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    Donald Trump Jr. Plans to Meet With Jan. 6 Committee

    The former president’s eldest son, who encouraged White House officials to pursue “multiple paths” to overturn his father’s election loss, is said to have agreed to appear voluntarily.WASHINGTON — Donald Trump Jr., former President Donald J. Trump’s eldest son, has agreed to meet soon with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to a person familiar with matter.The committee has not issued a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr.’s testimony, but he is expected to answer questions voluntarily, the person said. His testimony is slated to come after his fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, met with the panel on Monday for a lengthy interview, which the panel had said would focus on her activities the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, including an Oval Office meeting with the former president, and her role raising money for the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol.Donald Trump Jr.’s agreement to testify was reported earlier by ABC News. It was confirmed by a person familiar with it who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks about the younger Mr. Trump’s plans to appear were confidential.He would be the latest family member of the former president to meet with the committee, which is investigating the deadliest attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. More than 150 police officers were injured in the violence as a pro-Trump mob, believing the former president’s lie of a stolen election, stormed the building. Already, Mr. Trump’s sister Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have testified during lengthy sessions with the panel.The cooperation of members of Mr. Trump’s family stands in contrast to the stance taken by some allies of the former president, who have refused to meet with the committee or turn over documents. The panel has not decided whether to ask the former president for an interview.The panel’s investigators have learned about some of the younger Mr. Trump’s actions concerning the effort to overturn the 2020 election through text messages he sent to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff at the time.Donald Trump Jr. sent one message two days after Election Day in 2020 that laid out strategies for declaring his father the winner regardless of the electoral outcome.“We have multiple paths,” he wrote to Mr. Meadows on Nov. 5, 2020. “We control them all.”The message went on to lay out options that Mr. Trump or his allies ultimately employed in trying to overturn the results of the election, including legal challenges, promoting alternative slates of electors and focusing efforts on the statutory date of Jan. 6 for Congress’s official count of the Electoral College results.A lawyer for Donald Trump Jr. has said the message “likely originated from someone else and was forwarded.”The younger Mr. Trump also texted with Mr. Meadows during the riot, urging him to move the president to act as the violence played out.In December, Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and the vice chairwoman of the committee, read aloud at a public meeting from text messages Donald Trump Jr. sent to Mr. Meadows amid the Capitol siege, urging the president to speak out against the mob violence.“He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP,” the younger Mr. Trump texted Mr. Meadows.“I’m pushing it hard,” Mr. Meadows responded. “I agree.”In another message, the younger Mr. Trump implored Mr. Meadows: “We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.” More

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    Donald Trump Jr. Text Laid Out Strategies to Fight Election Outcome

    In a message two days after Election Day 2020, the president’s son conveyed a range of ideas for keeping his father in office.Former President Donald J. Trump’s eldest son sent the White House chief of staff a text message two days after Election Day in 2020 that laid out strategies for declaring his father the winner regardless of the electoral outcome, people familiar with the exchange said on Friday.The text, which was reported earlier by CNN, was sent two days before Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner of the election. The recipient, Mark Meadows, turned a cache of his text messages over to the House committee investigating the events leading up to the deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as the Electoral College results in Mr. Biden’s favor were being certified.“It’s very simple,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote to Mr. Meadows on Nov. 5, 2020. He wrote at another point, “We have multiple paths We control them all.”The message went on to lay out a variety of options that Mr. Trump or his allies ultimately employed in trying to overturn the results of the election, from legal challenges to promoting alternative slates of electors to focusing efforts on the statutory date of Jan. 6 for certification of the Electoral College results.In a statement, the younger Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, confirmed that the text message was sent but suggested it was someone else’s idea that Donald Trump Jr. was passing along.“After the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others,” Mr. Futerfas said. “Given the date, this message likely originated from someone else and was forwarded.”Still, the text message underscores the extraordinary lengths that Mr. Trump’s allies and official aides were already exploring right after Election Day to keep Mr. Trump in power if the voters throughout the country failed to do so.Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric called on Republicans to keep fighting on their father’s behalf in the immediate aftermath of Election Day, as votes were still being counted in a string of close races in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Arizona.“The total lack of action from virtually all of the ‘2024 GOP hopefuls’ is pretty amazing,” Donald Jr. wrote on Twitter the same day he sent the text to Mr. Meadows. “They have a perfect platform to show that they’re willing & able to fight but they will cower to the media mob instead. Don’t worry @realDonaldTrump will fight & they can watch as usual!”The House committee is investigating what led to the assault on the Capitol and the various efforts to try to thwart Mr. Biden’s victory, all of which failed. Ultimately, a mob of supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol during the certification. At least seven people died in connection with the riot.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5The effort to disqualify “insurrectionists.” More

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    La historia detrás del diario de Ashley Biden

    Proyecto Veritas llamó a la hija del presidente para corroborar que era su diario. Las investigaciones judiciales revelan nuevos datos que muestran cómo fue que esa organización trabajó para divulgar información personal sobre la familia Biden.Un mes antes de las elecciones estadounidenses de 2020, la hija de Joe Biden, Ashley, recibió una llamada de un hombre que dijo que la quería ayudar. Con un tono amistoso, le aseguró que había encontrado un diario que creía que le pertenecía a ella, y quería devolvérselo.Es cierto que Ashley Biden había escrito un diario durante el año anterior mientras se recuperaba de una adicción y lo había guardado, junto con otras pertenencias, en la casa de un amigo en Florida donde había vivido hasta unos pocos meses antes. Si el contenido de ese diario personal se hubiese divulgado, podría haber significado una vergüenza o una distracción para su padre durante un momento crítico de la campaña.Biden acordó con el hombre que llamó que, al día siguiente, enviaría a una persona para que buscara el diario.Pero no estaba tratando con un buen samaritano.Esa persona trabajaba para el Proyecto Veritas, un grupo conservador que se había convertido en uno de los predilectos del presidente Donald Trump, según entrevistas con personas familiarizadas con la secuencia de eventos. Desde la sede del grupo en el condado de Westchester, Nueva York, y acompañado por otros miembros de la organización, el hombre buscaba engañar a Biden para que confirmara la autenticidad del diario, el cual Proyecto Veritas estaba a punto de comprarle a dos intermediarios por 40.000 dólares.El hombre que llamó no se identificó como alguien vinculado al Proyecto Veritas, según relatos de dos personas que conocen los detalles de la conversación. Al final de la llamada, varios integrantes del grupo que estuvieron presentes, que escucharon grabaciones de la llamada o que fueron informados sobre la conversación, creían que Biden había dicho más que suficiente para confirmar que era su diario.Los nuevos detalles sobre el esfuerzo del Proyecto Veritas para confirmar que el diario era de Biden, son elementos de una historia que sigue en proceso y que se enfoca en cómo algunos partidarios de Trump, y una organización conocida por sus operaciones encubiertas, trabajaron para exponer información personal sobre la familia Biden durante la campaña electoral de 2020.A través de entrevistas, y documentos judiciales y de otros tipos, la nueva información le agrega más detalles a lo que se sabe sobre un episodio que ha causado una investigación penal sobre el Proyecto Veritas por parte de fiscales federales, quienes sugirieron tener evidencia de que el grupo fue cómplice en el robo de la propiedad de Ashley Biden y el transporte de bienes hurtados a través de fronteras estatales.Además, al demostrar que el Proyecto Veritas utilizó el engaño en vez de técnicas periodísticas tradicionales cuando contactó a Biden —la persona que hizo la llamada se identificó con un nombre falso—, los nuevos testimonios podrían complicar aún más las afirmaciones que hizo la organización en documentos judiciales de que debería ser tratada como una editorial y recibir las protecciones consagradas en la Primera Enmienda. Con regularidad, el Proyecto Veritas lleva a cabo operaciones encubiertas, emboscadas para entrevistas y operativos de vigilancia, principalmente contra organizaciones y periodistas liberales.Al mismo tiempo, la nueva información sobre el caso sugiere que el esfuerzo por divulgar el diario provino de niveles más profundos del círculo de Trump de lo que se suponía.Un mes antes de que llamaran a Ashley Biden, el diario había sido compartido en un evento de recaudación de fondos de Trump en Florida, en la casa de una donante que ayudó a conseguir el diario y se lo entregó al Proyecto Veritas, y que luego fue nominada por Trump para el Consejo Nacional Consultivo de Cáncer. Entre los asistentes al evento se encontraba Donald Trump Jr., aunque no se sabe si leyó el diario.Los fiscales federales han estado investigando el modo en el que el Proyecto Veritas obtuvo el diario, y en otoño del año pasado realizaron allanamientos en las casas de tres de los agentes del grupo, incluida la de su fundador, James O’Keefe. En diversos documentos judiciales, los fiscales han sugerido que la organización fue cómplice en el robo de algunas pertenencias de Ashley Biden porque los testimonios muestran que el grupo obtuvo esos objetos al tiempo que intentaba confirmar la autenticidad del diario.El Proyecto Veritas —que demandó a The New York Times por difamación en otro caso— ha negado cualquier irregularidad o conocimiento de que alguna pertenencia haya sido robada. Se ha presentado como una organización