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      California Lawmakers Push for a Court Ruling on Trump’s Eligibility

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      Nine California legislators asked the state’s attorney general to seek a court opinion on whether former President Donald J. Trump is disqualified from office under the 14th Amendment.Nine California lawmakers asked the state’s attorney general in a letter on Monday to seek a court opinion on whether former President Donald J. Trump should be excluded from Republican primary ballots under the 14th Amendment.The letter is part of an escalating effort across multiple states to establish whether Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election — including his actions before and during his supporters’ storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — disqualify him from the presidency under the amendment. It says that anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after taking an oath to defend it is ineligible to hold office.“The purpose of this letter is to request in haste the office of the attorney general seek the court opinion as to whether or not Donald J. Trump should be removed from the ballot of the presidential primary election scheduled in California on March 5, 2024,” the letter says. It describes Mr. Trump’s actions and tells Attorney General Rob Bonta, “You are uniquely positioned to proactively seek the court’s opinion to confirm Mr. Trump’s inability to hold office given these facts.”Eight members of the California Assembly — Mike Fong, Mike Gipson, Corey Jackson, Alex Lee, Evan Low, Kevin McCarty, Stephanie Nguyen and Philip Ting — and one member of the California Senate, Josh Becker, signed the letter. All nine are Democrats.Mr. Low, who wrote the letter, said that he saw calls for secretaries of state to unilaterally remove Mr. Trump from ballots as politically problematic and arguably antidemocratic, and that ordinary lawsuits would not resolve the question quickly enough. California law requires the secretary of state to announce by Dec. 8 which candidates are eligible for the ballot.“Having one official do it themselves in their own interpretation is politically not expedient, nor does it help on the division of our democracy,” he said, expressing concern about violence from the right if officials acted unilaterally. “This naturally will be seen as a political effort, but again that’s why the court’s opinion will be incredibly important.”Mr. Low said he and the other lawmakers were “trying to not make this a political issue but rather a constitutionality issue.”They believe, based on conversations with legal advisers, that Mr. Bonta has the ability to seek declaratory relief, essentially asking a court to tell him what his legal obligations are outside the context of a traditional lawsuit. The letter did not identify a specific court.A spokeswoman for Mr. Bonta said: “We are aware of the letter and will review the request internally. There is no denying that Donald Trump has engaged in behavior that is unacceptable and unbecoming of any leader — let alone a president of the United States. Beyond that, we have no additional comment.”Even if a court ruled that Mr. Trump were ineligible, it would not definitively resolve the question. Mr. Trump or his campaign would be certain to appeal, and the Supreme Court would most likely have the final say.The argument has been percolating since the Jan. 6 attack but gained traction this summer after two conservative law professors, William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas, concluded that Mr. Trump was disqualified. Two other prominent scholars — the conservative former judge J. Michael Luttig and the liberal law professor Laurence H. Tribe — made the same case in The Atlantic.Earlier this month, six Colorado voters filed a lawsuit with the help of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, asking a state court to order the Colorado secretary of state not to print Mr. Trump’s name on primary ballots there. An obscure Republican presidential candidate, John Anthony Castro, is suing separately with the same aim in New Hampshire, and the liberal group Free Speech for People urged several secretaries of state last month to exclude Mr. Trump.The 14th Amendment was written in the context of Reconstruction, and the disqualification clause — Section 3 — was originally used to bar people who had fought for the Confederacy from holding office. The clause’s modern application has not been tested in a case anywhere near as prominent as Mr. Trump’s. The outcome will depend on how the courts answer several questions, including what counts as insurrection and even whether the amendment applies to the presidency.Several constitutional law experts have told The New York Times that they feel unprepared to weigh in or to guess how judges will rule, describing the questions as complex and novel.“I think anybody who says that there’s an easy answer is probably being a little reductive in their analysis,” Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant professor of law at Georgia State University, said in a recent interview.Shawn Hubler More

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      President Biden Keeps Hunter Close Despite the Political Peril

