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      Ron DeSantis Is Young, Has Little Kids and Wants America to Know It

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      At 44, he is more than three decades younger than Donald Trump and Joe Biden. He is subtly playing up that age gap, even if his right-wing views leave him out of step with many younger voters.As top-tier presidential candidates go, Ron DeSantis is something of a rarity these days. He was born after the Vietnam War, he came of age when computers were common in American homes and he still has young children of his own, rather than enough grandchildren to fill a basketball team.Mr. DeSantis would be 46 on Inauguration Day if elected, younger than every president since John F. Kennedy. It’s a fact he doesn’t state explicitly, but his campaign has set out to make sure voters get it.The Florida governor talks frequently about having the “energy and discipline” needed for the White House, keeping a busy schedule of morning and evening events. He and his wife, Casey DeSantis, often speak about their young children, who are 6, 5 and 3 and have joined their parents on the campaign trail. One of the few candidates with kids still at home, Mr. DeSantis regularly highlights his parental worries about schools and popular culture as he presses his right-wing social agenda.When he signed the state budget on Thursday, he joked that a tax break on one of parenthood’s most staggering expenses — diapers — had come too late for his family, though not by much.“I came home, and my wife’s like, ‘Why didn’t you do that in 2019 when our kids were still in diapers?’” Mr. DeSantis said.The evident goal is to draw a stark contrast with his main rivals, President Biden, 80, and former President Donald J. Trump, who just turned 77, both grandfathers who have sons (Hunter and Don Jr.) older than Mr. DeSantis. Voters have expressed concern about the age and fitness of both men, especially Mr. Biden.Roughly two-thirds of registered voters believe Mr. Biden is too old to effectively serve another four-year term as president, according to a national poll conducted by Quinnipiac University last month. Only 36 percent of registered voters said the same of Mr. Trump, suggesting that Mr. DeSantis’s relative youth might be more of an advantage in a general election than in the primaries.Still, Mr. DeSantis, 44, rarely talks directly about his age, and the party he represents — older and whiter than the country at large — has never been known for nominating young presidential candidates who ride a wave of energy to the White House, as Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did.Mr. DeSantis rarely talks directly about his age, and his views are out of step with many in his own generation. He relies on subtler means to remind voters of his relative youthfulness.David Degner for The New York TimesHis conservative views on abortion, climate change and how race is taught — among other issues — have left Mr. DeSantis out of step with many members of his own generation. Majorities of voters in his age bracket want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, think climate change is a very serious problem and support the Black Lives Matter movement. Only about one in four voters between the ages of 35 and 49 have a favorable view of Mr. DeSantis, according to the Quinnipiac poll.Mr. DeSantis also hardly seems to have a natural knack for capturing youthful enthusiasm in the way that Mr. Obama did. The last major candidate to run on a platform of generational change, the 44th president was able to count on the support of young and influential cultural icons, including hip-hop artists.Other than railing against “wokeness,” Mr. DeSantis scarcely mentions cultural influences like television shows, movies, music or social media. One of his attempts to reach younger people — announcing his campaign on Twitter with Elon Musk — went haywire when the livestream repeatedly glitched out. His rally soundtrack is a generic mix of country and classic rock, augmented by a DeSantis tribute anthem to the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama.” He doesn’t talk much about his love of golf or discuss his hobbies. His references to parenthood are often prompted by his wife.But his children — Madison, Mason and Mamie — are highly visible. Neat stacks of toys, including baseball bats and a bucket of baseballs, are usually arrayed on the front porch of the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, visitors say.No presidential family has raised children as young as the DeSantis brood since the Kennedys, prompting hopes among supporters of a conservative Camelot at the White House. The comparison is one Ms. DeSantis especially seems to be leaning into. The elegant gowns and white gloves she sometimes favors have seemed to evoke the wardrobe of Jacqueline Kennedy.The couple’s family-centric image has softened views of Mr. DeSantis among some Democrats in Florida. “I don’t like him as a politician,” Janie Jackson, 52, a Democratic voter from Miami who runs a housekeeping business, said in an interview this past week. “But I think he’s a good father and husband.”Mr. DeSantis handed one of his daughters to wife, Casey, at a rodeo in Ponca, Okla., this month. His young family is core to his image as a presidential candidate.Thomas Beaumont/Associated PressMr. Trump, who is twice divorced and has five children with three different women, could be particularly vulnerable to such comparisons.“Engaging with his family helps humanize him,” Dave Carney, a New Hampshire-based Republican strategist, said of Mr. DeSantis. “He’s a dad. People can relate to that. It gives him credibility to talk about family issues.”But voters can sniff out shtick, Mr. Carney added. “There’s a balance,” he said. “You don’t want your kids to seem like a prop.”Younger Republicans do seem to be responding to Mr. DeSantis. A recent poll by The Economist and YouGov found that the governor received his highest level of support from Republicans and Republican leaners aged 18 to 29, although he was still trailing Mr. Trump by 39 percent to 27 percent in that group.At almost every stop on their swings through the early nominating states, Mr. DeSantis and Ms. DeSantis, who often joins her husband onstage to deliver her own remarks, mention their young family.On a recent trip to Iowa, Mr. DeSantis and his wife, 42, arrived at the state fairgrounds with their children in tow. All three were wearing DeSantis-branded shirts with a “Top Gov” logo on the back. They signed a bus belonging to a pro-DeSantis super PAC — his son did so while wearing a baseball glove — as Ms. DeSantis, sporting a black leather “Where Woke Goes to Die” jacket despite the heat, knelt down to help. Their eldest, Madison, wrote her name in red and drew a heart above it.“Did you guys write your stuff on there?” Mr. DeSantis asked, after wading through attendees while lifting up one daughter. The kids then moved on to an ice cream giveaway organized by the super PAC.“Want me to hold you?” Mr. DeSantis asked his son, Mason, before picking him up as the boy continued to eat ice cream.On the stump, Mr. DeSantis usually talks about his children to emphasize policy points, particularly on education, or to accentuate his long-running feud with Disney, which he accuses of indoctrinating children.“My wife and I just believe that kids should be able to go to school, watch cartoons, just be kids, without having some agenda shoved down their throats,” Mr. DeSantis said on a visit to New Hampshire. “So we take that very seriously, and we’ve done an awful lot to be able to support parents.”Ms. DeSantis, who has played a prominent role in her husband’s campaign, usually prompts him to open up about their children. Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis’s approach to family issues appeals specifically to conservative Republicans and has been criticized by Democrats and civil rights activists. He has signed legislation banning abortions after six weeks, outlawing gender-transition care for minors, imposing punishments on businesses that allow children to see performances like drag shows and further limiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.On the campaign trail, the DeSantises often try to temper the polarizing nature of his political persona with tales of family life.Ms. DeSantis usually coaxes her husband to open up about their kids, including his adventures taking them for fast food at a restaurant populated by inebriated college students and, in a sign of the couple’s religiosity, having them baptized with water from the Sea of Galilee in Israel.At one stop in New Hampshire, Ms. DeSantis apologized to the crowd for her raspy voice, suggesting she had strained her vocal cords in an effort to protect the furniture in the governor’s mansion from one of her daughters.