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      Inside the Troll Army Waging Trump’s Online Campaign

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      The video, called “Let’s Get Ready to Bumble,” is a slick mash-up of President Biden’s verbal slip-ups and his stumbles set to a thumping 1990s dance track. And when it was played on a big screen at Trump rallies late last year, it consistently drew laughs and jeers from the crowd.But Donald J. Trump thought he could improve it.So the former president asked an adviser to pass along a few notes to one of the video’s creators: It should include a clip of the president falling off a bicycle, he suggested, and another of him flubbing a line in a recent speech.The video’s co-creator — Bryan Heestand, a product engineer in Ohio who goes by the anonymous handle C3PMeme — rushed to incorporate the former president’s edits. He was delighted, he said later in a podcast interview, to see Mr. Trump play the new version at his final rally before the midterm elections, pausing his speech to watch it with well over a thousand supporters gathered at Dayton International Airport.“He had some suggestions. We made it happen,” Mr. Heestand said.Mr. Heestand doesn’t work for Mr. Trump, but he belongs to a small circle of video meme-makers who have effectively served as a shadow online ad agency for his presidential campaign. Led by a little-known podcaster and life coach, this meme team has spent much of the year flooding social media with content that lionizes the former president, promotes his White House bid and brutally denigrates his opponents.Much of the group, which refers to itself as Trump’s Online War Machine, operates anonymously, adopting the cartoonish aesthetic and unrelenting cruelty of internet trolls.Cheered on by Mr. Trump, the group traffics freely in misinformation, artificial intelligence and digital forgeries known as deepfakes. Its memes are riddled with racist stereotypes, demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people and broad scatological humor.Their most vulgar invectives are often aimed at women, particularly those seen as enemies of Mr. Trump. In one video, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley’s face is pasted on the body of a nearly naked woman, who kicks a man with the face of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in the groin. Another depicts Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, as a porn star. Women with ties to Mr. DeSantis are often shown with red knees, suggesting they have performed a sex act.The former president and his inner circle have celebrated the group’s work and helped it reach millions. Dan Scavino, Mr. Trump’s social media adviser; Steven Cheung, the campaign’s spokesman; and Donald Trump Jr. frequently share the memes on their social media accounts.Since March, Mr. Trump has posted videos made by the team to his Truth Social and Instagram accounts — which have more than 30 million followers combined — at least two dozen times. He tends to share the group’s less crude content, favoring memes that feature him in a positive light.But Mr. Trump and his campaign have also taken a more active role in the group’s activities, a New York Times review found. Over the past year, he and his campaign have privately communicated with members of the meme team, giving them access and making specific requests for content. In at least one instance, the campaign shared behind-the-scenes footage to be used in videos, according to members of the team.Late last month, Mr. Trump sent personalized notes to several of the group’s members, thanking them for their work. In September, Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, posted that the meme team was “single-handedly changing the landscape of politics and social media.”Asked by The Times about the group, the Trump campaign on Tuesday cast them as mere volunteers.“Every campaign in politics has volunteers and shows appreciation to their volunteers,” said Mr. Cheung, the campaign spokesman, adding that the group had done a “masterful job” highlighting Mr. DeSantis’s “insecurities and blunders.”Viral memes have played a role in presidential races since Barack Obama’s first run for the White House in 2008. But the meme team’s work — blessed by Mr. Trump, polished and substantially scaled up — represents an evolution with the potential to transform campaigning online.In an age of social media, the power of memes is rising as the influence of traditional television ads fades. Cheap to make and free to distribute, they are largely unconstrained by regulations about accuracy, fairness and transparency that apply to television and radio advertising. And they are proliferating just as fewer internet platforms try to police political content.“It’s ominous,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former Federal Election Commission lawyer who now works at the Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog nonprofit.Mr. Ghosh said the meme team’s activities appeared to fit the definition of a super PAC — an entity that can raise and spend unlimited sums to support a candidate or issue but must report its donors and spending. Yet because the group operates outside the campaign finance system, its finances and funders remain unknown.The lack of transparency “creates an avenue for lots of money to be spent in coordination with a campaign and having a serious impact on races without the public having any sense of what’s really going on,” Mr. Ghosh said.‘It Doesn’t Have to Be True’At the center of Mr. Trump’s meme militia is Brenden Dilley, a 41-year-old podcaster, failed congressional candidate and self-described social media and political influencer. Mr. Dilley doesn’t create the memes himself, but he provides the organizing force and smash-mouth ethos driving the crew.“It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to go viral,” he has said on his podcast.Brenden Dilley, a life coach and onetime congressional candidate, is the ringleader of the meme team. His podcast offers a running narrative of the team’s work and ambitions.The group’s more than two dozen members, posting under the hashtag #DilleyMemeTeam, convene in a private Telegram channel to share ideas and pick targets. Many also faithfully tune into Mr. Dilley’s daily podcast, where he talks at length about the group’s activities, interacts with a small but devoted audience and promotes his 2013 self-help book, “Still Breathin’: The Wisdom and Teachings of a Perfectly Flawed Man.”Most of the meme-makers post anonymously. The Times used podcast transcripts, photographs, news footage and public records to identify Mr. Heestand, who declined to comment.While some members have sizable followings, they have also been amplified by high-profile right-wing figures. Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Mr. Trump, hosted Mr. Dilley on his podcast last week, saying that he had “changed the course of history in this country.” The right-wing podcaster Jack Posobiec and the internet troll known as Catturd, who each have more than two million followers on X, regularly share the group’s work.But the team’s content isn’t just niche entertainment for the profoundly online; many memes have broken through to the mainstream.A video calling President Biden a “puppet candidate” and filled with conspiracy theories about election fraud went viral in July after Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, posted his criticism, calling it “the most alarming political ad I’ve seen this year.”In an interview, Mr. Luntz said he worried that such spots would soon become commonplace. “They have figured out how to manipulate the public,” Mr. Luntz said, “and they frankly don’t care about the consequences.”In August, when Mr. Trump was indicted on conspiracy charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, several team members produced a music video targeting the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis. A Kanye West parody, it used artificial intelligence to mimic Mr. Trump’s voice rapping lyrics that were peppered with racist dog whistles.The initial posting on social media, by the meme team member Ramble_Rants, logged 1.4 million views on X and was widely shared on other platforms.Nobody has borne the brunt of the group’s attacks more than Mr. DeSantis.Ron and Casey DeSantis have been mocked relentlessly by the Dilley Meme Team, which takes credit for some of its insults having broken into the mainstream media. Meg Kinnard/Associated PressThe meme team has produced hundreds of derisive posts attacking the Florida governor’s masculinity, demeanor, marriage and parenting, and his height.The group’s members have described the onslaught as part guerrilla messaging aimed at shaping coverage of the race and part psy-op aimed at the candidate himself. They take credit for catapulting “bootgate” — the unproven rumor that Mr. DeSantis wears lifts in his cowboy boots — into the mainstream media. (Politico published a 1,400-word investigation into the candidate’s footwear in October.) They also claim its barrage of mockery is the reason Mr. DeSantis wears the boots in the first place.