re “Berlusconi, Caught on Tape Gushing Over Putin, Heightens Concerns” (news article, Oct. 21):Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s talk of “sweet” letters and affection for Vladimir Putin, the barbaric Russian president, is as troubling as the right-wing political party that has ascended to power in Italy, a party in which Mr. Berlusconi has a patriarchal, deeply influential role.But Mr. Berlusconi’s defense of Mr. Putin’s savage invasion of Ukraine is even more sickening and chilling. Woe to Europe and the world if we see any significant scaling back or ultimately an abandonment of financial and military support for Ukraine.Mr. Putin may send Mr. Berlusconi bottles of fine vodka, but the Russian leader’s main exports to the real world are terror, autocracy and death.Cody LyonBrooklyn‘Stop Eating Animals’Lily and Lizzie after being rescued.Direct Action EverywhereTo the Editor:Re “I Took 2 Piglets That Weren’t Mine, and a Jury Said That Was OK,” by Wayne Hsiung (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 21):Mr. Hsiung’s powerful essay reveals the horror of animals being raised for meat. Meat production creates catastrophic global warming and tortures sentient beings. Stop eating animals.Ann BradleyLos Angeles More

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      How Trump Could Resist the Jan. 6 Panel’s Subpoena

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      If the ex-president turns down the drama of testifying, his legal team could mount several constitutional and procedural arguments in court.WASHINGTON — If former President Donald J. Trump decides to fight the subpoena issued to him on Friday by the House committee investigating his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, his lawyers are likely to muster a battery of constitutional and procedural arguments for why a court should allow him not to testify.In the most basic sense, any legal arguments seeking to get Mr. Trump off the hook would merely need to be weighty enough to produce two and a half months of litigation. If Republicans pick up enough seats in the midterm elections to take over the House in January, as polls suggest is likely, they are virtually certain to shut down the Jan. 6 committee, a move that would invalidate the subpoena.The issues raised by the extraordinary subpoena, which the panel announced at a hearing last week, are too complex to be definitively resolved before a potential change of power in the House, said Mark J. Rozell, a George Mason University professor and author of “Executive Privilege: Presidential Power, Secrecy and Accountability.”“We are in a constitutional gray area here where there is no clear guidance as to exactly what should happen,” Mr. Rozell said. “That gives the former president some leeway to put forward various creative legal arguments and ultimately delay the process until it doesn’t matter anymore.”Several former presidents have voluntarily testified before Congress, including Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Harry S. Truman and Gerald Ford. But there is no Supreme Court precedent that says whether Congress has the power to compel former presidents to testify against their will about their actions in office.There are two historical precedents, but neither generated court rulings. In 1846, the House subpoenaed two former presidents, John Quincy Adams and John Tyler, for an investigation into allegations of misspending by a secretary of state. According to a Congressional Research Service report, Tyler testified and Adams submitted a deposition.A subpoena of testimony from Harry S. Truman was eventually dropped by the House after he refused to honor it.The New York TimesAnd in 1953, the House Committee on Un-American Activities subpoenaed Truman. But while he later voluntarily testified before Congress on other topics, Truman refused to honor the committee’s subpoena, claiming that as a former chief executive he was immune from compelled testimony by the legislative branch. The House let the matter drop.One open question, then, is whether Truman was right. Should Mr. Trump’s legal team choose to argue that he was, one Supreme Court precedent could prove relevant: In 1982, the court ruled that former presidents are immune from being sued for damages over official decisions they made while in office.In that case, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, the majority reasoned that presidents must be able to perform their constitutional duties without being inhibited by the fear that a decision could risk making them liable to pay civil damages after they leave office. The question in Mr. Trump’s case would be whether a president could be similarly hindered by a fear of being forced to testify in front of Congress.Mr. Trump’s legal team could also invoke executive privilege in an attempt to ward off the subpoena. In another case involving Richard Nixon, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in 1974 that a Senate committee investigating the Watergate scandal could not force Nixon, then the sitting president, to turn over tapes of his Oval Office conversations.The appeals court ruled that the Senate’s need for the tapes was not enough to overcome the presumption of confidentiality guarding the presidential decision-making process. That general confidentiality is important, courts decided, so that presidents can receive candid advice from their aides about how best to carry out their constitutional functions.