de medios que está siendo injustamente investigada solo por ejercer periodismo, y ha atacado al Departamento de Justicia y al FBI por la manera en que han manejado el caso.Los fiscales han señalado que ven las circunstancias de otra manera; en un documento judicial en un tribunal casi desestimaron por completo los argumentos de la defensa del grupo que sostiene que actuaron como una organización de noticias. “La Primera Enmienda no brinda protección contra el robo y el transporte interestatal de propiedad robada”, afirmaron.En respuesta a una solicitud de comentarios al Proyecto Veritas, O’Keefe envió un correo electrónico criticando a The New York Times. “Imagínense escribir de forma tan divergente de la realidad y con un uso tan falaz de insinuaciones, que literalmente no exista ninguna expresión que no empeore la situación”, declaró.Los portavoces del FBI y de los fiscales federales que supervisan el caso en el distrito sur de Nueva York se negaron a hacer comentarios, al igual que Roberta Kaplan, abogada de Ashley Biden.Project Veritas se presenta como una organización de medios que está siendo investigada injustamente y ha atacado al Departamento de Justicia y al FBI por su manejo del caso.Stefani Reynolds para The New York TimesEl Times informó con anterioridad que la historia de la participación del Proyecto Veritas en el caso del diario comenzó en los meses previos al día de las elecciones.En julio de 2020, una madre soltera con dos hijos se mudó a la casa en alquiler de un exnovio en Delray Beach, Florida. La mujer, Aimee Harris, simpatizante de Donald Trump, le dijo al exnovio que tenía poco dinero, que no tenía dónde vivir y que estaba en disputa por la custodia de sus hijos. Poco después de mudarse a la casa en alquiler, Harris se enteró de que Ashley Biden —quien era amiga de su exnovio— había vivido en la casa durante ese año.Biden ya había regresado a Filadelfia en junio de 2020, por los días en que su padre había ganado la candidatura presidencial del Partido Demócrata. Guardó un par de bolsos con sus pertenencias en la casa de alquiler junto con su diario, y le dijo a su amigo, quien estaba rentando la casa, que planeaba regresar para llevarse sus cosas en el otoño.En agosto, Harris contactó a Robert Kurlander, un amigo suyo que en la década de 1990 fue sentenciado a 40 meses de prisión por fraude federal y que había expresado en línea su postura contra Biden, para decirle que había encontrado el diario. Ambos creían que podían venderlo, lo que ayudaría a Harris para pagar los abogados que la representaban en la disputa por la custodia.Nuevos detalles tomados de entrevistas y documentos han aclarado lo que sucedió después. Kurlander se puso en contacto con Elizabeth Fago, la donante de Trump que luego organizó el evento de recaudación de fondos al que asistió Donald Trump Jr. Cuando le hablaron por primera vez del diario, Fago afirmó haber pensado que podría ayudar a incrementar las posibilidades de que Donald Trump ganara las elecciones, según dos personas familiarizadas con el asunto.Richard G. Lubin, abogado de Fago, se negó a hacer comentarios.El 3 de septiembre, la hija de Fago alertó al Proyecto Veritas sobre la existencia del diario.Tres días después, Harris y Kurlander asistieron al evento de recaudación de fondos, donde también estaba presente Donald Trump Jr., en la casa de Fago en Jupiter, Florida, para ver si el equipo de la campaña de reelección del presidente podría estar interesado en el diario. Mientras estaba allí, Kurlander les mostró el diario a otras personas. No se sabe con claridad quiénes lo vieron.Después de que la investigación criminal sobre el Proyecto Veritas se hizo pública durante el otoño pasado, un destacado abogado republicano que cabildea en nombre de la organización y O’Keefe informó a un grupo de republicanos del Congreso sobre el caso, con el fin de instarlos a tratar de persuadir al Departamento de Justicia para que dejaran la investigación debido a que el grupo no había hecho nada malo, según una persona informada sobre el asunto.El presidente Donald Trump durante un discurso en Júpiter, Florida, en septiembre de 2020. Días antes, dos personas que luego le vendieron el diario a Project Veritas, lo llevaron a un evento de recaudación de fondos para la campaña de Trump.Doug Mills/The New York TimesEl abogado, Mark Paoletta, dijo que al enterarse de la existencia del diario en el evento de recaudación de fondos, Donald Trump Jr. no mostró ningún interés y dijo que quienquiera que lo tuviera debería informar al FBI. Pero poco después, Paoletta, quien se había desempeñado como el principal abogado del vicepresidente Mike Pence en la Casa Blanca, volvió a llamar a los republicanos del Congreso para decir que no estaba seguro de si la versión sobre la reacción de Donald Trump Jr. era precisa.Los archivos de cabildeo muestran que Paoletta recibió 50.000 dólares durante los últimos dos meses del año pasado para informar a los miembros del Congreso sobre la redada del FBI en la casa de O’Keefe. Paoletta y un abogado de Donald Trump Jr. no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios.Cuando el Proyecto Veritas se enteró de la existencia del diario a principios de septiembre, el grupo buscó adquirirlo. Aproximadamente una semana después del evento de recaudación de fondos, Harris y Kurlander volaron a Nueva York con el diario. Se reunieron con varios agentes del Proyecto Veritas en un hotel de Manhattan.Las dos partes comenzaron a negociar un acuerdo, pero no se llegó a un trato final. Como respuesta a la pregunta sobre qué pudo haberle pedido el Proyecto Veritas para ayudar a autenticar el diario, Kurlander, a través de su abogado Jonathan Kaplan, se negó a hacer comentarios.Pero Proyecto Veritas tuvo que dilucidar varios temas difíciles: ¿en realidad era el diario de Ashley Biden y no se trataba de una falsificación o una trampa? ¿Cómo es que Proyecto Veritas, una organización conocida por sus operaciones encubiertas, podría asegurarse de que no era víctima de sus propias tácticas engañosas?Uno de los subalternos de O’Keefe, Spencer Meads, fue enviado a Florida para investigar la autenticidad del diario.Lo que sucedió después aún no ha sido aclarado, y es uno de los grandes problemas de la investigación. El Proyecto Veritas ha dicho en documentos judiciales que sus agentes obtuvieron artículos adicionales pertenecientes a Biden que sus “fuentes” habían descrito como “abandonados”, sugiriendo así que no tenía conocimiento de ningún robo y que consiguieron las pertenencias de Biden de la misma manera en que los periodistas reciben información.“Poco después, las fuentes acordaron reunirse con el periodista de Project Veritas en Florida para darle artículos abandonados adicionales”, escribieron los abogados del grupo en un expediente judicial federal.Desde hace tiempo, los abogados de Proyecto Veritas habían advertido a los miembros que alentar o incentivar a las fuentes a robar documentos o artículos podría implicar al grupo en un delito. En un memorando dirigido a O’Keefe en 2017, uno de los abogados concluyó: “Bajo este precedente, PV disfruta de protecciones legales sustanciales para informar y divulgar material que puede haberse obtenido ilegalmente, siempre que no haya participado en el proceso para conseguirlo”.Sin embargo, al menos una de las “fuentes” les contó a otras personas que un agente del Proyecto Veritas le había preguntado si podía recuperar más artículos de la casa que pudieran ayudar a demostrar que el diario pertenecía a Ashley Biden, según una persona con conocimiento de la conversación. Una de las fuentes les informó a otras personas que procedió a sacar artículos adicionales de la casa y dárselos al integrante del grupo.En respuesta a las afirmaciones de la organización de que no había hecho nada malo y que su papel en el caso estaba protegido por la Primera Enmienda, los fiscales acusaron al grupo en los documentos judiciales de hacer declaraciones no juradas que son “falsas o engañosas y se contradicen directamente con la evidencia”. También declararon que incluso una organización de noticias legítima no sería protegida por la Primera Enmienda al adquirir materiales mediante robos u otros delitos.“En pocas palabras, incluso los miembros de los medios de comunicación ‘no pueden irrumpir con impunidad y entrar en una oficina o vivienda para recolectar noticias’”, dijeron los fiscales.Sin citar evidencia específica, los fiscales desafiaron directamente un argumento de Proyecto Veritas: la “reiterada afirmación del grupo de que no habían ‘participado’ en cómo se ‘adquirieron’ las pertenencias de la víctima”.El plan de Ashley Biden de que un amigo fuera a recuperar el diario, que tenía la persona que la llamó en octubre, fracasó. Y las versiones que Proyecto Veritas presentó en las últimas semanas, tanto en documentos judiciales como ante la policía local en Florida, sobre cómo obtuvo el diario dejan varias preguntas sobre el desarrollo de los eventos.El FBI obtuvo una orden y allanó la casa de James O’Keefe, el fundador del Proyecto Veritas.Cooper Neill para The New York TimesProyecto Veritas le dijo a un juez federal que el 12 de octubre, O’Keefe envió un correo electrónico diciéndole a su equipo que había tomado la decisión de no publicar la historia sobre el diario, aunque no tenían “ninguna duda de que el documento es real”. Sin embargo, sostenía que las reacciones a su publicación serían “calificadas como un golpe bajo”. La fecha del correo, proporcionada por O’Keefe, fue poco después de la llamada a Biden.Pero cuatro días después de que O’Keefe le dijera a su personal que no publicaría el diario, un importante abogado del Proyecto Veritas le dijo a la campaña de Joe Biden que tenía el diario y que quería entrevistarlo en cámara al respecto, según el Times reportó en diciembre.Menos de una semana después, Proyecto Veritas cerró un acuerdo por 40.000 dólares con Kurlander y Harris para comprar los derechos de publicación del diario, les transfirió el dinero y sugirió que el grupo planeaba publicarlo pronto, según una persona con conocimiento del caso.Al final, Proyecto Veritas decidió no publicarlo. En cambio, un sitio web de derecha publicó el diario en octubre, pero recibió muy poca atención antes de las elecciones. O’Keefe estaba furioso, y algunas personas dentro del Proyecto Veritas pensaron que uno de sus propios integrantes, frustrado por la falta de voluntad del grupo para publicar el diario, lo había filtrado.Proyecto Veritas decidió que uno de sus integrantes regresaría el diario, y las demás pertenencias de Biden, a Florida.Según un informe del Departamento de Policía de Delray Beach, un abogado se presentó en el departamento y le entregó los artículos a un oficial. El abogado, según las imágenes de la cámara corporal de la policía, dijo que los artículos fueron “posiblemente robados”.La policía alertó al FBI, que hizo que un agente recuperara el diario de Biden y otras pertenencias. Casi un año después, el FBI contactó a Harris y a Kurlander.Unas dos semanas después, agentes del FBI consiguieron órdenes para allanar las casas de O’Keefe y dos de sus colaboradores: Meads y Eric Cochran, quienes abandonaron la organización después del incidente del diario. En el caso de Meads, su abogado dijo que el FBI derribó la puerta de su apartamento. Los documentos judiciales indican que el FBI incautó 47 dispositivos, incluida una decena de teléfonos de Meads.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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    Ashley Biden’s Diary Was Shown at Trump Fund-Raiser. Weeks Later, Project Veritas Called Her.