“They all went straight to his head,” Ramble_Rants posted last month.The DeSantis campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Dilley has sworn to “destroy” the governor’s career and make him “unelectable,” even if he drops out of the 2024 race. A recent Christmas-themed meme directed at Mr. DeSantis ended with: “Forever you will be mocked.”The Dilley Meme Team’s work is often cartoonish and rife with mockery, savaging Mr. Trump’s opponents while lionizing the former president. A video that focused on President Biden was played at Trump rallies last year. A recent meme delivered a message to Mr. DeSantis. Another appeared to use behind-the-scenes images of Mr. Trump. Mr. Dilley declined to be interviewed for this article, and the team subsequently produced a video mocking The New York Times. Mr. Dilley told his podcast listeners that he planned to hang a copy of this article next to a signed letter from Mr. Trump.“Thanks to your efforts,” that letter reads, according to photos posted to social media, “we exposed Joe Biden’s failures and lies for the whole country to see.”Gratitude and AccessMr. Dilley has been a supporter of Mr. Trump for years, and in 2018 he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in Arizona as a “staunch believer in the Make America Great Again movement.” But until recently, his devotion always came from a distance.Today, Mr. Dilley, who now lives north of Atlanta, says he has visited Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort three times in the past year. He and his team have posted numerous photos of themselves posing with Mr. Trump, spending time with his advisers and attending events at Trump properties.During an episode of his show just before Thanksgiving, Mr. Dilley claimed to be texting one of those advisers, asking if he could join the former president at a football game at the University of South Carolina. That weekend, he and his wife were photographed by Mr. Miller in the governor’s box at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, S.C., along with Mr. Trump.A video that Mr. Dilley’s wife, Reanna, shot of Mr. Trump walking on the field at halftime was subsequently viewed millions of times online and reposted by the former president on Truth Social.Like many other influencers, Mr. Dilley appears to receive talking points from the campaign. He also claims more exclusive access, describing phone calls from advisers to Mr. Trump to discuss memes his team is producing and whether they strike the desired tone.In July, one of the group’s most prolific contributors — a musician from outside San Diego named Michael Beatty, who goes by the handle Miguelifornia — mentioned that Mr. Scavino and Mr. Miller “gave us tons of great video” shot at a Trump rally in South Carolina.Days later, the team released a clip that appeared to use behind-the-scenes footage of Mr. Trump at a rally. The moody meme, cast in blue monochrome and set to a Phil Collins song, cast Mr. Trump as a serious, heroic leader and concluded with information on how to text a donation to the campaign.“This is a campaign ad if I’ve ever seen one,” one team member, who goes by MAGADevilDog, wrote on X.A Plan to Avoid ‘a Ton of Oversight’Because the Dilley Meme Team’s content is shared on the internet, rather than on television or radio, it generally isn’t subject to laws requiring ads to include disclosure about who paid for them.“If it goes on the internet, there’s essentially no regulation,” said Richard L. Hasen, an elections law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. And without regulation, he added, it’s impossible to know who is paying for the content.But campaign finance experts pointed to two other unknowns about the Dilley Meme Team’s operations: coordination and compensation.If a group is receiving compensation to help a candidate get elected, then it could be considered a super PAC and should be registered and reporting its donors and spending.If it is not compensated but is coordinating with the campaign, then it may run afoul of strict limits on in-kind contributions, said Paul S. Ryan, who serves as deputy executive director of the pro-democracy group Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation.Mr. Ryan said receiving video footage that was not publicly available could be considered coordination.Memes created with input from the campaign, he said, “are just as good as a direct contribution to the campaign” and may be worth far more than the $6,600 individual limit per election cycle.Mr. Dilley and other members of the meme team often claim they receive no financial compensation for their efforts.“Everything they do, they do it for free and out of love of country,” said Alex Bruesewitz, a Republican strategist close to Mr. Trump, who frequently shares Dilley Meme Team posts.Mr. Dilley, who in 2019 was found to have failed to pay more than $24,000 in child support and interest, says he now makes “multiple six figures” a year. That income, he said on his podcast last month, comes from a combination of sources: podcast subscriptions and sponsors, sales of apparel, his life-coaching business and streaming revenue from the video platform Rumble, where the Dilley Show has more than 12,000 subscribers.“There’s nothing here that’s mysterious,” he said. “It’s all transparent.”Federal Election Commission records show no payments from any political committee to Mr. Dilley or other members of the meme team.Mr. Dilley has claimed to have received gifts from Mr. Trump. Last March, he posted video of a box filled with 28 Make America Great Again hats, each signed by the former president. The package was sent by the campaign in thanks for assisting with “rapid response” during President Biden’s State of the Union address, Mr. Dilley said.Signed MAGA hats can sell for as much as $1,000 on the secondary market.Mr. Dilley also said he got access to dozens of V.I.P. tickets to a Trump rally in Hialeah, Fla., on Nov. 8, which he gave to supporters of his show. It is unclear how much the tickets were worth, but tickets for other rallies have sold for as much as $1,500 apiece.Mr. Dilley has been clear that he is looking for more than just thank-you gifts.In October, he told his podcast audience that he wanted to use limited liability companies to receive money from Trump donors to fund his team’s work. The idea, he said, is to avoid “a ton of red tape” and “a ton of oversight” that come with operating as a super PAC or being paid by the campaign.“If you go super PAC or official campaign, you can get paid, but the problem is a lawyer has to watch every single thing you put out, and we don’t want that,” Mr. Dilley said on his podcast in October. “What we need is people that were going to give huge dollar amounts to the super PACs and the campaigns to just give directly to us.”“We already have L.L.C.s formed,” he added. “We’re ready to rock ’n’ roll.”Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer who advises both Democrats and Republicans, described that plan as “problematic” because it implies a clear goal of circumventing public disclosure as required by the F.E.C.“People can take advantage of those failures of the regulatory system to promote the interests of a candidate without the public ever being aware of it,” Mr. Kappel said. In that landscape, he added, “L.L.C.s have become the tool of choice” because they can be layered to obscure both the source and recipient of payments.The Dilley Meme Team was registered as a business in July, using the address of a UPS store outside Tampa, according to Florida business records. Mr. Dilley acknowledged being involved in its parent company, Counter Productions Digital Media L.L.C., which was registered at the same address in early 2022. He denies having said he set up any L.L.C.s to avoid campaign finance rules.On his podcast, Mr. Dilley has laid out his vision for his team, saying he hopes to hire all 27 meme team members full time through the 2024 election. “We need 12 months of everyone full time working to meme Donald Trump back into the White House while destroying Joe Biden,” he said.Jaymin Patel contributed research. More

