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      Trump Endorses Kari Lake’s Senate Run in Arizona

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      Ms. Lake, a Trump ally, embraced the former president’s lies about winning the 2020 election in her failed run for Arizona governor last year. Former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Kari Lake for Senate in Arizona as she runs in what will be one of the nation’s most consequential Senate races. “Kari is one of the toughest fighters in our movement,” Mr. Trump said in a video aired at Ms. Lake’s campaign rally on Tuesday evening.The move comes weeks after Mr. Trump told a prospective Republican candidate, Blake Masters, who lost a race for the other Senate seat in the state last year, that he would lose the primary against Ms. Lake if he ran, according to people familiar with their conversation.Ms. Lake, a Trump ally and former news anchor, embraced the former president’s lies about winning the 2020 election in her failed run for Arizona governor last year. She also refused to accept her defeat. He pointed to her as an example of how to win, in a conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Masters that was recorded by a television camera trailing Mr. Masters.Arizona, along with West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, are seen as among the best opportunities for Republicans to pick up Senate seats next year and win back a majority.Ms. Lake is running for the seat held by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who dropped her Democratic affiliation last year to be an independent. Ms. Sinema hasn’t announced whether she will run for re-election, but the race already includes Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat.Michael C. Bender More

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      Would a 3-Way Arizona Senate Race Help Kari Lake? Her Party Isn’t So Sure.

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      Kyrsten Sinema, the independent incumbent, has not announced whether she will run for re-election. But as both parties in Arizona prepare for that outcome, Republicans are worried.Republicans are growing anxious that their chances of capturing a Senate seat in Arizona would be diminished in a potential three-way race that included Kyrsten Sinema, the independent incumbent.While Ms. Sinema hasn’t announced whether she will run for re-election, the race already includes Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, and Kari Lake, a Republican scheduled to host her first campaign rally on Tuesday.Many political strategists had figured that a re-election bid from Ms. Sinema, who dropped her Democratic affiliation last year, would split votes in her former party and increase the odds that Ms. Lake, the controversial front-runner for the Republican nomination, would be sworn in to the Senate. Arizona, along with West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, has been seen as among the best opportunities for Republicans to pick up Senate seats next year and win back a majority.But private and public polling has suggested that Ms. Sinema is viewed much more favorably by Republican voters than by Democrats. Those surveys indicated that Mr. Gallego would benefit in a three-way race.“Some of the early conventional wisdom about this race assumed there would be more Democratic defections,” said Austin Stumpf, a Democratic consultant in Arizona. “But party unity among Democrats is hard to overstate. It’s a real phenomenon right now.”Republicans expressed their concerns as Ms. Lake, a TV-anchor-turned-conservative-firebrand, made an otherwise amicable visit to Washington last week. While she met with a half-dozen Republican senators, many of whom offered campaign assistance or asked to have their photos taken with her, conversations among aides revealed worries about current polling. One Lake adviser described being surprised by the level of “freaking out” by Washington Republicans.In response, Ms. Lake’s campaign has produced a nine-page internal memo aimed at reassuring the party that she stands to benefit the most from a three-way race. She was also expected to take aim at Ms. Sinema with some of her most withering attacks during her opening campaign event on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the planning, in an attempt to address the concerns that an independent bid by the senator could siphon off a significant share of Republican votes.The previously unreported memo relies largely on recent turnout trends in Arizona to point to built-in advantages for Republicans.While Republicans account for roughly 35 percent of registered voters in the state, they typically make up about 40 percent of turnout, according to the memo. Arizona’s unusually large bloc of independent voters accounts for 34 percent of the voter rolls, but makes up a smaller share of turnout, typically between 26 percent and 29 percent, according to the memo.That means that Ms. Lake — who struggled to unite Republicans during her unsuccessful bid for governor last year as she attacked fellow Republicans, falsely insisted that former President Donald J. Trump had won the 2020 election and later refused to accept her own defeat — should have “significantly more elasticity in shedding Republican voters” than Democrats, according to the memo. (First, Ms. Lake will have to win the Republican primary race; her early rivals include Mark Lamb, a right-wing sheriff and fellow Trump ally.)Kari Lake, who lost the Arizona governor’s race last year and has continued to dispute the results, is running for Senate. Mario Tama/Getty ImagesThe memo also calculates that if Mr. Trump captures another Republican presidential nomination — and wins roughly the same number of votes in Arizona next year as he did in 2020 — then Ms. Sinema’s best path to victory would require more than 600,000 Arizonans to split their ballots between him and the incumbent senator. That total would be about 35 percent of Mr. Trump’s votes.