“I had a very long, in-depth conversation with that 3-year-old as to why she cannot color on the dining room table with permanent markers,” she said.On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis usually talks about his children to emphasize policy points, particularly on education, and temper the polarizing nature of his political persona.Thomas Beaumont/Associated PressNow, Mr. DeSantis has competition from another youthful, if far less known, candidate from his home state: Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, 45, whose campaign announcement video this past week shows him jogging through the city and mentioning his children.Another lesser-known rival, Vivek Ramaswamy, has promoted himself as the first millennial to run for president as a Republican. Mr. Ramaswamy, 37, also has young children, sons ages 11 months and 3 years who have joined him on the trail. Campaigning with kids sometimes requires special accommodations, Mr. Ramaswamy said in a recent interview. His campaign bus, for instance, features two car seats and a diaper-changing table.At the end of an event in New Hampshire this month, he turned away from the crowd to thank his older son, Karthik, for behaving so well during his speech.“He got a bigger round of applause than I did,” Mr. Ramaswamy recounted.Shane Goldmacher More

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      DeSantis Takes Clear Aim at Trump in Nevada, an Important Early State

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida avoided mentioning Donald Trump at a G.O.P. fund-raiser in Nevada, but he took clear aim at the former president.In black boots, jeans and an untucked shirt — the fund-raiser dress code specified “ranch casual” — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Saturday tried to persuade Republican voters in Nevada still loyal to former President Donald J. Trump that the party’s formula for winning elections was beyond its shelf life.Headlining a conservative jamboree in the swing state, where loyalties to Mr. Trump still run deep, Mr. DeSantis never mentioned his rival for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination during a speech in Gardnerville, Nev.But the Florida governor sought to draw a not-so-subtle contrast between himself and the former president, a onetime ally who is the party’s overwhelming front-runner in a crowded Republican field. He described last year’s midterm elections as another disappointment in a string of defeats for the party, while touting his more than 1.2 million-vote margin of victory in his re-election last November.“We’ve developed a culture of losing in this party,” Mr. DeSantis said, adding, “You’re not going to get a mulligan on the 2024 election.”Mr. DeSantis spoke for nearly an hour at the Basque Fry, a barbecue fund-raiser that supports conservative groups in Nevada.Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Trump, hit back at Mr. DeSantis in a statement to The Times on Saturday.“Ron DeSantis is a proven liar and fraud,” he said. “That’s why he’s collapsing in the polls — both nationally and statewide. He should be careful before his chances in 2028 completely disappear.”The Basque Fry has risen in stature since it was first held in 2015, drawing a stream of Republican presidential candidates to the Corley Ranch in the Carson Valley with its rugged backdrop of the Sierra Nevada.Past headliners have included Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who earlier this month entered the race, had been scheduled to attend in 2017 but canceled because Hurricane Harvey was bearing down on the Gulf Coast.It’s an opportunity for White House aspirants to make an elevator pitch to rank-and-file conservatives in Nevada, a crucial early proving ground that in 2021 replaced its party-run caucuses with a primary. Republicans oppose the change, passed by the State Legislature, and are suing the state to keep the caucuses.Mr. DeSantis’s visit to Nevada punctuated a week in which Mr. Trump dominated the news cycle with his arraignment on Tuesday in a 37-count federal indictment over his handling of classified documents after leaving office.As Mr. Trump’s chief Republican rival, Mr. DeSantis did not mention the indictment outright, but instead echoed G.O.P. attacks on the Justice Department and pledged to replace the director of the F.B.I. if elected.“We are going to end the weaponization of this government once and for all,” Mr. DeSantis said.In 2016, the last presidential election during which the G.O.P. did not have a sitting president, Mr. Trump won the Republican caucuses in Nevada, where rural activists and Mormon voters wield influence. He finished 22 percentage points ahead of his closest rival, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.During the midterm elections last fall, Mr. Trump campaigned for Republicans in Nevada at a rally in Minden, which is next to Gardnerville. The elections turned out to be a mixed showing for the G.O.P., which flipped the governor’s office but lost pivotal races for the Senate and the House, including the seat held by Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat who had been considered vulnerable.Ms. Cortez Masto’s defeat of Adam Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general who was the de facto host of Saturday’s fund-raiser, helped give Democrats outright control of the Senate.Mr. Laxalt, who was a roommate of Mr. DeSantis when they were both Navy officers, introduced him to the crowd of about 2,500 people.“This is the kind of leader we need,” he said.Mr. Laxalt began the Basque Fry in 2015, building on a tradition that was started by his grandfather, Paul Laxalt, a former United States senator and governor of Nevada who died in 2018.Northern Nevada has one of the highest concentrations in the nation of people of Basque ancestry, a group that includes Mr. Laxalt, who also ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018.Jim McCrossin, 78, a retiree from Virginia City, Nev., who surveyed the ranch in a DeSantis cap, said that he had previously supported Mr. Trump but worried about his electability.“I just think there’s so much hate for him,” he said, adding, “Trump’s been arrested twice, and that’s probably not the last time.”He said that Mr. DeSantis “doesn’t have the drama.”His household is divided: His wife, Jacquie McCrossin, said that she still favored Mr. Trump, even though she had on a DeSantis cap.Shellie Wood, 72, a retired nail technician and gold miner from Winnemucca, Nev., who sported a Trump 2020 camouflage cap, said that Mr. DeSantis would make a strong running mate for Mr. Trump, but that it was not his moment.Still, Ms. Wood said Mr. DeSantis had made a positive impression on her with his record in Florida.“He’s stood up against Disney, and that’s something a lot of people didn’t have the gumption to do,” she said.Mr. DeSantis repeatedly reminded the crowd of his feud with Disney, which he and other Republicans turned into an avatar of “woke” culture after the company criticized a state law that prohibited classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.In the buildup to his formal debut as a candidate last month, Mr. DeSantis grappled with being labeled by the media and rivals as awkward at retail politics and in one-on-one settings with voters.Before stepping up to the podium, with the snow-peaked mountains behind him, Mr. DeSantis mingled with a group of V.I.P.s for about 30 minutes in a reception that was closed to the news media.Mr. DeSantis waves as he walks behind his wife, Casey DeSantis, and their children, Madison, Mamie and Mason.Jason Henry for The New York TimesOutside the reception, Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, who has been an omnipresent campaigner and influence on the policies of her husband’s administration, took selfies and signed autographs for local Republicans. She had on boots, too.While Mr. DeSantis impressed many of the attendees, there was still a pro-Trump undercurrent at the event. Shawn Newman, 58, a truck driver from Fernley, Nev., who hovered near a table with DeSantis campaign swag while wearing a ubiquitous red Trump cap, said Mr. Trump was still his candidate.“Trump’s above their reach,” he said of the other Republican candidates.As Mr. DeSantis worked a rope line after his speech, one man handed him a campaign hat to sign. In his other hand, he clutched a Trump cap. More

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      To Jail or Not to Jail