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      Nikki Haley Endorsed by Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire

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      Mr. Sununu is popular in the state, though former President Donald J. Trump continues to dominate the field.Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire endorsed Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination at a campaign event Tuesday evening, casting her as a fresh face for the party who could take on the elites in Washington and move the nation past the “nonsense and drama” of former President Donald J. Trump.“We are all in for Nikki Haley,” Mr. Sununu said to loud cheers at a ski area in Manchester, adding that her momentum was “real” and “tangible” and that her poll numbers and ground game have been “absolutely unbelievable.”Pacing in the middle of the audience, Ms. Haley called it “a great night in New Hampshire.” “It doesn’t get any better than this — to go and get endorsed by the ‘Live Free or Die’ governor is about as rock-solid of an endorsement as we could hope for.”The endorsement is a significant victory for Ms. Haley, who is trying to establish herself over Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as the main alternative to Mr. Trump and has gained ground in New Hampshire polling in the past month.Mr. Sununu, a Trump critic who is serving his fourth and last two-year term as governor, was re-elected last year by more than 15 percentage points and is popular in the state. He was seen as a top recruit for the Senate last year but declined to run, and he also chose not to run for the Republican presidential nomination himself — saying at the time that he thought he could have more influence as an external voice than as a candidate.On the 2024 presidential campaign trail, Mr. Sununu stumped with Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis and former Gov. Chris Christie, as he weighed which of the three to back. In an interview last month, he said he would talk over his decision with friends and family over the Thanksgiving break. He said he was looking for someone who could beat Mr. Trump and who could connect with voters on “a very retail level.”Before the raucous crowd in Manchester, Mr. Sununu lauded Ms. Haley as a traditional Republican with the executive experience to secure the border, tackle mental health needs and ensure low taxes and limited government. He urged New Hampshire voters to turn the page on this era’s politics, taking shots at both President Biden and Mr. Trump. “We have a president who is more concerned about nap time,” he said. “We have a president who is worried about jail time.”In a news conference after the event, Mr. Sununu and Ms. Haley shot down suggestions that Ms. Haley might choose Mr. Sununu as her vice president should she win the nomination. “I think he is fantastic, but he has told me he doesn’t want anything to do with V.P.,” she said.Ms. Haley told reporters she had been more focused on winning over voters than scoring endorsements from elected officials, but she nevertheless called Mr. Sununu’s support a huge win for her bid. Mr. Sununu argued the race had now become a contest between only two people — “Nikki Haley and Donald Trump.”“There’s differences with us,” Ms. Haley said when Mr. Sununu was asked if he believed Ms. Haley had sufficiently confronted the former president. “Anti-Trumpers don’t think I hate him enough. Pro-Trumpers don’t think I love him enough. The end of the day, I put my truths out there and let the chips fall were they may.”Given his popularity and his proven ability to win as a Republican in a state that leans Democratic, Mr. Sununu could help sway the moderate Republicans and independents whom Ms. Haley is counting on to give her a strong showing in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary on Jan. 23.Undeclared voters, who can participate in the Republican primary, now make up roughly 39 percent of voters in the state, a greater slice of the electorate than either Democrats or Republicans. And with no competitive Democratic presidential primary next year, they are expected to play an even larger role in the Republican contest.“It is really a big move,” Matthew Bartlett, a former Trump appointee and Republican strategist who is unaligned in the race, said of Mr. Sununu’s backing. “It is really the last chess piece to fall in line before Election Day, and it is not to be underestimated.”But just how much weight it will carry is an open question in a primary in which nothing — not endorsements, not debates, not 91 felony charges — has changed the basic dynamic: Mr. Trump is the overwhelming favorite, and everybody else is fighting for second place.The Sununu endorsement was first reported by WMUR earlier on Tuesday.Mr. DeSantis received two of the biggest endorsements available in Iowa — those of Gov. Kim Reynolds and the evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats — but has yet to make significant gains on Mr. Trump there. Still, campaign officials for Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Christie downplayed the impact of Mr. Sununu’s backing.“This puts us down one vote in New Hampshire and when Governor Christie is back in Londonderry tomorrow, he’ll continue to tell the unvarnished truth about Donald Trump and earn that one missing vote and thousands more,” said Karl Rickett, campaign spokesman for Mr. Christie, who has made New Hampshire his do-or-die state.Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, criticized both Ms. Haley and Mr. Sununu in a statement. “No matter how much Nikki Haley or Chris Sununu try to spin Granite Staters, the reality is they’re both MAGA extremists who spent years cozying up to Donald Trump,” he said.At the ski area in Manchester, a prospective voter solicited a low exclamation of “oohs” from the crowd when she asked if Ms. Haley would ever consider the vice presidency given Mr. Trump’s dominance in national and state polls.“It is not that big of a deal,” Ms. Haley responded, calming the crowd and prompting some laughter, “because what you have to know is I don’t play for second.”In the audience, Dan Silverman, 53, an undeclared voter who leans Republican, said he wasn’t particularly keen on any of the contenders in the Republican primary and was concerned about some of Ms. Haley’s “bombastic language” on foreign policy. But after watching her speak, Mr. Silverman, who teaches information systems courses at the University of New Hampshire, said he enjoyed her remarks. “I am coming around,” he said.Nearby, Bruce LaRiviere, 65, a retail salesman, said he was set on voting for Ms. Haley, whom he admired for her calls for term limits and competency tests for elected officials. He hoped Mr. Sununu’s endorsement would provide her the boost she needed to beat Mr. Trump, who he said was a force of a “noise and aggression.”“She’s very conservative,” he said. “I like the way she is going to try to change Washington.” More

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      As Biden Struggles With Black Men, Allies Gather at White House