(More famously, about three months later, the Supreme Court upheld a subpoena by the Watergate prosecutor for the tapes, citing the greater need for them in a criminal proceeding. Soon after, Nixon resigned to avoid being impeached.)Unlike Nixon in 1974, however, Mr. Trump is now a former — not a sitting — president, and his claims to executive privilege would be weaker. The current officeholder, President Biden, who has greater authority to invoke or withhold executive privilege, might not support him..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Notably, Mr. Biden declined to support an earlier attempt by Mr. Trump to invoke executive privilege to keep the Jan. 6 committee from subpoenaing the National Archives for White House records. The Supreme Court, ruling against Mr. Trump, declined to block the subpoena, although it did so in a way that left unresolved the scope of an ex-president’s powers under executive privilege.Still, courts might view forcing a former president to show up at the Capitol and testify under oath differently than obtaining documents. Mr. Biden might also be more reluctant to establish a precedent that could help a Republican-controlled Congress subpoena him for testimony.Mr. Trump could also try to mount a procedural argument that the subpoena is invalid.That tactic has been used by nearly 30 people — among them, former aides to Mr. Trump — who have filed lawsuits seeking to quash subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee. Many of these witnesses have argued the panel was improperly constituted and the subpoenas are insufficiently connected to writing laws.The first argument goes like this: The House resolution authorizing the committee envisioned that Speaker Nancy Pelosi would appoint 13 members, including five in consultation with Republican leadership. But the panel has only nine members, and neither of its two Republicans — Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — were endorsed by the minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who boycotted the process after Ms. Pelosi rejected several of his choices.As for the second, lawyers for the witnesses have argued that the subpoenas were not sent with the goal of assisting Congress in its role in drafting laws, but rather as a politically motivated fishing expedition for embarrassing information about Mr. Trump.In 1974, a Senate committee investigating the Watergate scandal could not force Richard Nixon, then the sitting president, to turn over tapes of his Oval Office conversations.Eddie Hausner/The New York TimesMost of the lawsuits challenging the subpoenas on these — and other — grounds are still working their way through the courts. But in May, a federal judge in Washington dismissed both of the arguments claiming the subpoenas were invalid in a case the Republican National Committee brought against the panel.That ruling, however, was vacated several months later by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit after the committee dropped its subpoena for the Republican National Committee.A Federal District Court judge also rejected claims that the committee’s subpoenas were invalid in the criminal prosecution of Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, who was sentenced to four months in prison on Friday for defying a subpoena from the House panel.In a ruling in the case, Judge Carl J. Nichols, a Trump appointee, noted that the full House had voted to hold Mr. Bannon and others who defied subpoenas in contempt, indicating that the body viewed the committee’s subpoena as valid. Judge Nichols said courts must defer to the House’s interpretation of its own rules, so he “cannot conclude as a matter of law that the committee was invalidly constituted.”Still, rulings by district court judges are not definitive precedents, leaving much to litigate.It also remains unclear which route to court a fight over the Trump subpoena could take. Mr. Trump might file his own suit asking a judge to quash it. Or he could wait for the House to try to enforce its subpoena.One way for that to happen would be for the full chamber to vote on whether to hold him in contempt and to refer the matter to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution, as it did for Mr. Bannon.It would then be up to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to decide whether to bring a criminal charge. The Jan. 6 committee could also file its own lawsuit against Mr. Trump seeking a judicial order that he comply. In August 2019, for example, the House Judiciary Committee sued Mr. Trump’s former White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who at Mr. Trump’s direction defied its subpoena seeking his testimony about Mr. Trump’s obstruction of the Russia investigation.The lawsuit set off a series of convoluted legal fights over constitutional issues and was still pending even when Mr. Biden became president in January 2021. That underscores the lack of time for extended litigation in Mr. Trump’s case.Aides to Mr. Trump have said that he has weighed whether to testify, but only under the condition that it be live and on television. That would deprive the committee of controlling what gets seen or from releasing only selected excerpts.Mr. Rozell said that was not surprising.“If Trump is going to go out there and make himself vulnerable, he’s going to do it in a public way,” he said. “It’s going to be a Trump show, and he’ll be playing to his own crowd. At that point, legal argument and nuances would be out the window.” More

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      Trump’s Post-Election Fund-Raising Comes Under Scrutiny by Justice Dept.