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      WASHINGTON — Studying “Hamlet,” the revenge play about a rotten kingdom, I tried for years to fathom Hamlet’s motives, state of mind, family web, obsessions.His consciousness was so complex, Harold Bloom wrote, it seemed bigger than the play itself.Now I’m mired in another revenge play about a rotten kingdom, “Trump.” I’ve tried for years to fathom Donald Trump’s motives, state of mind, family web, obsessions.The man who dumbed down the office of the presidency is a less gratifying subject than the smarty-pants doomed prince. Hamlet is transcendent, while Trump is merely transgressive. But we can’t shuffle off the mortal coil of Trump. He has burrowed, tick-like, into the national bloodstream, causing all kinds of septic responses.Trump is feral, focused on his own survival, with no sense of shame or boundaries or restraint.“In that sense,” David Axelrod told me, “being a sociopath really works for him.”As Axelrod wrote in The Atlantic, “Over time, Trump has worked to discredit and demean any institution that raises inconvenient truths or seeks to hold him accountable for his actions — not just media, but law enforcement and the election system itself.”It remains to be seen, as Axelrod has noted, whether indictments will serve as kryptonite against Trump or energy packs fueling his return to the Oval Office.After believing time and time again that Trump had self-destructed — after he denigrated John McCain, after we found out he had pretended to be his own spokesman, after the “Access Hollywood” tape, and after he shared classified material with Russian diplomats — I have learned to wait and see whether Trump will preposterously get away with things. He has spent his entire life cutting corners and dancing on the edge of legal. But Jack Smith, the special counsel, is teaching him that you can’t conduct a presidency that way.So we must contemplate Trump’s weird preoccupation with his boxes full of state secrets.“He held onto them. Why?” Mitt Romney asked reporters on Capitol Hill. “That’s the question. Why is the country going to have to go through all this angst and tumult? Why didn’t he just turn the documents in?”The papers spilling out of boxes are a snapshot of Trump’s id. He raised his personality to a management style. His disordered mind has caused public disorder.During his presidency, The Times reported, “his aides began to refer to the boxes full of papers and odds and ends he carted around with him almost everywhere as the ‘beautiful mind’ material. It was a reference to the title of a book and movie depicting the life of John F. Nash Jr., the mathematician with schizophrenia played in the film by Russell Crowe, who covered his office with newspaper clippings, believing they held a Russian code he needed to crack.”The aides used the phrase — which turned up in the indictment — as shorthand for Trump’s organized chaos, how he somehow kept track of what was in the boxes, which he held close as a security blanket. During the 2016 campaign, some reporters said, he traveled with cardboard boxes full of real estate contracts, newspaper clippings and schedules, as though he were carrying his world around with him.The guy likes paper. And, like Louis XIV, he believes “L’État, c’est moi.” His favorite words are personal pronouns and possessive adjectives. Kevin McCarthy is “my Kevin.” Army officers were “my generals.” Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was “my favorite dictator.” In the indictment, a Trump lawyer quotes Trump as warning, “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes.”Is he so addled by narcissism that he sees no distinction between highly sensitive documents belonging to the government and papers he wants to keep? He treats classified maps and nuclear secrets and a Pentagon war plan for Iran like pelts, hunting trophies, or family scrapbook items.He’s like a child, dragging around the things that are important to him. Chris Christie joked about Trump taking some of the boxes on his jet to his club in Bedminster: “He flew the boxes up to New Jersey for summer vacation. What is this? Like, they’re a family member?”It bespeaks a frailty, a need to be bolstered by talismanic items.When he was a real estate dealer and reality star, his office in Trump Tower was papered in framed magazine covers, so that his face stared back at him from every angle, like an infinity mirror.He must worry: Without pieces of paper to prove I am important, am I important?Trump has said one of his favorite movies is “Citizen Kane.” Perhaps the boxes at Xanadu he’s obsessed with, the papers that could make him the locked-up loser he dreads being, have been revealed as his Rosebud.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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      Vivek Ramaswamy Is Offering a Strong Defense of Trump, While Also Running Against Him

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      Vivek Ramaswamy is the lone Republican rival of Donald Trump to wholeheartedly claim the federal indictment is a Democratic attempt to jail the political opposition.In the overheated basement of the Thunder Bay Grille in Davenport, Iowa, on Thursday night, Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur turned Republican presidential candidate, tried out a new opening for his well-practiced stump speech.“Although it would be easier for someone like me to win this primary or win this election if certain people like Donald Trump were not in the race, that’s not how I want to win,” the biotech millionaire told the Scott County Republican faithful who packed the room on the outskirts of this Mississippi River city.“That’s not how we do things in America,” he continued. “We are not a country where the party in power should be able to use police force to indict its political opponents. And I stand not on the politics but on principle.”It was a portentous broadside for a man running to be president, one that questioned the integrity of a justice system that had just brought the first federal charges against a former president. And it is something that Mr. Ramaswamy admits he has wrestled with, given that his assertions could undermine the rule of law that he says he stands by firmly.The comments drew cheers from an audience not ready to repudiate Mr. Trump, but perhaps looking for an alternative.“I admire Trump for what he did for our country; I admire him immensely,” said Linda Chicarelli Renkes, from Rock Island, Ill., just across the Mississippi, who had praised Mr. Ramaswamy for his promise to pardon the former president if elected. “But I’m tired.”The indictment of Mr. Trump on charges that he mishandled some of the nation’s most sensitive military and nuclear secrets, then flagrantly obstructed law enforcement’s efforts to retrieve them, has put Republican political leaders at a moment of choosing between their oft-stated allegiance to law and order and their sensitivities to the passions of their voters.“Although it would be easier for someone like me to win this primary or win this election if certain people like Donald Trump were not in the race, that’s not how I want to win,” Mr. Ramaswamy said at a recent campaign stop in Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMore than any other presidential candidate not named Trump, Mr. Ramaswamy has staked an uncompromising position assailing the charges facing the Republican primary’s front-runner. He has not called the indictment “devastating,” as former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has. He has not called for Mr. Trump to drop out of the race, as former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has.He has not attempted the contortions of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, denouncing federal overreach even while suggesting that anyone mishandling classified documents should be prosecuted. He has not even allowed that the special counsel Jack Smith’s accusations are serious, as have former Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott and former Gov. Nikki Haley, both of South Carolina.Instead, Mr. Ramaswamy has said that while Mr. Trump may have shown some errors of judgment, the Biden administration has dangerously abused its power in order to block the comeback of a political rival. In Davenport, he denounced what he called the “politicized persecution through prosecution” of the enemies of the Biden administration, and promised to pardon Mr. Biden’s victims en masse, whether they be “peaceful protesters” incarcerated for the attack on the Capitol or Mr. Trump.Mr. Ramaswamy polling numbers remain in the very low single digits, and though he has captured some attention for his broadsides against the justice system, he has alienated others with his aggressive rhetoric.