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      Justice Dept. Weighs Special Counsel for Trump Inquiries if He Runs

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      The department is hoping to make decisions on whether to charge the former president in the documents and Jan. 6 inquiries before the 2024 campaign heats up.WASHINGTON — The Justice Department hopes to reach a decision on whether to bring charges against former President Donald J. Trump before the 2024 campaign heats up, and is considering appointing a special counsel to oversee investigations of him if he runs again, according to people familiar with the situation.The department is investigating Mr. Trump’s role in the efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and his retention of sensitive government documents at his residence and resort in Florida. It has made no decision in either case, but the inquiry into the former president’s handling of the documents is more straightforward, with prosecutors having publicly cited potential crimes that could be charged.Senior department officials and veteran prosecutors with the department’s national security division, in conjunction with the U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida, have spent recent weeks quietly navigating the thicket of thorny issues needed to file charges in the documents investigation, weighing evidence, analyzing legal precedents and mulling practical considerations such as the venue of a possible trial.The investigation, while proceeding quickly by Justice Department standards, has been slowed by Mr. Trump’s efforts in court to restrict the government’s access to the files removed from his home, and by the department’s self-imposed 30-day pause in issuing subpoenas ahead of this year’s midterm elections.But behind the scenes, prosecutors have been busily compiling evidence and case law that could be used to frame a memo that would be the basis for any prosecution. And some involved in that effort have become concerned that an indictment or trial of Mr. Trump during the campaign could generate fierce criticism that could undercut the department’s commitment to being seen as enforcing the law in a nonpartisan manner.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and his team have long considered creating a layer of protection for the department by tapping a special counsel, a veteran prosecutor appointed by Mr. Garland to run the day-to-day investigation. But even with the appointment of a special counsel, any final decisions on whether to charge Mr. Trump would still be made by Mr. Garland and the department’s senior leadership.Under federal law, a special counsel functions, in essence, as a pop-up U.S. attorney’s office with broad discretion over every aspect of an investigation in “extraordinary circumstances” in which the normal chain of command could be seen as creating a conflict of interest.An attorney general still has the right to approve or discard a special counsel’s recommendations. But if Mr. Garland were to reject the counsel’s recommendation, he would have to inform Congress, a safeguard intended to ensure transparency and autonomy.The department’s consideration of a special counsel appointment was first reported by CNN.A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Recent special counsels include Robert S. Mueller III, who oversaw the investigation into connections between Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, and John H. Durham, who brought two unsuccessful prosecutions of officials accused of acting improperly in the Trump-Russia inquiry.Some former officials and legal experts said the appointment of a special counsel would give Mr. Garland an opportunity to choose a lawyer to counter charges of a political witch hunt.Mr. Garland “needs to have a lawyer with Republican pedigree on that team to send the message that this is not a political persecution,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017.“This is the most important criminal case in our country’s history. Ultimately, every person in the United States will be the jury in this case, and they will need to have confidence that the prosecution team reflects all of them,” he said.On Wednesday, the Justice Department offered to allow Kash Patel, a close adviser to Mr. Trump, to testify to a federal grand jury under a grant of immunity about Mr. Trump’s handling of highly sensitive presidential records.It was the latest indication prosecutors are moving aggressively to gather the evidence necessary to determine whether the former president mishandled sensitive government documents and tried to obstruct justice by withholding information about the location of materials he removed from the White House after leaving office.Mr. Trump, who remains the most powerful, most popular and best-funded Republican in the country, has repeatedly suggested he would run, including at a rally in Iowa on Thursday, when he said he would “very, very, very probably” run again.He has been a vocal supporter of candidates who backed his lies about the 2020 election, but has not yet declared his intention to seek a second term.The status of the sprawling investigation related to Jan. 6 remains less clear. Prosecutors have been seeking testimony and evidence from a number of people associated with Mr. Trump, including lawyers like John Eastman. But officials have yet to set out any public indications of what charges, if any, could ultimately be brought against Mr. Trump. More