    The right-wing group’s deceptive call to the president’s daughter a month before Election Day is among the new details that show how the organization worked to expose personal information about the Biden family.A month before the 2020 election, Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s daughter, Ashley, received a call from a man offering help. Striking a friendly tone, the man said that he had found a diary that he believed belonged to Ms. Biden and that he wanted to return it to her.Ms. Biden had in fact kept a diary the previous year as she recovered from addiction and had stored it and some other belongings at a friend’s home in Florida where she had been living until a few months earlier. The diary’s highly personal contents, if publicly disclosed, could prove an embarrassment or a distraction to her father at a critical moment in the campaign.She agreed with the caller to send someone to retrieve the diary the next day.But Ms. Biden was not dealing with a good Samaritan.The man on the other end of the phone worked for Project Veritas, a conservative group that had become a favorite of President Donald J. Trump, according to interviews with people familiar with the sequence of events. From a conference room at the group’s headquarters in Westchester County, N.Y., surrounded by other top members of the group, the caller was seeking to trick Ms. Biden into confirming the authenticity of the diary, which Project Veritas was about to purchase from two intermediaries for $40,000.The caller did not identify himself as being affiliated with Project Veritas, according to accounts from two people with knowledge of the conversation. By the end of the call, several of the group’s operatives who had either listened in, heard recordings of the call or been told of it believed that Ms. Biden had said more than enough to confirm that it was hers.The new details of Project Veritas’s effort to establish that the diary was Ms. Biden’s are elements of a still-emerging story about how Trump supporters and a group known for its undercover sting operations worked to expose personal information about the Biden family at a crucial stage of the 2020 campaign.Drawn from interviews, court filings and other documents, the new information adds further texture to what is known about an episode that has led to a criminal investigation of Project Veritas by federal prosecutors who have suggested they have evidence that the group was complicit in stealing Ms. Biden’s property and in transporting stolen goods across state lines.And by showing that Project Veritas employed deception rather than traditional journalistic techniques in the way it approached Ms. Biden — the caller identified himself with a fake name — the new accounts could further complicate the organization’s assertions in court filings that it should be treated as a publisher and granted First Amendment protections. Project Veritas regularly carries out undercover stings, surveillance operations and ambush interviews, mostly against liberal groups and journalists.At the same time, new information about the case suggests that the effort to make the diary public reached deeper into Mr. Trump’s circle than previously known.A month before the call to Ms. Biden, the diary had been passed around a Trump fund-raiser in Florida at the home of a donor who helped steer the diary to Project Veritas and was later nominated by Mr. Trump to the National Cancer Advisory Board. Among those attending the event was Donald Trump Jr., though it is not clear if he examined it.Federal prosecutors have been investigating how Project Veritas obtained the diary, and last fall carried out searches at the homes of three of the group’s operatives, including that of its founder, James O’Keefe. In court filings, prosecutors have suggested that the organization was complicit in the theft of some of Ms. Biden’s other belongings, which interviews show the group obtained as it was seeking to confirm the diary’s authenticity.Project Veritas — which is suing The New York Times for defamation in an unrelated case — has denied any wrongdoing or knowledge that the belongings had been stolen. It has portrayed itself as a media organization that is being unfairly investigated for simply doing journalism and has assailed the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for their handling of the case.Prosecutors have signaled that they view the circumstances very differently, all but dismissing in one court filing the group’s defense that it was acting as a news organization, saying that “there is no First Amendment protection for the theft and interstate transport of stolen property.”In response to a request to Project Veritas for comment, Mr. O’Keefe sent an email criticizing The Times. “Imagine writing so thoroughly divergent from reality and so mendacious with innuendo that there is literally no utterance that won’t make it worse,” he said.Spokesmen for the F.B.I. and for federal prosecutors overseeing the case in the Southern District of New York declined to comment, as did Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Ms. Biden.Project Veritas portrayed itself as a media organization that is being unfairly investigated, and has assailed the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for their handling of the case.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe Times has previously reported that the story of Project Veritas’s involvement with the diary began in the months leading up to Election Day.In July 2020, a single mother of two moved into the rented home of a former boyfriend in Delray Beach, Fla. The woman, Aimee Harris, a Trump supporter, told the former boyfriend that she had little money, had nowhere to live and was in a bitter custody dispute. Shortly after moving into the rental, Ms. Harris learned that Ms. Biden — also a friend of the former boyfriend — had been staying at the home earlier that year during the pandemic.Ms. Biden had moved back to the Philadelphia area in June 2020, around the time her father clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. She stored a couple of bags of her belongings at the rental house along with her diary, and she told her friend, who was leasing the home, that she planned to return to retrieve her things in the fall.In August, Ms. Harris reached out to Robert Kurlander, a friend who had been sentenced to 40 months in prison in the 1990s on a federal fraud charge and had expressed anti-Biden sentiments online, to say she had found the diary. The two believed they could sell it, allowing Ms. Harris to help pay for the lawyers representing her in the custody dispute.New details from interviews and documents have further fleshed out what happened next. Mr. Kurlander contacted Elizabeth Fago, the Trump donor who would host the fund-raiser attended by Donald Trump Jr. When first told of the diary, Ms. Fago said she thought it would help Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the election, according to two people familiar with the matter.Richard G. Lubin, a lawyer for Ms. Fago, declined to comment.On Sept. 3, Ms. Fago’s daughter alerted Project Veritas about the diary through its tip line.Three days later, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander — with the diary in hand — attended the fund-raiser attended by Donald Trump Jr. at Ms. Fago’s house in Jupiter, Fla., to see whether the president’s re-election campaign might be interested in it. While there, Mr. Kurlander showed others the diary. It is unclear who saw it.After the criminal investigation into Project Veritas became public last fall, a prominent Republican lawyer who was lobbying on behalf of the organization and Mr. O’Keefe briefed a group of congressional Republicans on the case, to urge them to try to persuade the Justice Department to back off the investigation because the group did nothing wrong, according to a person briefed on the matter.President Donald J. Trump delivering remarks in Jupiter, Fla., in September 2020. Days earlier, two people who later sold the diary to Project Veritas brought the diary to a Trump campaign fund-raiser nearby.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe lawyer, Mark Paoletta, said that upon learning about the diary at the fund-raiser, Donald Trump Jr. showed no interest in it and said that whoever was in possession of it should report it to the F.B.I. But shortly thereafter Mr. Paoletta, who had served as Vice President Mike Pence’s top lawyer in the White House, called back the congressional Republicans to say he was unsure whether the account about Donald Trump Jr.’s reaction was accurate.Lobbying filings show that Mr. Paoletta was paid $50,000 during the last two months of last year to inform members of Congress about the F.B.I. raid on Mr. O’Keefe. Mr. Paoletta and a lawyer for Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to messages seeking comment.Once Project Veritas learned about the diary in early September, the group sought to acquire it. About a week after the fund-raiser, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander flew to New York with the diary. The pair met with several Project Veritas operatives at a hotel on Manhattan’s West Side.The two sides began negotiating an agreement, but no final deal was struck at that stage and Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander returned to Florida. In response to questions about what Project Veritas may have asked him to do to help authenticate the diary, Mr. Kurlander, through his lawyer, Jonathan Kaplan, declined to comment.But Project Veritas had to confront tricky questions: Was the diary really Ashley Biden’s, and not a fake or a setup? How could Project Veritas, best known for its undercover sting operations, be sure it was not a victim of its own deceptive tactics?To authenticate the diary, one of Mr. O’Keefe’s top lieutenants, Spencer Meads, was dispatched to Florida to do more investigative work.What happened next is a matter of dispute and one of the major issues in the investigation. Project Veritas has said in court filings that its operatives obtained additional items belonging to Ms. Biden that their “sources” had described as “abandoned,” suggesting that it had no knowledge of any theft and that it had gotten access to Ms. Biden’s belongings in the same way that journalists receive information.“The sources arranged to meet the Project Veritas journalist in Florida soon thereafter to give the journalist additional abandoned items,” lawyers for the group wrote in a federal court filing.Project Veritas’s lawyers had long instructed its operatives that encouraging or incentivizing sources to steal documents or items could ensnare the group in a crime. In a memo to Mr. O’Keefe in 2017, one of the group’s lawyers concluded: “Under controlling precedent, PV enjoys substantial legal protections to report and disclose material that may have been illegally obtained provided it played no part in obtaining it.”But at least one of the “sources” told others that a Project Veritas operative had asked them whether they could retrieve more items from the home that could help show that the diary belonged to Ms. Biden, according to a person with knowledge of the exchange. Additional items were then taken out of the home and given to the operative, one of the sources has told others.In response to assertions from Project Veritas that it had done nothing wrong and that its role in the case was protected by the First Amendment, prosecutors accused the group in court filings of making unsworn statements that are either “false or misleading and are directly contradicted by the evidence.” They also stated that even a legitimate news organization would have no First Amendment defense for acquiring material through theft or another crime.