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      The possibility of a federal indictment of Hunter Biden stunned the president. Yet the bond between him and his only surviving son is ironclad.Earlier this summer, President Biden was feeling hopeful.His son Hunter’s lawyers had struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors on tax and gun charges, and it seemed to the president that the long legal ordeal would finally be over.But when the agreement collapsed in late July, Mr. Biden, whose upbeat public image often belies a more mercurial temperament, was stunned.He plunged into sadness and frustration, according to several people close to him who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve their relationships with the Biden family. Since then, his tone in conversations about Hunter has been tinged with a resignation that was not there before, his confidants say.Now, as the Justice Department plans to indict Hunter Biden on a gun charge in coming weeks, White House advisers are preparing for many more months of Republican attacks and the prospect of a criminal trial in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign.Republicans have cast Hunter’s troubles as a stew of nepotism and corruption, which the Biden administration denies. But there is no doubt that Hunter’s case is a drain, politically and emotionally, on his father and those who wish to see him re-elected.The saga reflects the painful dynamics of the first family, shaped by intense ambition and deep loss, along with anger and guilt. It is the story of two very different if much-loved sons, and of a father holding tight to the one still with him.This account is based on interviews with more than a dozen people close to the Biden family who declined to speak on the record out of concern about jeopardizing their relationships with the Bidens, along with writings from Biden family members.People who know both men say their bond is singular in its intensity. But even allies of President Biden, who prides himself on his political and human instincts, say he has at times been too deferential to his younger son, appearing unwilling to tell him no, despite Hunter’s problems and his long trail of bad decisions.And that has created unexpected political peril for the president.The Family BusinessMr. Biden with his sons Hunter, left, and Beau in the early 1970s. The two boys were close growing up.via Associated PressHunter was born on Feb. 4, 1970 — a year and a day after his older brother, Beau.The two boys were close growing up. Beau was seen as the future of the Biden political brand — the one who should be running for president, his father has said. President Biden has described Beau as “me, but without all the downsides.”Beau was a natural leader, a student athlete and Ivy League-educated lawyer who rose to become the most popular political figure in Delaware. As President Barack Obama described him, Beau was “someone who charmed you, and disarmed you, and put you at ease.’’Hunter grew up intelligent and artistic, sharing his father’s loquacious personality. After graduating from Georgetown University, he served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Portland, Ore., where he worked at a food bank in a church basement and volunteered at a socialization center for disabled people. He met a fellow volunteer, Kathleen Buhle, in the summer of 1992. Within months she was pregnant, and in July 1993 the two married. Hunter later graduated from Yale Law School.By the early 2000s, living in Delaware with his wife and three young daughters, Hunter had begun drinking heavily at dinner, he has said, at parties and after work at Oldaker, Biden & Belair, a law and lobbying firm where he was a partner.He moved away from lobbying around the time his father became vice president, after the Obama administration issued restrictions on lobbyists working with the government. But his later ventures drew scrutiny as well. In 2014 he joined the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that was under investigation for corruption, as Mr. Biden, then the vice president, was overseeing White House policy toward Ukraine.When Hunter was discharged from the Navy Reserve in 2014 because of cocaine use, Mr. Biden’s email to his family about the news coverage was succinct. “Good as it could be,” he wrote. “Time to move on. Love Dad.”As his father and brother showed a talent for public service, Hunter envisioned himself as the financier supporting the family business of politics.For a time, it was work that made him proud, because it made him feel needed.“I had more money in the bank than any Biden in six generations,” he wrote in “Beautiful Things,” his 2021 memoir, noting that when his lobbying career was steady in the late 1990s, he helped pay off his brother’s student loans, enrolled his three daughters in private school and covered the mortgage on a house where he and Beau were living.Decades later, though, he was known to complain about the responsibility. A person close to Hunter said those complaints were exaggerated, expressed at a time when Hunter was feeling bruised.Tragedy and substance abuse have stalked the Biden family for generations. Hunter was not quite 3 years old when his mother and baby sister were killed in a car accident that left him and Beau seriously injured and in a hospital for months. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015, at age 46. After that, Hunter descended further into alcoholism and a devastating addiction to crack cocaine.Mr. Biden with Hunter, left, and other members of their family at a memorial service for Beau Biden in Dover, Del., in 2015.Patrick Semansky/Associated PressPresident Biden’s father had bouts of drinking, according to people who knew him, and one of his brothers, Frank, has struggled with alcoholism. Mr. Biden’s daughter, Ashley, has sought treatment for addiction. On the campaign trail in 2008, when Mr. Biden was a candidate for vice president, he offered a blunt explanation for his own decision not to drink: “There are enough alcoholics in my family.”As his problems with addiction worsened in recent years, Hunter’s life unraveled. His marriage to Ms. Buhle ended in 2017, and he had a romantic relationship with his brother’s widow, Hallie, that set off tabloid headlines and more family angst.At times the elder Mr. Biden has seemed at a loss to respond, and worried about pushing Hunter away. At his son’s behest, Mr. Biden released a statement in support of the relationship between Hunter and Hallie. When that relationship ended soon after, Hunter cycled in and out of rehabilitation facilities and tried experimental therapies including ketamine and “the gland secretions of the Sonoran Desert toad,” according to his memoir. He was often not able to stay sober for more than a couple of weeks at a time.Hunter has a fourth child, Navy Joan Roberts, who was conceived during an encounter in 2017 he says he does not remember. Hunter has said he does not have a relationship with the child. President Biden did not acknowledge the girl, who was born in Arkansas, until July, and only after Hunter gave him the OK, according to a person close to the president.Mr. Biden’s devotion to his son means that he has long followed Hunter’s lead. At one point, after a family intervention over Hunter’s drug use, a distraught Mr. Biden approached his son in the driveway of Mr. Biden’s home in Delaware.