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      Takeaways From Trump’s Indictment in the 2020 Election Investigation

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      Jack Smith made only his second televised appearance as special counsel on Tuesday to explain his decision to charge former President Donald J. Trump with leading a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.He took no questions and urged viewers to read the 45-page indictment in its entirety.The indictment of the former president for trying to subvert democracy — an episode that has no precedent in American history — was issued by a federal grand jury in Washington and unsealed shortly before Mr. Smith gave his statement.Mr. Trump has been charged with four crimes, including conspiracies to defraud the United States and to obstruct an official proceeding.Here are four takeaways:The indictment portrays an attack on American democracy.Mr. Smith framed his case against Mr. Trump as one that cuts to a core function of democracy: the peaceful transfer of power.By underscoring this theme, which he also laid out in the indictment, Mr. Smith cast his effort as not just an effort to hold Mr. Trump accountable but also to defend the very core of democracy.Mr. Smith said the former president’s efforts to overturn the election went well beyond his First Amendment right to make claims about voter fraud. The indictment details Mr. Trump’s efforts to use the machinery of government — including his own Justice Department — to help him cling to power.Trump was placed at the center of the conspiracy.Mr. Smith puts Mr. Trump at the heart of three overlapping conspiracies: a conspiracy to “defraud the United States” in his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election; a conspiracy to “corruptly obstruct” the counting and certification of election results on Jan. 6; and a conspiracy to disenfranchise American voters by trying to override legitimate votes.These overlapping conspiracies culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, when the so-called fake electors, the pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence and the riot at the Capitol all converged to obstruct Congress’s function in ratifying the Electoral College outcome.Mr. Smith argued in the indictment that Mr. Trump knew his claims about a stolen election were false. He cited a litany of episodes in which campaign advisers, White House officials, top Justice Department lawyers, speakers of statehouses and election administrators all told Mr. Trump his claims about “outcome-determinative fraud” in the election were false. Mr. Trump nonetheless kept repeating them.Establishing that Mr. Trump knew he was lying could be important to convincing a jury to convict him. A lawyer for Mr. Trump has already signaled that his defense could rest in part on showing that he truly believed he had been cheated out of re-election.Trump didn’t do it alone.The indictment lists six co-conspirators, without naming or indicting them.Based on the descriptions provided of the co-conspirators, they match the profiles of a crew of outside lawyers and advisers that Mr. Trump turned to after his campaign and White House lawyers failed to turn up credible evidence of fraud and had lost dozens of cases to challenge the election results in swing states.After many of his core advisers told him his claims of fraud weren’t bearing out, Mr. Trump turned to lawyers who were willing to argue ever more outlandish conspiracy theories and to devise edge-of-the-envelope legal theories to keep him in power.These advisers included Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York; the constitutional lawyer John Eastman, who came up with the scheme to pressure Mr. Pence to block the certification of election results on Jan. 6; and Sidney Powell, the lawyer who pushed the theory that foreign nations had hacked into voting machines and flipped votes to Joseph R. Biden Jr. Even Mr. Trump told advisers at the time that Ms. Powell’s theories sounded “crazy,” but he kept repeating them in public.It’s unclear whether any or all of these co-conspirators will be indicted or whether they now have a period in which there’s an opportunity for them to decide to cooperate with prosecutors.Indictments have only strengthened Trump’s hold on the Republican Party.Mr. Trump may be on trial next year in three or four separate criminal cases — and there’s no telling what effect that might have on his general election prospects if he’s the Republican nominee. But in the short term, the indictments so far appear to have had nothing but political upside for the former president.All evidence leads to a fact that would have been unbelievable in the pre-2015 Republican Party: In part by allowing him to claim that he is the victim of politicized prosecution by the Biden administration and liberal foes in New York and Georgia, the criminal investigations have helped consolidate Mr. Trump’s position as his party’s overwhelming front-runner in the presidential primaries.Tuesday’s was Mr. Trump’s third indictment since early April. In the four months since his first indictment in New York, Mr. Trump has gained nearly 10 percentage points in national polling averages. During that same period, his closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has seen his support collapse to the point where he now lags Mr. Trump nationally by more than 30 percentage points and is far behind in all the early voting states.To understand the depths of frustration that Mr. Trump’s presidential rivals are wallowing in as they helplessly watch a Republican electorate in thrall to the former president, consider a single data point from this week’s New York Times/Siena College poll.“In a head-to-head contest with Mr. DeSantis,” The Times wrote, “Mr. Trump still received 22 percent among voters who believe he has committed serious federal crimes — a greater share than the 17 percent that Mr. DeSantis earned from the entire G.O.P. electorate.”If Mr. Trump does well among Republican voters who already think he’s a criminal, what hope do his G.O.P. opponents have of exploiting this latest indictment? More