“This is incredibly unlikely in the Trump era of American politics,” the memo says, noting that split-ticket voting is “near all-time lows.”One of the private polls that showed Mr. Gallego leading the race, in part because Ms. Lake appeared to be losing Republican votes to Ms. Sinema, was from Chuck Coughlin, a longtime Arizona operative, according to people briefed on the survey. Mr. Coughlin declined to comment on specific findings in his poll, but said that while Ms. Sinema would be a significant underdog if she sought re-election, it would also be foolish to count her out.“Kyrsten is a monstrously strong campaigner, a very effective fund-raiser and has shown a lot of personal strength to do what she’s done in politics, and I don’t want to underestimate that,” Mr. Coughlin said. “All of that is going to be necessary and a lot more for her to be successful.”The ambiguity about Ms. Sinema’s plans for re-election has confounded political professionals across three time zones separating Arizona and Washington.Some of those who anticipate she will retire point to fund-raising numbers showing that Mr. Gallego has consistently out-raised her this year. Ms. Sinema is sitting on a considerable war chest of nearly $11 million, but the Arizona Senate race last year drew more than $230 million in spending from the two major-party candidates and multiple outside groups.Some of those convinced she will seek a second term pointed to a fund-raiser she hosted this year at the Phoenix Open. The annual golf outing attracts a mix of rowdy partygoers and avid golfers, far from the typical Sinema crowd. “That’s like nails on the chalkboard for Sinema,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican operative in Arizona.Others were encouraged about her prospects after an internal fund-raising prospectus surfaced last month that signaled she and her team were actively charting a path to a second term, telling donors she could win a competitive three-way race as an independent, which is practically unheard-of in modern American politics.“Kyrsten promised Arizonans she’d be an independent voice who wouldn’t answer to party bosses and would deliver real, lasting solutions to the challenges Arizonans face,” said Hannah Hurley, an aide to Ms. Sinema. “Instead of engaging in name-calling and stupid political insults, Kyrsten has worked with anyone to make Arizonans’ lives better and then get government out of the way — and that’s exactly what she’s done and will continue to do as Arizona’s senior senator.”Ms. Sinema’s path relies on an unusual coalition of voters, according to the document, which was first reported by NBC News: winning between 10 percent and 20 percent of Democrats, 25 percent to 35 percent of Republicans and 60 percent to 70 percent of independent voters in the state.The most difficult benchmark may be the projection among independents. Even Senator John McCain — who was famously popular among independent voters — won just 50 percent of that group in his sixth and final victory in the state in 2016, according to exit polls.Independents also figure to be a top target for Mr. Gallego, an engaging politician with an inspiring personal story who is running to be the state’s first Latino senator. His campaign projects that Latinos account for about 30 percent of unaffiliated voters in Arizona, and he was ahead of both Ms. Sinema and Ms. Lake in the one public poll that has tested all three candidates this year.Some public and private polling has shown that Representative Ruben Gallego, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, would benefit in a three-way race.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times“Ruben is in a good spot and he knows it,” said Mike Noble, an Arizona pollster. He noted that early polls showed that people who had heard of Mr. Gallego generally liked him, while Arizonans tended to have negative views of both Ms. Lake and Ms. Sinema.Still, Mr. Gallego is running his first statewide campaign since first being elected to the state’s most liberal House district in 2014.He has collected a handful of endorsements from local officials and public encouragement from Yolanda Bejarano, the chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic Party, but the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Senate Majority PAC — which combined to spend nearly $40 million in the Arizona Senate race last year — have both remained silent on the prospect of a three-way race.Stan Barnes, a Republican consultant and former Arizona state legislator, said a potential three-way race offered a unique opportunity for voters because the top candidates would rely on compelling personalities as they pursued their own silos of voters.“It is about the most exciting thing I have seen in terms of politics in Arizona in the three decades I have seen,” Mr. Barnes said. 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      Prosecutors Ask if Trump Will Blame His Lawyers as Defense in Election Case

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      The special counsel asked a judge to require the former president to disclose whether he would blame poor legal advice for his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss.Federal prosecutors asked a judge on Tuesday to force former President Donald J. Trump to tell them months before he goes to trial on charges of seeking to overturn the 2020 election whether he intends to defend himself by blaming the stable of lawyers around him at the time for giving him poor legal advice.In a motion filed to the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, the prosecutors sought an order that would compel Mr. Trump to tell them by Dec. 18 if he plans to pursue the blame-the-lawyers strategy — known as an advice of counsel defense — at his federal election interference trial, which is now set to begin in March in Federal District Court in Washington.Both Mr. Trump and his current team of lawyers have “repeatedly and publicly announced” that they were going to use such arguments as “a central component of his defense,” prosecutors