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      Gingrich Is Willing to Testify to Jan. 6 Panel, His Lawyer Says

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      Mr. Gingrich would speak about his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, a move his lawyer suggested should spare him from having to testify in a separate inquiry in Georgia.ATLANTA — Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker involved in efforts to overturn Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss, is willing to give an interview to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol after certain conditions are met, his lawyer said Thursday.Mr. Gingrich, a staunch ally of Mr. Trump, was asked to appear before the committee in a Sept. 1 letter from Representative Bennie Thompson, the Democrat who serves as the panel’s chairman. The letter noted that the committee’s investigators had obtained evidence that Mr. Gingrich had been in touch with senior advisers to Mr. Trump about advertisements that amplified false claims about election fraud in the November 2020 election.According to Mr. Thompson, Mr. Gingrich urged the Trump campaign to run ads focused on the bogus assertion that suitcases of fake ballots had been smuggled into a vote-processing area by election workers in Atlanta.Mr. Gingrich, 79, a former member of Congress from Georgia, rose to power and fame in the early 1990s promoting a so-called “Contract with America,” a statement of conservative governing principles. Mr. Gingrich has also been ordered to give testimony on Nov. 16 before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is conducting a criminal investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse Mr. Trump’s loss in the Southern state.A court hearing in Fairfax County, Va., where Mr. Gingrich lives, on whether he must testify in Georgia is scheduled for Wednesday.However, in an interview on Thursday, Mr. Gingrich’s lawyer, J. Randolph Evans, said that he hoped a Virginia judge would be convinced that Mr. Gingrich’s testimony before members of Congress would render his client’s appearance in Atlanta unnecessary.“The idea being that if this really is about information, presumably the Jan. 6 committee would do a good job and obviate the need for testimony in Georgia,” Mr. Evans said.Mr. Evans described the outstanding conditions to be agreed upon as “transparency and attorney-driven issues” but did not elaborate further.Mr. Evans said that John A. Burlingame, the lawyer representing Mr. Gingrich in the Virginia hearing, would also likely argue that he does not have to testify in Georgia and follow a legal strategy used, with varying success, by other out-of-state Trump allies who have fought orders to testify in Georgia. The strategy rests on the idea that the special grand jury is civil in nature, not criminal, and therefore lacks the power to compel appearances by people who are not residents of Georgia.A spokesman for Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who is leading the investigation, declined to comment on Thursday. Mr. Evans said that his client had broken no laws and was not a target of the investigation but rather “just a potential witness.”In a court document seeking Mr. Gingrich’s testimony, Ms. Willis referenced the advertisements mentioned by Mr. Thompson in his letter, noting that they had “encouraged members of the public to contact their state officials and pressure them to challenge and overturn the results of the election.”The ads ran, Ms. Willis stated, “in the days leading up to Dec. 14, 2020, when both legitimate and, in several states, nonlegitimate electors met to cast electoral college votes, and they were purportedly personally approved by former President Donald Trump.”Mr. Thompson, in his letter, said that Mr. Gingrich was involved in the plan to put forward pro-Trump electors in states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Evans, Mr. Gingrich’s lawyer, was named ambassador to Luxembourg by Mr. Trump and is also mentioned by name in the court documents filed by Ms. Willis.The prosecutor noted that on or around Nov. 12, 2020, Mr. Gingrich wrote an email to Pat Cipollone, then the White House counsel, and to Mark Meadows, then Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, who has also been ordered to testify in the Atlanta investigation.“Is someone in charge of coordinating all the electors?” Mr. Gingrich wrote, according to Ms. Willis. She added that Mr. Gingrich then wrote that Mr. Evans had made the point “that all the contested electors must meet on Dec. 14 and send in ballots to force contests which the House would have to settle.” More