“I don’t know what else to do,” Mr. Biden cried out. “Tell me what to do.’”Hunter has said he finally got sober after meeting his second wife, Melissa Cohen, in 2019.A Father, Not a PoliticianPresident Biden tries to keep his son close.When Hunter accompanied the president on a trip to Ireland in the spring, he traveled on Air Force One and slept on a cot in his father’s hotel room. When Hunter flies to Washington from his home in Malibu, he stays at the White House, sometimes for weeks at a time. When he is on the West Coast, his father calls him nearly every day, sometimes more than once.Hunter shares his father’s tendency toward effusiveness and intensity in interactions with people he loves, according to people who know both of them. They also share a quick temper.“I’m like his security blanket,” Hunter told The New Yorker in 2019. “I don’t tell the staff what to do. I’m not there giving directions or orders. I shake everybody’s hands. And then I tell him to close his eyes on the bus. I can say things to him that nobody else can.”Allies of the president have deep respect for the bond, but have privately criticized Mr. Biden’s apparent inability to say no when Hunter sought to pull him into his business dealings. Some allies of the president say his loyalty to his son — inviting him to state dinners, flying with him aboard Marine One and standing on the White House balcony with him — has resulted in wholly avoidable political distractions.Hunter Biden is often seen at presidential events with his family, like watching the Fourth of July fireworks at the White House.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesNo hard evidence has emerged that Mr. Biden personally participated in or profited from the business deals or used his office to benefit his son’s partners while he was vice president. And Mr. Biden’s advisers have pointed to legal experts who argue that the tax and gun charges against the president’s son are rarely prosecuted.Still, Hunter Biden’s business dealings have raised concerns because testimony and reports have indicated that he traded on the family name to generate lucrative deals. Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business partner, told congressional investigators that Hunter used “the illusion of access to his father” to win over potential partners.Mr. Archer said that Mr. Biden had been in the presence of business associates of his son’s who were apparently seeking connections and influence inside the United States government.But Mr. Archer’s testimony fell short of Republican hopes of a smoking gun to prove the president’s involvement in his son’s efforts to drum up business overseas. The elder Mr. Biden would occasionally stop by a dinner or a hotel for a brief handshake, Mr. Archer said, or engage in a few pleasantries over the phone.Although many observers see the investigation as a darkening shadow over the presidency, President Biden and his son do not dwell on it in their daily phone calls.They do talk politics occasionally; Hunter is an informal adviser who has helped his father brainstorm speeches. But mostly, the president shares updates from the rest of the family and simply asks how his son is doing, people familiar with the calls say.Anger in CaliforniaHunter Biden’s life in California is a world away from his father’s in Washington.He lives with his wife and their toddler son, who is named for Beau, in a rental home high above the Pacific Ocean. It is a place that feels impossibly idyllic — except for signs that warn of wildfires that could burn the fragile paradise to the ground.Most mornings, he sits in his home and paints, putting oils and acrylics to canvas in a ritual that he says helps keep him sober. Then he drives, Secret Service agents in tow, to the nearby house of Kevin Morris, a Hollywood lawyer who has become a financial and emotional lifeline since the two met at a fund-raiser for the Biden campaign in 2019.Hunter Biden painting in his California studio in 2019. He says painting keeps him sober.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesThat year, Hunter told The New Yorker he was making about $4,000 a month. He had moved to California, in his telling, to “disappear” as his father was running for the presidency. His new wife was pregnant. He had chosen to live in one of the most expensive areas of the country, and he was struggling to stay afloat. Mr. Morris, who made his fortune brokering entertainment deals and representing celebrities including Matthew McConaughey, saw an opportunity to help. He has lent Hunter millions to pay back taxes and support his family, according to people who know about the arrangement.Friends of the family fear for Hunter’s well-being out in California because he is a recovering addict who is under pressure. He has said that his new career as a painter is a form of survival, keeping him “away from people and places where I shouldn’t be.”Despite the concerns, people closer to Hunter say he is determined and resilient. But they also describe him as angry and spoiling for a fight.These days, under the watchful eye of a drone that Mr. Morris uses to scan for photographers and intruders, he and the president’s son huddle together in anger and isolation, assessing the day’s damage. The collapse of a plea deal. A special counsel investigation. A looming indictment. A likely trial.Every day, on and on, there is a new crisis.President Biden only occasionally makes the trip out West to raise money or deliver remarks on his policy agenda. His political ethos is rooted more in middle-class Scranton, Pa., than in the wealth that surrounds his son’s home in the hills of Malibu.There is tension between Mr. Biden’s allies, who favor a cautious approach in Hunter’s legal proceedings, and Mr. Morris, who prefers a more aggressive approach.That tension reached a boiling point last winter, when Mr. Morris pushed to remove Joshua A. Levy, an attorney recommended by Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney, from Hunter’s legal team.Kevin Morris, a Malibu-based entertainment lawyer, has funded Hunter Biden’s legal team and is said to have a brotherly bond with the president’s son.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesAfter Mr. Levy resigned, Mr. Morris replaced him with Abbe Lowell, one of Washington’s best-known scandal lawyers, who has a reputation for bare-knuckle tactics. (He had also recently represented Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald J. Trump.) For now, the strategic command center is at Mr. Morris’s dining room table in Malibu, not in Washington.Mr. Biden does not believe that Republican attacks on his son will hurt him with voters as he runs for re-election in 2024, and there is data to suggest that is largely true, at least for now. A June poll by Reuters and Ipsos found that 58 percent of Americans would not factor Hunter Biden into their decision in the presidential race.The White House declined to comment for this article, as did Hunter Biden and his attorneys.“Joe Biden’s been around politics all his life,” said the Democratic strategist David Axelrod, who noted that Mr. Biden’s decisions about Hunter were not made by advisers or consultants. “This is about him and how he feels and his relationship with his son.”Mr. Biden told MSNBC in May that his son had done nothing wrong.“I trust him,” he said. “I have faith in him.”Last month, when asked by reporters at Camp David about the special counsel investigation into his son, Mr. Biden’s response was terse.“That’s up to the Justice Department,” Mr. Biden said, “and that’s all I have to say.”Mr. Biden then left Camp David and rode aboard Air Force One to Lake Tahoe for vacation. Hunter joined him there.That time, the president’s son flew commercial. More