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      A federal grand jury has issued subpoenas seeking information about Save America PAC, which was formed as Donald J. Trump promoted baseless assertions about election fraud.A federal grand jury in Washington is examining the formation of — and spending by — a fund-raising operation created by Donald J. Trump after his loss in the 2020 election as he was soliciting millions of dollars by baselessly asserting that the results had been marred by widespread voting fraud.According to subpoenas issued by the grand jury, the contents of which were described to The New York Times, the Justice Department is interested in the inner workings of Save America PAC, Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising vehicle after the election. Several similar subpoenas were sent on Wednesday to junior and midlevel aides who worked in the White House and for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.The fact that federal prosecutors are now seeking information about the fund-raising operation is a significant new turn in an already sprawling criminal investigation into the roles that Mr. Trump and some of his allies played in trying to overturn the election, an array of efforts that culminated with the mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The expanded Jan. 6 inquiry is playing out even as Mr. Trump is also under federal investigation on an entirely different front: his decision to hold onto hundreds of government documents marked as classified when he left office and his failure to comply with efforts by the National Archives and the Justice Department to compel their return.On Thursday, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to revisit her decision to temporarily stop prosecutors from gaining access to the classified documents for use in that investigation.The new subpoenas related to Mr. Trump’s fund-raising vehicle did not make clear what possible crime or crimes the Justice Department might be investigating. The House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol and what led to it has also been examining Mr. Trump’s fund-raising operation, and has raised questions about whether it had duped donors through misleading appeals about election fraud.The Justice Department’s Jan. 6 inquiry related to Mr. Trump has so far largely centered on a plan to create slates of electors pledged to him in seven key swing states that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won.The new subpoenas appeared to have been issued by a different grand jury than the one that has been gathering evidence about the so-called fake electors plan, although the two grand juries seemed to be focused on some overlapping subjects.The inquiry into Mr. Trump’s fund-raising appears to be at a relatively early stage.Save America was officially registered with the Federal Election Commission on Nov. 9, 2020 — two days after news organizations declared Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump.Since then, it has been a key hub of an operation controlled by Mr. Trump’s team that has been the dominant force in Republican low-dollar fund-raising.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Issues Subpoena to Secret Service in Hunt for Text Messages

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      The House committee is seeking messages that an inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security said had been erased.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the attack on the United States Capitol issued a subpoena to the Secret Service late Friday seeking text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, that were said to have been erased, as well as any after-action reports.In a statement, the committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, said the panel was seeking records from “any and all divisions” of the Secret Service “pertaining or relating in any way to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.”The development came after the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the Secret Service, met with the panel and told lawmakers that many of the texts were erased as part of a device replacement program even after the inspector general had requested them as part of his inquiry into the events of Jan. 6.The Secret Service has disputed parts of the inspector general’s findings, saying that data on some phones had been “lost” as part of a planned three-month “system migration” in January 2021, but none pertinent to the inquiry.The agency said that the project was underway before it received notice from the inspector general to preserve its data and that it did not “maliciously” delete text messages.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 8Making a case against Trump. More

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      Giuliani and Graham Among Trump Allies Subpoenaed by Georgia Grand Jury

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      Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham, John Eastman and several others in the former president’s orbit were subpoenaed in the election meddling inquiry.Seven advisers and allies of Donald J. Trump, including Rudolph W. Giuliani and Senator Lindsey Graham, were subpoenaed on Tuesday in the ongoing criminal investigation in Georgia of election interference by Mr. Trump and his associates. The move was the latest sign that the inquiry has entangled a number of prominent members of Mr. Trump’s orbit, and may cloud the future for the former president.The subpoenas underscore the breadth of the investigation by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, which encompasses most of Atlanta. She is weighing a range of charges, according to legal filings, including racketeering and conspiracy, and her inquiry has encompassed witnesses from beyond the state. The latest round of subpoenas was reported earlier by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.The Fulton County investigation is one of several inquiries into efforts by Mr. Trump and his team to overturn the election, but it is the one that appears to put them in the greatest immediate legal jeopardy. A House committee continues to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. And there is an intensifying investigation by the Justice Department into a scheme