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      Biden and Netanyahu Gear Up for a Complicated New Era

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      The two leaders have forged a relationship over four decades that vacillates between warmth and combat.When President Biden took office last year, he held the advantage in a tumultuous, four-decade relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, the longtime Israeli prime minister.Mr. Biden had vanquished former President Donald J. Trump, who was a close ally of Mr. Netanyahu, and the new American president made clear that one of his first foreign policy initiatives would be to restart the Iran nuclear deal that the Israeli prime minister hated, and consistently sought to undermine.Meanwhile, in Israel, Mr. Netanyahu faced charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Within months, he would be ousted from office after more than a dozen years as the leader of the Jewish state.Now, the tables have turned.Mr. Biden’s hopes for a nuclear deal with Iran have all but collapsed, and Iran has begun supplying missiles and drones to Russia for use in Ukraine. Polls suggest the president faces a stinging rebuke in midterm elections next week that may end his domestic legislative agenda. Mr. Trump remains a potent force in American politics, likely to run again in 2024.And on Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu secured his own return to power with a new, far-right coalition that will once again make him prime minister — an endorsement of the aggressive, in-your-face style that has been at the heart of his clashes with Mr. Biden and other American presidents over the years.The two leaders will find themselves in the position of sparring anew over issues that have long strained their relationship.It is the most complicated of relationships, vacillating between warmth and combat, sometimes on the same day. But Dennis Ross, the former Mideast negotiator who used to accompany Mr. Biden, when he was vice president, on trips to see Mr. Netanyahu, noted in an interview on Thursday that the relationship was better than the one between Mr. Netanyahu and President Barack Obama.“Bibi’s view of Biden is different than Bibi’s view of Obama,” Mr. Ross said, using the common nickname for Mr. Netanyahu. “Bibi was convinced that Obama was trying to undercut him, and Obama was convinced that Bibi was working with the Republicans to undercut him.”“He viewed Biden as someone who he would disagree with, but that Biden’s heart and emotions were all with Israel,” said Dennis Ross, who oversaw Mideast diplomacy at the National Security Council in Mr. Obama’s presidency.Disagreements remain. The president favors a Palestinian state to resolve the decades-long clash with Israel. Mr. Netanyahu does not. The Israeli prime minister called the 2015 Iran nuclear deal a disaster for Israel and the region. Mr. Biden said it was the best way to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. And the two men have been at odds for years over the construction of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.The State of the WarGrain Deal: Russia rejoined an agreement allowing the shipment of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, one of the few areas of cooperation amid the war, easing uncertainty over the fate of a deal seen as crucial to preventing famine in other parts of the world.Nuclear Rhetoric: As President Vladimir V. Putin makes public threats and Russian generals hold private discussions, U.S. officials say they do not believe that Moscow has decided to detonate a tactical nuclear device in Ukraine, but concerns are rising.Turning the Tables: With powerful Western weapons and deadly homemade drones, Ukraine now has an artillery advantage in the Kherson region. The work of reconnaissance teams penetrating enemy lines has also proven key in breaking Russia’s hold in the territory.Sea Drone Attack: The apparent use of remote-controlled boats to attack the Russian naval fleet off the Crimean port city of Sevastopol suggests an expansion in Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities after months of military aid from Western nations.But in the 16 months since Mr. Netanyahu was ousted and then returned to power, the world has changed. Iranian leaders, preoccupied by protests at home, seem uninterested in returning to the nuclear deal from which Mr. Trump — to the delight of Mr. Netanyahu — withdrew in 2018.Meanwhile, Iran is supporting President Vladimir V. Putin’s war in Ukraine, selling drones and missiles to Russia for use on the battlefield. And the frequent source of tension, the future of a Palestinian state, is barely on the agenda these days, in part because of divisions within the Palestinian leadership.During Mr. Trump’s four years in office, Mr. Netanyahu faced little pressure from the United States to bend to the will of an American president. Mr. Trump never challenged Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign of sabotage and assassination in Iran, or his refusal to pursue a two-state solution with the Palestinians. The relationship between the two leaders did not seem to fray until Mr. Netanyahu congratulated Mr. Biden for his victory in 2020, leading the former president to accuse his Israeli counterpart of disloyalty.President Donald J. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu supported each other on key policies, but Mr. Trump eventually accused the Israeli leader of disloyalty.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Netanyahu had held off calling to congratulate Mr. Biden for several hours, worried about angering Mr. Trump, the candidate he openly preferred. But the delay did little good in the end. Mr. Biden returned the favor, taking weeks to hold a first phone call with Mr. Netanyahu. And, partly because of Covid-19 lockdowns, the two men did not meet in person before Mr. Netanyahu lost office.As vice president, Mr. Biden often found himself at odds with Mr. Netanyahu or his government.More than a decade ago, according to former officials, it was Mr. Biden who complained during a Situation Room meeting that Israel, under Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership, had been too hasty in updating secret computer code to sabotage Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment plant. The malware spread around the world, its revelation leading to the unraveling of the story of a covert program, code-named Olympic Games, run by both countries.At other times, Mr. Biden voiced concerns that Israel’s assassination of nuclear scientists was undercutting the effort to reach a diplomatic deal to limit its production of nuclear material.The disagreements over policy between Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu sometimes seemed to stoke personal animosities.On a visit to Israel in March 2010, Mr. Netanyahu’s government announced the construction of new settlement projects in East Jerusalem, territory that would have been up for negotiation over the boundaries of a Palestinian state. Mr. Biden, who had just hours earlier gushed effusively about the security relationship between the two nations, was surprised by the announcement — and angry.That night, Mr. Biden delayed his arrival at a dinner with Mr. Netanyahu and his wife for more than 90 minutes, a diplomatic rebuke intended to make his displeasure clear. (Mr. Netanyahu maintained he was not involved in the decision on settlements or the timing of the announcement during Mr. Biden’s visit.)After Mr. Netanyahu was ousted by his party in 2021, he lashed out at the Biden administration in his final speech, comparing the hesitance to confront Iran’s nuclear program to the failure by a past American president to more quickly confront Hitler during World War II.“In 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to bomb the railway leading to the extermination camps, and refused to bomb the gas chambers, which could have saved millions of our people,” Mr. Netanyahu said.The relationship between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Biden goes back decades, to when Mr. Biden was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Mr. Netanyahu was the deputy Israeli ambassador in Washington.Mr. Biden has often spoken fondly of Mr. Netanyahu since then, despite their political differences, and once described giving him a photograph with a warm caption: “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say, but I love you.”“Biden has this instinctive attachment to Israel,” Mr. Ross said. The belief that Israelis feel “existentially threatened” by their adversaries, Mr. Ross said, led Mr. Biden to be more inclined to understand Mr. Netanyahu’s point of view.After Mr. Netanyahu became prime minister in 1996 and then lost the position three years later, Mr. Biden was the only American politician to write him a letter after his election defeat, Mr. Ross said. During moments of heightened friction between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama, it fell to Mr. Biden to play peacemaker.But there have been sharp moments when the differences came into open view.In 2015, Mr. Biden declined to attend an address that Mr. Netanyahu delivered in Congress after the Israeli leader accepted an invitation from the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a Republican, without notifying the White House. The speech was devoted to opposing the Iran nuclear deal, and Mr. Biden’s absence exacerbated the dispute between Mr. Netanyahu and the Obama administration about the wisdom of the deal.That deal did freeze Iran’s activity for several years, until it was unwound by Mr. Trump, and the Iranians resumed nuclear fuel production.As