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesFor an outsider with no political experience beyond his cable news appearances and his “anti-woke” jeremiads against corporate liberalism, Mr. Ramaswamy is showing some staying power.His poll numbers aren’t great — Mr. Trump’s own pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, released a survey after the indictment putting Mr. Ramaswamy at 2 percent in Iowa, behind five other candidates. But he has received the 40,000 individual donations to qualify for the Republican primary debates, and as of now, has the requisite 1 percent in national polling for the first debate on Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.He also has deep ties to Republican power sources, including the tech financier Peter Thiel and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.But his run to the right, which had already alienated some of his business partners and financial backers, raises a new question: Are Republicans like Mr. Ramaswamy risking the stability of the country for their own political fortunes?While Mr. Ramaswamy is the longest of long shots when it comes to winning the nomination, some fear that the aggressive rhetoric he and other Republicans regularly use — both in defense of Mr. Trump and in attacking the justice system — could cause lasting damage.In an interview on his well-appointed campaign bus, the candidate was circumspect. He agreed that his call for every candidate to pre-emptively promise a pardon to Mr. Trump could breed lawlessness, though he concluded that his offer was defensible because it was narrowly tailored to only the charges laid out in the special counsel’s indictment. If other offenses, such as the transmission of national security secrets to foreign powers, emerged in trial, the deal would be off.He also said he wanted to make “sure that I’m not contributing to a problem that I worry deeply about,” the erosion of the rule of law.Mr. Ramaswamy traveled to Miami this week to hold a news conference outside the courthouse after former President Donald J. Trump’s arraignment. Christian Monterrosa for The New York Times“The thought crosses my mind, but I think the facts are plain,” he said: President Biden has indicted the front-running challenger of the opposing party to thwart his rise.Mr. Biden did no such thing. A federal grand jury brought the indictment, at the behest of a special counsel, named by the attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, precisely to insulate the legal investigation of Mr. Trump from any perceived or real pressure from the president or his political appointees.Mr. Ramaswamy said he was not willing to accept that version of events. He flew to Miami on the morning of Mr. Trump’s arraignment to announce before the television crews assembled at the federal courthouse that he had submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for any and all communications between the White House and the Justice Department’s leadership, and between Justice Department leadership and Mr. Smith.Mr. Ramaswamy does have a law degree from Yale, though he made his wealth not in law but in finance and biotechnology. Nonetheless, he speaks with absolute certainty when he rails against the validity of the federal grand jury’s indictment, which he said “reeks of politicization.” The Presidential Records Act, not the Espionage Act, is the governing legal authority over former presidents, he said, and the records act gives broad latitude to former presidents to retain documents from their years in the White House.Iowans watched a speech by Mr. Ramaswamy in Dubuque, Iowa, on Tuesday. Mr. Ramaswamy argues that many Republican voters already believe his extreme version of how the country’s justice system operates.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThat reasoning has been dismissed by more experienced Republican legal minds, such as Mr. Trump’s own attorney general, William P. Barr, and the retired appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig. Judge Luttig wrote on Twitter on the day of Mr. Trump’s arraignment, “There is not an Attorney General of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president.”Asked about those judgments, Mr. Ramaswamy said he would have to examine the words of people like Mr. Barr and Mr. Luttig more closely. But he offered another defense of his attacks on the legal system: Republican voters already believe them.“To actually recognize a reality that other leaders are reluctant to recognize, I think that is actually net trust-enhancing for our institutions,” he said.Though he may be following the passions of the voters, not leading them, Mr. Ramaswamy insisted that his stand was principled, not political.“I will be deeply disappointed if Donald Trump is unable to run because of these politicized charges against him,” he said.Mr. Ramaswamy’s denunciation of the indictment is only the latest stand in a campaign predicated on his belief that the former president’s “America First” agenda does not belong to Mr. Trump, but to the American people — and that he has the intelligence and guts to take it much farther than Mr. Trump ever could.If Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor and Mr. Trump’s closest competitor, is “Trumpism without Trump,” Mr. Ramaswamy is putting himself forward as Trumpism squared.The appeal has its limits, especially with ardent Trump supporters who still want the real deal.Some are considering Mr. Ramaswamy as they seek an alternative to Mr. Trump, but it is a difficult pitch while Mr. Trump is still in the race.Jordan Gale for The New York Times“I haven’t seen anything that Vivek says and Donald Trump says that aren’t aligned perfectly,” said Clint Crawford, 48, of Eldridge, Iowa, after watching the candidate at a session at the Estes Construction offices four floors over downtown Davenport. With the former president bent on staying in the race, Mr. Crawford said, he’s not switching.But there is a chance that Mr. Trump won’t make it through a potential federal trial, another possible trial in New York on felony charges surrounding a hush money to a porn star, a looming indictment out of Georgia for efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there, and more to come from Mr. Smith.If Mr. Trump drops out, Mr. Ramaswamy intends to be the alternative.“It’s so ongoing with Trump — it’s our past, it’s our present, and it’s not going to stop,” said Penny Overbaugh, 77, who had stood up in Bettendorf, Iowa, on Thursday to praise Mr. Ramaswamy for his performance in Miami on arraignment morning. As for the younger challenger, “the fact that he could see the hypocrisy of the two-sided justice system, he has conviction.” More

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      The Business of Being Chris Christie

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      Mr. Christie left the governor’s office in New Jersey and set out to, as he put it, “make money.” He successfully traded on his political profile — and on his ties to the man he now wants to defeat.As his second term as governor of New Jersey drew to a close in 2017, Chris Christie was characteristically blunt about his plans.“I want to have fun, and I want to make money,” he told The New York Times in an interview.Mr. Christie wasted no time. On his first day out of office, he saw Bruce Springsteen on Broadway. On his second, he met with executives of DraftKings, a fantasy sports behemoth that stood to benefit enormously from the Christie administration’s support for legalizing sports betting. The company later put the former governor on retainer to advise and influence state officials.Over the past six years, Mr. Christie has repeatedly capitalized, for personal gain, on the connections he made as one of the best-known governors in the country.He started a federal lobbying and consulting firm called Christie 55 Solutions, joined a multimillion-dollar real estate venture with a donor, landed a contract with ABC News, represented an international fugitive and sat on corporate boards, including that of his beloved New York Mets, the tortured baseball franchise run by his friend and megadonor, the billionaire Steve Cohen.And in 2018, the Christies bought a multimillion-dollar shorefront home in Bay Head, one of the more exclusive towns on the Jersey Shore. Their neighbors included, at one point, members of Bon Jovi. The business of being Chris Christie has received only sporadic attention since he left public office. But his latest enterprise — a presidential campaign bent on taking down former President Donald J. Trump, a man he once endorsed and advised — has cast a new light on his success.A close review of corporate and government records as well as interviews with more than 30 people familiar with his lobbying and consulting work shows Mr. Christie has profited from his relationship to the man he now wants to defeat, as well as from the political profile he gained in eight years as New Jersey’s governor.Mr. Christie has made millions from interests wanting to leverage his political ties, including pharmaceutical, medical and sports betting companies, like DraftKings — whose hiring of Mr. Christie has not been previously