to create slates of fake presidential electors in 2020.Amid the deepening investigations, Mr. Trump is weighing an early entrance into the 2024 presidential race; people close to him have said he believes it would bolster his claims that the investigations are politically motivated.A subpoena is not an indication that someone is a subject of an inquiry, though some of the latest recipients are considered at risk in the case — in particular Mr. Giuliani, a personal lawyer for Mr. Trump who has emerged as a central figure in the grand jury proceedings in the Georgia investigation. Mr. Giuliani spent several hours speaking before state legislative panels in December 2020, where he peddled false conspiracy theories about corrupted voting machines and a video that he claimed showed secret suitcases of Democratic ballots. He told members of the State House at the time, “You cannot possibly certify Georgia in good faith.”Ms. Willis’s office, in its subpoena, said Mr. Giuliani “possesses unique knowledge concerning communications between himself, former President Trump, the Trump campaign, and other known and unknown individuals involved in the multistate, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”Though the subpoenas were issued Tuesday, not all had necessarily been received. Robert J. Costello, a lawyer for Mr. Giuliani, said, “We have not been served with any subpoena, therefore we have no current comment.”Others sent subpoenas included Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who worked closely with Mr. Giuliani to overturn the 2020 election results; John Eastman, the legal architect of a plan to keep Mr. Trump in power by using fake electors, and Mr. Graham, the South Carolina Republican who called the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, days after the election to inquire about the rules for discarding mail-in ballots.Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who worked with Rudolph W. Giuliani to overturn the 2020 election results, was also subpoenaed.Rey Del Rio/Getty ImagesAnother prominent lawyer who received a subpoena, Cleta Mitchell, was on a Jan. 2, 2021, call that Mr. Trump made to Mr. Raffensperger where he asked him to find enough votes to reverse the state’s results. The subpoena to her said, “During the telephone call, the witness and others made allegations of widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 election in Georgia and pressured Secretary Raffensperger to take action in his official capacity to investigate unfounded claims of fraud.”Two other Trump lawyers were also subpoenaed: Jacki Pick Deason, who helped make the Trump team’s case before the Georgia legislature, and Kenneth Chesebro, whose role has come into sharper focus during the House Jan. 6 hearings in Washington. In an email exchange with Mr. Eastman in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack, he wrote that the Supreme Court would be more likely to act on a Wisconsin legal challenge “if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”Most of those subpoenaed could not be immediately reached for comment. A spokesman for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where Ms. Deason is a senior fellow, declined to comment.The special grand jury was impaneled in early May and has up to one year to complete its work before issuing a report advising Ms. Willis on whether to pursue criminal charges, though Ms. Willis has said she hopes to conclude much sooner. In official letters sent to potential witnesses, her office has said that it is examining potential violations that include “the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.”The new subpoenas offered some further clues about where her investigation is focused.Mr. Eastman was a key witness at one of the December 2020 legislative hearings that were led by Mr. Giuliani. Ms. Willis’s office said in its subpoena to Mr. Eastman that during the hearing he had “advised lawmakers that they had both the lawful authority and a ‘duty’ to replace the Democratic Party’s slate of presidential electors, who had been certified as the duly appointed electors for the State of Georgia after the November 2020 election, due to unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud within the state.”John Eastman, a Trump legal adviser and the architect of the fake-elector plan, with Mr. Giuliani.Jim Bourg/ReutersThey called the appearance part of a “multistate, coordinated plan by the Trump campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”The subpoena also noted that Mr. Eastman “drafted at least two memoranda to the Trump Campaign and others detailing a plan through which Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, could refuse to count some of President Joe Biden’s electoral votes” on Jan. 6 — a plan that was rejected by Mr. Pence.Regarding Ms. Ellis, Ms. Willis’s office said that even after Mr. Raffensperger’s office debunked claims of fraud by election workers at an Atlanta arena, Ms. Ellis persisted. “Despite this, the witness made additional statements claiming widespread voter fraud in Georgia during the November 2020 election,” the subpoena said.Mr. Trump has derided the inquiry; last year, a spokesman for the former president called it “the Democrats’ latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump.”Sean Keenan More

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      Navarro Indicted as Justice Dept. Opts Not to Charge Meadows and Scavino