“Put simply, even members of the news media ‘may not with impunity break and enter an office or dwelling to gather news,’” prosecutors said.Without citing specific evidence, prosecutors directly challenged one argument from Project Veritas in particular: the group’s “repeated claim that they had ‘no involvement’ in how the victim’s property was ‘acquired.’”The plan for Ms. Biden to have a friend retrieve the diary from the person who called her in early October fell through. And the accounts that Project Veritas has laid out in court papers and to the local police in Florida about how it obtained the diary and dealt with it in the final weeks leave open questions about how the events played out.The F.B.I. obtained a search warrant and raided the home of James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesProject Veritas told a federal judge that on Oct. 12, Mr. O’Keefe sent an email telling his team that he had made the decision not to publish a story about the diary, adding, “We have no doubt the document is real” but that reactions to its publication would be “characterized as a cheap shot.” The date provided by Mr. O’Keefe for the email was shortly after the call to Ms. Biden.But four days after Mr. O’Keefe told his staff that it would not publish the diary, a top lawyer for Project Veritas told Mr. Biden’s campaign that it had the diary and wanted to interview Mr. Biden on camera about it, The Times reported in December.Less than a week after that, Project Veritas finalized a deal with Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris to buy the rights to publish the diary for $40,000, wired them the money and signaled that the group planned to soon publish it, according a person with knowledge of the case.In the end, Project Veritas chose not to publish. Instead, an obscure right-wing website published the diary in late October, but it got little attention before the election. Mr. O’Keefe was furious, and some within Project Veritas thought that one of its own operatives, frustrated with the group’s unwillingness to publish the diary, had leaked it.Project Veritas decided to have one of its operatives take the diary and Ms. Biden’s other belongings back to Florida.According to a Delray Beach Police Department report, a lawyer showed up at the department and gave the items to an officer. The lawyer, according to police body camera footage, said the items were “possibly stolen.”The police alerted the F.B.I., which had an agent retrieve Ms. Biden’s diary and other belongings. Almost a year later, the F.B.I. approached Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander.About two weeks later, F.B.I. agents obtained search warrants to raid the homes of Mr. O’Keefe and two of his operatives: Mr. Meads and Eric Cochran, both of whom left the organization after the diary project. In the case of Mr. Meads, his lawyer said the F.B.I. broke down his apartment door. Court documents indicate that the F.B.I. seized 47 devices, including a dozen phones from Mr. Meads.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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    CPAC: A Bacchanal of Right-Wing Pageantry, Passion and Grievance

    While U.S. leaders are dealing with war in Europe and disruption of the global order, the leading lights of MAGA America are in central Florida this week for that annual bacchanal of right-wing pageantry and passion known as the Conservative Political Action Conference.With all the serious challenges the nation has faced of late, now seems like a perfect moment for serious conservative thinkers and activists to come together in pursuit of serious solutions. That, alas, is not what happens at CPAC.Put on annually by the American Conservative Union, whose name pretty much explains its aim, the confab may once have been about ideology or actual policy. But for years, the gathering has been better known as a multiday fringe fest featuring some of the most outrageous players on the political right.This time, it promises to be largely a celebration of former President Donald Trump and his angry MAGA vision for the nation — which makes it less distinct from the broader Republican Party than it once was. But such is the debased state of modern conservatism, and — for those who have the stomach for it — this circus can tell you a lot about the state of American politics.For most of its nearly five decades, CPAC was held in the Washington, D.C., area, the better to lure Very Important Politicos to the festivities. Last year, the Covid pandemic drove it out of the region — way too many local mandates for this freedom-loving crowd — and the event landed in Florida, the adopted home of one Donald J. Trump. But even if the former president were not a Florida Man, there is arguably no place more conducive to letting one’s freak flag fly than the Sunshine State. And providing a safe space to fly those flags has long been at the heart of CPAC.Damon Winter/The New York TimesThis year’s lineup provides the same caliber of thought-provoking offerings that the conference’s fans and foes alike have come to expect. Among the scheduled panel discussions are “The Moron in Chief” and the more baroquely titled “Put Him to Bed, Lock Her Up and Send Her to the Border.” The latter session will feature crack analysis by Jack Posobiec, the conspiracymonger known for scampering down the rabbit holes of crank theories such as Pizzagate.Asinine titles aside, the presentations offer a glimpse into what is obsessing the G.O.P.’s activist base. Among this year’s hot topics is clearly the threat of wokeness, inspiring multiple offerings, including “Awake Not Woke,” “Woke Inc.” and “Fighting Woke Inc.” A legal chat about “defending the canceled” seems to fit the theme as well.There are several presentations related to schools, including “School Boards for Dummies,” “Domestic Terrorists Unite: Lessons From Virginia Parents” and a town hall on the fittingly misspelled “Pupil Propoganda.”Mock if you will, but Republicans will wrap these culture war issues around Democrats’ necks in the coming midterms. CPAC is a prime venue for test-driving their material.Some offerings are more incendiary than others. Take “The Truth About Jan. 6: A Conversation With Julie Kelly,” who wrote the book “January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right.”Then there’s “Lock Her Up, for Real,” featuring the former representative and enduring Trumper Devin Nunes; Kash Patel, a Nunes aide turned controversial Pentagon staff member; and Lee Smith, the author of a book purporting to show how Mr. Nunes uncovered the secret deep state plot to bring down Mr. Trump. So. Much. Fun.The conference set list includes some classics as well. “Obamacare Still Kills” should provide a warm dose of nostalgia. Ditto “I Escaped From Communist North Korea.” The enduring menace of Communism is always a crowd-pleaser at CPAC.The gathering’s educational component should not be pooh-poohed. Attendees tired of all the pandemic hubbub will want to catch the Saturday morning breakout session “Lock Downs and Mandates: Now Do You Understand Why We Have a Second Amendment.” And aspiring public servants surely learned a lot from the session “Are You Ready to Be Called a Racist: The Courage to Run for Office.”A couple of the presentation titles go so far as to name-check individuals who really rile up conservatives, so it is illuminating to see who rises to that level of distinction. This year’s honorees are the CNN host Don Lemon (“Don Lemon Is a Dinosaur: The New Way to Get Your News”) and Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia (“Sorry Stacey, You Are Not the Governor”).The lineup of speakers is as telling as the panels and town halls. Who’s in? Who’s out? Who’s got the loser time slots? This year features appearances by conference old-timers like Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s longtime frontman, as well as rising MAGA stars like Donald Trump Jr., who scored the closing speech, and his fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, an infamously high-octane orator. (One word for her: decaf.)An array of presumed presidential hopefuls/Trump lickspittles are having have their moments as well. Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are all on the program. Former Vice President Mike Pence is not, having declined his invitation.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is generating the most buzz, mostly because the chattering class is giddy at the prospect of spotting even a hint of friction between Team DeSantis and Trumpworld. Mr. DeSantis is considered a top — maybe the top — 2024 presidential contender.Unlike some 2024 hopefuls, he has not pledged to sit the race out if Mr. Trump runs. This has not gone over well in Trumpworld. It is perhaps unsurprising then that the governor was given a not-so-great speaking slot this week: early on the opening afternoon, wedged in between a presentation by Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, and a speech by Florida’s lieutenant governor.Mr. Trump will speak at 7 on Saturday evening, serving as basically the keynote of the gathering.As the convention unfolds, look for breathless updates on the dynamic between the governor and the former president — especially as the time draws nigh to announce the results of the annual straw poll on who should be the next president.Last year, Mr. DeSantis was the solid winner when Mr. Trump was not among the options. This year’s results are likely to get more scrutiny than President Biden’s upcoming Supreme Court pick (OK, maybe not quite so much). That said, it’s worth remembering that, in the pre-Trump age, Senator Rand Paul won the poll three years running — 2013, 2014 and 2015 — with a Cruz win in 2016. So it’s best not to get too wrapped up in the predictive power of these things.Until recently, it was best not to take CPAC in general that seriously as a political barometer. But with the G.O.P. eaten alive by Trumpism, there isn’t much left of the party beyond its raging MAGA base. Which makes this four-day spectacle as representative of Republican politics as any event.Just one more thing to keep you up worrying at night.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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    Los aliados de Trump ayudan a sembrar dudas en Brasil

    Ante la caída de sus números en las encuestas, el presidente Jair Bolsonaro se queja de un supuesto fraude en las elecciones del próximo año. Y, desde Estados Unidos, lo están asesorando.BRASILIA — La sala de conferencias estaba repleta, con más de 1000 personas vitoreando los ataques contra la prensa, los liberales y lo políticamente correcto. Donald Trump Jr. estaba presente y advertía que los chinos podrían entrometerse en las elecciones, también asistió un congresista de Tennessee que votó en contra de certificar las elecciones de 2020 y el presidente, quien se quejaba sobre el fraude electoral.En muchos sentidos, el evento de septiembre se parecía al CPAC, la conferencia política conservadora, durante la era Trump. Pero estaba ocurriendo en Brasil, la mayor parte era en portugués y el mandatario que estaba en el escenario era el líder populista de extrema derecha del país, Jair Bolsonaro.Recién salido de su asalto a los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales de 2020 en Estados Unidos, el expresidente Donald Trump y sus aliados están exportando su estrategia a la mayor democracia de América Latina, trabajando para apoyar la candidatura de Bolsonaro a la reelección el próximo año, y ayudando a sembrar dudas en el proceso electoral en caso de que pierda.Están tachando a sus rivales políticos de criminales y comunistas, construyendo nuevas redes sociales en las que pueda evitar las reglas de Silicon Valley contra la desinformación y amplificando sus afirmaciones de que las elecciones en Brasil estarán amañadas.Simpatizantes de Bolsonaro en Brasilia, en septiembreDado Galdieri para The New York TimesPara los ideólogos estadounidenses que impulsan un movimiento nacionalista de derecha, Brasil es una de las piezas más importantes del tablero mundial. Con 212 millones de habitantes, es la sexta nación más grande del mundo, la fuerza dominante en América del Sur y el hogar de una población abrumadoramente cristiana que sigue desplazándose hacia la derecha.Brasil también presenta una rica oportunidad económica, con abundantes recursos naturales que se han hecho más accesibles gracias al retroceso de las regulaciones de Bolsonaro, y un mercado cautivo para las nuevas redes sociales de derecha dirigidas por Trump y otros líderes.Para el presidente brasileño, que se encuentra cada vez más aislado en la escena mundial y es impopular en su país, el apoyo estadounidense es un impulso. El nombre de Trump es un grito de guerra para la nueva derecha brasileña y sus esfuerzos por socavar el sistema electoral estadounidense parecen haber inspirado y envalentonado a Bolsonaro y sus partidarios.Pero Brasil es un país profundamente dividido donde las instituciones que salvaguardan la democracia son más vulnerables a los ataques. La adopción de los métodos de Trump está añadiendo combustible a un polvorín político y podría desestabilizar al país, que cuenta con una historia de violencia política y gobiernos militares.