president, Mr. Biden used his early political capital to seek a return to the deal that Mr. Trump trashed. He pushed forward at a time when Mr. Netanyahu was politically weak. But even during those moments, Mr. Biden vowed to stand with Israel, whoever its leaders might be.That was on display during Mr. Biden’s visit to Israel in mid-July, when he met with the government of Yair Lapid.Mr. Biden was clearly relaxed and enjoyed the trip, especially in comparison to his next stop, in Saudi Arabia. He went to see Mr. Netanyahu, in what was described as a warm but brief meeting. Later, Mr. Netanyahu said he had told Mr. Biden that the United States needed to threaten Iran with more than economic sanctions or a defensive military partnership between Middle Eastern states.“We need one thing,” he said. “A credible offensive military option is needed.”Mr. Netanyahu will undoubtedly press that point as prime minister, now that negotiations on re-entering the nuclear deal are stalled. With Iran producing more and more uranium enriched at near bomb-grade levels, he will surely call for more sanctions and more threats of military action. And with little prospect of a diplomatic solution, Mr. Biden may have less room to push back.Mr. Biden, for his part, will likely press Israel to declare itself on the side of containing Russia, a step Israel has refused to take, saying it needs to work with Moscow in Syria.Each of these problems has a different shape than when Mr. Biden came to office. History suggests that the inevitable tensions with Mr. Netanyahu, born of different national interests, are nonetheless bound to emerge quickly. More

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      The Grass Roots, Part 2

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis moment in politics will be defined by shifts at the grass-roots level. It wasn’t long ago that Democrats used to brag about the coalition they had built — full of young people, minority voters and college-educated women. Today, we talk to members of the Democratic base, many of whom no longer see a clear path forward for the party.Tim Gruber for The New York TimesOn today’s episodeAstead Herndon, host of “The Run-Up,” spoke with voters who had participated in New York Times polling, including Delaney Elliott Miller, Nelson Aquino, Katharine Hinson and Rochelle Nelson.Additional readingIn the final days of the midterm elections, top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s campaign tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Once a G.O.P. stalwart, Representative Liz Cheney has been hitting the trail for Democrats. Her approach is part of a last-ditch push by Republican opponents of former President Donald J. Trump to try to thwart a comeback of his political movement.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Justice Dept. Offers Immunity to Kash Patel for Testimony in Documents Case

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      The adviser, Kash Patel, had previously declined to answer questions from prosecutors in front of a federal grand jury, citing his Fifth Amendment rights.The Justice Department offered on Wednesday to allow Kash Patel, a close adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, to testify to a federal grand jury under a grant of immunity about Mr. Trump’s handling of highly sensitive presidential records, two people familiar with the matter said.The offer of immunity came about a month after Mr. Patel invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in front of the grand jury and refused to answer questions from prosecutors investigating whether Mr. Trump improperly took national security documents with him when he left the White House and subsequently obstructed attempts by the government to retrieve them.During Mr. Patel’s initial grand jury appearance, one of the people familiar with the matter said, Judge Beryl A. Howell of Federal District Court in Washington acknowledged Mr. Patel’s Fifth Amendment claims and said the only way he could be forced to testify was if the government offered him immunity.The decision by the Justice Department to grant immunity in the case, the person said, effectively cleared the way for the grand jury to hear Mr. Patel’s testimony.A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment.The disclosure that Mr. Patel has received immunity for his testimony comes as prosecutors have increased their pressure on recalcitrant witnesses who have declined to answer investigators’ questions or have provided them with potentially misleading accounts about Mr. Trump’s handling of documents.What to Know About the Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      Extremism Is on the Rise … Again