reported. Some had business with the state when Mr. Christie was governor, and saw him as a reliable advocate for their bottom line, while others were interested in tapping into his close association with Mr. Trump and the Trump administration.Christie 55 Solutions earned roughly $1.3 million in federal lobbying fees from April 2020 to April 2021, according to federal records. The firm also earned more than $800,000 in consulting fees from Pacira Biosciences, a pharmaceutical company with a significant presence in New Jersey. And he has earned around $400,000 a year for his work as a contributor to ABC News, according to a person familiar with the contract. Before he signed with ABC, multiple networks were interested in and were competing for Mr. Christie, another person familiar with the contract said. ABC later suspended its relationship with Mr. Christie before he began his campaign.The total value of Mr. Christie’s financial ventures is difficult to tabulate; much of his work involves corporate consulting, contracts that are not generally made public. Mr. Christie, who announced his bid in early June, has not yet been required to file a personal financial disclosure, a requirement for all federal candidates.Mr. Christie’s campaign declined both to comment on his finances and to disclose his post-governor clients and contracts.Mr. Christie at his campaign announcement. He has made millions from interests wanting to leverage his political ties.John Tully for The New York TimesFormer public officials from both parties regularly turn to political donors and corporate allies to make money. Former President Barack Obama earned $400,000 in a single speech from a Wall Street firm months after leaving office and later signed a production deal with Netflix, whose founder, Reed Hastings, is a major Democratic donor.No modern president comes close to Mr. Trump’s voluminous record of conflicts of interest, allegations of self-dealing and post-presidential deal-making that marked the Trump administration and its afterlife. His entanglements have spawned continued interest on the part of ethics experts, watchdog groups and federal prosecutors, who have issued subpoenas for information about his business dealings in foreign countries during his time in the White House.“The grift from this family is breathtaking,” Mr. Christie said at a recent town hall on CNN.While Mr. Christie’s own business ties don’t match Mr. Trump’s, they may test how far one more norm has been eroded in the Trump era: Registering as a lobbyist — a card-carrying member of the so-called swamp — has long been viewed as tantamount to retiring from electoral politics.Ambitious politicians typically tried to put distance between the “public office and the private interests they’re serving,” said Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group.“But if he’s got all of these other adjacent interests,” Ms. Canter said of Mr. Christie, “how impartial can you be?”‘The George Washington of legalized gaming’Retaining Mr. Christie was a natural move for DraftKings. As governor, he had been a leading force in the push to overturn the federal law that barred sports betting in most states. In 2018, when the Supreme Court decision in the case initially known as Christie vs. National Collegiate Athletic Association allowed states to legalize sports gambling, the industry rushed to push laws in states that would allow them to cash in on a new market.Weeks after the court’s ruling, Mr. Christie was the keynote speaker at a conference a gambling industry group hosted for state legislators in New Orleans, where he criticized sports leagues that had opposed expanding gambling.At the time, Mr. Christie was a consultant for Scientific Games, a lottery company that was part of a consortium that had won big when he privatized the New Jersey state lottery operations in 2013.The company was now seeking Mr. Christie’s advice on expanding into sports betting. Mr. Christie was paid more than $30,000 a month by Scientific Games, according to a person with knowledge of the arrangement who requested anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the contract.DraftKings also put Mr. Christie on a monthly retainer and then sent him to speak to state legislators, although he did not register as a state lobbyist.Soon after Mr. Christie left office, DraftKings put him on retainer to advise and influence state officials.AJ Mast for The New York TimesMr. Christie initially had broad appeal. His blue-state Republicanism made him popular with moderate lawmakers in the Northeast and Midwest, and his ties to then-President Trump gave him credibility with more right-wing legislators.“Having the George Washington of legalized gaming in the U.S. was obviously something we thought would be helpful,” said Jeremy Kudon, who worked for DraftKings and a rival, FanDuel, on joint lobbying efforts at the time and now runs a gambling industry trade association. “And his relationship with Trump we thought would be helpful.”But in late 2020, just as the sports gambling industry focused its lobbying efforts on conservative Southern states, Mr. Christie broke with Mr. Trump over the president’s false claims of a stolen election — and DraftKings stopped deploying him.A spokesman for the company declined to comment.An $800,000 New Jersey connectionMr. Christie has also worked closely with — and for — the pharmaceutical industry, one of the biggest economic drivers in his state.Just months after leaving office, Mr. Christie was tapped by Mr. Trump to lead the President’s Commission on Opioids, giving him a prominent national post on an issue he had made a major focus of his second term as governor.Among the industry executives the commission brought in to testify was David Stack, the chief executive of Pacira Biosciences. Mr. Stack pressed for a change in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement policies, arguing, along with some policy experts, that the programs created incentives for doctors to prescribe opioids instead of non-opioid painkillers and other treatments that are less addictive.The commission included Mr. Stack’s suggestions in its final report and in 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services changed their policies for non-opioid treatments for pain, citing the recommendation from the Christie-led commission.The change benefited just one drug on the market at the time: Exparel, made by Pacira.Donald Trump chose Mr. Christie, a former rival who became a close adviser, to lead a commission on the opioid crisis. Mr. Christie later became a consultant and lobbyist for drug companies. Doug Mills/The New York TimesThat same year in 2018, Pacira paid $481,000 to Christie 55 Solutions for consulting work. In 2019, Pacira put Mr. Christie on its board and paid his firm $320,000, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The reports did not offer any further details, and the company did not respond to questions about the payments.As of June 2022, Mr. Christie owned 3,486 Pacira Biosciences shares worth $207,034.Mr. Christie has said he was not employed by Pacira while serving on the opioids commission.Sara Marino, a spokeswoman for the company, said Mr. Christie “provided Pacira with valuable insight and guidance” as it sought “to provide an opioid alternative to as many patients as appropriate.”Mr. Christie has continued to consult for drug companies. In April, he joined the advisory board for Cytogel Pharma, a company testing a new non-opioid pain reliever in clinical trials.Dean Maglaris, the chief executive of Cytogel, said Mr. Christie had helped connect the young company with industry experts and government officials.