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      How Jack Smith Quickly Brought Two Indictments Against Trump

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      Last fall, a largely unknown former prosecutor with a beard and a brisk gait flew unnoticed to Washington from The Hague after being summoned to a secret meeting by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.Jack Smith’s job interview would remain unknown to all but a handful of department officials until hours before he was appointed special counsel to oversee two investigations into former President Donald J. Trump in mid-November.Over the past few months of frenetic activity, Mr. Smith’s anonymity has vanished. He has now indicted Mr. Trump twice: in June, for risking national security secrets by taking classified documents from the White House, and on Tuesday, in connection with his widespread efforts to subvert democracy and overturn an election in 2020 he clearly lost.And he has taken these actions with remarkable speed, aggressiveness and apparent indifference to collateral political consequences.Mr. Smith has now indicted former President Donald J. Trump twice.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“He’s going at a very fast clip — not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good — to the point that I sometimes worry they might be going a little too fast and haven’t buttoned everything up,” said Ryan Goodman, a professor at the New York University School of Law, before the release of the indictment in the election case.Mr. Smith told reporters that the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was “fueled by lies” — Mr. Trump’s lies — during brief remarks on Tuesday, after a jury in Washington indicted the former president on four counts.Mr. Smith is not the first special counsel to investigate Mr. Trump. From 2017 to 2019, Robert S. Mueller III examined ties between Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. In his final report, he laid out a frantic effort by Mr. Trump to thwart a federal inquiry but ultimately cited a Justice Department policy in not making a determination on whether the sitting president had committed a crime. Mr. Smith, by contrast, faces no such limits, given that Mr. Trump is no longer in office.But where Mr. Mueller took two years to conclude his investigations into Mr. Trump, Mr. Smith — who took over investigations into Mr. Trump that were several months old — delivered his basic assessment in two criminal investigations in a little over eight months.Beyond the contrast in circumstances and timing, there are undeniable differences between the two men, rooted in their respective ages, experiences, management styles and prosecutorial philosophies, that have shaped their divergent charging decisions.“His disposition, compared to Mueller, seems very different — he’s working against the clock, Mueller moved a lot more slowly,” said Mr. Goodman, who is a co-founder of Just Security, an online publication that has closely monitored the Trump investigations.Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have accused Mr. Smith, without evidence, of pursuing a politically motivated investigation intended to destroy Mr. Trump’s chances of retaking the White House, including by leaking details of the case. But department officials have said Mr. Smith is committed to conducting a fair investigation, and he has defended his own lawyers against attacks from the Trump team, who accuse them of using unethical tactics.The former president has taken to calling Mr. Smith “deranged,” and some of his supporters have threatened the special counsel, his family and his team — prompting the U.S. Marshals to spend $1.9 million to provide protection for those who have been targeted, according to federal expense reports that cover the first four months of his tenure. Mr. Smith was flanked by a three-person security detail inside his own building when he delivered remarks to reporters on Tuesday.Mr. Mueller was an established and trusted national figure when he was appointed special counsel, unlike Mr. Smith, who was virtually unknown outside the department and drew a mixed record during his tenure. Mr. Mueller had already solidified a reputation as the most important F.B.I. director since J. Edgar Hoover, after protecting and reshaping the bureau at a time when some were calling for breaking it up following the intelligence failures that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel, was an established and trusted national figure when he was appointed.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesBut there was, at times, a gap between the perception of Mr. Mueller and his ability to execute a difficult job under fire. Already in his mid-70s, he struck many of those who working with him as a notably diminished figure who, in testifying before Congress at the end of the investigation, was not entirely in command of the facts of his complex investigation.By comparison, Mr. Smith is someone who rose to the upper echelons of the Justice Department but is not well known outside of law enforcement circles. At 54, Mr. Smith, a lifelong prosecutor, is leading the investigation at the height of his career, not at the end of it.Mr. Smith is fresh off a stint as a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague and took over two investigations that were already well down the road. Mr. Smith sees himself as a ground-level prosecutor paid to make a series of fast decisions. He is determined to do everything he can to quickly strengthen a case (or end it) — by squeezing witnesses and using prosecutorial tools, such as summoning potential targets of prosecution before a grand jury to emphasize the seriousness of his inquiries, people close to him have said.When Mr. Smith took over as chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity unit in 2010, the unit was reeling from the collapse of a criminal case against former Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. In his first few months on the job, he closed several prominent investigations into members of Congress without charges.At the time, Mr. Smith brushed off the suggestion that he had lost his nerve. “If I were the sort of person who could be cowed,” he said, “I would find another line of work.”Among his more notable corruption cases was a conviction of Robert McDonnell, the Republican former governor of Virginia, that was later overturned by the Supreme Court, and a conviction of former Representative Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona, whom Mr. Trump pardoned during his final hours as president.Mr. Smith appears to be somewhat more involved than Mr. Mueller in the granular details of his investigations. Even so, he seldom sits in personally on witness interviews — and spoke only sparingly during two meetings with Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers, delegating the discussions to subordinates, according to people familiar with the situation.Mr. Smith’s stony style, intentional or not, has the effect of sowing considerable unease across a conference table or courtroom.James Trusty, who quit the former president’s defense team a day after meeting with Mr. Smith’s team in June, worked for years with Mr. Smith as a senior criminal prosecutor at Justice Department headquarters and told associates he was a “serious” adversary not to be underestimated. Other lawyers said Mr. Smith’s team has fed the sense of mystery by describing him in veiled or cryptic terms, with one calling him “the man behind the curtain.”He has been more public-facing than Mr. Mueller in one critical respect — delivering short, sober statements to the news media after each grand jury indictment.Mr. Mueller said little when faced with a barrage of falsehoods pushed publicly by Mr. Trump and his allies about him and his investigative team. But at a news conference after Mr. Trump was indicted in the documents case, Mr. Smith seemed to be speaking with an added purpose: to rebut claims that one of his prosecutors, Jay I. Bratt, had inappropriately pressured a defense lawyer representing one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.“The prosecutors in my office are among the most talented and experienced in the Department of Justice,” he said. “They have investigated this case hewing to the highest ethical standards.”While much attention has centered on Mr. Smith, most of the day-to-day work on critical elements of the case has been done by several prosecutors known for their aggressive approaches.One of them is J.P. Cooney, the former leader of the public corruption division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. Mr. Cooney has worked on several politically fraught trials and investigations that drew the ire of Republicans and Democrats alike.He unsuccessfully prosecuted two Democrats — Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Greg Craig, a former White House counsel during the Obama administration — and investigated Andrew G. McCabe, the former F.B.I. deputy director, who was vilified by Mr. Trump for the bureau’s Russia investigation. (Mr. McCabe was never prosecuted.)More recently, Mr. Cooney oversaw the lawyers prosecuting Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime political adviser to Mr. Trump. The lawyers quit in protest after the Justice Department under William P. Barr intervened in his sentencing. (Mr. Cooney was deeply upset by the intervention, but he said the case was “not the hill worth dying on” according to Aaron Zelinsky, a career prosecutor, who testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2020.)A second key player is Thomas P. Windom, who was brought in nearly a year before Mr. Smith’s appointment to coordinate the complicated Jan. 6 investigation that had once been seated in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.Mr. Smith had a stint as a war crimes prosecutor at The Hague, in the Netherlands.Pool photo by Peter DejongMr. Smith has relied on F.B.I. agents to perform investigative tasks, which is not uncommon for special counsels. But the F.B.I. is not walled off from Mr. Smith’s investigation, unlike the agents who were detailed to work for John H. Durham, a special counsel who investigated the origins of the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation.In a letter to House Republicans in June, Carlos F. Uriarte, the Justice Department’s legislative affairs director, disclosed that Mr. Smith employed about 26 special agents, with additional agents being brought on from “time to time” for specific tasks related to the investigations.Mr. Smith, unlike many previous special counsels, did not hire most of the staff: He inherited two existing Trump investigations and moved them from Justice Department headquarters to his new office across town. Some of the investigative legwork was also done by investigators with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and agents with the Justice Department’s inspector general working alongside Mr. Windom at one point.He has, however, exerted direct control over both inquiries, trying to keep even the most quotidian information about his efforts away from the news media, and been present, if sotto voce, at the most critical moments.During Mr. Trump’s arraignment in Miami in June, Mr. Smith sat in the gallery, closely watching the proceedings. Some in the courtroom suggested he stared at Mr. Trump for much of the hearing, sizing him up.But that was not really the case. He listened intently to the lawyers on both sides, at times leaning in toward a colleague to make a whispered comment or ask a question.Alan Feuer More