“Bolsonaro ya está metiendo en la cabeza de la gente que no aceptará el resultado de las elecciones si pierde”, dijo David Nemer, un profesor brasileño que enseña en la Universidad de Virginia y estudia la extrema derecha del país. “En Brasil, eso se puede ir de las manos”.Steve Bannon, quien fue el principal estratega de Trump, ha dicho que el presidente Bolsonaro solo perderá si “las máquinas” roban las elecciones. Mark Green, representante republicano por Tennessee que ha impulsado leyes para combatir el fraude electoral, se reunió con legisladores en Brasil para discutir sobre las “políticas de integridad del voto”.Y uno de los hijos del presidente Bolsonaro, Eduardo Bolsonaro, dio quizás su presentación más elaborada sobre lo que dijo que eran elecciones brasileñas manipuladas en Sioux Falls, Dakota del Sur. En agosto, asistió a un evento organizado por Mike Lindell, el empresario de almohadas que está siendo demandado por difamar a los fabricantes de máquinas de votación.El hijo del presidente Bolsonaro, Eduardo Bolsonaro, durante las celebraciones del Día de la Independencia en São PauloVictor Moriyama para The New York TimesLas autoridades, incluyendo académicos, funcionarios electorales de Brasil y el gobierno de Estados Unidos, han dicho que no ha habido fraude en las elecciones de Brasil. Eduardo Bolsonaro ha insistido en que lo hubo. “Ellos dicen que no puedo probar que hubo fraude”, dijo en Dakota del Sur. “Así que, OK, no pueden demostrar que no lo hubo”.El círculo de Trump se ha acercado a otros líderes populistas de extrema derecha, incluso en Hungría, Polonia y Filipinas, y ha tratado de impulsar a los populistas de otros lugares. Pero los lazos son más fuertes, y lo que está en juego podría ser de una magnitud mayor, en Brasil.Los grupos de WhatsApp de los partidarios de Bolsonaro comenzaron a circular recientemente el tráiler de una nueva serie de Tucker Carlson, un presentador de Fox News que simpatiza con los disturbios del 6 de enero en el Capitolio, dijo Nemer. Estados Unidos, que es una democracia desde hace 245 años, resistió ese ataque. Brasil aprobó su constitución en 1988, tras dos décadas de dictadura militar.“Lo que me preocupa es la fragilidad de nuestras instituciones democráticas”, expresó Nemer.El interés estadounidense en Brasil no solo es político. Dos redes sociales conservadoras dirigidas por aliados de Trump, Gettr y Parler, están creciendo rápidamente aquí apoyándose en el miedo a la censura de las grandes empresas tecnológicas y convenciendo al presidente Bolsonaro para que publique en esas plataformas, lo que lo convierte en el único líder mundial que ha participado en esas redes. La propia red social de Trump, anunciada el mes pasado, está parcialmente financiada por un congresista brasileño alineado con el presidente Bolsonaro.Más allá de la tecnología, muchas otras empresas estadounidenses se han beneficiado de la apertura al comercio del presidente Bolsonaro, incluidas las de defensa, agricultura, espacio y energía.“Estamos convirtiendo la afinidad ideológica en intereses económicos”, dijo Ernesto Araujo, ministro de Relaciones Exteriores del presidente Bolsonaro hasta marzo.Los Trump, los Bolsonaro y Bannon no respondieron a las repetidas solicitudes de comentarios.El entonces presidente Trump recibió al presidente brasileño Jair Bolsonaro en una cena en Mar-a-Lago en marzo de 2020.T.J. Kirkpatrick para The New York TimesLas afirmaciones de fraude de Bolsonaro han preocupado a los funcionarios del gobierno de Biden, según dos funcionarios estadounidenses que hablaron bajo condición de anonimato. En agosto, Jake Sullivan, asesor de seguridad nacional del presidente Biden, viajó a Brasil y aconsejó al presidente Bolsonaro que respetara el proceso democrático.En octubre, 64 miembros del Congreso le pidieron al presidente Biden un reajuste en la relación de Estados Unidos con Brasil, citando el empeño de Bolsonaro en políticas que amenazan el régimen democrático. En respuesta, el embajador de Brasil en Estados Unidos defendió al presidente Bolsonaro, diciendo que el debate sobre la seguridad electoral es normal en las democracias. “Brasil es y seguirá siendo uno de los países más libres del mundo”, dijo.Para el presidente Bolsonaro, el apoyo de los miembros del partido Republicano llega en un momento crucial. La pandemia ha ocasionado el fallecimiento de más de 610.000 brasileños, solo superada por las 758.000 muertes en Estados Unidos. El desempleo y la inflación han aumentado. Lleva dos años sin partido político. Y el Supremo Tribunal Federal y el Congreso de Brasil están llegando a conclusiones en investigaciones sobre él, sus hijos y sus aliados.A fines del mes pasado, una comisión del Congreso de Brasil recomendó que el presidente Bolsonaro fuera acusado de “crímenes contra la humanidad”, afirmando que dejó intencionadamente que el coronavirus arrasara en Brasil con el fin de lograr la inmunidad de rebaño. El panel culpó a su gobierno de más de 100.000 muertes.Minutos después de la votación, Trump emitió su apoyo. “Brasil tiene suerte de tener a un hombre como Jair Bolsonaro trabajando para ellos”, dijo en un comunicado. “¡Es un gran presidente y nunca defraudará a la gente de su gran país!”.Para el presidente brasileño, que cada vez está más aislado en la escena mundial y que lidia con la impopularidad en su país, el apoyo estadounidense es un impulso.Victor Moriyama para The New York Times‘El Donald Trump de Sudamérica’En 2018, el presidente Bolsonaro logró la victoria gracias a la misma ola populista que impulsó a Trump. Las comparaciones entre Bolsonaro, un paracaidista retirado del ejército con una inclinación por los insultos y los tuits fuera de lugar, y Trump fueron instantáneas.“Dicen que es el Donald Trump de Sudamérica”, dijo Trump en 2019. “Me cae bien”.Para muchos otros, Bolsonaro era alarmante. Como congresista y candidato, se había puesto poético con la dictadura militar de Brasil, que torturaba a sus rivales políticos. Dijo que sería incapaz de amar a un hijo gay. Y que una diputada rival era demasiado fea para ser violada.A los tres meses de su mandato, Bolsonaro visitó Washington. En su cena de bienvenida, la embajada brasileña lo sentó junto a Bannon. Más tarde, en la Casa Blanca, Trump y Bolsonaro llegaron a acuerdos que permitirían al gobierno brasileño gastar más con la industria de defensa de Estados Unidos y a las empresas estadounidenses lanzar cohetes desde Brasil.Junto al presidente Bolsonaro estaba su hijo, Eduardo. Diputado y ex policía, Eduardo Bolsonaro ya llevaba gorras de Trump y posaba con rifles de asalto en Facebook. Luego surgió como el principal enlace de Brasil con la derecha estadounidense, visitando Estados Unidos varias veces al año para reunirse con Trump, Jared Kushner, los principales senadores republicanos y un cuadro de expertos de extrema derecha y teóricos de la conspiración.Unas semanas después de que su padre fuera elegido, Eduardo Bolsonaro fue a la fiesta de cumpleaños de Bannon y fue tratado como “el invitado de honor”, dijo Márcio Coimbra, un consultor político brasileño que también estuvo allí.Dos meses más tarde, Bannon anunció que Eduardo Bolsonaro representaría a América del Sur en The Movement, un grupo nacionalista y populista que Bannon imaginaba haciéndose cargo del mundo occidental. En el comunicado de prensa, Bolsonaro dijo que iban a “reclamar la soberanía de las fuerzas elitistas globalistas progresistas”.Camioneros y otros partidarios de Bolsonaro en BrasiliaDado Galdieri para The New York Times‘No podemos permitir que nos silencien’Antes de la pandemia, el presidente Bolsonaro ya era un gran aliado de los negocios estadounidenses.Los gobiernos de Trump y Bolsonaro firmaron pactos para aumentar el comercio. Los inversores estadounidenses invirtieron miles de millones de dólares en empresas brasileñas. Y Brasil gastó más en importaciones estadounidenses, incluyendo combustible, plásticos y aviones.Ahora a una nueva clase de empresas se le hace agua la boca por Brasil: las redes sociales conservadoras.Gettr y Parler, dos clones de Twitter, han crecido rápidamente en Brasil prometiendo un enfoque de no intervención a las personas que creen que Silicon Valley está censurando las voces conservadoras. Uno de sus reclutas más destacados es el presidente Bolsonaro.El director ejecutivo de Gettr, Jason Miller, es el antiguo portavoz de Trump. Dijo que la actividad de Bolsonaro y sus hijos en su sitio ha sido un gran impulso para el negocio. La aplicación, que tiene cuatro meses de vida, ya cuenta con cerca de 500.000 usuarios en Brasil, o el 15 por ciento de su base, su segundo mayor mercado después de Estados Unidos. Gettr se anuncia en canales brasileños conservadores de YouTube. “Tenía a Brasil identificado desde el primer día”, dijo.Jason Miller, en el centro, con Steve Bannon y Raheem Kassam durante la grabación de un programa de radio en 2019Justin T. Gellerson para The New York TimesParler dijo que Brasil también es su segundo mercado más grande. Ambas empresas patrocinaron el CPAC en Brasil. “No podemos permitir que nos silencien”, dijo Candace Owens, una comentarista conservadora, en un video en el que presentaba a Parler en la CPAC.Understand the Claim of Executive Privilege in the Jan. 6. InquiryCard 1 of 8A key issue yet untested. More

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    Trump Allies Help Bolsonaro Sow Doubt in Brazil's Elections

    With his poll numbers falling, President Jair Bolsonaro is already questioning the legitimacy of next year’s election. He has help from the United States.BRASÍLIA — The conference hall was packed, with a crowd of more than 1,000 cheering attacks on the press, the liberals and the politically correct. There was Donald Trump Jr. warning that the Chinese could meddle in the election, a Tennessee congressman who voted against certifying the 2020 vote, and the president complaining about voter fraud.In many ways, the September gathering looked like just another CPAC, the conservative political conference. But it was happening in Brazil, most of it was in Portuguese and the president at the lectern was Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s right-wing leader.Fresh from their assault on the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are exporting their strategy to Latin America’s largest democracy, working to support Mr. Bolsonaro’s bid for re-election next year — and helping sow doubt in the electoral process in the event that he loses.They are branding his political rivals as criminals and communists, building new social networks where he can avoid Silicon Valley’s rules against misinformation and amplifying his claims that the election in Brazil will be rigged.Supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro in Brasília in September.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesFor the American ideologues pushing a right-wing, nationalist movement, Brazil is one of the most important pieces on the global chess board. With 212 million people, it is the world’s sixth-largest nation, the dominant force in South America, and home to an overwhelmingly Christian population that continues to shift to the right.Brazil also presents a rich economic opportunity, with abundant natural resources made more available by Mr. Bolsonaro’s rollback of regulations, and a captive market for the new right-wing social networks run by Mr. Trump and others.For the Brazilian president, who finds himself increasingly isolated on the world stage and unpopular at home, the American support is a welcome boost. The Trump name is a rallying cry for Brazil’s new right and his efforts to undermine the U.S. electoral system appear to have inspired and emboldened Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters.But Brazil is a deeply divided nation where the institutions safeguarding democracy are more vulnerable to attack. The adoption of Mr. Trump’s methods is adding fuel to a political tinderbox and could prove destabilizing in a country with a history of political violence and military rule.“Bolsonaro is already putting it into people’s heads that he won’t accept the election if he loses,” said David Nemer, a University of Virginia professor from Brazil who studies the country’s far right. “In Brazil, this can get out of hand.”Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, has said President Bolsonaro will only lose if “the machines” steal the election. Representative Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican who has pushed laws combating voter fraud, met with lawmakers in Brazil to discuss “voting integrity policies.”And President Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, gave perhaps his most elaborate presentation on what he said were manipulated Brazilian elections in Sioux Falls, S.D. He was at an August event hosted by Mike Lindell, the pillow executive being sued for defaming voting-machine makers.President Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, during Independence Day celebrations in São Paulo.