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      The House had recommended contempt charges against all three Trump White House aides over their stonewalling of its Jan. 6 inquiry.A federal grand jury on Friday indicted Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, for failing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Capitol attack, even as the Justice Department declined to charge Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino Jr., two other top officials who have also refused to cooperate.The indictment against Mr. Navarro, handed up in Federal District Court in Washington, marked the first time that an official who served in Mr. Trump’s White House during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, has been charged in connection with the investigation into the attack.Prosecutors charged Mr. Navarro, 72, with what amounted to a misdemeanor process crime for having failed to appear for a deposition or provide documents to congressional investigators in response to a subpoena issued by the House committee on Feb. 9. The indictment includes two counts of criminal contempt of Congress that each carry a maximum sentence of a year in prison, as well as a fine of up to $100,000.The Justice Department has declined to take similar steps against Mr. Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, and Mr. Scavino, the deputy chief of staff, according to people familiar with prosecutors’ decision and a letter reviewed by The New York Times informing the top House counsel of it.“Based on the individual facts and circumstances of their alleged contempt, my office will not be initiating prosecutions for criminal contempt as requested in the referral against Messrs. Meadows and Scavino,” Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote to Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, on Friday. “My office’s review of each of the contempt referrals arising from the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation is complete.”Both Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino — who were deeply involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election — engaged in weeks of negotiations with the committee’s lawyers, and Mr. Meadows turned over more than 9,000 documents to the panel, before the House voted to charge them with contempt.By contrast, Mr. Navarro and his ally Stephen K. Bannon, who has also been charged with contempt, fought the committee’s subpoenas from Day 1 and never entered into negotiations.Asked for comment, Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III, said, “The result speaks for itself.”A spokesman for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Scavino declined to comment.In a statement, the leaders of the committee applauded Mr. Navarro’s indictment but urged the Justice Department to provide “greater clarity” on its rationale for not charging Mr. Meadows or Mr. Scavino.“We find the decision to reward Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino for their continued attack on the rule of law puzzling,” said the leaders, Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming. “Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino unquestionably have relevant knowledge about President Trump’s role in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the events of Jan. 6.”For his part, Mr. Navarro appeared in court on Friday afternoon, speaking on his own behalf and telling a federal magistrate judge that the congressional subpoena he was served with was “illegal” and “unenforceable.”At the court hearing, he cast himself as a victim of an unfair system run by Democrats bent on destroying him and Mr. Trump.“There are bigger things at play than whether I go to prison,” Mr. Navarro said. “And that’s why I’m standing here.”He also complained that although he lives close to F.B.I. headquarters, federal agents arrested him at the door of an airplane as he was on his way to Nashville.“This is not the way that America is supposed to function,” he went on, adding, “They’re playing hardball.”A former White House trade adviser who undertook extensive efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office after the 2020 election, Mr. Navarro is the second high-ranking former presidential aide to be charged with contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the committee. Mr. Bannon, a former top aide to Mr. Trump, was indicted in November on similar charges.The indictment against Mr. Navarro came nearly two months after the House voted mostly along party lines to recommend criminal charges against him. The same vote also recommended a contempt indictment against Mr. Scavino.The House voted in January to recommend that Mr. Meadows be charged with contempt.“Upon receiving each referral, my office conducted a thorough investigation and analysis of the individualized facts and circumstances surrounding each contempt allegation to determine whether to initiate a criminal prosecution,” Mr. Graves wrote to Mr. Letter. “Those investigations and analyses were conducted by and supervised by experienced prosecutors. Each referral has been analyzed individually based on the facts and circumstances of the alleged contempt developed through my office’s investigation.”The House subpoena that Mr. Navarro received sought documents and testimony about an effort to overturn the election that he had billed as the “Green Bay Sweep.” The plan called for lawmakers in key swing states to team with Republican members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to reject the results that showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the election and give Mr. Trump the victory.The subpoena also mentioned a call Mr. Navarro participated in with Mr. Trump and his lawyers on Jan. 2, 2021, in which they attempted to persuade hundreds of state lawmakers to join the effort.Mr. Navarro also wrote a 36-page report claiming election fraud as part of what he called an “immaculate deception” that he said he made sure was distributed to Republican members of Congress.There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and the Jan. 6 committee has described the claims in Mr. Navarro’s report as having been “discredited in public reporting, by state officials and courts.”The indictment comes days after Mr. Navarro filed a lawsuit against the House committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in which he questioned the authority and validity of the inquiry.In the lawsuit, Mr. Navarro also revealed that he had recently received another subpoena, this one from a federal grand jury in Washington. That subpoena sought documents from him related to any communications he may have had with Mr. Trump or his lawyers.Mr. Navarro has claimed that because Mr. Trump invoked executive privilege to bar the disclosure of information requested by the Jan. 6 investigators, he is prevented from complying with the subpoena. Prosecutors were most likely interested in how closely Mr. Navarro was in touch with the former president or his lawyers in order to assess that defense against the contempt of Congress charge.