“Being from New Jersey, which is the, probably the state with the largest population of pharmaceutical companies, he has put us in contact with people that he knows,” Mr. Maglaris said. Mr. Christie also helped connect the company with “folks in the federal government who have an abiding interest in solving the addiction crisis.”Negotiating with JusticeMr. Christie, a former federal prosecutor, also got involved in a high-profile money-laundering case. Mr. Christie was hired by Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman who had been indicted in 2018 on money laundering and bribery charges and was living as a fugitive. At the time, the U.S. government had seized hundreds of millions of dollars in assets tied to Mr. Low and associates.Mr. Christie never registered in court as an attorney for Mr. Low, but he worked behind the scenes to negotiate a deal with Justice Department lawyers. Mr. Low ultimately forfeited nearly all of the seized assets — with the exception of $15 million in payments to Mr. Christie and two law firms. Mr. Christie represented Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman who was indicted on money-laundering charges, in his negotiations with the Justice Department. Scott Roth/Invision, via Scott Roth/Invision/ApThe payout raised eyebrows among other lawyers involved. They saw it as a hefty sum for the legal work performed, but ultimately the Justice Department agreed to it, because the priority was to make sure Mr. Low did not have access to the money himself, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations.Although Mr. Christie had been using his connections in the Trump administration as a consultant for years, he did not register as a federal lobbyist until June 2020, shortly after the pandemic hit.As Congress passed several bills to help both businesses and health care providers, several major health care networks, all in New Jersey, hired Christie 55 Solutions: Atlantic Health System, RWJBarnabas Health and Hackensack Meridian Health each paid the firm $200,000 for a little less than a year’s work.Christie 55 Solutions, whose small staff included Mr. Christie’s wife, Mary Pat Christie, and Rich Bagger, his former chief of staff, closed its federal lobbying shop in late 2021.Seeing opportunity at homeAs he used his sway in Washington, Mr. Christie kept one foot in New Jersey. Both Mr. and Mrs. Christie joined a real estate venture with a New Jersey developer, Jon Hanson, a longtime political ally and fund-raiser for Mr. Christie’s campaigns.Mr. Christie’s involvement was announced in 2019 as the enterprise, named the Hampshire Christie Qualified Opportunity Fund, set out to find investors for real estate developments taking advantage of federal “opportunity zones,” a Republican-backed tax program intended to benefit low-income neighborhoods. The Trump administration program has been criticized as a windfall for wealthy developers.The Christies are “investor partners” in the fund and Mrs. Christie has helped raise some of the money, Mr. Hanson told The Times.Karl Rickett, a spokesman for the Christie campaign, said the former governor was never involved in the fund as a senior adviser or in any other capacity, and that the venture was entirely a project of Mrs. Christie’s.The fund has raised $80 million of its $250 million goal for three luxury housing and retail projects in Hackensack, N.J., and a New London, Conn., storage facility that will be developed by the firm Mr. Hanson founded, according to Mr. Hanson.When the fund was first publicized, Mrs. Christie promoted her husband’s involvement as an advantage, saying he would use his connections to smooth the path with New Jersey mayors, town councils and zoning boards.“Nobody really knows New Jersey as well as Chris, because he’s been at the helm for the last eight years,” she said to The Wall Street Journal at the time.Mr. Hanson, however, has said that has not happened. Mr. Christie has not been involved at the local level, he said.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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      In Trump Prosecution, Special Counsel Seeks to Avoid Distracting Fights

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      Jack Smith has taken an iron-fist-in-a-kid-glove approach, sidestepping secondary issues that could divert attention from the weight of the evidence he has assembled in his case against the former president.Jonathan Goodman, the magistrate judge assigned to handle Donald J. Trump’s arraignment, did something of a double take during the proceeding on Tuesday, when the Justice Department offered the former president a bond deal that was not merely lenient but imposed virtually no restrictions on him at all.Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the prosecution for the department, opted not to request conditions routinely imposed on other defendants seeking to be released from custody, like cash bail, limits on domestic travel or turning in his passport.But Judge Goodman, tasked with hashing out a bond agreement during a one-day cameo appearance on the case, was not entirely on board. He suggested that Mr. Trump be compelled to “avoid all contact with co-defendants, victims and witnesses except through counsel.” Mr. Smith’s deputy, David Harbach, joined Mr. Trump’s lawyers in opposing that idea — but the judge imposed a version of it anyway.The first courtroom skirmish in United States v. Donald J. Trump underscored the legal perils the former president faces and his determination to make the indictment a centerpiece of a 2024 presidential campaign fueled by grievance and retribution.It also provided telling insights into the fist-inside-a-kid-glove approach that Mr. Smith and his team employed: an aggressive fast-track approach to prosecution coupled with a conspicuously respectful posture toward the defendant.Mr. Smith’s decision not to demand any conditions at the arraignment, people familiar with the situation said, reflected a belief that prosecutors should avoid impairing Mr. Trump’s ability to campaign. He is also seeking to dodge potentially distracting elements to a case focused on concrete evidence about the former president’s handling of classified documents and efforts to obstruct government efforts to reclaim them.His approach also seems to be a nod to the political sensitivities created by years of Republican protests — and misinformation — about prior investigations into Mr. Trump by the Justice Department and the F.B.I.“The prosecution of a former president and the current political rival of President Biden is obviously hugely politically fraught and comes against the background of prior Justice Department actions against Trump marked by error and excess,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former assistant attorney general.“Trump and his allies will do everything they can to demonize the prosecution as unfair,” he added. “It makes perfect sense that Smith, who has the law clearly on his side, would do everything he can to avoid raising the temperature on the matter further.”There are other indications that Mr. Smith, who sat a few feet behind Mr. Harbach in the courtroom on Tuesday, intently following the back-and-forth with the judge, seems intent on avoiding unnecessary confrontation.Conspicuously absent from the indictment was a potential charge that had been listed in the affidavit the Justice Department filed to obtain a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago last summer: Section 2071 of the federal criminal code, which prohibits the concealment and mishandling of sensitive government documents.It was the only crime on the sheet that might have directly affected Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, requiring that anyone convicted of it “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”Jack Smith, the special counsel, opted not to request conditions routinely imposed on other defendants seeking to be released from custody.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMany legal scholars believe that the provision is unconstitutional and would have ultimately been struck down if it were imposed on Mr. Trump. But Mr. Smith’s team sidestepped the issue altogether, leaving it out of their 37-count indictment on a section of the Espionage Act that imposes a prison term but no restrictions on holding office.“I think it’s a very savvy move not bringing that charge,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., who was the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “It makes this much less about politics — this is about the evidence, not about blocking him from office.”The special counsel has already gone where no prosecutor has before, indicting a former president on charges that he illegally retained national security documents and schemed with his personal aide to obstruct investigators. And he has not been shy about ensuring that some of the most vivid evidence (including photographs of boxes stacked in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago and of top-secret documents spilled onto the floor of a storage room) be made public.But Mr. Smith’s team has also taken pains to spare the former president unnecessary embarrassment or inconvenience, as evidenced by their deferential attitude at the arraignment toward Mr. Trump and his co-defendant, Walt Nauta.The U.S. Marshals Service, a branch of the Justice Department responsible for law enforcement at federal courts, adopted a similar tack. They booked Mr. Trump quickly and quietly in an office in the courthouse, registering his fingerprints electronically but eschewing a mug shot “because there are plenty of pictures of him” to choose from, according to a federal law enforcement official who briefed reporters afterward.Mr. Smith’s decision to avoid the placement of strict preconditions on Mr. Trump’s release appears to be part of a larger strategy of avoiding secondary fights that could complicate efforts to obtain a conviction, according to current and former Justice Department officials.By not pressing to limit contact between Mr. Trump and potential witnesses who are also his aides and other employees or advisers and lawyers, the prosecutors were seeking to minimize the potential for any violations of those strictures that might disrupt their efforts to keep the trial focused on the core charges involving national security secrets and obstruction.