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      Aides of the president met with influential Black male Democrats to discuss how to shore up his standing with a crucial group of voters before 2024.As President Biden’s allies grow more worried that his standing is slipping among Black men, his aides met on Tuesday at the White House with influential Black male Democrats to discuss how to increase his popularity with a crucial group of voters before the 2024 election.Several attendees said there was general agreement that Mr. Biden, during both his 2020 campaign and his first three years in office, had paid more attention to Black female voters than to Black male ones. These people said they had suggested to Mr. Biden’s aides that the president needed to make a specific argument about how his administration had improved the lives of Black men.“It’s clear that there’s been a focus on Black women and the question becomes, has there been an equal focus on Black men?” said Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana congressman and Biden administration official who is now a senior adviser at the Democratic National Committee and who was at the meeting.He added: “There’s been a mantra that Black women are the base of the party and, I think, it’s Black families that are the base of the party. That has the potential to separate the family unit by gender, which I think is just unfortunate.”The afternoon meeting included, among others, Representative Steven Horsford of Nevada, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus; Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee; Lt. Gov. Austin Davis of Pennsylvania, who has warned publicly that Mr. Biden’s standing with Black voters has fallen; and Antjuan Seawright and Clay Middleton, political operatives from South Carolina who are closely associated with Representative James E. Clyburn, a key Biden ally in the state.The group agreed that Mr. Biden had many accomplishments that had helped Black men. Democrats, he said, are falling short in telling this story.“We left the room acknowledging that we collectively have to do a better job communicating,” said Kwame Raoul, the attorney general of Illinois. “Sometimes being awakened to a challenge is a good thing.”The White House session followed months of nail-biting among Democrats about rising skepticism of Mr. Biden among Black voters, especially Black men. Republicans have aimed to drive a wedge between Black voters and the Democratic Party in recent cycles, arguing that former President Donald J. Trump’s record on the economy and his passage of a criminal justice law were more beneficial for Black communities — arguments that Democrats have dismissed as disinformation.Polling released by The New York Times and Siena College last month found that 22 percent of Black voters in six of the most important presidential battleground states said they would support Mr. Trump against Mr. Biden next year, an alarming figure for Democrats given Black voters’ decades-long loyalty to the party.At the meeting on Tuesday — led by Steve Benjamin, the director of the White House’s public engagement office — the Black male allies of Mr. Biden were encouraged to recount what people in their communities and home districts had been saying about his administration and whether they would support him for a second term.“There have been communication gaps,” said Harold Love, a Tennessee state representative who is the incoming president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. He said the administration needed to tell people what Mr. Biden had done “in plain language so they can understand.”The White House declined to comment about the meeting.In interviews and focus groups, Black men who express openness to supporting Mr. Trump have pointed to the former president’s record on the economy and said their businesses and families fared better during his administration. Black Democrats have rebutted this idea, in some cases arguing that Black men have been targeted by disinformation that, if crystallized in enough voters’ minds, could endanger the president’s already shaky standing with them.Mr. Raoul, the Illinois attorney general, said that part of Mr. Biden’s problem was that he had articulated a complex message that often ended up competing with easier-to-digest misinformation.“Sometimes when you do a lot, it’s difficult to convey it to folks who are used to consuming things in sound bites and who have been at times recipients of intentionally targeted misinformation,” Mr. Raoul said on Tuesday.Democrats have emphasized earlier and more frequent outreach to Black communities as important to winning their voters.Vice President Kamala Harris has frequently met with small groups of Black men as she has traveled the country and, last month, hosted a group of 10 Black men in the news media and politics for dinner at her home in Washington. The party has also bought advertisements on Black radio stations and placed digital ads geared toward young Black voters.Mr. Benjamin’s office in the White House has held frequent meetings with a variety of constituency groups.But the meeting on Tuesday followed a particularly bad stretch of polling for Mr. Biden. CNN polls released Monday found Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump by 10 percentage points in Michigan and five points in Georgia — both battleground states with large numbers of Black voters.Even though Mr. Biden has no serious Democratic presidential challengers, the party’s primary election in South Carolina on Feb. 3 will be an early test of Black voters’ enthusiasm. Black voters made up nearly 60 percent of the Democratic electorate in the state in 2020, when Mr. Biden’s victory there set him on the path to the White House.No other Democrats have made a significant investment in the state’s primary this year, but the South Carolina Democratic Party on Monday nevertheless began a statewide voter outreach program, complete with a 50-person staff and a six-figure investment.Mr. Middleton, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden’s South Carolina campaign, said the meeting was ultimately meant to help determine how best to relay the president’s accomplishments and his plans for a second term to Black men across the country, with a focus on battleground states.“If we ignore what Black men are saying, then we would have some problems,” Mr. Middleton said. “This is to say, ‘We will not ignore.’” More

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      Election Worker Defamed by Giuliani Recounts Emotional Toll

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      In federal court, Shaye Moss detailed how Rudolph Giuliani’s baseless claims that she had stolen votes from Donald Trump ignited threats and left her depressed and fearful.On Dec. 4, 2020, Shaye Moss, at the time an election worker in Fulton County, Ga., was summoned to her supervisor’s office, where she thought she would be getting a promotion for her hard work on Election Day, after a month of positive feedback.Instead, Ms. Moss was shown videos filled with “lies” and unfounded accusations that she and her mother, a co-worker, had tried to steal votes in the vital swing state from President Donald J. Trump, she testified in Federal District Court in Washington on Tuesday.From the moment she got that heads up, her life was altered. Soon, she and her 14-year-old son were inundated with threats, racist messages and calls. “Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920” was one warning she received on Facebook.“That was the day that everything changed,” Ms. Moss told a jury in a civil trial to determine what damages Rudolph W. Giuliani should pay for defaming her and her mother, Ruby Freeman, by spreading the baseless reports that they had tried to cheat Mr. Trump out of votes. “Everything in my life changed. The day that I changed. The day that everything just flipped upside down.”Georgia officials quickly debunked the accusations, and a yearslong investigation cleared Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman of any wrongdoing. But Ms. Moss is unrecognizable to herself, crippled by fear, anxiety and depression, she said during hours of emotional testimony.“I’m most scared of my son finding me and, or my mom, hanging in front of my house in front of a tree,” she said, fighting back tears, as Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and federal prosecutor, sat nearby, showing no emotion.“Most days I pray that God does not wake me up, that I just disappear,” she said.It was the second day of the trial, and her testimony brought to life the impact of the falsehoods that Mr. Giuliani helped to promote in the aftermath of Election Day 2020. At the time, Mr. Giuliani was serving as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and helped lead the efforts to keep him in office after he lost the 2020 election.The women are seeking compensatory damages between $15.5 million and $43 million, an amount Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer on Monday said was the civil equivalent of the death penalty.The judge presiding over the case, Beryl A. Howell, previously ruled that Mr. Giuliani had spread lies about the women, intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them and engaged in a conspiracy with others.Throughout her testimony, Ms. Moss described the pain inflicted on people she loves, particularly the racism embedded in the accusations and threats she said were spurred by Mr. Giuliani. The relentless calls and texts to Ms. Moss’s son interfered with his school work. She said he ended up with failing grades in his first year of high school.“He didn’t deserve that,” she said through tears.When Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley IV, questioned Ms. Moss, he tried to make the point that the racist comments could not be directly linked to his client, a notion Ms. Moss strongly rebutted. She said Mr. Giuliani assumed that all of the Fulton County election workers were Democrats because they were all Black.“I feel like that is the beginning of the race issue,” she said, adding that he did not go on “BET Nightly News” to talk about his conspiracy theory, but instead went to media platforms where “he knew his people would believe his lies.”Mr. Giuliani has yet to testify in court, but despite the judge’s ruling — and his own previous acknowledgment that he had made false and defamatory accusations about the women — repeated his accusations on Monday evening as he left the courthouse.“Everything I said about them is true,” Mr. Giuliani told journalists. “They were engaging in changing votes.”On Tuesday morning, Judge Howell told Mr. Sibley that comments like those could be considered another defamation claim.When she asked if Mr. Sibley knew about his client’s statements, Mr. Sibley deflected and said he was not with him at the time, while Mr. Giuliani nodded his head in affirmation behind him. Judge Howell then asked Mr. Giuliani directly if he made those statements, and he said, “yes.”Mr. Sibley also suggested that the long days in the courtroom could be taking a toll on Mr. Giuliani, 79. Judge Howell asked Mr. Sibley if he was concerned about his client’s age and mental capacity issues. Mr. Sibley said he had not seen evidence of that yet.Judge Howell said she had observed Mr. Giuliani paying close attention and being responsive.“He’s following everything I’m saying quite closely,” she said Tuesday morning.Mr. Giuliani has rankled Judge Howell several times throughout the case. He refused to turn over routine documents about his net worth and wide reach on social media. He skipped one of the final hearings on the case. And on the first day of the trial, he was late to the courtroom.On Tuesday, Judge Howell said, “Mr. Sibley has a hard job.”Mr. Sibley told the jury, “My client, as you saw last night, likes to talk a lot, unfortunately.”The trial is expected to last a week and include testimony from Ms. Freeman and Mr. Giuliani. More