“The executive privilege invoked by President Trump is not mine to waive,” Mr. Navarro has repeatedly said.Mr. Bannon has also sought to argue that he does not have to comply with his own subpoena because of Mr. Trump’s claims of executive privilege. A trial in his case is tentatively scheduled for July.Mr. Bannon is arguing that the committee is not a legitimate investigative body but a politically motivated one, citing the fact that two of its members have written books that presuppose who is to blame for the Capitol riot even though the inquiry has not ended.While contempt of Congress charges are rarely brought, the cases filed against Mr. Navarro and Mr. Bannon suggest that the Justice Department is willing to take a tough stance against at least some of Mr. Trump’s former aides who have stonewalled the committee’s efforts.The decision not to charge Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino indicates that there are limits to that approach, particularly when it comes to top White House officials who could more plausibly argue that their communications with the president were privileged.The charges against Mr. Navarro come at a politically sensitive moment: one week before the committee is poised to begin a series of high-profile hearings on its findings.Mr. Navarro has taken an aggressive stance toward the committee, especially with regard to its Democratic members. In his lawsuit, he vowed payback against Democrats should Republicans retake the White House and Congress in 2024.“If I’m not dead or in prison,” he wrote, “I will lead the charge.”At his court hearing, Mr. Navarro expressed similar disdain for the legal proceeding.A federal magistrate judge, Zia M. Faruqui, released him from custody with a standard set of conditions, mostly simple restrictions on Mr. Navarro’s travel privileges, noting that he understood the defendant was frustrated by them.Mr. Navarro rejected the idea that he was frustrated.“I am, let us say, disappointed in our republic,” he declared.Maggie Haberman More

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      Peter Navarro, Former Trump Aide, Gets Grand Jury Subpoena in Jan. 6 Inquiry

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      The subpoena, the latest indication of an expanding inquiry by federal prosecutors, seeks Mr. Navarro’s testimony and any records he has related to the attack on the Capitol last year.Peter Navarro, who as a White House adviser to President Donald J. Trump worked to keep Mr. Trump in office after his defeat in the 2020 election, disclosed on Monday that he has been summoned to testify on Thursday to a federal grand jury and to provide prosecutors with any records he has related to the attack on the Capitol last year, including “any communications” with Mr. Trump.The subpoena to Mr. Navarro — which he said the F.B.I. served at his house last week — seeks his testimony about materials related to the buildup to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and signals that the Justice Department investigation may be progressing to include activities of people in the White House.Mr. Navarro revealed the existence of the subpoena in a draft of a lawsuit he said he is preparing to file against the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.Mr. Navarro, who plans to represent himself in the suit, is hoping to persuade a federal judge to block the subpoena, which he calls the “fruit of the poisonous tree.”The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.The grand jury’s subpoena, Mr. Navarro said, builds on a separate subpoena issued to him in February by the committee. That subpoena sought documents and testimony about an effort to overturn the election nicknamed the “Green Bay Sweep,” and a Jan. 2, 2021, call that Mr. Navarro participated in with Mr. Trump and his lawyers in which they attempted to persuade hundreds of state lawmakers to join the effort.Mr. Navarro has refused to cooperate with the committee. He was found in contempt of Congress, and the House referred the contempt case to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. In his draft lawsuit, he called the committee’s subpoena “illegal and unenforceable.”Mr. Navarro said the grand jury subpoena was directly related to the contempt of Congress referral. Asked if he planned to comply and appear on Thursday to testify, Mr. Navarro responded, “T.B.D.”The subpoena is the latest sign the Justice Department’s investigation into the attack has moved beyond the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol. Federal prosectors have charged more than 800 people in connection with the attack.The subpoena sent last week to Mr. Navarro is the first known to have been issued in connection to the department’s Jan. 6 investigations to someone who worked in the Trump White House. But it follows others issued to people connected to various strands of the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack and its prelude.In April, Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer, revealed that he had been served with his own grand jury subpoena, asking for records about people who organized, spoke at or provided security for pro-Trump rallies in Washington after the election, including Mr. Trump’s incendiary event near the White House on Jan. 6.Mr. Alexander’s subpoena also sought records about members of the executive or legislative branches who may have helped to plan or execute the rallies, or who tried to “obstruct, influence, impede or delay” the certification of the 2020 presidential election.Last week, word emerged that the same grand jury, sitting in Washington, had more recently issued a different set of subpoenas requesting information about the role that a group of lawyers close to Mr. Trump may have had played in a plan create alternate slates of pro-Trump electors in key swing states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.The lawyers named in the subpoena included Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani; Jenna Ellis, who worked with Mr. Giuliani; John Eastman, one of the former president’s chief legal advisers during the postelection period; and Kenneth Chesebro, who wrote a pair of memos laying out the details of the plan.Those subpoenas also requested information about any members of the Trump campaign who may been involved with the alternate elector scheme and about several Republican officials in Georgia who took part in it, including David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.Mr. Navarro’s subpoena, by his own account, was issued by a different grand jury.In the draft of the suit he said he intends to file, he argues that only Mr. Trump can authorize him to testify. He asks a judge to instruct Mr. Graves, the U.S. attorney in Washington, to negotiate his appearance with Mr. Trump. Mr. Navarro cites Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over materials related to the attack on the Capitol.