“I imagine this is why they did not insist on travel restrictions or even a gag order,” said Barbara L. McQuade, who was the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010 to 2017.There is also a sense among some close to the case that much of the evidence needed to convict the defendants — in the form of text messages, photographs, camera footage, sworn testimony and the detailed notes of M. Evan Corcoran, a Trump lawyer — is already in place, making a confrontation over witnesses a costly distraction with limited benefits.“No-contact orders, like the one the judge insisted on, are routine — even in cases where you don’t have a defendant, like Trump, who has tried to influence witnesses,” said Mary McCord, a former top official in the Justice Department’s national security division. “But in this case, Jack Smith has a lot of what he needs already, so he seems to be avoiding a fight that could slow the whole the process down.”Mr. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche had a different reason for objecting to the tougher terms: It was “unworkable” for the court to place preconditions on his client’s casual interactions with potential witnesses on his payroll or in his Secret Service protective detail, he told the court.But some critics, including Andrew Weissmann, who was the lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, see all this as a double standard that unfairly shields Mr. Trump from the conditions placed on others accused of serious offenses.Judge Goodman — a former newspaper reporter with a wry, conversational courtroom style — did not object to the department’s desire to limit the restrictions on Mr. Trump, other than he appear for his court hearings and commit no crimes. But he seemed puzzled why Mr. Smith’s team would not, as a bare minimum, insist that a defendant who has been accused repeatedly of pressuring witnesses be given no constraints at all.“Despite the parties’ recommendations to me, I am also going to be imposing some additional special conditions,” the judge said. “Former President Trump will avoid all contact with witnesses and victims except through counsel” — once prosecutors assembled a list of witnesses.Mr. Harbach said his team would comply, then joked that the “elephant in the room” was that no such list existed yet. More

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      I Won’t Let Donald Trump Invade My Brain

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      I try to be a reasonable person. I try to be someone who looks out on the world with trusting eyes. Over the decades, I’ve built up certain expectations about how the world works and how people behave. I rely on those expectations as I do my job, analyzing events and anticipating what will happen next.And yet I’ve found that Donald Trump has confounded me at every turn. I’ve found that I’m not cynical enough to correctly anticipate what he is capable of.I have consistently underestimated his depravity. I was shocked at how thuggishly Trump behaved in that first debate with Joe Biden in 2020. As the Jan. 6 committee hearings progressed, I was stunned to find out just how aggressively Trump had worked to overthrow the election. And then, just last week, in reading his federal indictment, I was once again taken aback to learn how flagrantly he had breached national security.And yet I can’t quite feel ashamed of my perpetual naïveté toward Donald Trump. I don’t want to be the kind of person who can easily enter the head of an amoral narcissist.I’d rather not let him infect my brain. I’d rather not let that guy alter my views of the world. If occasional naïveté is the price for mental independence from Trump, I’m willing to pay it.I’ve been thinking about all this while bracing for the 17 months of campaigning that apparently lie ahead, with Trump probably once again the central focus of the nation’s consciousness. I’m thinking about how we will once again be forced to defend our inner sanctums as he seeks, on a minute-by-minute basis, to take up residence in our brains.I cling to a worldview that is easy to ridicule. I hold the belief that most people, while flawed, seek to be good. I hold the belief that our institutions, while fraying, are basically legitimate and deserve our respect. I hold the belief that character matters, and that good people ultimately prosper and unethical people are ultimately undone.I don’t think this worldview is born of childish innocence. It comes out of my direct experience with life, and after thousands of interviews, covering real-life politicians like Barack Obama, John McCain and Mitt Romney.Donald Trump, by his mere presence, is an assault on this worldview. Trump is a tyrant. As Aristotle observed all those many years ago, tyranny is all about arbitrariness. When a tyrant has power, there is no rule of law, there is no governing order. There is only the whim of the tyrant. There is only his inordinate desire to have more than his fair share of everything.Under political tyranny external laws become arbitrary. Even when Trump doesn’t wield state power, when he is merely campaigning, Trump wields cultural power. Under cultural tyranny internal values become arbitrary too — based on his whims and lusts of the moment.The categories we use to evaluate the world lose their meaning — cruelty and kindness, integrity and corruption, honesty and dishonesty, generosity and selfishness. High-minded values begin to seem credulous and absurd, irrelevant to the situation at hand. Trump’s mere presence spreads his counter-gospel: People are basically selfish; raw power runs the world. All that matters is winning and losing. Under his influence, subtly and insidiously, people develop more nihilistic mind-sets.Trump has already corroded the Republican Party in just this way. Let me focus on one value that Trump has already dissolved: the idea that there should be some connection between the beliefs you have in your head and the words that come out of your mouth. If you say something you don’t believe, you should at least have a twinge of guilt about your hypocrisy.I used to at least hear Republicans express guilt privately when they publicly supported a guy they held in contempt. That guilt seems to have gone away. Even the contempt has gone away. Many Republicans have switched off the moral faculty, having apparently concluded that personal morality doesn’t matter.Trump’s corrosive influence spreads far beyond his party. Any stable social order depends on a sense of legitimacy. This is the belief and faith that the people who have been given authority have a right to govern. They wield power for the common good.Trump assaults this value too. Prosecutors are not serving the rule of law, he insists, but are Joe Biden’s political pawns. Civil servants are nothing but “deep state” operatives to take Trump down. This cynical attitude has become pervasive in our society. Proper skepticism toward our institutions has turned into endemic distrust, a jaundiced cynicism that says: I’m onto the game; it’s corruption all the way down.Over the coming months, we face not merely a political contest, but a battle between those of us who believe in ideals, even though it can make us seem naïve at times, and those who argue that life is a remorseless struggle for selfish gain. Their victory would be a step toward cultural barbarism.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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      The Radical Strategy Behind Trump’s Promise to ‘Go After’ Biden