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      Why Jack Smith Is Taking Trump’s Immunity Claim Straight to the Supreme Court

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      The special counsel has substantive and procedural reasons for wanting a quick ruling on whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his actions as president.Jack Smith, the special counsel who has brought two cases against former President Donald J. Trump, made a bold move this week designed to undercut one of Mr. Trump’s chief defenses against accusations of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to rule on Mr. Trump’s attempts to have the election subversion charges dismissed on a sweeping claim of executive immunity before a lower appeals court even has the chance to consider the issue.Mr. Smith also asked the justices to make their decision quickly.“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” he told the Supreme Court in a petition filed on Monday.But there was a reason it was needed.“This is an extraordinary case,” he wrote.Here is a look at the intersecting legal and political issues surrounding the special counsel’s move.What does Mr. Smith want the Supreme Court to do?He made two separate requests.First, he asked the justices to consider a legal issue they have never looked at before: whether the Constitution confers absolute immunity on a former president against a federal prosecution for crimes he committed while in office.Mr. Trump put that argument at the center of his initial motion to dismiss the election case, which he filed in October in Federal District Court in Washington. He contended that because the charges were based on official actions he took while in the White House, the indictment in its entirety had to be thrown out.Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is handling the case, disagreed and rejected the motion two weeks ago. Mr. Trump’s lawyers challenged her decision in the normal way in front of a federal appeals court in Washington and also asked her to freeze the case while the appeal was being heard.Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to step in front of an appeals court to rule on former President Donald J. Trump’s claims of immunity.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesWhile the lawyers obviously hoped to win the appeal, they also had another goal: to drag out the process for as long as possible and postpone a trial on the election interference charges.It was that delay strategy that appeared to underlie Mr. Smith’s second request to the Supreme Court. He asked the justices not only to rule on the immunity issue before the lower appeals court did, but also to do so on an expedited basis.Mr. Smith told the justices that an ordinary, even a relatively fast, appeal could take too much time. And he expressed concern in particular about keeping the trial, now set to go before a jury on March 4, more or less on schedule.What could happen if the trial is delayed?It depends on whom you ask and how long the trial is postponed.A significant delay could push the trial into summer or fall — the heart of the 2024 campaign season. That could cause problems for Mr. Trump because he would be obliged to attend the trial in Washington every weekday for two or three months when he could be holding rallies or meeting voters.Mr. Trump would likely respond to such a situation by bringing his campaign to the steps of the federal courthouse. He would almost certainly hold daily news conferences in front of the television cameras that would await his exit from the courtroom and use them to deliver his political talking points and attack the legal proceeding. He has employed a similar strategy during the civil fraud trial in New York in which he is accused of inflating his company’s net worth.There could also be serious consequences, however, if the trial is pushed off until after the election.If that happens and Mr. Trump wins the race, he would suddenly have the power to order the charges to be dropped. Moreover, millions of voters would never get to hear the evidence that Mr. Smith’s team collected about Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the last election before making a decision about whether to elect him again.What do we know about whether the Supreme Court will take the case on an expedited basis?It would require only four of the nine justices to come together for Mr. Smith’s request to be granted. Shortly after Mr. Smith filed his petition, the court issued an order telling Mr. Trump’s legal team to respond with their opinions on the issue by Dec. 20. While the schedule the justices set gave no indication of whether they might ultimately take the case, it did seem to suggest that the court was not inclined to drag its feet in reaching a decision.A significant delay in the case could plunge the trial into the heart of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesHistorically speaking, the Supreme Court has only rarely stepped in front of lower appeals courts by using the procedure known as “certiorari before judgment.” Before 2019, the court had not used the provision for 15 years, according to statistics compiled by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. But as of late last year, the court had used it 19 times since.The procedure has been used in cases involving national crises, like President Richard M. Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor during a criminal investigation.Mr. Smith urged the court to use it in Mr. Trump’s criminal case as well, saying that the proceeding involved “issues of exceptional national importance.”How sympathetic has this Supreme Court been to Trump in such cases?While the court’s current majority has voted in favor of a number of staunchly conservative policies, from striking down abortion rights to reversing affirmative action, it has shown less of an appetite for supporting Mr. Trump’s attempts to monkey with the democratic process.Just months before Mr. Trump appointed his third Supreme Court justice, the court ruled by a 7-to-2 vote in 2020 that he had no absolute right to block the release of his financial records from investigators in a criminal inquiry.“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.That same year, in a brief unsigned order, the court rejected a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas seeking to throw out the election results in four battleground states that Mr. Trump had lost. It also declined requests to review suits filed by pro-Trump lawyers claiming that voting machines across the country had been hacked by a cabal of foreign actors to flip votes away from Mr. Trump.Last year, the Supreme Court refused a request from Mr. Trump to block the release of White House records concerning the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, effectively rejecting his claims of executive privilege.The court’s unsigned order upheld the original decision made in the case by none other than Judge Chutkan. And she had scathing words for Mr. Trump in her initial decision rejecting his claims of executive privilege.“Presidents are not kings,” she wrote, “and plaintiff is not president.”What could happen next?If the Supreme Court takes the case and agrees with Mr. Trump’s immunity claims, then the indictment would be tossed out and there would be no trial on the election interference charges. But if the court hears the case and quickly sides with Mr. Smith, a trial would be held, likely before the election.On the other hand, if the justices decline to hear the case at this stage, then it would go back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But the Supreme Court could eventually come back into the picture and consider challenges to the decision of the appeals court. More

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      What Is the Real Meaning of ‘Pro-Life’?