“The executive privilege invoked by President Trump is not mine or Joe Biden’s to waive,” Mr. Navarro writes. “Rather, as with the committee, the U.S. attorney has constitutional and due process obligations to negotiate my appearance.”An effort by Mr. Trump to block release of White House materials related to the Jan. 6 attack on the grounds of executive privilege was rejected by a federal appeals court in January, and the Supreme Court denied Mr. Trump’s request for a stay of the decision.Mr. Navarro, who helped coordinate the Trump administration’s pandemic response through his role overseeing the Defense Production Act, has insisted that the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was not part of the plans he backed, which he said included having Vice President Mike Pence reject electors for Mr. Biden when Congress met in a joint session to formally count them.In a book, Mr. Navarro wrote that the idea for the “Green Bay Sweep” was for Mr. Pence to be the “quarterback” of the plan and “put certification of the election on ice for at least another several weeks while Congress and the various state legislatures involved investigate all of the fraud and election irregularities.”Mr. Navarro also wrote a 36-page report claiming election fraud as part of what he called an “Immaculate Deception.” In an interview with The New York Times, he said he relied on “thousands of affidavits” from Mr. Giuliani, and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner, to help produce the report, which claimed there “may well have been a coordinated strategy to effectively stack the election deck against the Trump-Pence ticket.”There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and the Jan. 6 committee described the claims in Mr. Navarro’s report as having been “discredited in public reporting, by state officials and courts.”Mr. Navarro said that he made sure Republican members of Congress received a copy of his report and that more than 100 members of Congress had signed on to the plans. (Ultimately, 147 Republican members of Congress objected to certifying at least one state for Mr. Biden.)An aide to Mr. Navarro was also in contact with a group of Trump allies who were pushing for the former president to order the seizure of voting machines. More

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      Trump Lawyers Are Focus of Inquiry Into Alternate Electors Scheme

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      In recent subpoenas, federal prosecutors investigating alternate slates of pro-Trump electors sought information about Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman and others.The Justice Department has stepped up its criminal investigation into the creation of alternate slates of pro-Trump electors seeking to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the 2020 election, with a particular focus on a team of lawyers that worked on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.A federal grand jury in Washington has started issuing subpoenas in recent weeks to people linked to the alternate elector plan, requesting information about several lawyers including Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and one of his chief legal advisers, John Eastman, one of the people said.The subpoenas also seek information on other pro-Trump lawyers like Jenna Ellis, who worked with Mr. Giuliani, and Kenneth Chesebro, who wrote memos supporting the elector scheme in the weeks after the election.A top Justice Department official acknowledged in January that prosecutors were trying to determine whether any crimes were committed in the scheme.Under the plan, election officials in seven key swing states put forward formal lists of pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College on the grounds that the states would be shown to have swung in favor of Mr. Trump once their claims of widespread election fraud had been accepted. Those claims were baseless, and all seven states were awarded to Mr. Biden.It is a federal crime to knowingly submit false statements to a federal agency or agent for an undue end. The alternate elector slates were filed with a handful of government bodies, including the National Archives.The focus on the alternate electors is only one of the efforts by the Justice Department to broaden its vast investigation of hundreds of rioters who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.In the past few months, grand jury subpoenas have also been issued seeking information about a wide array of people who organized Mr. Trump’s rally near the White House that day, and about any members of the executive and legislative branches who may have taken part in planning the event or tried to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election.The widening and intensifying Justice Department inquiry also comes as the House select committee investigating the efforts to overturn the election and the Jan. 6 assault prepares for public hearings next month.The subpoenas in the elector investigation are the first public indications that the roles of Mr. Giuliani and other lawyers working on Mr. Trump’s behalf are of interest to federal prosecutors.After Election Day, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Ellis appeared in front of a handful of legislatures in contested swing states, laying out what they claimed was evidence of fraud and telling lawmakers that they had the power to pick their own electors to the Electoral College.Mr. Eastman was an architect of a related plan to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use the alternate electors in a bid to block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.Examining the lawyers who worked with Mr. Trump after the election edges prosecutors close to the former president. But there is no guarantee that an investigation of the lawyers working on the alternate elector plan would lead prosecutors to discover any evidence that