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      After all this country has been through — from Donald Trump and his election denial, to the insurrection, to what prosecutors call the “politically motivated” attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband — it still appears poised to elect candidates next Tuesday who deny the results of the 2020 election. There are 291 election deniers on the ballot. And Trump — the greatest threat to democracy — may make a comeback in 2024.It’s hard to believe even though it’s happening right in front of our eyes.In a major speech Wednesday night, President Biden described election denial as “the path to chaos in America.” “It’s unprecedented,” he said. “It’s unlawful. And it’s un-American.” But in truth, the extremism, racism and white nationalism are neither un-American nor unfamiliar.I am personally fascinated by precedents and historical corollaries, the ways that events find a way of repeating themselves, not because of some strange glitch in the cosmos but because human beings are fundamentally the same, unchanged, stuck in rotation of our failings and frailties.The presidential election of 1912 offers a few lessons for our current political moment.William Howard Taft had been elected president in 1908, succeeding the gregarious Theodore Roosevelt, the undisputed leader of the progressive movement of the age, who endorsed Taft’s presidential bid. But Taft was no Teddy. Taft was, as University of Notre Dame professor Peri E. Arnold has written, “a warmhearted and kind man who wanted to be loved as a person and to be respected for his judicial temperament.”I hear echoes there of the differences between Presidents Barack Obama and Biden.Progressives at first seemed satisfied with Taft’s election, as they expected him to simply carry Roosevelt’s legacy forward. But they soon grew disaffected, as did Roosevelt.It wasn’t that Taft was ineffective; he just didn’t do all of what those progressives wanted, much like Biden hasn’t checked the box on all progressive priorities. Riding a wave of progressive anger, Roosevelt challenged Taft in 1912, and when Roosevelt didn’t secure the nomination, he ran as a third-party candidate, taking many of the progressives with him.That split all but guaranteed that their opponent, Woodrow Wilson, would win, becoming the first president from the South since the Civil War.Wilson had not been a favorite to win the nomination of his own party — he only secured it on the 46th ballot after quite a bit of deal-making. But once he reached the general election, he sailed to victory over the quarreling liberals. He would go on to campaign on an “America First” platform, which for him was primarily about maintaining America’s neutrality in World War I. But as Sarah Churchwell, author of “Behold, America,” told Vox in 2018, it soon became associated not just with isolationism, but also with the Ku Klux Klan, xenophobia and fascism.In Wilson’s case, extremists took his language and twisted its meaning into something more sinister. When Trump glommed onto that language over a century later, he started with the sinister and tried to pass it off as benign.Of course, Wilson was no Trump. Trump is one of the worst presidents — if not the worst — that this country has ever had. Wilson at least, as the University of Virginia’s Miller Center points out, supported “limits on corporate campaign contributions, tariff reductions, new and stronger antitrust laws, banking and currency reform, a federal income tax, direct election of senators, a single term presidency.” He was a progressive Southern Democrat. The newly formed N.A.A.C.P. actually endorsed him.But there are eerie similarities between him and Trump. Wilson was a racist. He brought the segregationist sensibility of the South, where he had grown up and where Jim Crow was ascendant, into the White House. He allowed segregation to flourish in the federal government on his watch.And while Wilson didn’t support shutting down all immigration, as long as the immigrants were from Europe, he did embrace ardently xenophobic beliefs. In 1912, he released a statement, saying:“In the matter of Chinese and Japanese coolie immigration I stand for the national policy of exclusion (or restricted immigration). The whole question is one of assimilation of diverse races. We cannot make a homogeneous population out of people who do not blend with the Caucasian race.”It was Wilson who screened “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House, a film that pushed the “Lost Cause” narrative and fueled the rebirth of the Klan.Trump hosted a screening of “2,000 Mules” — a fact-checker-debunked documentary that purported to show widespread voter fraud carried out by “mules” who stuffed ballot boxes with harvested ballots during the last presidential election — at Mar-a-Lago, which Trump has called the Southern White House. That film has helped boost his followers’ belief in his lie about the 2020 election.Allow me a quick aside to dissect the dehumanizing language of the “mule.” Mules were synonymous with captivity and servitude, and as such, a comparison between them and the enslaved — and later, oppressed — Black people was routine. In fact, in “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston famously wrote that the Black woman is the mule of the world.Then came the invention of the “drug mule,” a phrase that first appeared in this newspaper in 1993. Later, the media would often use it to describe Hispanic women.Now we have ballot mules, an extensive cabal of liberal actors bent on stealing elections.Once you animalize people, you have, by definition, dehumanized them, and that person is no longer worthy of being treated humanely.I say all this to demonstrate that we have been here before. We have seen extremism rise before in this country, multiple times, and it often follows a familiar pattern: One party loses steam, focus and cohesion; liberals become exhausted, disillusioned or fractured, allowing racists and nativist conservatives to rise. Those leaders then tap into a darkness in the public, one that periodically goes dormant until it erupts once more.I fear that too many liberals are once again caught up in the cycle, embracing apathy. My message to all of them going into Election Day: Wake up!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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Trump’s Guys Have Their Work Cut Out for Them

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      If Democrats do better than expected in next week’s elections, let’s hope they send a thank-you card to Donald Trump.Just because it’d drive him crazy. But his meddling is also a real factor: If you look at some of the most competitive races, the awfulness of the Republican nominee is thanks in good part to Trumpian support.“My record is unparalleled, my endorsements, it’s totally unparalleled,” he bragged earlier this year. It certainly was extensive — he reportedly made about 200 primary endorsements. But there weren’t a ton of heavy lifts. His choices were mainly incumbents and others who were virtually unopposed.“It’s like the Celtics winning a game against the Little Sisters of the Poor,” said a friend of mine.Still, when there was a serious race, Trump had a major-league talent for picking the least attractive possibility.Take Georgia. Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock should probably be in deep, deep trouble given the general political climate. But the polls show a near-even race. Warnock sure is lucky that Trump made such a heroic effort to promote Herschel Walker, who was terrible even before he plunged into his serial abortion scandals.And then there’s J.D. Vance, who Trump is backing in the Ohio Senate race. The former president showed up for a Vance rally last month in Youngstown, standing right next to the contender, who, he told the crowd, “is kissing my ass, he wants my support so much.”A comment that has been quoted a time or 20 by Vance’s opponent, Tim Ryan.To be fair — if you really feel like being fair — Trump’s favorites generally did win. ( “Nobody’s ever had a record like this. I’m almost unblemished.”)Of course, it’s natural that voters in Republican primaries would care about the opinion of the last Republican president. Trump’s endorsement certainly made a difference in Arizona — where the deeply unappealing Blake Masters won the Senate nomination with his help.And his backing was also very important in Pennsylvania, where Republicans are now stuck in the governor’s race with Doug Mastriano, a state senator who’s argued that women who have abortions relatively early in a pregnancy should be charged with murder.The general elections are a different kind of competition, where the Trump name can be a little less, um, attractive. Wisconsin observers couldn’t help noticing that once Tim Michels had won the Republican nomination for governor, his campaign website scrubbed all references to “Endorsed by President Trump,” only to put them back up an hour later. Such is the life of the Trump acolyte.In New York, the Democratic candidate for governor, Kathy Hochul, cannot remind voters enough that her opponent, Lee Zeldin, has Trump’s backing. Zeldin, who was happy to have Trump appear at a September fund-raiser, now likes to focus on crime, and you will probably not hear the 45th president’s name in his ads unless Trump gets mugged on Park Avenue.Even when he’s not promoting anybody, Trump is … keeping in touch. It’s hard to avoid his emails, the vast, vast majority of which are asking for money. My absolute favorite, which arrived last month, announced he “just couldn’t wait any longer to tell you this EXCITING NEWS.”Which was — wait for it:“I HAVE BEEN NAMED THE #1 PRESIDENTIAL GOLFER IN HISTORY!”The namer was a conservative website called the DC Enquirer. We will not mention the very different opinion of experts like the sportswriter Rick Reilly, who wrote about Trump’s game in his book “Commander in Cheat.”But our former president was sharing this exciting news to remind us that “we still have a few boxes left of our LIMITED EDITION Trump Golf Balls.” A collector’s item!You can get any of this stuff