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      Colorado Lawsuit Seeks to Keep Trump Off Ballots Under 14th Amendment

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      The amendment says anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after taking an oath to defend it is ineligible to hold office, and a long-shot effort to employ it is growing.Six Colorado voters filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to keep former President Donald J. Trump off the state’s ballots under the 14th Amendment, which says anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after taking an oath to defend it is ineligible to hold office.The lawsuit, which was filed in a state district court in Denver with the help of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, demands that the Colorado secretary of state not print Mr. Trump’s name on the Republican primary ballot. It also asks the court to rule that Mr. Trump is disqualified in order to end any “uncertainty.”The theory that the 14th Amendment disqualifies Mr. Trump has gained traction among liberals and anti-Trump conservatives since two prominent conservative law professors argued in an article last month that his actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol constituted engagement in an insurrection. But it remains a legal long shot. Mr. Trump would surely appeal any ruling that he was ineligible, and a final decision could rest with the Supreme Court, which has a conservative supermajority that includes three justices he appointed.A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state, said in a statement, “I look forward to the Colorado court’s substantive resolution of the issues, and am hopeful that this case will provide guidance to election officials on Trump’s eligibility as a candidate for office.”The plaintiffs are Republican and unaffiliated voters who argue that Mr. Trump is ineligible and that they will be harmed if he appears on primary ballots. They aim to ensure “that votes cast will be for those constitutionally qualified to hold office, that a disqualified candidate does not siphon off support from their candidates of choice, and that voters are not deprived of the chance to vote for a qualified candidate in the general election,” the suit says.Similar efforts are unfolding in other states. Last month, the liberal group Free Speech for People wrote to the secretaries of state of Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin, urging them not to include Mr. Trump on ballots. And an obscure presidential candidate, John Anthony Castro, a Republican, has sued in New Hampshire.These attempts are separate from the criminal cases against Mr. Trump. They do not depend on his being convicted, and convictions would not trigger disqualification.The legal questions instead include what counts as engaging in an insurrection, who has standing to challenge Mr. Trump’s eligibility and who has the authority to enforce his disqualification if he is disqualified.“Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is old — it has not been truly stress-tested in modern times,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School who specializes in election law. “There are some big forks in the road where you can argue both ways.”The first fork in the Colorado case will be whether individual voters have the right to sue. Challenges to a candidate’s eligibility — on any basis, not just the 14th Amendment — often come from opposing candidates, who are directly affected by the challenged candidate’s presence.Derek Muller, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, emphasized that standing requirements are looser in state courts than in federal courts, especially when it comes to voters’ ability to challenge candidates’ eligibility. But Richard Collins, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Colorado, said that the Colorado Supreme Court had become increasingly restrictive in its interpretation of standing.And beyond standing, Professor Muller said, a big hurdle could be “ripeness”: Because candidates haven’t formally filed for ballot access yet, a judge could decide that the legal questions are not ready for review. More

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      Democracy in Bangladesh Is Quietly Being Crushed