told Judge Chutkan in their filing. They said they wanted a formal order forcing Mr. Trump to tell them his plans by mid-December “to prevent disruption of the pretrial schedule and delay of the trial.”The early notification could also give prosecutors a tactical edge in the case. Defendants who pursue advice of counsel arguments waive the shield of attorney-client privilege that would normally protect their dealings with their lawyers. And, as prosecutors reminded Judge Chutkan, if Mr. Trump heads in this direction, he would have to give them not only all of the “communications or evidence” concerning the lawyers he plans to use as part of his defense, but also any “otherwise-privileged communications” that might be used to undermine his claims.Lawyers have been at the heart of the election interference case almost from the moment prosecutors first began issuing grand jury subpoenas to witnesses in the spring of 2022. Many of the subpoenas sought information about lawyers like John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, who entered Mr. Trump’s orbit around the time of the election and were instrumental in advising him about a scheme to create false slates of electors that declared him the winner of key swing states that had actually been won by his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.The subpoenas also sought information about other lawyers, like Jenna Ellis and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had not only advised Mr. Trump on the false elector plan, but had helped him advance claims that the election had been marred by widespread fraud.Moreover, lawyers from both Mr. Trump’s administration and his presidential campaign proved to be key witnesses in the investigation that began under the Justice Department and then was handed off to prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith.And when charges were finally filed against Mr. Trump, accusing him of three overlapping conspiracies to remain in power despite the will of the voters, the indictment identified six unnamed co-conspirators — most, if not all, of whom were lawyers as well.In their motion to Judge Chutkan, prosecutors noted that at least 25 witnesses in their sprawling investigation had withheld information based on assertions of attorney-client privilege. Those people, the prosecutors said, included Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators, some of his former campaign employees, some “outside attorneys” and “even a family member of the defendant,” who was not further identified.While prosecutors acknowledged that they were not entirely sure if Mr. Trump intended to raise an advice of counsel defense — or whether he was even legally entitled to do so — they did take note of the public statements that he and his current legal team have made suggesting that such arguments might be used at trial.The prosecutors pointed out that three days after Mr. Trump was arraigned in the case, one of his lawyers, John F. Lauro, made the rounds of the Sunday TV news shows, describing how Mr. Trump had been charged for “following legal advice” from Mr. Eastman, whom he described as “an esteemed scholar.”Weeks later, in an online interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, prosecutors said, Mr. Trump himself made similar claims. In their filing, they wrote that Mr. Trump claimed he had “some lawyers” who had advised him “that a particular course of action described in the indictment was appropriate.”In a separate filing on Tuesday, prosecutors sought to get a jump on what is certain to be the difficult process of picking a jury for the trial.Citing Mr. Trump’s “continued use of social media as a weapon of intimidation” — an issue that has come up in the government’s request for a gag order to be placed on the former president — the prosecutors asked Judge Chutkan to impose restrictions on information about potential jurors and those who are ultimately picked to serve.The prosecutors asked that no one involved in the case be allowed to publicly disclose information about the jurors gleaned during the selection process, in order to protect them “from intimidation and fear.”They also asked Judge Chutkan to consider arranging “for jurors to gain discreet entry into and out of the courthouse” once the trial begins. 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      DeSantis Amps Up Attacks on Trump, as GOP Primary Enters a New Phase

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      The Florida governor had been reluctant to criticize the former president on the trail, but in recent weeks, that has started to change.Since the start of his presidential campaign, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has pulled his punches during speeches to voters, choosing not to attack the man leading him by 40 points in many national Republican primary polls.But in recent stump speeches in California, South Carolina, Florida and Iowa, Mr. DeSantis has started attacking former President Donald J. Trump more directly, drawing laughter and applause from his audiences.Previously, Mr. DeSantis had talked about Mr. Trump, who helped secure his political rise, only when prompted by questions from voters or during interviews with the news media. No longer.Speaking to a crowd of several hundred people on Saturday at a packed coffee shop north of Des Moines, the Florida governor pointed out that Mr. Trump had gone back on his pledge to make Mexico pay for a border wall, after Mr. Trump suggested recently that it was an impossible promise to keep. Mr. DeSantis tried to draw a strong contrast with his rival, laying out a plan to fund the wall by imposing fees on remittances back to Mexico.