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      After Indictment, DeSantis Suggests Trump Can’t Get a Fair Trial in D.C.

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida raced to respond to news that former President Donald J. Trump had been indicted a third time not by opining one way or the other on the new federal charges, but by leveling an unusual attack at residents of the District of Columbia, where the case is being prosecuted.Suggesting that Mr. Trump could not get a fair trial if the jurors were residents of the nation’s capital, an overwhelmingly Democratic city, Mr. DeSantis called for enacting reforms to let Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, D.C. to their home districts.“Washington, D.C. is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality,” Mr. DeSantis wrote on Twitter. “One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicization of the rule of law. No more excuses — I will end the weaponization of the federal government.”The judge assigned to Mr. Trump, who was indicted on charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is Tanya S. Chutkan, a D.C. District Court judge who has routinely issued harsh penalties in Jan. 6-related cases against people who stormed the Capitol.The Republican candidates, who have sought to overtake the former president’s substantial lead in early polls with little success, have campaigned amid a backdrop of Mr. Trump’s legal battles that have sucked up valuable airtime and dominated media coverage. Here’s what the others said on Tuesday: Former Vice President Mike Pence, who was present at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack and was the target of some rioters — and whom the indictment describes as a key target of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election — said that the indictment “serves as an important reminder: Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, in a statement to The Times, echoed a common refrain among Republicans: that the Justice Department, under the Biden administration, had been weaponized against Mr. Biden’s political opponents. He referenced the case against Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s son, and said, “We’re watching Biden’s D.O.J. continue to hunt Republicans while protecting Democrats.”Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur and one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal defenders in the 2024 field, called the indictment “un-American.” He sought to absolve Mr. Trump of any responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and reiterated his previous promise that, if elected, he would pardon Mr. Trump. “The corrupt federal police just won’t stop until they’ve achieved their mission: eliminate Trump,” he said, and added: “Trump isn’t responsible for what happened on Jan 6. The real cause was systematic and pervasive censorship of citizens in the year leading up to it.”Former Representative Will Hurd of Texas, who has refused to pledge his support to Mr. Trump if he is the eventual nominee, was the first candidate to respond to the new indictment. “Let me be crystal clear: Trump’s presidential bid is driven by an attempt to stay out of prison and scam his supporters into footing his legal bills,” Mr. Hurd wrote. “His denial of the 2020 election results and actions on Jan. 6 show he’s unfit for office.”Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who is running an explicitly anti-Trump campaign, reiterated his earlier calls for Mr. Trump to quit his campaign, calling him “morally responsible for the attack on our democracy.” Mr. Hutchinson said that if Mr. Trump does not drop out of the race, “voters must choose a different path.” More