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      More from our inbox:The Texas Abortion RulingThe Campus Clash of Free Speech and AntisemitismThe Undemocratic Electoral CollegeTrump and NATO Illustration by Alicia Tatone; Photographs by Yiming Chen, SDI Productions, Joshua Roberts/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Republicans Are Finding Out That ‘Pro-Life’ Has Too Many Meanings,” by Liz Mair (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 6):Ms. Mair, a G.O.P. campaign strategist, writes about all the desperate ways Republican politicians are trying to explain their stance on abortion now that their decades-long fight to make it illegal has taken a step forward.It seems her clients are scrambling, surprised to find that “rank-and-file G.O.P. voters are not as pro-life as we might have thought.”The medical community is not surprised. You see, there are no party affiliation requirements for unplanned or medically doomed pregnancies. Doctors have seen staunch Republicans obtain safe and legal abortions for decades. I’m sure that every single white male Republican legislator who signs “heartbeat” laws, piously claims he is pro-life and rails against Planned Parenthood knows a woman who has had an abortion. And he may have caused one himself.Instead of spinning the message on their terrible policies, her advice to her G.O.P. clients should be to stop blocking funding for reliable contraception, stop interfering with medical decisions between women and their doctors and start writing laws that support women who can’t afford another pregnancy because of poverty, a lack of postpartum job security or abusive partners.You know, “pro-life” stuff.Cheryl BaileySt. Paul, Minn.The writer is a retired gynecologic oncologist.To the Editor:In recommending that Republicans finesse the abortion issue, Liz Mair doesn’t mention one point. Pro-choice advocates are not anti-life, but we disagree with those who call themselves pro-life in two fundamental ways. We do not believe that humans can claim to know what God — who certainly allows miscarriages — wants, and we do not believe that humans claiming to have this knowledge have a right to impose their religious beliefs on others.Republicans may continue to succeed politically by demagoguing the abortion issue, but most Americans, religious or not, do not believe that the law should forbid women from obtaining a safe abortion.Jamie BaldwinRedding, Conn.To the Editor:Liz Mair is absolutely correct that “pro-life” has many meanings, but she mistakenly focuses only on abortion.Being “pro-life” also means things like good pre- and post-natal care for all mothers; good health care for everyone, including babies born to the poorest among us; accessible and affordable child care and preschool for all; gun safety laws to ensure that bullets are no longer the biggest cause of accidental death among U.S. children, and, not least, more commitment to combating climate change.Republicans need to consider these matters when they (or if they) decide to come up with a better, more marketable definition of “pro-life.”Nadine GodwinNew YorkThe Texas Abortion Ruling Kate Cox, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Woman Who Sought Abortion” (news article, Dec. 12):I hope the women of Texas go on strike and march to the state capital. Women, especially mothers, all over the country will stand with them.Eve Rumpf-SternbergSeattleTo the Editor:Is there no end to these people’s cruelty?Linda GrunbaumNew YorkThe Campus Clash of Free Speech and Antisemitism Adam Glanzman for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Censorship Can’t Help University Presidents,” by David French (column, Dec. 11):Mr. French argues that what American campuses need is more viewpoint diversity and true freedom of speech — not the current hypocrisy of some speech being favored and other speech censored.But what Mr. French does not mention at all is the need for morality and truth to be part of the curriculum. President John F. Kennedy, a Harvard alumnus, said “the goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.”The university presidents’ failure before Congress to unambiguously repudiate calls for “the genocide of Jews” reflected how far these schools have strayed from that purpose. Allowing more speech on campus without a moral compass will yield only more noise and little else.Nathan J. DiamentWashingtonThe writer is the executive director for public policy of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.The Undemocratic Electoral College Christopher Lee for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “‘The Exploding Cigar of American Politics,’” by Gail Collins (column, Nov. 30):Ms. Collins’s excellent column about the Electoral College should have commented more on the U.S. Senate, which is even more unrepresentative and undemocratic.Two out of three of our elected national arms of government are unrepresentative. (The third “arm,” the House, is roughly representative, but tainted by gerrymandering, “dark” money and increasing voter suppression.)The Electoral College has overturned the national popular vote five times in America’s nearly 250-year history, but twice already in this still young century. It’s likely to happen again, probably soon (’24?).One reason the founding fathers decided not to have direct elections to the presidency was a fear of a mostly uneducated and ill-informed electorate voting in either a fraudster or a populist demagogue as president. Some would say we got two for the price of one in 2016.We should abolish the Electoral College and directly vote for the president (as we do for the Senate and the House). Failing that, embrace the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, by which states agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.I dread the day when many more Americans despair of the ballot box and instead choose far more dangerous ways of expressing their will — i.e., more Capitol insurrections, but successful ones.The founding fathers must be spinning in their graves at our inability to modernize our now dangerously outdated Constitution.Michael NorthmoreStaten IslandTrump and NATOFormer President Donald J. Trump has made it clear that he primarily sees NATO as a drain on American resources.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump’s Stance Toward NATO Alarms Europe” (front page, Dec. 10):I’m 73 years old and frightened. So many things I have taken for granted my entire life are threatened. My dad fought overseas in World War II. He, and I, always assumed that the things he fought for would remain protected.I never contemplated that the coalitions we established with our allies after the war would be threatened. I came to believe that the isolationism thriving before the war had been essentially put to rest.But now Donald Trump and his disciples have awakened the blind nationalism that raises the specter of totalitarianism. That menace should strike terror in all who treasure our democracy.And we can’t allow a feeling of helplessness or a belief that such things could never happen here prevent us from protecting what we can no longer take for granted.Stephen F. GladstoneShaker Heights, Ohio More

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      Las inquietudes sobre el autoritarismo de Trump abren un debate en EE. UU.