“So I can tell you: Not only will I keep my promises as president, I’ll keep Donald Trump’s promises as president,” the normally staid Mr. DeSantis said with a wry smile as he delivered one of his biggest applause lines of the day. It was a jab he would repeat several times during his three-day bus tour through Iowa over the holiday weekend.Criticizing a rival might not seem very notable in a presidential campaign. But Mr. Trump is no ordinary rival. He is running in the primary as a popular quasi-incumbent, and his four indictments have only further rallied Republican voters behind him and juiced his fund-raising.Leading Republicans have tried and failed to figure out how to challenge Mr. Trump since 2015. For an ambitious Republican politician, attacking Mr. Trump without success means angering his loyal supporters who make up a significant portion of the G.O.P. base, potentially forfeiting a future in the Republican Party.But the response from Mr. DeSantis’s crowds across four states in the last 10 days suggests that there could be a lane for a Republican politician to criticize Mr. Trump without alienating voters — particularly those who support his policies but say they are tired of the drama surrounding him.Still, going so far as to call Mr. Trump a threat to democracy or characterize his run as an effort to stay out of jail is not likely to play well. Will Hurd, a former congressman from Texas and a long-shot presidential candidate, was booed in Iowa this summer for invoking the indictments against him.But Mr. DeSantis’s willingness to take on Mr. Trump demonstrates that the race is moving into a new, more pressing phase for his rivals, as Mr. Trump remains miles ahead of the rest of the field in the polls and the first nominating contests are fast approaching. And it could provide a blueprint for other candidates as they look to gain ground and offer themselves as a Trump alternative.Judy McDonough, 82, said Mr. DeSantis struck the right tone against the former president.“He didn’t say anything mean or nasty about Trump,” said Ms. McDonough, who voted twice for Mr. Trump. “He stuck to the facts,” she added.Mr. DeSantis is being more forthright in his criticisms of Mr. Trump, but on the trail he still largely focuses on non-Trump talking points.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis’s more direct strategy began late last month at the second Republican presidential debate. Standing center stage, Mr. DeSantis teed off on Mr. Trump for skipping the debates, taking a far more aggressive tone than he had in the debate a month earlier. Soon after, at a convention of the California Republican Party, Mr. DeSantis criticized the former president for claiming he had turned Florida red, saying he wished Mr. Trump had not “turned Georgia and Arizona blue.”Now, Mr. DeSantis’s approach to taking on Mr. Trump seems like it will be rooted in addressing a few key policy points from Mr. Trump’s presidency. Among them, based on Mr. DeSantis’s statements so far, will be Mr. Trump’s failures to build the border wall he promised and dismantle what Republicans call the “deep state”; his adding to the national debt; and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. DeSantis has also pointed out that Mr. Trump would be able to serve only one term, calling him a “lame duck,” and has gone after his stance on abortion.Despite Mr. DeSantis raising the pressure on Mr. Trump, their potential showdown is unlikely to combust into fiery theatrics anytime soon. The Florida governor avoids the kind of name-calling and cutting personal attacks that Mr. Trump has used to cow scores of his G.O.P opponents. And besides one or two jabs, Mr. DeSantis’s stump speech remains focused on non-Trump issues, such as inflation, immigration and President Biden’s ability to handle the rigors of the White House.But there is a sense of heightened urgency for Mr. DeSantis, who has gone all-in on winning the Iowa caucuses, moving a third of his staff to the state last week. With only $5 million on hand for the primary going into the last three months of the year, Mr. DeSantis must make his move on Mr. Trump now or never.Mr. Trump, of course, has been savaging Mr. DeSantis for months.On Saturday, as the two men campaigned roughly 100 miles apart in Iowa, Mr. Trump claimed Mr. DeSantis, whom he often refers to by the demeaning nickname “DeSanctimonious,” would soon drop out of the race.“He’s like a wounded bird going down,” Mr. Trump told a cheering crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.In typical fashion, Mr. Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung mocked Mr. DeSantis’s criticisms, saying that his “tough guy routine is laughable.”“Ron DeSantis has a Little League brain trying to compete in a Major League world,” Mr. Cheung said in a statement. “This is nothing more than a desperate attempt of a flailing candidate who is in the last throes of his campaign.”As the other candidates battle against Mr. Trump’s overwhelming lead, even the most pro-Trump among them, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, has started drawing contrasts with the front-runner, although in Mr. Ramaswamy’s case, quite gently.“I have something that he doesn’t: I’m from a different generation,” Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, said in response to a question about Mr. Trump, 77, at a SiriusXM town hall in New Hampshire that aired Monday.Mr. DeSantis debuted his line about the border wall during appearances in South Carolina and Florida this past week, before trotting it out again in Iowa.Although it generally drew loud applause, the attack did not land with everyone.Leo Nowak, 69, said he believed Republicans should remain respectful of Mr. Trump even as he acknowledged he was ready to vote for someone else.“I didn’t like it,” said Mr. Nowak, a retired parole officer who heard Mr. DeSantis speak on Saturday at a hotel in Keosauqua, Iowa. “I don’t like seeing him take shots at Trump, and I don’t like seeing Trump take shots at him.”But Mr. Nowak said he was ultimately impressed by Mr. DeSantis’s combative conservative message.“He’s a younger version of Trump,” he said.And Dennis Moore, 73, a Trump supporter who attended a DeSantis event on Monday at an Iowa ice cream parlor, said he wasn’t worried by the attacks.Mr. Trump, he noted, “punches back.”Michael Gold More