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      Here Are the Charges Trump Faces in the Jan. 6 Case

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      The newly unsealed indictment of former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday leveled four criminal counts against him over his efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election: a conspiracy to violate civil rights, a conspiracy to defraud the government, the corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding and a conspiracy to carry out such obstruction.Here is a closer look at the charges.One of the charges, a conspiracy to violate rights, is Section 241 of Title 18 of the United States Code. A conviction on this charge is punishable by up to five years in prison.Congress enacted what is now Section 241 after the Civil War to go after white Americans in the South, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, who used terrorism to prevent formerly enslaved African Americans from voting. But in a series of cases in the 20th century, the Supreme Court upheld expanding use of the statute to election-fraud conspiracies, like ballot-box stuffing.In invoking the statute, the indictment frames it as “a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.” Essentially, Mr. Smith has accused Mr. Trump of trying to rig the outcome of the election to falsely claim victory.“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted and certified,” the indictment said.The indictment cites five means by which Mr. Trump and his accused co-conspirators sought to reverse the results of the election, including pushing state legislators and election officials to change electoral votes won by his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., in his favor instead.“That is, on the pretext of baseless fraud claims, the defendant pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors in favor of the defendant,” the indictment said.It also cited the recruitment of fake electors in swing states Mr. Biden won, trying to wield the power of the Justice Department to fuel lies about election conspiracy, and pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to delay the certification of the election or reject legitimate electors.The special counsel has accused Mr. Trump of trying to rig the outcome of the 2020 election to falsely claim victory.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesAnd when all that failed, it said, Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators “exploited” the violent disruption of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, by “redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.”The indictment, which recounts each of those episodes in detail, relies on the same basic facts for the other counts against Mr. Trump.One of those, conspiracy to defraud the United States, involves Section 371. Any conviction on this charge is also punishable by up to five years in prison.The possibility of this charge has long been part of public discussion of the investigation. In March 2022, for example, a federal judge ruled that emails of John Eastman, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump in the effort, were most likely involved in that crime and qualified for an exemption from attorney-client privilege.And the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 recommended in its final report in December 2022 that the Justice Department charge Mr. Trump and others with this offense.The third and fourth counts are closely related: corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to commit that crime. Both are provisions of Section 1512. Any conviction under that statute is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.Prosecutors have used this law to charge hundreds of people who participated in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, accusing them of obstructing the joint session of Congress to certify Mr. Biden’s victory.In April, a federal appeals court upheld the viability of applying that charge in relation to the Capitol attack, but using it against Mr. Trump may raise different issues since he did not personally participate in the riot. More

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      Donald Trump es acusado de cuatro cargos