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      El expresidente y sus aliados hacen poco para tranquilizar a quienes están preocupados por una posible dictadura. Incluso, con sus declaraciones y acciones parecen estar reafirmando esas alarmas.El otro día, cuando un historiador escribió un ensayo en el que advertía que elegir al expresidente Donald Trump el próximo año podría conducir a una dictadura, un aliado de Trump no tardó en responder con un llamado para que dicho historiador fuera enviado a prisión.Suena casi como una parodia: la respuesta a las inquietudes de un autor sobre una dictadura es procesarlo. Pero Trump y sus aliados no se están tomando la molestia de rechazar con firmeza la acusación de una dictadura para tranquilizar a quienes les preocupa lo que podría significar un nuevo mandato. En todo caso, parece que la están alentando.Si Trump regresara a la presidencia, sus allegados han prometido “perseguir” a los medios de comunicación, iniciar investigaciones penales contra excolaboradores que se distanciaron del expresidente y expulsar del gobierno a los funcionarios públicos que consideran desleales. Cuando los críticos señalaron que el lenguaje de Trump sobre eliminar a todos los “parásitos” de Washington evocaba al de Adolf Hitler, un portavoz del expresidente dijo sobre los críticos que su “triste y miserable existencia será destruida” bajo el gobierno de Trump.El propio Trump hizo poco para calmar a los estadounidenses cuando su amigo Sean Hannity intentó ayudarlo en Fox News la semana pasada. Durante una reunión de foro abierto, Hannity le planteó a Trump lo que parecía ser una pregunta sencilla al pedirle que reafirmara que, por supuesto, no tenía la intención de abusar de su poder y usar el gobierno para castigar a sus enemigos. En lugar de tan solo concordar con esa afirmación, Trump aseguró que solo sería un dictador en el “Día 1” de un nuevo periodo.“Trump ha dejado bien claro, mediante todas sus acciones y retórica, que admira a los líderes que despliegan tipos de poder autoritario, desde Putin hasta Orbán pasando por Xi, y que quiere ejercer ese tipo de poder en casa”, comentó Ruth Ben-Ghiat, autora de Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, en referencia a Vladimir Putin de Rusia, Viktor Orbán de Hungría y Xi Jinping de China. “La historia nos demuestra que los autócratas siempre manifiestan quiénes son y qué van a hacer”, agregó. “Solo que nosotros no escuchamos hasta que es demasiado tarde”.A pesar de su enfrentamiento público con la dirigencia china, el presidente Trump ha elogiado al presidente Xi Jinping por sus políticas de hombre fuerte.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEn los últimos días, las conversaciones sobre el posible carácter autoritario de una nueva presidencia de Trump han impregnado el debate político en la capital de Estados Unidos. Una serie de informes en The New York Times esbozaron varios planes desarrollados por aliados de Trump para imponer un enorme poder en un nuevo mandato y detallaron cómo el exmandatario tendría menos restricciones constitucionales. The Atlantic publicó una edición especial en la que 24 colaboradores pronosticaron cómo sería un segundo periodo presidencial de Trump, y muchos predijeron un régimen autocrático.Liz Cheney, quien fue legisladora republicana por Wyoming en el Congreso y vicepresidenta del comité de la Cámara de Representantes encargado de investigar el asalto del 6 de enero de 2021 al Capitolio, publicó un nuevo libro en el que advierte que Trump es un peligro claro y presente para la democracia estadounidense. Y, por supuesto, se publicó el ensayo del historiador Robert Kagan en The Washington Post que motivó a J. D. Vance, senador republicano por Ohio y aliado de Trump, a presionar al Departamento de Justicia para que lo investigara.Seamos claros, los presidentes estadounidenses han excedido los límites de su poder y han sido llamados dictadores desde los primeros días de la república. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson y Franklin Roosevelt, entre otros, fueron acusados de ser déspotas. Se decía que Richard Nixon consolidó su poder en la “presidencia imperial”. Tanto a George W. Bush como a Barack Obama se les comparó con Hitler.Pero hay algo distinto en el debate actual, más allá de la retórica subida de tono o los desacuerdos legítimos sobre los límites del poder ejecutivo, algo que sugiere que este es un momento fundamental de decisión en el experimento estadounidense. Tal vez es una manifestación del desencanto popular con las instituciones del país: solo el 10 por ciento de los estadounidenses piensa que la democracia funciona muy bien, según una encuesta realizada en junio por The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Tal vez es un reflejo del extremismo y la demagogia que se han vuelto tan comunes en la política de muchos lugares en el mundo. Y tal vez proviene de un expresidente que reclama su antiguo puesto y evidencia una afinidad tan desconcertante hacia los autócratas.En una ocasión, Trump expresó que no sentía ni un atisbo de remordimiento al compartir en redes sociales una cita de Mussolini y adoptó el lenguaje de Stalin al llamar a los periodistas los “enemigos del pueblo”. Le dijo a su jefe de gabinete que “Hitler hizo muchas cosas buenas” y luego expresó que deseaba que los generales estadounidenses fueran como los generales de Hitler.En diciembre del año pasado, poco después de iniciar su campaña de reaparición, Trump hizo un llamado a “poner fin” a la Constitución para retirar de inmediato al presidente Joe Biden del cargo y reinstaurarlo a él en la Casa Blanca sin tener que esperar a otras elecciones.Los defensores de Trump desestiman los temores sobre sus instintos autocráticos como quejas de los liberales que no lo apoyan ni a él ni a sus políticas y que intentan asustar a los votantes de maneras engañosas. Argumentan que Biden es el verdadero dictador, ya que su Departamento de Justicia llevará a juicio a su rival más contundente el próximo año por varios presuntos delitos, aunque no hay evidencia de que Biden haya participado personalmente en esas decisiones, y a pesar de que algunos exasesores de Trump afirman que las acusaciones son legítimas.“Los comentarios relacionados con una dictadura que realizan Kagan y sus colegas escritores liberales es un intento de asustar a los estadounidenses no solo para distraerse a sí mismos de los errores y la debilidad del gobierno de Biden, sino porque hay algo que ellos temen aún más: que un segundo gobierno de Trump tenga mucho más éxito a la hora de implementar su agenda y deshacer políticas y programas progresistas que el primero”, escribió Fred Fleitz, quien trabajó brevemente en la Casa Blanca de Trump, en el sitio web American Greatness el viernes.Kagan, un académico muy respetado de la Institución Brookings y autor de numerosos libros de historia, tiene muchos antecedentes de apoyar una política exterior firme que, en opinión de la izquierda, dista mucho de ser liberal. Pero desde hace años ha sido un crítico firme y declarado de Trump. En mayo de 2016, cuando otros republicanos se hacían a la idea de la primera nominación de Trump a la presidencia, Kagan advirtió: “así es como el fascismo llega a Estados Unidos”.Su ensayo del 30 de noviembre sonó como una nueva advertencia. Puede que los intentos de Trump para poner en marcha sus ideas más radicales en su primer mandato hayan sido obstaculizados por asesores republicanos y oficiales militares más moderados, argumentó Kagan, pero no se va a volver a rodear de esas figuras y encontrará menos de los controles y contrapesos que lo limitaron la última vez.Los defensores del expresidente califican los temores sobre los instintos autocráticos de Trump como quejas de liberales que intentan asustar a los votantes.Jordan Gale para The New York TimesEntre otros ejemplos, Kagan citó el intento de Trump por anular una elección que había perdido, sin tomar en cuenta la voluntad de los votantes. También señaló los comentarios francos de Trump sobre llevar a juicio a sus adversarios y desplegar al ejército en las calles para reprimir las manifestaciones. “En unos pocos años, hemos pasado de tener una democracia relativamente segura a estar a unos pasos cortos, y a escasos meses, de la posibilidad de vivir una dictadura”, escribió Kagan.Vance, senador recién llegado que buscó el apoyo de Trump y la semana pasada fue mencionado por Axios como un posible compañero de fórmula a la vicepresidencia en 2024, se ofendió en nombre del expresidente. Envió una carta al fiscal general Merrick Garland en la que sugería que Kagan debía ser llevado a juicio por incitar una “rebelión abierta”, y basó su argumento en una parte del ensayo de Kagan que señalaba que los estados dirigidos por demócratas podrían desafiar la presidencia de Trump.Vance escribió que “según Robert Kagan, la perspectiva de una segunda presidencia de Donald Trump es tan terrible como para justificar una rebelión abierta contra Estados Unidos, junto con la violencia política que invariablemente le seguiría”.El artículo de Kagan no abogaba realmente por la rebelión, sino que pronosticaba la posibilidad de que los gobernadores demócratas se opusieran a Trump “mediante una forma de anulación” de la autoridad federal. De hecho, llegó a insinuar que los gobernadores republicanos podrían hacer lo mismo con Biden, algo que tampoco defendía.Vance intentaba establecer un paralelo entre el ensayo de Kagan y los esfuerzos de Trump para revertir las elecciones de 2020. El senador escribió que, según la lógica del Departamento de Justicia al investigar a Trump, el artículo de Kagan podría ser interpretado como una “invitación a la ‘insurrección’, una expresión de ‘conspiración’ delictiva o un intento de ocasionar una guerra civil”. Para enfatizar su idea, insistió en que hubiera respuestas para el 6 de enero.Kagan, quien publicó otro ensayo el jueves sobre cómo detener la trayectoria hacia la dictadura que él vislumbra, comentó que la intervención del senador validaba sus argumentos. “Es revelador que su primer instinto tras ser atacado por un periodista es sugerir que lo encierren”, señaló Kagan en una entrevista.Los ayudantes de Trump y Vance no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios. David Shipley, editor de opinión de The Washington Post, defendió el trabajo de Kagan. “Estamos orgullosos de publicar los reflexivos ensayos de Robert Kagan y animamos al público a leer sus artículos del 30 de noviembre y del 7 de diciembre juntos, y a sacar sus propias conclusiones”, dijo. “Estos ensayos forman parte de una larga tradición de Kagan de iniciar conversaciones importantes”.Es una conversación que tiene meses por delante y un final incierto. Mientras tanto, nadie espera que Garland tome en serio a Vance, incluido casi con toda seguridad el propio Vance. Su carta era una declaración política. Pero dice algo de este momento que su propuesta de procesar a un crítico se pueda ver como un triunfo político.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe del Times en la Casa Blanca. Ha cubierto a los cinco últimos presidentes estadounidenses y a veces escribe artículos analíticos que sitúan a los mandatarios y sus gobierno en un contexto y un marco histórico más amplios. Más de Peter Baker More