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      Conservatives with close ties to Donald J. Trump are laying out a “paradigm-shifting” legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president.When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”Mr. Trump’s message was that the Justice Department charged him only because he is Mr. Biden’s political opponent, so he would invert that supposed politicization. In reality, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and the financial dealings of his son, Hunter.But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr. Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.The naked politics infusing Mr. Trump’s headline-generating threat underscored something significant. In his first term, Mr. Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.Two of the most important figures in this effort work at the same Washington-based organization, the Center for Renewing America: Jeffrey B. Clark and Russell T. Vought. During the Trump presidency, Mr. Vought served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Clark, who oversaw the Justice Department’s civil and environmental divisions, was the only senior official at the department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.Jeffrey B. Clark was the only senior official in the Justice Department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAlong with Mr. Clark, Russell T. Vought argues that presidents should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesMr. Trump wanted to make Mr. Clark attorney general during his final days in office but stopped after the senior leadership of the Justice Department threatened to resign en masse. Mr. Clark is now a figure in one of the Justice Department’s investigations into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought are promoting a legal rationale that would fundamentally change the way presidents interact with the Justice Department. They argue that U.S. presidents should not keep federal law enforcement at arm’s length but instead should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency. They are condemning Mr. Biden and Democrats for what they claim is the politicization of the justice system, but at the same time pushing an intellectual framework that a future Republican president might use to justify directing individual law enforcement investigations.Mr. Clark, who is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s and is likely to be in contention for a senior Justice Department position if Mr. Trump wins re-election in 2024, wrote a constitutional analysis, titled “The U.S. Justice Department is not independent,” that will most likely serve as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.Like other conservatives, Mr. Clark adheres to the so-called unitary executive theory, which holds that the president of the United States has the power to directly control the entire federal bureaucracy and Congress cannot fracture that control by giving some officials independent decision-making authority.There are debates among conservatives about how far to push that doctrine — and whether some agencies should be allowed to operate independently — but Mr. Clark takes a maximalist view. Mr. Trump does, too, though he’s never been caught reading the Federalist Papers.In statements to The New York Times, both Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought leaned into their battle against the Justice Department, with Mr. Clark framing it as a fight over the survival of America itself.Conservatives have been attacking President Biden and the Justice Department, claiming it has been “weaponized.”Doug Mills/The New York Times“Biden and D.O.J. are baying for Trump’s blood so they can put fear into America,” Mr. Clark wrote in his statement. “The Constitution and our Article IV ‘Republican Form of Government’ cannot survive like this.”Mr. Vought wrote in his statement that the Justice Department was “ground zero for the weaponization of the government against the American people.” He added, “Conservatives are waking up to the fact that federal law enforcement is weaponized against them and as a result are embracing paradigm-shifting policies to reverse that trend.”Mr. Trump often exploited gaps between what the rules technically allow and the norms of self-restraint that guided past presidents of both parties. In 2021, House Democrats passed the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a legislative package intended to codify numerous previous norms as law, including requiring the Justice Department to give Congress logs of its contacts with White House officials. But Republicans portrayed the bill as an attack on Mr. Trump and it died in the Senate.The modern era for the Justice Department traces back to the Watergate scandal and the period of government reforms that followed President Richard M. Nixon’s abuses. The norm took root that the president can set broad policies for the Justice Department — directing it to put greater resources and emphasis on particular types of crimes or adopting certain positions before the Supreme Court — but should not get involved in specific criminal case decisions absent extraordinary circumstances, such as if a case has foreign policy implications.Since then, it has become routine at confirmation hearings for attorney general nominees to have senators elicit promises that they will resist any effort by the president to politicize law enforcement by intruding on matters of prosecutorial judgment and discretion.As the Republican Party has morphed in response to Mr. Trump’s influence, his attacks on federal law enforcement — which trace back to the early Russia investigation in 2017, the backlash to his firing of then-F.B.I. director James B. Comey Jr. and the appointment of Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel — have become enmeshed in the ideology of his supporters.Mr. Trump’s top rival for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, also rejects the norm that the Justice Department should be independent.Gov. Ron DeSantis has likewise argued that the Justice Department should be an extension of the executive branch.Kate Medley for The New York Times“Republican presidents have accepted the canard that the D.O.J. and F.B.I. are — quote — ‘independent,’” Mr. DeSantis said in May on Fox News. “They are not independent agencies. They are part of the executive branch. They answer to the elected president of the United States.”Several other Republican candidates acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents — as outlined in the indictment prepared by the special counsel, Jack Smith, and his team — was a serious problem. But even these candidates — including Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Vice President Mike Pence — have also accused the Justice Department of being overly politicized and meting out unequal justice.The most powerful conservative think tanks are working on plans that would go far beyond “reforming” the F.B.I., even though its Senate-confirmed directors in the modern era have all been Republicans. They want to rip it up and start again.“The F.B.I. has become a political weapon for the ruling elite rather than an impartial, law-enforcement agency,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of the conservative movement since the Reagan years. He added, “Small-ball reforms that increase accountability within the F.B.I. fail to meet the moment. The F.B.I. must be rebuilt from the ground up — reforming it in its current state is impossible.”Conservative media channels and social media influencers have been hammering the F.B.I. and the Justice Department for months since the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago, following a playbook they honed while defending Mr. Trump during the investigation into whether his campaign conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.Senator Tim Scott is among the other Republican presidential candidates who say the Justice Department is politicized.Travis Dove for The New York TimesOn its most-watched nighttime programs, Fox News has been all-in on attacks against the Justice Department, including the accusation, presented without evidence, that Mr. Biden had directed the prosecution of Mr. Trump. As the former president addressed his supporters on Tuesday night at his Bedminster club, Fox News displayed a split screen — Mr. Trump on the right and Mr. Biden on the left. The chyron on the bottom of the screen read: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”As president, Mr. Trump saw his attorney general as simply another one of his personal lawyers. He was infuriated when his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the Russia investigation — and then refused to reverse that decision to shut down the case.After firing Mr. Sessions, Mr. Trump believed he had found someone who would do his bidding in William P. Barr, who had been in the role during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. Mr. Barr had an expansive view of a president’s constitutionally prescribed powers, and shared Mr. Trump’s critical views of the origins of the Russia investigation.Under Mr. Barr, the Justice Department overruled career prosecutors’ recommendations on the length of a sentence for Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr., and sought to shut down a case against Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had already pleaded guilty. Both cases stemmed from the Russia investigation.But when Mr. Trump wanted to use the Justice Department to stay in power after he lost the election, he grew enraged when Mr. Barr refused to comply. Mr. Barr ultimately resigned in late 2020. More