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      Trump Sues Over Steele Dossier on Russia in London Court

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      Former President Donald J. Trump is arguing that the document known as the Steele dossier was calculated to embarrass him and that it breached data protection laws.Donald J. Trump has claimed in a lawsuit in a London court that Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, inflicted “personal and reputational damage and distress” on him by leaking a dossier detailing unsavory, unproven accounts of links between him and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.Lawyers for Mr. Trump argue that Mr. Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, breached British data protection laws with the dossier, which triggered a political earthquake when it was published just before Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017.The lawsuit, the first filed by Mr. Trump in Britain related to the dossier, could offer the former president more favorable legal terrain than the United States. Last year, a federal judge in Florida threw out his lawsuit claiming that Mr. Steele, as well as Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, was involved in a concerted plot to spread false information about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia.In a court filing last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said he was “compelled to explain to his family, friends, and colleagues that the embarrassing allegations about his private life were untrue. This was extremely distressing” for him, the filing said, asserting that Mr. Steele had presented the claims in a “sensationalist manner” that was “calculated to cause tremendous embarrassment” to Mr. Trump. He is asking for unspecified compensation.The High Court judge Matthew Nicklin has scheduled a two-day hearing on Oct. 16 and 17, at which arguments will be heard and lawyers for Mr. Steele’s firm will move to throw out the case, which was originally filed last November.The dossier’s author, Christopher Steele, center, in 2020. He has accused Mr. Trump of engaging in “frivolous and abusive legal proceedings” in the United States.Victoria Jones/Press Association, via Associated PressIn a witness statement, Mr. Steele accused Mr. Trump of “numerous public attacks upon me and Orbis.” He said the former president had initiated “frivolous and abusive legal proceedings” against him and his firm in the United States, a conclusion echoed by the Florida judge’s ruling.A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did his British lawyers, while Mr. Steele declined to comment.Mr. Trump’s foray into the British courts comes as he is facing a raft of criminal and civil charges in the United States, on accusations ranging from election interference to inflating the value of his real estate assets — all of which he has denied. He has experienced a string of legal setbacks in courtrooms from Manhattan to South Florida.But in London, Mr. Trump is the plaintiff, and legal experts said his lawyers were trying to seize an advantage from Britain’s comparatively tight controls on personal data. Winning a claim that his data had been compromised, these lawyers said, would be easier than winning a claim of defamation.“It avoids the obvious hurdles of a U.K. defamation claim,” said Jay Joshi, a media lawyer with the London firm Taylor Hampton. These include the statute of limitations for defamation, normally a year, and the fact that the dossier was published in the United States, not Britain. “Trump is clearly seeking some form of vindication,” Mr. Joshi said.In 2020, Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian technology entrepreneur who was cited in the dossier, lost a defamation suit against Mr. Steele. But in another case that year, two Russian oligarchs, Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, won damages of 18,000 pounds ($22,900) each from Mr. Steele’s firm after they argued that allegations about them in the dossier violated data-protection laws.The court ruled that Orbis had “failed to take reasonable steps to verify” claims that Mr. Fridman and Mr. Aven, who controlled Alfa Bank, had made illicit payments to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, though the judge dismissed several other claims.Mr. Trump’s lawyers are making a similar claim that Mr. Steele’s firm did not confirm the claims about him. Among other things, they said, Mr. Trump did not bribe Russian officials to advance his business interests.“The claimant did not engage in unorthodox behavior in Russia and did not act in a way that Russia authorities were provided with material to blackmail him,” the lawyers said. “The personal data is not accurate. Further, the Defendant failed to take all reasonable steps to insure the personal data was accurate.”Mr. Trump is being represented by Hugh Tomlinson, a leading London media lawyer who specializes in defamation, privacy and data protection. Among his former clients is King Charles III, then the Prince of Wales, for whom Mr. Tomlinson argued successfully that a British tabloid should not be allowed to publish his private diaries, which contained astringent comments about the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.The Steele dossier grew out of an opposition research effort to dig up information about Mr. Trump, funded by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party. Their law firm, Perkins Coie, contracted with a Washington research firm, Fusion GPS, which in turn hired Mr. Steele, an expert on Russia, to research Mr. Trump’s business dealings in the country.Mr. Steele shared some of the memos with the F.B.I. and journalists; they first came to light in January 2017 when Buzzfeed published 35 pages.His findings have been largely discredited by the F.B.I. and others who have investigated Mr. Trump’s relationship to Russia. Relying on anonymous sources, the dossier asserted that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of coordination” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and