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      Bangladesh’s multiparty democracy is being methodically strangled in crowded courtrooms across this country of 170 million people.Nearly every day, thousands of leaders, members and supporters of opposition parties stand before a judge. Charges are usually vague, and evidence is shoddy, at best. But just months before a pivotal election pitting them against the ruling Awami League, the immobilizing effect is clear.About half of the five million members of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, are embroiled in politically motivated court cases, the group estimates. The most active leaders and organizers face dozens, even hundreds, of cases. Lives that would be defined by raucous rallies or late-night strategizing are instead dominated by lawyers’ chambers, courtroom cages and, in Dhaka, the torturously snail-paced traffic between the two.One recent morning, a party leader, Saiful Alam Nirob, was ushered into Dhaka’s 10-story magistrate court in handcuffs. Mr. Nirob faces between 317 and 394 cases — he and his lawyers are unsure exactly how many. Outside the court, a dozen supporters — facing an additional 400 cases among them — waited in an alley whose bustle was cleared only by intermittent monsoon downpours and the frequent blowing of a police whistle to open the way for another political prisoner.The police ushering Saiful Alam Nirob, an opposition leader, to court in Dhaka in June. He faces hundreds of court cases.A rally by supporters of the ruling Awami League in July.“I can’t do a job anymore,” said one of the supporters, Abdul Satar, who is dealing with 60 cases and spends three or four days a week in court. “It’s court case to court case.”In recent years, Bangladesh has been known mostly as an economic success story, with a strong focus on a garment export industry that brought in a steady flow of dollars, increased women’s participation in the economy and lifted millions out of poverty. A country once described by American officials as a basket case of famine and disease appeared to be overcoming decades of coups, countercoups and assassinations.But under the surface, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has waged a campaign of political consolidation whose goal, opposition leaders, analysts and activists say, is to turn the South Asian republic into a one-party state.Over her 14 years in office, she has captured Bangladesh’s institutions, including the police, the military and, increasingly, the courts, by filling them with loyalists and making clear the consequences for not falling in line.She has wielded these institutions both to smother dissent — her targets have also included artists, journalists, activists and even the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus — and to carry out a deeply personal campaign of vengeance against her political enemies.With an election expected in December or January, the country again feels on the verge of eruption. The opposition sees the vote as a last fight before what could be its full vanquishing. Ms. Hasina’s lieutenants, for their part, say in no uncertain terms that they cannot let the B.N.P. win — “they will kill us” if they come to power, as one aide put it.When asked during an interview in her Dhaka office about using the judiciary to harass the opposition, Ms. Hasina sent an aide out of the room to retrieve a photo album. It was a catalog of horrors: graphic pictures of maimed bodies after arsons, bombings and other attacks.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her office in Dhaka in June.Bangladesh’s economic success story in recent years has overshadowed its slide toward a one-party state. “It is not political, it is not political,” the prime minister said of the court cases, pointing to the visuals as examples of the “brutality” of the B.N.P. “It is because of their crime.”B.N.P. leaders say that about 800 of their members have been killed and more than 400 have disappeared since Ms. Hasina came to power in 2009. In the interview, Ms. Hasina said the B.N.P., when it was in power, had done much the same to her party, jailing and killing her supporters by the thousands.“They started this,” Ms. Hasina said.The SurvivorsThe story of Bangladesh over the past three decades has largely been one of bitter rivalry between two powerful women — Ms. Hasina, 75, and Khaleda Zia, 77, the leader of the B.N.P. and the country’s first female prime minister.Ms. Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was Bangladesh’s most prominent independence leader when the country broke away from Pakistan in 1971. He was killed four years later in a military coup, and much of his family was massacred.Ms. Zia was married to Ziaur Rahman, the army chief who came to power in the bloody chaos that followed Sheikh Mujib’s murder. Mr. Rahman himself was assassinated by soldiers in 1981.For much of the time since, the two surviving women have been locked in a fight over who defines Bangladesh’s democracy — and who is entitled to rule over it.“Actually it was my struggle to establish democracy,” Ms. Hasina said. Pointing to Ms. Zia’s husband, she added: “This opposition, you know, was created by a military dictator.”The B.N.P. says it was the one that restored multiparty democracy after Ms. Hasina’s father declared the country a one-party state — an unfinished project that the B.N.P. says Ms. Hasina is determined to complete.The story of Bangladesh in recent decades has largely been one of bitter rivalry between two powerful women: Ms. Hasina and Khaleda Zia, seen on a large poster inside the office of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka. Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the B.N.P.’s secretary general and de facto leader.“They don’t believe in democracy,” said Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the B.N.P.’s secretary general.In 2018, Ms. Zia was jailed on graft charges. Today, she lives under house arrest, where, in deteriorating health, she is reduced to watching television and reading the newspaper, her aides say.Her son Tarique Rahman, who was implicated in a 2004 attack in which a dozen grenades were hurled at Ms. Hasina during a rally — a charge the B.N.P. denies — lives in exile in London. Mr. Alamgir, the party’s de facto leader in their absence, spends much of his time dealing with the 93 court cases he faces.Ms. Hasina has intensified her assault on the opposition as she has found herself in her most politically vulnerable position in years.Just as Bangladesh was working to get its garment industry back on track after the pandemic disrupted global demand, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in the cost of imported energy and food, pushing the country’s supply of dollars perilously low.“It has put tremendous pressure on our economy,” Ms. Hasina said.Bangladesh was working to get its garment industry back on track after the pandemic when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in the cost of imported energy and food.Anger has risen in Bangladesh over the rising food prices and power cuts.The battered opposition saw an opportunity in anger over rising food prices and power cuts, and, fearing an unfair election, was eager to take the showdown to the streets after Ms. Hasina refused to appoint a neutral caretaker administration to oversee the vote.During a rare large rally in June, B.N.P. speakers demanded free elections and the release of political prisoners. But as supporters marched across Dhaka, their chants offered an indication of the bubbling tensions: “Set fire to Hasina’s throne” and “A flood of blood will wash away the injustice.”As the police held back and allowed the rally and march to proceed, ruling-party leaders staged a rival rally where speakers acknowledged that the European Union and the United States were watching Bangladesh’s democracy. The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on Ms. Hasina’s senior security officers and threatened visa restrictions, and American and European officials have made several visits to Bangladesh in recent months.A few weeks after the B.N.P. rally, though, an unsettled Ms. Hasina responded with force. When the party’s supporters tried to hold another large rally, the police met them with clubs and tear gas — and 500 fresh court cases. The crackdown showed that, even as the West issues warnings, it ultimately has limited sway over a leader who has deftly balanced ties with Asia’s two giants, China and India.Opposition supporters during their rally against the governing party in June.Ms. Hasina has governed Bangladesh since 2009 and is seeking re-election in the coming months.Increasingly, the government’s powers are wielded en masse, said Ashraf Zaman, a Bangladeshi lawyer and activist in exile who works with the Asian Human Rights Commission. The police round up scores of people in one case — accusing them of “anti-state activities” or of blocking police work — and leave room for more to be added by listing dozens or even hundreds of “unnamed persons” in the same case. Each individual case can involve multiple charges.By the time the evidence, often flimsy, is put in front of a judge, the accused have spent months in jail, often at risk of harassment or torture in custody, human rights activists say. Bail, lawyers and legal experts said, has become harder to get in political cases. If the accused does get released, the government presents it as a magnanimous gift, not as acknowledgment that the person should not have been detained in the first place.Defense lawyers argue in court that their client “has a family, he has already spent this long time, if you kindly give him bail it would be appreciated, and the prosecution ‘allows’ it,” Mr. Zaman said.The CourtOne of the busiest places for political cases is Dhaka’s magistrate court, where Mr. Nirob, the B.N.P. leader facing more than 300 cases, was taken one morning in June. Syed Nazrul, Mr. Nirob’s lawyer, said his client had at least one case filed against him in every police station in the city.Before proceedings begin each morning, about a dozen lawyers cram into Room 205 at the bar association building, where Mr. Nazrul checks papers one last time. On June 12, the office’s large ledger showed that the team was defending clients in 33 cases that day, 32 of them involving the B.N.P.Lawyers crammed into a room at the bar association building in Dhaka in June. Many represent political prisoners. Syed Nazrul, a lawyer, inspecting documents for cases filed against a B.N.P. leader.Then the lawyers make their way through the narrow alley — buzzing with vendors selling anything from chicken to marigold to replacement teeth — that connects the bar association with the crowded courthouse.“The hearing takes, maximum, 20 minutes. All day is spent back and forth in this harassment,” Mr. Nazrul said.Even those fighting for causes beyond the bitter rivalry between the two political parties increasingly pay a heavy price.Didarul Bhuiyan, a computer engineer, returned to Dhaka after completing his studies in Australia. He set up a small software company, got married and raised three sons. But a question nagged at him: Had he made the right decision in returning?Mr. Bhuiyan became active in a civil society movement aimed at strengthening checks in the system, so his children would not be forced to pursue a life abroad. “Whenever someone gets to power, they go above the law,” he said.After Mr. Bhuiyan’s group criticized the management of relief funds during the pandemic, security forces in civilian clothes took him away in a van with tinted windows.Didarul Bhuiyan with his family in Dhaka in July. He spent five months in jail after criticizing the government’s management of Covid relief money. A woman and her relatives waving at people on a bus leaving court in Dhaka.“The incidents of disappearances were common; we worried about what could happen to him,” said his wife, Dilshad Ara Bhuiyan.As Ms. Bhuiyan went from court to court hoping to apply for bail for her husband, they refused to hear his case, even though the government had filed no charges against him. “The judge would see the name, the case, and say, ‘Sorry, I can’t,’” Mr. Bhuiyan said.After five months in jail, he got bail. The police did not file charges until about a year after his arrest, leveling vague accusations of treason and conspiracy against the state. As a central piece of evidence, the police submitted a Facebook post by Mr. Bhuiyan — which he had written months after his release. A time stamp marked a screenshot as having been taken three hours before.A fellow activist, Mushtaq Ahmed, who was detained around the same time as Mr. Bhuiyan, died in jail. A large portrait of Mr. Ahmed sits on a drawer in Mr. Bhuiyan’s home office.Mr. Bhuiyan called Mr. Ahmed’s death political murder.“Putting someone in jail for 10 months without any trial whatsoever is good enough to kill someone,” he said. More