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesAuthorities, including academics, Brazil’s electoral officials and the U.S. government, all have said that there has not been fraud in Brazil’s elections. Eduardo Bolsonaro has insisted there was. “I can’t prove — they say — that I have fraud,” he said in South Dakota. “So, OK, you can’t prove that you don’t.”Mr. Trump’s circle has cozied up to other far-right leaders, including in Hungary, Poland and the Philippines, and tried to boost rising nationalist politicians elsewhere. But the ties are the strongest, and the stakes perhaps the highest, in Brazil.WhatsApp groups for Bolsonaro supporters recently began circulating the trailer for a new series from Fox News host Tucker Carlson that sympathizes with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Mr. Nemer said. The United States, which has been a democracy for 245 years, withstood that attack. Brazil passed its constitution in 1988 after two decades under a military dictatorship.“What concerns me is how fragile our democratic institutions are,” Mr. Nemer said.The American interest in Brazil is not only political. Two conservative social networks run by allies of Mr. Trump, Gettr and Parler, are growing rapidly here by leaning into fears of Big Tech censorship and by persuading President Bolsonaro to post on their sites — the only world leader to do so. Mr. Trump’s own new social network, announced last month, is partially financed by a Brazilian congressman aligned with President Bolsonaro.Beyond tech, many other American companies have benefited from President Bolsonaro’s opening to trade, including those in defense, agriculture, space and energy.“We’re turning ideological affinity into economic interests,” said Ernesto Araújo, President Bolsonaro’s foreign minister until March.The Trumps, the Bolsonaros, Mr. Green and Mr. Bannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.President Trump hosted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in March of 2020.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesPresident Bolsonaro’s fraud claims have worried officials in the Biden administration, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In August, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, traveled to Brazil and advised President Bolsonaro to respect the democratic process.In October, 64 members of Congress asked President Biden for a reset in the United States’ relationship with Brazil, citing President Bolsonaro’s pursuit of policies that threaten democratic rule. In response, Brazil’s ambassador to the United States defended President Bolsonaro, saying debate over election security is normal in democracies. “Brazil is and will continue to be one of the world’s freest countries,” he said.For President Bolsonaro, the Republicans’ support comes at a crucial moment. The pandemic has killed more than 610,000 Brazilians, second to only the 758,000 deaths in the United States. Unemployment and inflation have risen. He has been operating without a political party for two years. And Brazil’s Supreme Court and Congress are closing in on investigations into him, his sons and his allies.Late last month, a Brazil congressional panel recommended that President Bolsonaro be charged with “crimes against humanity,” asserting that he intentionally let the coronavirus tear through Brazil in a bid for herd immunity. The panel blamed his administration for more than 100,000 deaths.Minutes after the panel voted, Mr. Trump issued his endorsement. “Brazil is lucky to have a man such as Jair Bolsonaro working for them,” he said in a statement. “He is a great president and will never let the people of his great country down!”For the Brazilian president, who finds himself increasingly isolated on the world stage and unpopular at home, American support is a welcome boost. Victor Moriyama for The New York Times‘The Donald Trump of South America’In 2018, President Bolsonaro was carried to victory by the same populist wave that buoyed Mr. Trump. The comparisons between Mr. Bolsonaro, a former Army paratrooper with a penchant for insults and off-the-cuff tweets, and Mr. Trump were instant.“They say he’s the Donald Trump of South America,” Mr. Trump said in 2019. “I like him.”To many others, Mr. Bolsonaro was alarming. As a congressman and candidate, he had waxed poetic about Brazil’s military dictatorship, which tortured its political rivals. He said he would be incapable of loving a gay son. And he said a rival congresswoman was too ugly to be raped.Three months into his term, President Bolsonaro went to Washington. At his welcome dinner, the Brazilian embassy sat him next to Mr. Bannon. At the White House later, Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro made deals that would allow the Brazilian government to spend more with the U.S. defense industry and American companies to launch rockets from Brazil.Joining President Bolsonaro in Washington was his son, Eduardo. A congressman and former police officer, Eduardo Bolsonaro already was wearing Trump hats and posing with assault rifles on Facebook. He then emerged as Brazil’s chief liaison with the American right, visiting the United States several times a year to meet with Mr. Trump, Jared Kushner, top Republican senators and a cadre of far-right pundits and conspiracy theorists.A few weeks after his father was elected, Eduardo Bolsonaro went to Mr. Bannon’s birthday party and was treated as “the guest of honor,” said Márcio Coimbra, a Brazilian political consultant who was also there.Two months later, Mr. Bannon announced Eduardo Bolsonaro would represent South America in The Movement, a right-wing, nationalist group that Mr. Bannon envisioned taking over the Western world. In the news release, Eduardo Bolsonaro said they would “reclaim sovereignty from progressive globalist elitist forces.”Truck drivers and other supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro in Brasília.Dado Galdieri for The New York Times‘We cannot allow them to silence us’Before the pandemic, President Bolsonaro had been good for American business.The Trump and Bolsonaro administrations signed pacts to increase commerce. American investors plowed billions of dollars into Brazilian companies. And Brazil spent more on American imports, including fuel, plastics and aircraft.Now a new class of companies is salivating over Brazil: conservative social networks.Gettr and Parler, two Twitter clones, have grown rapidly in Brazil by promising a hands-off approach to people who believe Silicon Valley is censoring conservative voices. One of their most high-profile recruits is President Bolsonaro.Gettr’s chief executive, Jason Miller, is Mr. Trump’s former spokesman. He said that President Bolsonaro and his sons’ activity on his site has been a major boost for business. The four-month-old app already has nearly 500,000 users in Brazil, or 15 percent of its user base, its second-largest market after the United States. Gettr is now advertising on conservative Brazilian YouTube channels. “I had Brazil identified from day one,” he said.Jason Miller, center, with Steve Bannon and Raheem Kassam during the recording of a radio show in 2019.Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesParler said Brazil is also its No. 2 market. Both companies sponsored CPAC in Brazil. “We cannot allow them to silence us,” Candace Owens, the conservative pundit, said in a video pitching Parler at CPAC.Gettr is partly funded by Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire who is close with Mr. Bannon. (When Mr. Bannon was arrested on fraud charges, he was on Mr. Guo’s yacht.) Parler is funded by Rebekah Mercer, the American conservative megadonor who was Mr. Bannon’s previous benefactor.Understand the Claim of Executive Privilege in the Jan. 6. InquiryCard 1 of 8A key issue yet untested. More

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    Tap Dancing With Trump: Lindsey Graham’s Quest for Relevance

    Lindsey Graham’s moment, it seemed, came on the evening of Jan. 6. With crews still cleaning up the blood and broken glass left by the mob that just hours before had stormed the Capitol, he took the Senate floor to declare, “Count me out” and “Enough is enough.”Half a year later, a relaxed Mr. Graham, sitting in his Senate office behind a desk strewn with balled napkins and empty Coke Zero bottles, says he did not mean what almost everybody else thought he meant.“That was taken as, ‘I’m out, count me out,’ that somehow, you know, that I’m done with the president,” he said. “No! What I was trying to say to my colleagues and to the country was, ‘This process has come to a conclusion.’ The president had access to the courts. He was able to make his case to state legislators through hearings. He was disappointed he fell short. It didn’t work out. It was over for me.”What was not over for the senator from South Carolina was his unlikely — to many people, confounding — relationship with that president, Donald J. Trump.For four years, Mr. Graham, a man who had once called Mr. Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot,” exemplified the accommodations that so many Republicans made to the precedent-breaking president, only more vividly, volubly and candidly.But Mr. Graham’s reaffirmed devotion has come to represent something more remarkable: his party’s headlong march into the far reaches of Trumpism. That the senator is making regular Palm Beach pilgrimages as supplicant to an exiled former president who inspired the Capitol attack and continues to undermine democratic norms underscores how fully his party has departed from the traditional conservative ideologies of politicians like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Mr. Graham’s close friend John McCain.To critics of Mr. Graham, and of Mr. Trump, that enabling comes at enormous cost. It can be seen, for example, in Republicans’ efforts to torpedo the investigations of the Capitol riot and in the way the party, with much of its base in thrall to Mr. Trump’s stolen-election lie, is enacting a wave of vote-suppressing legislation in battleground states.Mr. Graham, of course, describes his role in far less apocalyptic terms. Even as he proclaims — from under the hard gaze of a half-dozen photos of Mr. McCain — that the Republican Party is now “the Trump party,” even as he goes on Fox to declare that the party can’t “move forward” without the man who twice lost the popular vote, Mr. Graham casts himself as a singular force for moderation and sanity.Senator Lindsey Graham at a campaign rally last year with President Donald J. Trump.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHe alone can fix the former president, he believes, and make him a unifying figure for Republicans to take back both houses of Congress next year and beyond. To that end, he says, he is determined to steer Mr. Trump away from a dangerous obsession with 2020.“What I say to him is, ‘Do you want January the 6th to be your political obituary?’” he said. “‘Because if you don’t get over it, it’s going to be.’”Many of Mr. Graham’s old friends on both sides of the aisle — and he still does not lack for them — grudgingly accepted as political exigency his original turn to Mr. Trump. His deviations from conservative orthodoxy, they understood, had left him precariously mistrusted back home. Now, though, they fear he has reached a point of no return.“Trump is terrible for the country, he’s terrible for the Republican Party and, as far as I’m concerned, he’s terrible for Lindsey,” said Mark Salter, a close McCain friend who was the ghostwriter for Mr. Graham’s autobiography.“Lindsey is playing high-risk politics,” said Senator Dick Durbin, a liberal Democrat from Illinois who considers Mr. Graham a friend. “He is pinning the hopes of the Republican Party on a very unstable person.”What makes Lindsey run?Over the last four years, pundits and political analysts have endlessly teased the question. Yet what emerges from interviews with more than 60 people close to him, and with the senator himself, is a narrative less of transformation than of gyration — of an infinitely adaptable operator seeking validation in the proximity to power. It is that yearning for relevance, rooted in what he and others described as a childhood of privation and loss, that makes Mr. Graham’s story more than just a case study of political survival in the age of Trump.Raised just this side of poverty and left parentless early, Mr. Graham, 66, has from his school days chosen to ally himself with protective figures he calls “alpha dogs,” men more powerful than himself — disparate, even antagonistic, figures like Mr. Trump and Mr. McCain, the onetime prisoner of war so famously disparaged by Mr. Trump. Indeed, toward the end of his life, Mr. McCain privately remarked that his friend was drawn to the president for the affirmation.