that Russian officials had a blackmail tape of Mr. Trump with prostitutes.For much of his information, Mr. Steele relied on Igor Danchenko, a Russian researcher who told federal investigators that some of the claims were rumors that he had not been able to confirm. Mr. Danchenko was later indicted on a charge of misleading federal investigators, but he was ultimately acquitted.The F.B.I. concluded that one of the most explosive allegations in the dossier — that Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, had met with Russian officials in Prague during the 2016 campaign — was false.In his witness statement, Mr. Steele said he wrote the memos on a computer that was not connected to a network and was equipped with security that prohibited any third party from extracting data stored on it. He also said that Orbis no longer held any copy of the dossier on its systems by the end of the first week of January 2017.Mr. Steele has not denied sharing the dossier with journalists. But he rejected the contention that he has sought to promote its contents since then.“I declined to provide any media interviews for three and a half years after the publication of the dossier by Buzzfeed, despite being asked multiple times by major international media organizations,” he testified. “If I had wanted to ‘promote’ the dossier as Mr. Trump suggests, I obviously would have taken up those media opportunities.” More

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      Trump Uses Support for Israel to Revive Travel Ban Talk

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      Former President Donald J. Trump, while addressing the fighting in Israel on Monday, attempted to stoke fear of attacks taking place on U.S. soil and suggested that a travel ban like the one he implemented as president could stop such violence.Mr. Trump’s comments, at a campaign rally in Wolfeboro, N.H., echoed the anti-Muslim rhetoric that he successfully tapped during his 2016 presidential run, harnessing sentiments that have lingered in the post-9/11 era.While discussing a series of surprise attacks launched over the weekend by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, Mr. Trump promised to “stand strongly with the state of Israel” and said, to cheers, said that he had “imposed a strict travel ban to keep radical Islamic terrorists” out of the United States.He called to “reimpose the travel ban on terror-afflicted countries.”“The bloodshed and killing that we saw this week will never, ever be allowed to happen on American soil,” he said. “Except for the fact that we have now allowed tens of thousands of probable terrorists into our country.”He claimed, without evidence, that the “same people that attacked Israel” are entering the United States through its southern border, a similar message asserted by at least two other Republican presidential candidates — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Vivek Ramaswamy — over the weekend.During his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States.The order that his administration imposed shortly after taking office in 2017 banned travel into the United States for people from seven countries, most of them predominantly Muslim, though the order went through several iterations that changed the final list of countries. Iran, one of the affected countries, has funded Hamas.Mr. Trump earlier revived discussions of a travel ban in July, saying in Iowa that he would impose a travel ban “even bigger than before.” More

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      The Republican Meltdown Shows No Sign of Cooling Off

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      Gail Collins: Bret, when we started our conversations, you generously agreed to stick to domestic issues. I’ve always steered away from commenting on foreign affairs because I have so very many colleagues who know so very much more about them than I do.But I know you’re weighed down by the situation in the Middle East. I’m gonna hand off to you here so you can share your thoughts.Bret Stephens: Thanks for raising the subject, Gail. And since I’ve written a column about it, I promise to keep it brief so we can talk about marginally less depressing things, like the increasingly plausible prospect of a second Trump term.Israel occupies such a big place in the public imagination that people often forget what a small country it is. When an estimated 700 Israelis (a number that is sure to grow, out of a total population of a little over nine million) are killed in terrorist attacks, as they have been since Hamas’s rampage began Saturday morning, that’s the proportional equivalent of around 25,000 Americans. In other words, eight 9/11s.I know some of our readers have strong feelings about Israeli policies or despise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But what we witnessed on Saturday was pure evil. Habitual critics of Israel should at least pause to mourn the hundreds of young Israelis murdered at a music festival, the mothers and young children kidnapped to Gaza to be used as human shields, the Israeli captives brutalized, the thousands of wounded and maimed civilians who were just going about their morning on sovereign Israeli territory. And the critics should also ask whether the version of Palestine embodied by Hamas, which tyrannizes its own people even as it terrorizes its neighbor, is one they can stomach.Gail: Horrific stories like the music festival massacre make it flat-out clear how this was an abomination that has to be decried around the globe, no matter what your particular position on Palestine is.Now I will follow my own rule and dip back into domestic politics.Bret: OK, and I will have lots more to say about this in my regular column this week. I also know you’re raring to talk about those charming House Republicans who ended Kevin McCarthy’s speakership last week. But first I have to ask: How do you feel about Build the Wall Biden?Gail: I knew you were going to head for the wall! Couple of thoughts here, the first being that the