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      N.H. GOP Fights 14th Amendment Bid to Bar Trump From Ballot

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      In New Hampshire, Republicans are feuding over whether the 14th Amendment bars Donald J. Trump from running for president. Other states are watching closely.New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary is quickly becoming the leading edge for an unproven legal theory that Donald J. Trump is disqualified from appearing on the ballot under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.A long-shot presidential candidate has filed a lawsuit in state court seeking an injunction to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot. And a former Republican candidate for Senate is urging the secretary of state to bring a case that could put the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court.On Wednesday, Free Speech for the People, a liberal-leaning group that unsuccessfully tried to strike House Republicans from the ballot in 2022, sent a letter to the secretaries of state in New Hampshire, as well as Florida, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin, urging them to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment.These efforts employ a theory that has been gaining traction among liberals and anti-Trump conservatives: that Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, disqualify him under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars people from holding office if they took an oath to support the Constitution and later “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”The theory has been gaining momentum since two prominent conservative law professors published an article this month concluding that Mr. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from running for office.But even advocates of the disqualification theory say it is a legal long shot. If a secretary of state strikes Mr. Trump’s name or a voter lawsuit advances, Mr. Trump’s campaign is sure to appeal, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court, where the 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices nominated by Mr. Trump.“When it gets to the Supreme Court, as it surely will, this will test the dedication of the justices to principles of law, more than almost anything has for a very long time,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard who believes the insurrection disqualification clearly applies to Mr. Trump, “because they will obviously realize that telling the leading candidate of one major political party, ‘no, no way, you’re not eligible’ is no small matter.”However long the odds of success, discussion of the amendment is bubbling up across the country. In Arizona, the secretary of state said he had heard from “concerned citizens” about the issue, and the Michigan secretary of state said she was “taking it seriously.” In Georgia, officials are looking at precedent set by a failed attempt to use the 14th Amendment to disqualify Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from the ballot in the 2022 midterms.But New Hampshire has jumped out as the early hotbed of the fight.The New Hampshire Republican Party said this week that it would challenge any effort to remove Mr. Trump, or any other candidates who have met requirements, from the ballot.“There’s no question that we will fight, and we’ll use all of the tools available to us to fight anyone’s access being denied on the ballot,” said Chris Ager, a Republican state committeeman in New Hampshire. “And if there’s a lawsuit, we are likely to intervene on behalf of the candidate to make sure that they have access. So we take it very seriously that the people of New Hampshire should decide who the nominee is, not a judge, not a justice system.”Chris Ager, a Republican state committeeman in New Hampshire, shaking Mr. Trump’s hand at the state party meeting in January.Doug Mills/The New York TimesLate last week, Bryant Messner, a former Trump-endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate, who goes by Corky, met with New Hampshire’s secretary of state, David M. Scanlan, to urge him to seek legal guidance on the issue. After Politico first reported the meeting, Mr. Scanlan and John M. Formella, the state’s attorney general, issued a joint statement saying that “the attorney general’s office is now carefully reviewing the legal issues involved.”Other secretaries of state have also been seeking legal guidance.“We’re taking a very cautious approach to the issue,” Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, said in an interview. “We’re going to be consulting with lawyers in our office and other folks who will eventually have to deal with this in the courts as well. We don’t anticipate that any decision that I or any other election administrator might make will be the final decision. This will get ultimately decided by the courts.”Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state, said his office had already heard from “concerned citizens” regarding Mr. Trump’s eligibility under the 14th Amendment.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesThough the argument is particularly appealing to liberals who view Mr. Trump as a grave threat, most of the recent momentum on this topic has come from conservative circles.Mr. Messner, a self-described “constitutional conservative,” said he was seeking to create case law around the issue. He said he had not yet filed a legal challenge because he first wanted the secretary of state to open up the candidate filing period and decide whether he would accept Mr. Trump’s filing. He argued that the lawsuit filed on Sunday by a Republican candidate, John Anthony Castro, was unlikely to advance because the filing period has not yet opened.“Section 3 has not been interpreted,” Mr. Messner said in an interview. “So, my position is let’s find a way for this to get into the court system as soon as possible. And then hopefully we can expedite through the legal system, to get it to the Supreme Court as soon as possible.”The precedent is by no means settled. A case filed against then-Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, ended with Judge Richard E. Myers II of U.S. District Court, an appointee of Mr. Trump, siding with Mr. Cawthorn. The judge ruled that the final clause of Section 3 allowed for a vote in Congress to “remove” the disqualification and that the passage of the Amnesty Act of 1872 effectively nullified the ban on insurrectionists.But on appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overruled that argument, saying the Amnesty Act clearly applied only to confederates, not future insurrectionists. The case was declared moot after Mr. Cawthorn lost his re-election in the 2022 primaries.Other cases may also come into play. An administrative law judge in Georgia ruled that plaintiffs failed to prove that Ms. Greene, Republican of Georgia, was in fact an insurrectionist. And cases against Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, Republicans of Arizona, were similarly dropped.Advocates of the disqualification clause fear that judges and secretaries of state could decide that any case against Mr. Trump will have to wait until a jury, either in Fulton County, Ga., or Washington, D.C., renders judgment in the two criminal cases charging that Mr. Trump had tried to overturn the 2020 election.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia indicated that previous cases involving Ms. Greene would continue to guide his office, and that “as secretary of state of Georgia, I have been clear that I believe voters are smart and deserve the right to decide elections.”“In Georgia, there is a specific statutory process to follow when a candidate’s qualifications for office are challenged,” Mr. Raffensperger said in a statement. “The secretary of state’s office has and will continue to follow the appropriate procedures in state law for any candidate challenges.”There has been one settled case since Jan. 6 that invoked the 14th Amendment. In September, a judge in New Mexico ordered a county commissioner convicted of participating in the Jan. 6 riot removed from office under the 14th Amendment. He was the first public official in more than a century to be barred from serving under a constitutional ban on insurrectionists holding office. More