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      El expresidente, que está en campaña para regresar a la Casa Blanca, ha sido imputado por sus intentos de usar los mecanismos del Estado para permanecer en el poder.El expresidente Donald Trump fue imputado el martes por sus esfuerzos generalizados de revertir las elecciones de 2020, luego de una amplia investigación federal sobre su intento de aferrarse al poder después de perder la presidencia ante Joseph Biden.La imputación la presentó el fiscal especial Jack Smith en la Corte Federal de Distrito en Washington.Se acusa a Trump de tres conspiraciones: una para defraudar a Estados Unidos, otra para obstruir un procedimiento oficial del gobierno y una tercera para privar al pueblo de derechos civiles previstos en la ley federal o la Constitución.“Cada una de estas conspiraciones, que se aprovechaban de la desconfianza generalizada que el acusado creaba a través de mentiras generalizadas y desestabilizadoras sobre el fraude electoral, atacaban una función esencial del gobierno federal de Estados Unidos: el proceso nacional de recolección, conteo y certificación de resultados de las elecciones presidenciales”, decía la acusación.También se indicó que Trump tuvo seis conspiradores pero no los nombró.Los cargos representan un momento extraordinario en la historia estadounidense: un expresidente, que está en campaña para regresar a la Casa Blanca, ha sido imputado por sus intentos de usar los mecanismos del poder gubernamental con el fin de trastocar la democracia y quedarse en el cargo contra la voluntad de los votantes.La acusación se produjo más de dos años y medio después de que una turba favorable a Trump —alentada por los discursos incendiarios del exmandatario y sus aliados— irrumpieron en el Capitolio el 6 de enero de 2021, en el peor ataque contra la sede del Congreso desde la Guerra de 1812.Un gran jurado federal devolvió la acusación unos ocho meses después de que el procurador general Merrick Garland nombrara a Smith, un fiscal federal de carrera, para que supervisara dos investigaciones contra Trump, una sobre el manejo de documentos clasificados y la otra sobre la manipulación de las elecciones. Sucedió un año después de que la Cámara de Representantes realizó audiencias de alto nivel sobre el ataque del 6 de enero y sus causas que dieron como resultado pruebas extensas de los esfuerzos de Trump por revertir los resultados electorales.Garland procedió a nombrar a Smith como fiscal especial unos días después de que Trump declarara que volvía a postularse.El expresidente enfrenta dos acusaciones federales distintas. En junio, Smith presentó cargos en Florida acusando a Trump —el principal contendiente a la nominación republicana a la presidencia para 2024— de retener de manera ilegal un conjunto de documentos de defensa nacional muy delicados y luego obstaculizar los intentos del gobierno para recuperarlos. Se espera que ese caso llegue a juicio en mayo.El esquema que Smith imputó el martes en el caso de la elección se desarrolló sobre todo en los dos meses transcurridos entre el Día de las Elecciones en noviembre de 2020 y el ataque al Capitolio. En ese tiempo. Trump participó en un amplio repertorio de esfuerzos para permanecer en el poder, a pesar de haber perdido frente a Biden en la contienda presidencial.Trump también enfrenta dificultades legales en las cortes estatales, además de los cargos a nivel federal en los casos de los documentos y las elecciones.La oficina del fiscal de distrito de Manhattan lo acusó en un caso enfocado en pagos hechos a la estrella porno Stormy Daniels con el fin de acallarla antes de las elecciones de 2016.Los esfuerzos de Trump y sus aliados para revertir su derrota electoral también son motivo de otra investigación a cargo del fiscal de distrito del Condado de Fulton, Georgia. Parece ser que esa indagatoria podría formular cargos este mes.Alan Feuer cubre los tribunales y la justicia penal para la sección Metro. Ha escrito sobre mafiosos, cárceles, mala conducta policial, condenas injustas, corrupción gubernamental y El Chapo, el jefe encarcelado del cártel de Sinaloa. Se unió al Times en 1999.Maggie Haberman es corresponsal de la Casa Blanca. Se unió al Times en 2015 como corresponsal de campaña y fue parte del equipo que ganó un premio Pulitzer en 2018 por informar sobre los asesores del presidente Trump y sus conexiones con Rusia. More

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      The Republicans Who Could Qualify for the First Presidential Debate

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      At least seven candidates appear to have made the cut so far for the first Republican presidential debate on Aug. 23. Trump(may not attend) Trump(may not attend) The latest polling and fund-raising data show that the playing field is narrowing for the Republican presidential debate scheduled for later this month. Although former President Donald J. […] More

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      Matt DePerno, Trump Meddler in Michigan, Is Charged in Election Breach