money was appropriated by Congress during the Trump administration for his favorite barrier and President Biden was right when he asked for it to be reallocated to a general migration-control program.Which, of course, didn’t happen. I still hate, hate, hate the wall and all it symbolizes. But also understand why Biden didn’t want to give Republicans ammunition to claim he wasn’t trying to control the immigration problem.Now feel free to tell me that you differ.Bret: It ought to be axiomatic that you can’t have a gate without a wall. If we want more legal immigration, which we both do, we need to do more to prevent illegal immigration. It’s also a shame Biden didn’t do this two years ago when he could have traded wall building for something truly constructive, like citizenship for Dreamers and a higher annual ceiling for the number of political refugees allowed into the United States. Now he just looks desperate and reactive and late to address a crisis he kept trying to pretend wasn’t real.Not to mention the political gift this whole fiasco is to Donald Trump, who now has a slight lead over Biden in the polls. Aren’t you a wee bit nervous?Gail: Impossible not to be a wee bit nervous when Trump’s one of the options. But I still think when we really get into all the multitudinous criminal and civil trials, it’s going to be very hard for the middle-of-the-road, don’t-ask-me-yet voters to pick the Trump option.Bret: I wouldn’t get my hopes up on that front. For so many Americans, Trump’s indictments have gone from being the scandal of the century to just so much white noise on cable TV, like all of Trump’s other scandals. The only thing millions of Americans care about is whether they are better off in 2023 than they were in 2019, the last full year under Trump that wasn’t affected by the pandemic. And the sad truth is: Many believe that they aren’t.Gail: I will refrain from veering off into a discussion of how the Trump tax cuts caused the deficit to surge. Or mentioning the latest jobs report, which was really good.Bret: Shame about the high gas prices, rising mortgage rates, urban decay, a border crisis and all the other stuff my liberal friends keep thinking is just some sort of American hypochondria.Gail: It’s settled — we disagree. Time for us to get on to those embattled House Republicans. Anybody in contention for speaker of the House you actually like?Bret: You’re asking me to pick my poison. I’d say Steve Scalise, the majority leader who once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage,” is still better than Jim Jordan, but that’s because almost everyone is better than Jim Jordan, the former wrestling coach. Republicans don’t have particularly good experiences with former wrestling coaches who become speakers of the House.Admit it: You’re sorta enjoying this G.O.P. meltdown, right?Gail: At the moment, absolutely. Once again, this is a Trump creation. He was the one who engineered the nomination of so many awful House candidates that the Republicans couldn’t get the usual postpresidential election surge in the out-party’s seats. They’re not even a majority if you subtract the total loons, like our friend Matt Gaetz.But I’m not looking forward to a government shutdown, and I doubt these guys will be able to get the votes together to avoid one next month.Bret: We are in agreement. All the clichés about lunatics running the asylum, letting the foxes in the henhouse, picking the wrong week to stop sniffing glue and really futile and stupid gestures apply. A government shutdown will accomplish exactly nothing for Republicans except make them seem like the party of total dysfunction — which, of course, is what they are. Not exactly a winning political slogan.Gail: Can you make dysfunction a slogan? Maybe: Vote for this — total dys!Bret: Our colleague Michelle Goldberg got it right last week when she said that centrist Republicans would have been smart to team up with Democrats to elect a unity candidate as speaker, someone like Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican. But of course, that would have meant putting country over party, a slogan that John McCain ran for president on but hardly exists today as a meaningful concept.Gail: You know, my first real covering of a presidential race was the one in 2000, and McCain was my focus. I followed him around on his early trips to New Hampshire. He’d drive to a town and talk to some small veterans’ gathering or student club or anybody who’d ask him. And his obsession was campaign finance reform.It was pretty wonderful to watch up close. Later, he got a bill passed that improved the regulations. Can’t think of a current Republican candidate who is superfocused on driving out big-money donors.Bret: I thought McCain was wrong about campaign finance reform; he would often be the first to admit that he was wrong about a lot of stuff. But politics was more fun, more functional, more humane and more honorable when his way of doing business ruled Congress than it is with the current gang of ideological gangsters.Gail: So true.Bret: Speaking of our political malfunctions, our colleague Alex Kingsbury had a really thoughtful Opinion audio short talking about how violent Trump’s rhetoric has become. Trump had suggested that Gen. Mark Milley had behaved treasonously and said shoplifters deserved to be executed. One point Alex makes is that a second Trump term would very likely be much worse than the first. Do you agree, or do you think it will be the same Spiro Agnew-Inspector Clouseau mash-up we had last time?Gail: You know, a basic rule of Trumpism is that he always gets worse. Alex’s piece is smart, and his prediction is deeply depressing.Bret: The scary scenario is that Trump 2.0 makes no concessions to the normal conservatives who populated the first administration: people like Gary Cohn and H.R. McMaster and Scott Gottlieb. So imagine Stephen Miller as secretary of homeland security, Tucker Carlson as secretary of state, Sean Hannity as director of national intelligence and Vivek Ramaswamy as vice president. This