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      Giuliani Is Liable for Defaming Georgia Election Workers, Judge Says

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      The ruling means that a defamation case against Rudolph W. Giuliani, stemming from his role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election, can proceed to a trial where damages will be considered.A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Rudolph W. Giuliani was liable for defaming two Georgia election workers by repeatedly declaring that they had mishandled ballots while counting votes in Atlanta during the 2020 election.The ruling by the judge, Beryl A. Howell in Federal District Court in Washington, means that the defamation case against Mr. Giuliani, a central figure in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after his election loss, can proceed to trial on the narrow question of how much, if any, damages he will have to pay the plaintiffs in the case.Judge Howell’s decision came a little more than a month after Mr. Giuliani conceded in two stipulations in the case that he had made false statements when he accused the election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, of manipulating ballots while working at the State Farm Arena for the Fulton County Board of Elections.Mr. Giuliani’s legal team has sought to clarify that he was not admitting to wrongdoing, and that his stipulations were solely meant to short circuit the costly process of producing documents and other records to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss so that he could move toward dismissing the allegations outright.Although the stipulations essentially conceded that his statements about Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss were false, Mr. Giuliani has continued to argue that his attacks on them were protected by the First Amendment.But Judge Howell, complaining that Mr. Giuliani’s stipulations “hold more holes than Swiss cheese,” took the proactive step of declaring him liable for “defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy and punitive damage claims.”In a statement, Mr. Giuliani’s political adviser, Ted Goodman, slammed the opinion as “a prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment.” He added that “this decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence.”Judge Howell’s decision to effectively skip the fact-finding stage of the defamation case and move straight to an assessment of damages came after a protracted struggle by Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss to force Mr. Giuliani to turn over evidence they believed they deserved as part of the discovery process.In her ruling, Judge Howell accused Mr. Giuliani of paying only “lip service” to his discovery obligations “by failing to take reasonable steps to preserve or produce” reams of relevant information. His repeated excuses and attempts to paint himself as the victim in the case, the judge went on, “thwarted” the two women’s “procedural rights to obtain any meaningful discovery.”“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case,” Judge Howell wrote.The remedy for all of this, she added, was that Mr. Giuliani would have to pay nearly $90,000 in legal fees Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss had incurred and would suffer a default judgment on the central issue of whether he had defamed the women.The lawsuit filed by Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss in December 2021 was among the first to be brought by individual election workers who found themselves targets of criticism and conspiracy theories promoted by right-wing politicians and media figures who claimed that Mr. Trump had won the election. The two women sued other defendants, including the One America News Network and some of its top officials, but ultimately reached settlements with everyone except Mr. Giuliani.The campaign of harassment against Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss came after Mr. Giuliani and others wrongly accused them of pulling thousands of fraudulent ballots from a suitcase in their vote-counting station and illegally feeding them through voting machines. The story of that campaign was featured prominently in a racketeering indictment against Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani and 17 others that was filed this month by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga.The indictment accused Mr. Giuliani of falsely telling state officials in Georgia that Ms. Freeman had committed election crimes in an effort to persuade them to “unlawfully change the outcome” of the race on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Other members of the criminal enterprise, the indictment said, “traveled from out of state to harass Ms. Freeman, intimidate her and solicit her to falsely confess to election crimes that she did not commit.”Last year, Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss — who are mother and daughter — appeared as witnesses at a public hearing of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 and related what happened after Mr. Giuliani amplified the false claims about them.Although Fulton County and Georgia officials immediately debunked the accusations, Mr. Giuliani kept promoting them, ultimately comparing the women — who are Black — to drug dealers and calling during a hearing with Georgia state legislators for their homes to be searched.Mr. Trump invoked Ms. Freeman’s name 18 times during a phone call with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, on Jan. 2, 2021. In the call, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Raffensperger to help him “find” 11,800 votes — enough to swing the results in Georgia from the winner, Joseph R. Biden Jr.“I’ve lost my name, and I’ve lost my reputation,” Ms. Freeman testified to the House panel, adding as her voice rose with emotion, “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”Mr. Giuliani has blamed his failure to produce documents to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss on his own financial woes. Facing an array of civil and criminal cases, Mr. Giuliani has racked up about $3 million in legal expenses, a person familiar with the matter has said.He has sought a lifeline from Mr. Trump, but the former president has largely rebuffed requests to cover Mr. Giuliani’s legal bills. Mr. Trump’s political action committee did pay $340,000 that Mr. Giuliani owed to a company that was helping him produce records in various cases, but he had still sought to avoid turning over documents to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, prompting the judge’s ruling on Wednesday.The defamation suit by the women is only one of several legal problems Mr. Giuliani faces.In addition to the Georgia indictment, Mr. Giuliani is facing a defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems, which has accused him of “a viral disinformation campaign” to spread false claims that the company was part of a complex plot to flip votes away from Mr. Trump during the 2020 election.Last month, a legal ethics committee in Washington said that Mr. Giuliani should be disbarred for his “unparalleled” attempts to help Mr. Trump overturn the election.He was also included as an unnamed co-conspirator in a federal indictment filed against Mr. Trump this month by the special counsel, Jack Smith, accusing the former president of plotting to illegally reverse the results of the election. More

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      Who Are Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the Debate Moderators?