Mr. Trump broke the law.The plot to use alternate electors was one of the most expansive and audacious schemes in a dizzying array of efforts by Mr. Trump and his supporters to deny his election loss and keep him in the White House.John Eastman, a lawyer advising Mr. Trump, was an architect of a plan to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use alternate electors in a bid to block Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesIt began even before some states had finished counting ballots, as officials in places like Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin came under pressure to create slates of electors announcing that Mr. Trump had won.The scheme reached a crescendo in the days leading up to Jan. 6, when Mr. Trump and his allies mounted a relentless campaign to persuade Mr. Pence to accept the alternate electors and use them at a joint session of Congress to deny — or at least delay — Mr. Biden’s victory.At various times, the plan involved state lawmakers and White House aides, though prosecutors seem to believe that a group of Mr. Trump’s lawyers played a crucial role in carrying it out. Investigators have cast a wide net for information about the lawyers, but prosecutors believe that not all of them may have supported the plans that Mr. Trump’s allies created to keep him in office, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer said he was unaware of any investigation into his client. Mr. Eastman’s lawyer and Ms. Ellis did not return emails seeking comment. Mr. Chesebro declined to answer questions about the inquiry.The strategy of pushing the investigation forward by examining the lawyers’ roles could prove to be tricky. Prosecutors are likely to run into arguments that some — or even much — of the information they are seeking is protected by attorney-client privilege. And there is no indication that prosecutors have sought to subpoena the lawyers or search their property.“There are heightened requirements for obtaining a search warrant on a lawyer,” said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama. “Even when opening a case where a lawyer could be a subject, prosecutors will flag that to make sure that people consider the rights of uninvolved parties.”As a New York real estate mogul, Mr. Trump had a habit of employing lawyers to insulate himself from queries about his questionable business practices and personal behavior. In the White House — especially in times of stress or scandal — he often demanded loyalty from the lawyers around him, once asking in reference to a mentor and famous lawyer known for his ruthlessness, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”Some of the lawyers who have come under scrutiny in connection with the alternate elector scheme are already facing allegations of professional impropriety or misconduct.In June, for instance, Mr. Giuliani’s law license was suspended after a New York court ruled that he had made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while fighting the election results on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Boris Epshteyn, another lawyer who worked with Mr. Giuliani, has also come under scrutiny in the Justice Department investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.Two months before Mr. Giuliani’s license was suspended, F.B.I. agents conducted extraordinary searches of his home and office in New York as part of an unrelated inquiry centered on his dealings in Ukraine before the 2020 election, when he sought to damage Mr. Biden’s credibility.In March, a federal judge in California ruled in a civil case that Mr. Eastman had most likely conspired with Mr. Trump to obstruct Congress and defraud the United States by helping to devise and promote the alternate elector scheme, and by presenting plans to Mr. Pence suggesting that he could exercise his discretion over which slates of electors to accept or reject at the Jan. 6 congressional certification of votes.There is no guarantee that an investigation of the lawyers working on the alternate elector plan would lead prosecutors to discover evidence that Mr. Trump broke the law.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe scheme, which involved holding meetings and drafting emails and memos, was “a coup in search of a legal theory,” wrote the judge, David O. Carter of the Central District of California.It was revealed this month that Mr. Eastman was involved in a similar — but perhaps even more brazen — effort to overturn to the election results. According to emails released by a public records request, Mr. Eastman pressed a Pennsylvania state lawmaker in December 2020 to carry out a plan to strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by essentially retabulating the vote count in a way that would favor Mr. Trump.A week before the disclosure of Mr. Eastman’s emails, Ms. Ellis was accused of misconduct in an ethics complaint submitted to court officials in Colorado, her home state.The complaint, by the bipartisan legal watchdog group the States United Democracy Center, said that Ms. Ellis had made “numerous public misrepresentations” while traveling the country with Mr. Giuliani after the election in an effort to persuade local lawmakers that the voting had been marred by fraud.It also noted that Ms. Ellis had assisted Mr. Trump in an “unsuccessful and potentially criminal effort” to stave off defeat by writing two memos arguing that Mr. Pence could ignore the electoral votes in key swing states that had pledged their support to Mr. Biden.As for Mr. Chesebro, he was involved in what may have been the earliest known effort to put on paper proposals for preparing alternate electors.A little more than two weeks after Election Day, Mr. Chesebro sent a memo to James Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, laying out a plan to name pro-Trump electors in the state. In a follow-up memo three weeks later, Mr. Chesebro expanded on the plan, setting forth an analysis of how to legally authorize alternate electors in six key swing states, including Wisconsin.The two memos, obtained by The New York Times, were used by Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Eastman, among others, as they developed a strategy intended to pressure Mr. Pence and to exploit ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act, according to a person familiar with the matter. More