could be an administration that would pull the United States out of NATO, defund Ukraine, invade Mexico and invite Vladimir Putin for skeet shooting at Camp David.Gail: As I’ve pointed out before, this is one reason people watch football.Bret: Just wait until Steve Bannon somehow becomes N.F.L. commissioner during the second Trump term.Gail: One last issue: I know you’re not in favor of bringing up global warming when it’s time to admire the leaves, but whenever the weather gets bad now, I worry that it’s a hint of more dire things to come. This winter, if it’s colder than usual, I’ll be miserable because it’s … cold. But now I can’t really feel totally chipper if it’s warm, either.Bret: I really am concerned with the climate. But, hey, we may as well enjoy some nice fall weather while we still can.Gail: You totally win that thought. Look for the good moments whenever you can.Here at the end, you generally conclude with a poem or a nod to a great piece you read. Particularly eager to hear it this week.Bret: Did you know that one of Shakespeare’s sonnets touches on climate change? Here is another gem my dad had the good sense to make me memorize:When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’dThe rich proud cost of outworn buried age;When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’dAnd brass eternal slave to mortal rage;When I have seen the hungry ocean gainAdvantage on the kingdom of the shore,And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,Increasing store with loss and loss with store;When I have seen such interchange of state,Or state itself confounded to decay;Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,That Time will come and take my love away.This thought is as a death, which cannot chooseBut weep to have that which it fears to lose.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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      Closing the Political Divide: Compromise, Don’t Demonize

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      More from our inbox:Defending GiulianiAntidepressants on Shirts: Don’t Trivialize Mental Illness Illustration by The New York Times. Photographs by Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “My Fellow Republicans Need to Grow Up,” by Bob Inglis (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 3):We are divided not by ideology but by a deep lack of willingness to consider ideas before party alliances.I wasn’t paying attention to politics until 2015. But Donald Trump was so outrageous I was shocked into political activism. I speak out often because silence is not an option.The MAGA followers I encounter on internet political sites call me Communist, Marxist, treasonous and fascist. I find their attitudes loathsome. I blame Mr. Trump’s constant attacks on anyone who speaks out against him — his most virulent and nasty attacks being against Democrats. We have become deeply divided because Mr. Trump models divisive behavior. I fear for our Republic.But, if I am honest, it is Mr. Trump who has taught me something vital. I must be careful of rejecting someone just because they are on the other side. At least I must be able to define our differences and find our similarities. As a result I may expand my point of view to be richer, more inclusive and balanced. And that is what our system of debate and compromise demands.Jo TraffordPortland, MaineTo the Editor:I appreciate Bob Inglis’s call for Republicans to stop with the mindless vilifying of their Democratic colleagues (and with them the millions of Americans who voted for them), and start engaging on substantive issues that really matter.Elected Republicans prioritize demonizing and scapegoating and temper tantrums over concern for the challenges of the lived lives of their constituents. Those challenges are shared, to varying degrees, by most Americans. Look for legislative common ground there.When elected Republicans at all levels of government start noticing the specifics of their constituents’ suffering, and then start using their offices to do something about it — that’s when we’ll know they’ve really grown up.Jeri ZederLexington, Mass.Defending GiulianiRudolph W. Giuliani’s drinking was long whispered about by former City Hall aides, White House advisers and political socialites. Now it has become a factor in one of the federal cases against former President Donald J. Trump. Erin Schaff for The New York TimesTo the Editor:In “Giuliani’s Drinking Is Subplot in Trump Inquiry” (front page, Oct. 5), I was quoted as saying:“It’s no secret, nor do I do him any favors if I don’t mention that problem, because he has it. … It’s actually one of the saddest things I can think about in politics.”While I don’t deny the quote — Rudy Giuliani had a drinking problem that he has dealt with, and I believe he is no longer drinking — I also said a lot of good things about Rudy.He was one of our greatest mayors. He cleaned New York City up and made it livable. He was a national hero during 9/11, when the country needed leadership. He was “America’s Mayor” and beloved by many.We should also not forget that he was a great U.S. attorney for the Southern District and prosecuted many people who committed heinous crimes.I have the greatest respect and empathy for this man, who did so much good.Andrew SteinNew YorkThe writer is a former president of the New York City Council.Antidepressants on Shirts: Don’t Trivialize Mental IllnessTo the Editor:Re “Prozac Nation, Meet Lexapro Sweatshirts” (Style, nytimes.com, Oct. 2):I cringed when I read this article about using the names of antidepressants on shirts. I personally think it trivializes the seriousness of depression. Having suffered from manic depression for 50 years now, I don’t see that as reducing the stigma of mental illness. It reflects privilege if anything.Too many moan about being depressed or anxious, but some of us are battling a chronic illness. And we see no point in publicizing our conditions. We are too busy taking care of ourselves.Nancy C. Langwiser-KearWellesley, Mass. More