“To be part of a football team, you don’t have to be the quarterback, right?” Mr. Graham said in the interview. “I mean, there’s a value in being part of something.”It was in that role, amid unrelenting pressure from Mr. Trump and his sons, that Mr. Graham called Georgia’s top elections official in November to inquire about the vote tally in the state, which Mr. Trump lost by nearly 12,000. That call is now part of a criminal investigation of the Trump camp’s actions in Georgia.Yet nothing Mr. Graham does or says seems enough to satisfy the Trumps. That has left the self-described conciliator struggling to generate good will on both sides of the political divide.In mid-November, as he was publicly urging Mr. Trump to keep up the election fight, Mr. Graham made a previously unreported phone call to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., to revive a friendship damaged by his call for a special prosecutor to investigate the overseas business dealings of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.It was short, and not especially sweet, according to three people with direct knowledge of the exchange. Mr. Graham told Mr. Biden that, in attacking Hunter, he had done only the bare minimum to satisfy Trump supporters back home. (A Graham spokesman disputed that account.)Mr. Biden, who viewed Mr. Graham’s statement as an unforgivable attack on his family responded by saying he would work with any Republican, but dismissed the approach as Mr. Graham trying to have it both ways, two people close to the president said.“Lindsey’s been a personal disappointment,” Mr. Biden said a few days later, “because I was a personal friend of his.”From Humble BeginningsIt is a truism of political biography that golf affords a window into both style and soul. And it has certainly played an important role in sustaining the precarious but durable Trump-Graham partnership. (That bond was on display in May, when the two men staged a Trump Graham Golf Classic fund-raiser, with an entry fee of $25,000.)Still, the senator’s frequent impromptu trips to Mar-a-Lago remain a bit of a puzzlement to the former president.“Jesus, Lindsey must really, really like to play golf,” Mr. Trump recently told an aide.The game — and the status conferred by playing with Mr. Trump — is no small thing to a man who grew up on the creaky lower rungs of the middle class, living in the back room of his family’s beer-and-shot pool hall, the Sanitary Cafe, in Central, S.C., a mill town at the midpoint of the freight line between Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C.His parents, Millie and F.J. Graham — known to everyone in town as Dude — worked 14-hour days and slept in the cramped apartment next to the bar’s two bathrooms, their kitchen separated by a curtain from the smoky tavern, with its jukebox, pinball machines and peeling laminate-wood counter. The future senator shared a single room with his parents, his sister, Darline, and the occasional patron, often coated in mill dust, who would wander in tipsily to watch TV with the family.A young Mr. Graham with his mother, Millie, in 1958.via Lindsey GrahamThe future senator being held by his father, F.J., several years earlier.via Lindsey GrahamMr. Graham was very close to both parents, and he finds it hard to discuss their loss without choking up. But his mother was the warmer presence; her husband was a wry but undemonstrative World War II veteran devoted to his family but preoccupied with keeping the business afloat and prone, in Mr. Graham’s early years, to drinking.“He had a tough side to him. He kept a gun behind the counter,” the senator’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, recalled in a recent interview, adding, “You knew that Mr. Dude was a kind, good man, but you weren’t going to mess with him.”It fell largely to Mr. Graham, 9 years older, to be parent to his sister. From his early teens, she recalled, it was Lindsey who helped her with her homework, Lindsey who gave her medicine when she was sick. Not too many years later, it would be Lindsey who told her that their mother was dying. “Lindsey took me to the end of the hall” at the hospital, she said. “He told me he didn’t know if she was going to make it.”The Grahams did not have the money or the time for real vacations, so to bond with his father, Lindsey decided they should take up golf. They began playing at a chewed-up county course, and it became such a weekly ritual that, to save on rental fees, Dude Graham eventually bought an old electric cart that could be charged, free, at the course’s cart shed.Mr. Graham with his sister, Darline, and his parents.via Lindsey GrahamShortly after Mr. Graham began attending the University of South Carolina, his mother was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. On weekends, he would ride a bus home to look after his sister. “It was just dark and lonely without him there,” she said.Fifteen months after their mother died, Ms. Nordone, still in middle school, woke up to discover Dude Graham dead, from a heart attack.“Don’t worry,” her brother told her, “I’ll always take care of you,” which he did as he ground his way through law school.Had this childhood led Mr. Graham to seek out father figures in his adult life? “That’s a tough question,” she replied. “I just don’t know.”Either way, his quicksilver mind and self-lacerating sense of humor made him a magnet for mentors and big brothers. Two of the earliest were his high school coach, Alpheus Lee Curtis, and Colonel Pete Sercer, the head of Air Force R.O.T.C. at the University of South Carolina, who guided him toward his first career, as a military lawyer, serving largely in Europe.Another mentor was Larry Brandt, his law partner when he returned to South Carolina. In an interview, Mr. Brandt recalled that Mr. Graham’s career in politics began when he was approached by both the local Republican and Democratic parties in 1992 to run for a state House seat held by an unpopular Democrat.“Lindsey came to me and said, ‘What do you think?’” said Mr. Brandt, a lifelong Democrat. “Lindsey and I talked a lot over time about issues, and there’s no doubt Lindsey was a Democrat on all social issues.”Ultimately, he said, Mr. Graham’s decision came down to calculation more than deep partisan feeling: The Democratic primary would be competitive; if he ran as a Republican, he would be able to devote himself to the general election.He won, and within a few years was elected to Congress, which in 1999 led to a career-making performance as a House manager in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. Mr. McCain was so impressed with the barbed, folksy one-liners that he invited Mr. Graham back to his Senate office, where he declared himself a fan — and, oh, would Mr. Graham endorse him for president in 2000?Mr. Graham was House manager in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999.Douglas Graham/Congressional Quarterly, via Getty Images“I said, ‘Yeah,’” recalled Mr. Graham, who remembers thinking, in the moment, how far he had come from the Sanitary Cafe. “No one’s ever asked me to help them run for president. If Bush had asked me before him, I’d have probably said yes.”After Mr. Graham’s election to the Senate in 2002, the two became inseparable, communicating by flip-phone, often several times an hour, with Mr. Graham serving as sounding board, soother and tactical adviser. Their influence peaked as they supported the Iraq war before joining forces to question the Bush administration’s strategy and interrogation methods. They shared a vision for the Republican Party — inclusive, center-right, hawkish on foreign policy, more moderate on immigration and other domestic issues.But that ideal had long been fading when Mr. Graham joined Mr. McCain at his ranch in Sedona, Ariz., on election night 2016. Mr. Graham still believed Hillary Clinton would win in a romp, yet there he was, incredulously watching the returns come in for Mr. Trump, uttering profanities over and over and over.“I was in shock for a week,” Mr. Graham recalled. It did not take him long to make a decision. “Am I going to be fighting a rear-guard action here? Or am I going to try to work with him?”‘An Abiding Need to Be in the Room’Mr. McCain, whose own presidential aspirations ended after his loss to Barack Obama in 2008, had urged Mr. Graham to run in 2016. But he warned his friend against engaging in a one-on-one verbal brawl with Mr. Trump. Mr. Graham did not listen.“I want to talk to the Trump supporters for a minute. I don’t know who you are and why you like this guy,” Mr. Graham said on CNN in late 2015, before quitting the race. “Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot. He doesn’t represent my party.”Yet scarcely two months after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, a grinning Mr. Graham could be found in the office of the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, chatting with Kellyanne Conway, one of the president’s top advisers.The senator had been orchestrating his West Wing appearance, steadily softening his criticism of Mr. Trump on Fox, and working some of the network’s pro-Trump hosts, with the knowledge that the president would be watching. He had also had dinner with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.Mr. Graham’s presence bewildered some Trump aides, but not people who knew him. “He has an abiding need to be in the room, no matter what the cost,” said Hollis Felkel, a veteran South Carolina Republican political consultant.Mr. Graham said he was there to sell the president on a more hawkish foreign policy at a time when Mr. Trump was vowing quick withdrawals from Afghanistan. He was surprised, he said, how friendly the president was. Indeed, to hear Mr. Graham talk about his interactions with Mr. Trump is to be struck by how much he seems to relish them.“He came in and he was very gracious, like he’s trying to sell me a condo, showed me around,” Mr. Graham recalled.Mr. Graham said he reciprocated by praising his host’s political skills and pledging to support him when he could, especially on judicial nominations. He soon followed up with a flurry of phone conversations on politics, gossip and golf.That led to the prize Mr. Graham wanted from the start: an invitation to Mr. Trump’s club in Virginia.“Where it all changed is when we went for golf,” Mr. Graham said.Senator and president playing golf last summer at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va.Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Trump had his own motivations for making nice. He was an interloper who craved legitimacy, and found the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, unapproachable and humorless. Mr. Graham, according to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist at the time, wasn’t a “stiff,” like so many others in Congress.“The senator closest to Trump was Lindsey Graham, and it’s not even a question,” Mr. Bannon said. “Have you met Lindsey Graham? I like him, and I think he’s the worst.”Like Mr. McCain, Mr. Trump was drawn to Mr. Graham’s ambidextrous, pragmatic politics — and his strategic amiability.“People apparently found the combination of my slight stature and gabby nature comical,” Mr. Graham wrote in his 2015 memoir, referring to a coping strategy learned in childhood. “I was expected to entertain folks. And I knew the more audacious I was the more entertaining I would be.”Mr. Trump also told his staff that he preferred the company of people he had turned — former enemies who had come to see that he was actually a good guy they could respect.Mr. McCain was decidedly not turned. While he understood the need to make peace with the party’s leader, he told Mr. Graham flatly that the president “is not one of us.”He kept his temper in check until Mr. Graham started raving about how “such a big, older guy” could put up an 18-hole score that nearly matched his age, according to a mutual friend.“My ass he shot a 70!” Mr. McCain yelled.