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      Rudy Giuliani Could Face $43 Million in Damages in Defamation Trial

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      Two Georgia election workers are seeking as much as $43 million for false assertions from Rudolph Giuliani that they had sought to swing the 2020 outcome against Donald Trump.Rudolph W. Giuliani’s lawyer told jurors on Monday that the tens of millions of dollars in damages two Georgia election workers are seeking from him in a defamation suit “will be the end of Mr. Giuliani,” likening an award of that scale to a civil death penalty.The lawyer, Joseph Sibley IV, made the assertion in his opening statement on the first day of Mr. Giuliani’s civil trial in Federal District Court in Washington.The judge, Beryl A. Howell, has already ruled that Mr. Giuliani, who served as personal lawyer to President Donald J. Trump and helped spearhead the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office after his loss in the 2020 election, defamed the two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.Mr. Giuliani was found to have intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them and engaged in a conspiracy with others when he publicly accused them of election fraud related to their work counting absentee ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta for the Fulton County Board of Elections on Nov. 3, 2020.A jury of eight will determine how much Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City and a former federal prosecutor, should have to pay them for the harm he caused.Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss are seeking compensatory damages between $15.5 million and $43 million. The trial is expected to last a week. Mr. Giuliani, Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss all plan to testify.Michael J. Gottlieb, a lawyer for Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, who are mother and daughter, said Mr. Giuliani’s false accusations led to a “campaign of defamation and emotional terror” against them. He said the women had to move out of their homes for safety and security because of the thousands of threats that followed.“Their names have become synonymous with crime, cheating and fraud,” Mr. Gottlieb said in his opening statement. “How much is somebody’s reputation worth?”The women’s lawyers showed the jury social media posts, laden with expletives, racial slurs, accusations of treason and threats, some calling for them to be lynched.Sitting across from Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss in the courtroom, Mr. Giuliani sighed, put his hand on his forehead and at times shook his head as Judge Howell described his actions after the election to the jury.And he nodded his head as he watched footage of himself maligning the women in December 2020, when he said, “The F.B.I. hasn’t arrested anybody,” and “they just walk around free.”Even as Georgia officials quickly debunked Mr. Giuliani’s assertions in 2020, he repeated them so often that Ms. Freeman became one of Mr. Trump’s favorite targets.Georgia’s State Election Board conducted a yearslong investigation into Mr. Giuliani’s claims and officially cleared Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss last summer.Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer said Monday that there is no question that Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss did not deserve what happened to them. But, he said, the harm inflicted on them was not all the fault of Mr. Giuliani.“You’re going to see a lot of evidence of harm, but not much evidence that Mr. Giuliani was the cause,” he said.The plaintiffs’ first witness was Regina Scott, a consultant who led a team hired to track the threats against the women. She described how analysts collected and cataloged thousands of screenshots that included mentions of their names. Ms. Scott’s risk-consulting firm, Jensen Hughes, found that in most cases the election workers’ names were mentioned in a negative context.When he cross-examined Ms. Scott, Mr. Sibley was quick to point out that there was nothing in a majority of the posts clearly linking the comments to Mr. Giuliani.Even though Judge Howell already ruled that Mr. Giuliani defamed the two women, their lawyers are presenting evidence of the attacks against them to try to convince the jury that their compensation should be significant.But any amount is likely to throw Mr. Giuliani deeper into financial distress. He already owes money to lawyers who have represented him in other matters related to his post-election efforts to undermine President Biden’s victory in 2020. Disciplinary actions against him prevent him from working as a lawyer, and he faces disbarment.He is also being sued by Dominion Voting Systems because of unfounded claims he made that the company was part of a scheme to rig the 2020 election against Mr. Trump.Mr. Giuliani, along with Mr. Trump, has also been indicted in Georgia in a racketeering case on charges that they tampered with the state’s election.Mr. Giuliani has previously annoyed Judge Howell because he was a no-show for one of the final court hearings in the case. He also refused to comply with routine trial obligations, including providing documents that would disclose his net worth and estimate the breadth of his media reach through his podcast and other programs. And last week, the judge chided Mr. Giuliani for asking that she, not a jury, hear the trial.And arriving late to the courtroom on Monday did little to help Mr. Giuliani with the judge. After waiting for him to show up, Judge Howell sent someone to collect Mr. Giuliani from where he was standing with other members of the public in the security line to enter the courthouse. More