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      The role of debate moderator carries prestige, but it also brings exacting demands and inherent risks: personal attacks by candidates, grievances about perceived biases and, for the two moderators of Wednesday’s Republican primary debate, a tempestuous cable news network’s reputation.Enter Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the Fox News Channel mainstays who drew that assignment and will pose questions to the eight G.O.P. presidential candidates squaring off for the first time, absent former President Donald J. Trump.The party’s front-runner, Mr. Trump will bypass the debate in favor of an online interview with Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News in April.But that doesn’t mean the debate’s moderators will be under any less of a microscope.Here’s a closer look at who they are:Bret BaierHe is the chief political anchor for Fox News and the host of “Special Report With Bret Baier” at 6 p.m. on weeknights. Mr. Baier, 53, joined the network in 1998, two years after the network debuted, according to his biography.Mr. Baier, like Ms. MacCallum, is no stranger to the debate spotlight.In 2016, he moderated three G.O.P. primary debates for Fox, alongside Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace, who have since left the network. He was present when Ms. Kelly grilled Mr. Trump about his treatment of women during a 2015 debate, an exchange that drew Mr. Trump’s ire and led him to boycott the network’s next debate nearly six months later.During the 2012 presidential race, Mr. Baier moderated five Republican primary debates.At a network dominated by conservative commentators like Sean Hannity and the departed Mr. Carlson and Bill O’Reilly, Mr. Baier has generally avoided controversy — but not entirely.After Fox News called Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. on election night in 2020, becoming the first major news network to do so and enraging Mr. Trump and his supporters, Mr. Baier suggested in an email to network executives the next morning that the outlet should reverse its projection.“It’s hurting us,” he wrote in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times.Mr. Baier was also part of a witness list in the defamation lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems brought against Fox News over the network’s role in spreading disinformation about the company’s voting equipment. Fox settled the case for $787.5 million before it went to trial.Martha MacCallumShe is the anchor and executive editor of “The Story With Martha MacCallum” at 3 p.m. on weekdays. Ms. MacCallum, 59, joined the network in 2004, according to her biography.During the 2016 election, Ms. MacCallum moderated a Fox News forum for the bottom seven Republican presidential contenders who had not qualified for the party’s first debate in August 2015. She reprised that role in January 2016, just days before the Iowa caucuses.She and Mr. Baier also moderated a series of town halls with individual Democratic candidates during the 2020 election, including one that featured Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.Before joining Fox, she worked for NBC and CNBC.When Fox projected Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump in Arizona, effectively indicating that Mr. Biden had clinched the presidency, Ms. MacCallum was similarly drawn into the maelstrom at the network.During a Zoom meeting with network executives and Mr. Baier, she suggested it was not enough to call states based on numerical calculations — the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations — but that viewers’ reactions should be considered.“In a Trump environment,” Ms. MacCallum said, according to a review of the phone call by The Times, “the game is just very, very different.” More

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      Giuliani Plans to Surrender Wednesday in Georgia Election Case

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      Mr. Giuliani served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and advanced false claims that the election was stolen.Rudolph W. Giuliani plans to turn himself in on Wednesday at the Atlanta jail where defendants are being booked in the racketeering case against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies, Mr. Giuliani’s local lawyer said Wednesday morning.Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump face the most charges among the 19 defendants in the sprawling case. A former mayor of New York, Mr. Giuliani served as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer in the aftermath of the 2020 election and played a leading role in advancing false claims that the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump.Bernard Kerik, who served as New York City’s police commissioner during Mr. Giuliani’s tenure as mayor, planned to accompany him to the jail in Atlanta, two people with knowledge of Mr. Giuliani’s plans said. Mr. Kerik is not a defendant in the case.The former mayor’s bond has not yet been set. His lawyers plan to meet on Wednesday with the office of Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who is leading the investigation.The bond for Mr. Trump, who plans to turn himself in on Thursday, has been set at $200,000.“Based on the bonds that have been set, we would expect it to not be any higher than the president’s, but we’re going to negotiate that with the district attorney’s office,” said Brian Tevis, an Atlanta lawyer representing Mr. Giuliani.The case against Mr. Giuliani is a striking chapter in the recent annals of criminal justice. A former federal prosecutor who made a name for himself with racketeering cases, he now faces a racketeering charge himself.“This is a ridiculous application of the racketeering statute,” he said last week after the indictment was issued.Several of the defendants in the case have already made the trip to the Fulton County jail to be fingerprinted and have mug shots taken. They include Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman, the two architects of the plan to use fake electors to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost the election to President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.David Shafer, a former head of the Republican Party in Georgia, has also turned himself in, as has Scott Hall, a pro-Trump Atlanta bail bondsman who was involved in a data breach at a rural Georgia elections office.In a social media post on Wednesday, Mr. Trump — who is running for office again, leads the Republican presidential primary field and is skipping his party’s first debate on Wednesday night — sounded a defiant note on social media about his upcoming visit to the Atlanta jail, saying he would “proudly be arrested” Thursday afternoon.Mr. Giuliani has struggled financially with mounting legal expenses, many of them related to his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office for another term after the 2020 defeat. After repeated entreaties from people close to Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump plans to host a $100,000-per-person fund-raiser next month at his club in Bedminster, N.J., to aid the former mayor, according to a copy of the invitation.Three of the 19 defendants have begun trying to have the case removed to federal court: Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official; Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff; and Mr. Shafer.Mr. Clark and Mr. Meadows have also filed court papers seeking to block their arrest.Some defendants were granted bond this week after their lawyers met with prosecutors in Atlanta. Mr. Trump’s bond agreement includes stipulations that he not intimidate witnesses or co-defendants, whether in social media posts or otherwise.Shane Goldmacher More