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      A key figure in a multistate effort to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. DePerno lost his race for Michigan attorney general in 2022. He later finished second to lead the state’s Republican Party.Matthew DePerno, a key orchestrator of efforts to help former President Donald J. Trump try to overturn the 2020 election in Michigan and an unsuccessful candidate for state attorney general last year, was arraigned on four felony charges on Tuesday, according to documents released by D.J. Hilson, the special prosecutor handling the investigation.The charges against Mr. DePerno, which include undue possession of a voting machine and a conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a computer or computer system, come after a nearly yearlong investigation in one of the battleground states that cemented the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president.Former State Representative Daire Rendon was also charged with two crimes, including a conspiracy to illegally obtain a voting machine and false pretenses.Both Mr. DePerno and Ms. Rendon were arraigned remotely on Tuesday before Chief Judge Jeffery Matis, according to Richard Lynch, the court administrator for Oakland County’s Sixth Circuit, and remained free on bond.The charges were first reported by The Detroit News.Mr. DePerno denied any wrongdoing and said that his efforts “uncovered significant security flaws” in a statement from his lawyer, Paul Stablein.“He maintains his innocence and firmly believes that these charges are not based upon any actual truth and are motivated primarily by politics rather than evidence,” Mr. Stablein said.The criminal inquiry in Michigan has largely been overshadowed by developments in Georgia, where a grand jury is weighing charges against Mr. Trump for trying to subvert the election, but both are part of the ongoing reckoning over the conspiracy theories about election machines promoted by Mr. Trump and his allies.The efforts to legitimize the falsehoods and conspiracy theories promoted widely by Mr. Trump and his allies continued long after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and after Mr. Biden took office. In Arizona, such efforts included the discredited election audit of Maricopa County led by Republicans in the state legislature.In a statement, Mr. Hilson said, “Although our office made no recommendations to the grand jury as to whether an indictment should be issued or not, we support the grand jury’s decision and we will prosecute each of the cases as they have directed in the sole interests of justice.”Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general and a Democrat who went on to defeat Mr. DePerno in the November election, has not been involved in the investigation since the appointment of a special prosecutor in August last year. In a statement on Tuesday, Ms. Nessel said that the allegations “caused undeniable harm to our democracy” and issued a warning for the future.“The 2024 presidential election will soon be upon us. The lies espoused by attorneys involved in this matter, and those who worked in concert with them across the nation, wreaked havoc and sowed distrust within our democratic institutions and processes,” Ms. Nessel said. “We hope for swift justice in the courts.”The charges stemmed from a bizarre plot hatched by a group of conservative activists in early 2021 to pick apart voting machines in at least three Michigan counties, in some cases taking them to hotels and Airbnb rentals as they hunted for evidence of election fraud.In the weeks after the 2020 election, he drew widespread attention and the admiration of Mr. Trump when he filed a lawsuit challenging the vote tallies in Antrim County, a rural area in Northern Michigan where a minor clerical error fueled conspiracy theories.He falsely claimed that voting machines there had been rigged, a premise that was rejected as “idiotic” by William P. Barr, an attorney general under Mr. Trump, and “demonstrably false” by Republicans in the Michigan Senate.Mr. Hilson, the prosecutor in Muskegon County appointed as special prosecutor, had initially delayed bringing charges, asking a state judge to determine whether it was against state law to take possession of a voting machine without the secretary of state’s permission or a court order. A judge determined last month that doing so was against the law, clearing the way for charges.Democrats swept the governor’s race and other statewide contests last fall, in addition to flipping the full Legislature for the first time in decades. Mr. DePerno, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, lost the attorney general’s race by eight percentage points.This year, Mr. DePerno had been a front-runner to lead the Michigan Republican Party after its disappointing showing in last year’s midterm election, but he finished second to another election-denier: Kristina Karamo.In his campaign to lead the G.O.P. in Michigan, Mr. DePerno had vowed to pack the party’s leadership ranks with Trump loyalists, close primaries to just Republicans and ratchet up the distribution of absentee ballot applications to party members — despite what he said was lingering opposition to voting by mail within the party’s ranks.His candidacy was supported by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who has spread conspiracy theories about election fraud and appeared at a fund-raising reception for Mr. DePerno in Lansing on the night before the chairmanship vote.Mr. DePerno lost to Ms. Karamo after three rounds of balloting at the state party convention, a process that was slowed for several hours by the use of paper ballots and hand counting.Danny Hakim More