“John was just surprised and to certain extent disappointed, but not really angry, with the closeness of the Lindsey Graham relationship with Trump,” said Joseph Lieberman, a former Democratic senator from Connecticut who was close to both lawmakers.When Mr. McCain’s aggressive brain tumor was diagnosed in the summer of 2017, Mr. Graham compartmentalized, comforting his friend and courting Mr. Trump.The president enlisted Mr. Graham and another McCain ally, Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, to win over Mr. McCain on a key campaign promise, repealing Obamacare, and Mr. Graham eagerly agreed. Both assured White House officials they had persuaded Mr. McCain to vote “yes,” according to former West Wing aides involved in the talks.They had not. On July 28, a dying Mr. McCain returned to Washington to deliver his defiant thumbs-down, and it seemed, for a moment, that Mr. Trump’s grip on the party was not as tight as he claimed.There would be one more act. The McCain family had insisted that the president and his entourage would not be welcome at the senator’s state funeral, but Ivanka Trump, who had collaborated with Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, on the issue of human trafficking, insisted on attending. It was Mr. Graham who persuaded Ms. McCain to reluctantly extend an invitation to Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner.Afterward, Mr. McCain’s daughter Meghan angrily told the late-night host Stephen Colbert, “My father had been very clear about the line between the McCains and the Trumps.”Mr. Graham paid his respects after the death in 2018 of Senator John McCain, a longtime friend.Erin Schaff for The New York TimesBy this time, Trump aides were noticing a curious dynamic: It wasn’t just that the president absolved Mr. Graham for the Obamacare debacle; the senator was one of the few people who could get away with taking on Mr. Trump and his temper.The most common source of flare-ups was Afghanistan. During one golf outing, the two men got into a screaming match after Mr. Graham said he would rather deal with a bomb killing civilians in Kabul “than in Times Square.”Mr. Trump barked an expletive, shouted, “You guys have been wrong for 20 years,” and stomped off, according to a person who witnessed the exchange.A few minutes later, they were chatting amiably as if nothing had happened, the person said.Some of the president’s top advisers were growing annoyed by Mr. Graham’s pesky omnipresence — finagling flights on Air Force One, showing up at the West Wing on little notice. “Sometimes he’d just like to sit with the president in the dining room off the Oval at the end of the day,” a former senior White House official said.In early 2019, as the Trumps were sitting down to dinner, Mr. Graham phoned up the president’s assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, to say he was coming up to the White House residence with Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, to discuss a plan to address one of the many crises plaguing the administration.Mr. Trump obliged, Melania Trump felt put upon and nothing came of it, aides familiar with the episode said.‘I’m the Senator From South Carolina’Mr. McCain’s death in August 2018 had been a profound loss for Mr. Graham, and during the interview in his office, he nearly broke down describing the hours he spent at his friend’s hospital bedside, holding his hand, during those final days in Arizona.Yet he also acknowledged that the dissolution of the partnership had freed him to look after his own political interests, which entailed cozying up to the right-wing populists who increasingly dominated his party in South Carolina.“I jokingly refer to Senator Graham as Senator Graham 1.0 and the Senator Graham 2.0 who came along during the Trump years, the 2.0 being the preferred upgrade,” said Nate Leupp, chairman of the Greenville County Republicans and one of several party leaders in South Carolina who said they had long been wary of the senator’s “maverick alliances.”Mr. Graham’s 2016 presidential primary bid — a bit of a lark, intended to vault him to the national stage as a solo act — had been a humiliating reminder of how vulnerable he was at home: When he dropped out in December 2015, he was polling in single digits in South Carolina.His McCain-esque positions on immigration and trade, he admits, were part of the problem. “I adore John McCain. Yeah, he’s done more to mentor me and help me than any single person in politics,” Mr. Graham said. “But having said that, I’m the senator from South Carolina.”Perhaps the most sensitive issue for Mr. Graham was his bipartisan record on judicial appointments.Mr. Graham had long argued that presidents deserved to have their judicial nominees confirmed, and in 2010, he voted for Mr. Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan. It came at a cost: Anti-abortion protesters in South Carolina hanged him in effigy, and when he ran for re-election in 2014, six primary opponents popped up, each hammering him for being too liberal on the courts.Mr. Graham has played down the episode, but it clearly scarred him.“I have triplets, and I would probably do anything, including breaking the law, to protect them. He’s got a Senate seat,” Mick Mulvaney, the former acting White House chief of staff, said of Mr. Graham on a recent podcast.So when a second Supreme Court vacancy opened up in early 2016, Mr. Graham signed on to Mr. McConnell’s refusal to allow a Senate vote on the nomination of Merrick Garland, on the grounds that it came too close to the November election.And several people described a similar determination to prove his conservative bona fides in what was probably Mr. Graham’s most memorable public performance in the service of Mr. Trump: his outraged defense of Brett M. Kavanaugh, whom he had known for a decade, against sexual misconduct allegations during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings in September 2018.“You’re legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics!” Mr. Graham said.Yet if Mr. Graham’s performance won him kudos from skeptics back home, it did not translate into safety ahead of his re-election campaign. The election became a referendum, of sorts, on Mr. Graham’s shotgun conversion to Trumpism.In mid-2019, his eventual Democratic opponent, Jaime Harrison, began raising tens of millions of dollars from donors nationwide. And after a mid-September 2020 poll showed the candidates in a dead heat, Mr. Harrison raised $1 million in 24 hours, part of a $57 million quarter, the richest for any Senate candidate in history.“I’m getting overwhelmed,” Mr. Graham lamented to Sean Hannity on Fox. “LindseyGraham.com. Help me.”The senator campaigned for re-election last year. He won by 10 points.Gavin McIntyre for The New York TimesBehind the scenes, Mr. McConnell tapped his national fund-raising network, channeling $10 million to Mr. Graham’s cause, and two Ohio-based dark-money groups chipped in $4.4 million.As for Mr. Trump, he made one appearance with Mr. Graham in South Carolina and cut one campaign ad. But he did let Mr. Graham raise money off his brand, and, in the end, the senator raked in about $111 million, almost nine times what he had raised in 2014 and nearly as much as Mr. Harrison.Mr. Graham won by 10 points.After the ElectionEven with a renewed six-year lease on public life, Mr. Graham hasn’t stopped tap dancing.In the days following the election, he scrambled to stay on Mr. Trump’s good side, publicly urging him not to concede until he had exhausted all his legal challenges and listening calmly on late-night phone calls as the president raged about a stolen election. He even wrote a $500,000 check to aid Mr. Trump’s legal defense.But privately he was already reaching out to Mr. Biden and counseling Mr. Trump to ramp down his rhetoric. And he steadfastly refused to appear at news conferences with Mr. Trump’s legal team or repeat their false claims — which annoyed the president and infuriated his son Donald Jr., always a Graham skeptic, retweeting stories with a “#whereslindsey” hashtag when he felt the senator was not standing up for his father.The biggest source of residual anger inside the Trump bubble was Mr. Graham’s refusal, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to acquiesce to White House demands for hearings into Hunter Biden’s business dealings.Mr. Graham said all the right things on Fox, and hinted he would get to the bottom of the matter. But his staff advised him that it was impossible to tell reality from disinformation, so he delayed and deliberated, happily deferring to the homeland security committee.He had a better relationship with the president’s middle son, Eric, yet he, too, was growing frustrated that the senator would not even retweet claims of election fraud. At a family meeting, he fumed that Mr. Graham had always been “weak” and would pay a price because his father would be the most powerful Republican for years to come, according to a political aide who was within earshot. Mr. Trump was working the senator, too, according to people familiar with the exchanges.Mr. Graham said that what happened next had nothing to do with the pressure bearing down on him. But on Nov. 13, he called Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, the first of a series of interventions Mr. Trump and his allies were to make into the tallying of the results in Georgia.Mr. Raffensperger has said that Mr. Graham asked if there was a legal way, using the state courts, to toss out all mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures. And a Raffensperger aide who was on the call said in an interview that Mr. Graham’s goal was getting as many ballots thrown out as possible.Even so, he made no overt request to discard ballots, according to another Raffensperger aide, Gabriel Sterling. As such, prosecutors investigating the Trump camp’s actions in Georgia would probably have difficulty establishing any wrongdoing by Mr. Graham.In the interview, Mr. Graham laughed off the idea that he had done anything wrong, saying he had called “Ratzenberger” simply to ask about auditing signatures.Around the same time, he made another call, to Governor Ducey in Arizona. His aim, Mr. Graham said, was not to overturn Mr. Biden’s narrow victory but to counter the “garbage” Mr. Trump was getting from his own legal team, according to an aide who was given a readout.In Mr. Graham’s mind, he had threaded the needle: He had professed loyalty and value to Mr. Trump while taking an unequivocal public stand, as Mr. Biden’s inauguration approached, opposing efforts to block certification of the election.Then came Jan. 6, and his presumed declaration of independence.Mr. Graham, in fact, began softening his tone almost immediately, following a tongue-lashing from the president and a confrontation, two days after the Capitol assault, with dozens of Trump supporters at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, chanting: “Traitor! Traitor!”Mr. Graham was escorted by security through a Washington airport in January while Trump supporters called him a traitor.Oreo Express/Via ReutersBy Jan. 13, when Mr. Trump was impeached on charges of inciting the riot, Mr. Graham was back on board, offering advice on how to quell a possible revolt by Republican senators. What followed, in the eyes of many Senate colleagues, was a frenzied overcorrection.Mr. Graham has become an ever-more-frequent face on Fox, denying the existence of systemic racism and decrying federal aid to Black farmers as “reparations.” He posted a video of himself firing an AR-15 bought as protection from marauding “gangs” and forcefully backed Ms. Cheney’s expulsion from House leadership. He has embraced the culture-war grandstanding that he and Mr. McCain mocked when they were a team — recently saying he would “go to war” against students at the University of Notre Dame for trying to block a Chick-fil-A on campus over the anti-L.G.B.T.-rights politics of its executives.Yet there are signs Mr. Graham may be playing an inside-outside game. He has placed himself at the center of a monthslong effort to draft bipartisan police-reform legislation and recently met with the Rev. Al Sharpton to hear him out on the bill. And when he tested positive for Covid-19 after being inoculated, he made a point of telling vaccine deniers in his own party to get their shots.During his near-weekly golfing trips to Mar-a-Lago, he said, he is still trying to persuade Mr. Trump to “take it down a notch.” He remains convinced he can get him to play by the rules, and not the other way around.Many of the people who have known him longest are not so sure.From his office in Walhalla, just up the road from Central, Mr. Graham’s old law partner, Mr. Brandt, has been thinking about something the senator told him during a visit eight or nine years ago.“Larry, you are too honest to survive in Washington,” Mr. Graham said. “Eighty-five percent of the people there would sell their mothers to keep their jobs.”Mr. Brandt ran into Mr. Graham at a local restaurant in 2017, as the senator was beginning to court Mr. Trump. Mr. Brandt took him to task, reminding him of their “85 percent” conversation. “I said, ‘Lindsey, don’t sell your mother,’” he recalled.Two years later, Mr. Graham called to say he was coming back to town, and could they have dinner? Mr. Brandt said he was eager to see him — and to give him an earful about his friendship with the president. Mr. Graham said sure, and promised to ring back.“I’m still waiting on that call,” Mr. Brandt said. More