by clicking a box and making a contribution — pick any amount you want, although that vibrant blue $250 box is doing a special happy dance. All the money goes to Trump’s own personal election fund-raising operation, which cynics might just refer to as Donald’s Piggy Bank. From which he’s forked out more than $13 million for TV ads over the last month to help out his fellow Republicans.That may sound nice, but put in another context, it amounts to about 15 percent of what he had on hand. And about one-fifth of the $71 million Republicans are getting from the Senate Leadership Fund, Mitch McConnell’s super PAC. McConnell, by Trump’s calculation, is a “Broken Old Crow.” So, of course, nothing Mitch does counts.I guarantee the emails will keep on coming. What else can Trump do? He’s still banned from Twitter and his attempt at a substitute, Truth Social, probably has fewer followers than some minor celebrities. Although definitely more than a semi-popular college sophomore.Well, hey, D.J.T. does need some diversion. His business organization is wrestling with multitudinous court cases in New York right now — tax fraud is a central topic.He’s been on the road a lot, making speeches, raising money and being protected by Secret Service agents who the Trump Organization has charged up to $1,185 per night for hotel rooms. Yeah, he’s so grateful for security over the past few years he’s billed us more than $1.4 million.Let’s see what happens next. If his pitiful candidates don’t survive, maybe some Republicans will ask for their money back.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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      Oath Keepers Leader Sought to Get Message to Trump After Jan. 6

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      One of the government’s final witnesses in the seditious conspiracy trial of members of the far-right group described attempts by Stewart Rhodes to urge Donald J. Trump to keep his grip on power.Four days after the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, held a secret meeting in the parking lot of a Texas electronics store.Mr. Rhodes had gone to see a soldier-turned-I.T.-expert who, he had been told, could get an urgent message to President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Rhodes wanted to persuade Mr. Trump to maintain his grip on power despite the violence at the Capitol and offered to mobilize the members of his group to help him stay in office.“I’m here for you and so are all of my men,” Mr. Rhodes wrote to Mr. Trump, typing his words into a cellphone and handing it to the man in the belief that he would pass the message on to the president. “We will come help you if you need us. Military and police. And so will your millions of supporters.”A description of that cloak-and-dagger scene was offered to the jury on Wednesday at the trial of Mr. Rhodes and four of his subordinates, all of whom are facing charges of seditious conspiracy in connection with the attack on the Capitol. By the end of the day, prosecutors at the trial had all but reached the end of their evidence and were expected to rest their case on Thursday morning.When the government’s presentation concludes it will be a milestone in the trial, which is taking place in Federal District Court in Washington. It will also be an important step for the Justice Department’s broader investigation of the Capitol assault.The seditious conspiracy charges confronting Mr. Rhodes and his co-defendants — Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — are among the most severe and politically significant to have been filed so far against any of the 900 people charged in connection with Jan. 6.The success or failure of the prosecution could influence how the storming of the Capitol is perceived by the public and affect another trial set for mid-December in which five members of another far-right group, the Proud Boys, also stand accused of seditious conspiracy.Some of the strongest evidence prosecutors have presented to the jury has come directly from the mouth of Mr. Rhodes.Jim Urquhart/ReutersAs one of their final witnesses, prosecutors called to the stand the man who met with Mr. Rhodes in Texas: Jason Alpers, a software designer who helped found a cybersecurity firm called Allied Security Operations Group. The company was instrumental in working with outside advisers to Mr. Trump — including the lawyer Sidney Powell — in promoting a conspiracy theory that voting machines had been used to cheat in the 2020 election.Mr. Alpers, a former Army psychological operations expert, told the jury that he met Mr. Rhodes and a lawyer, Kellye SoRelle, on Jan. 10, 2021, outside a Fry’s Electronics store near Dallas. He offered his phone to Mr. Rhodes as a means of conveying a message to Mr. Trump, but ultimately gave both the phone and a recording of the encounter to the F.B.I.In the recording, which was played on Wednesday for the jury, Mr. Rhodes can be heard telling Mr. Alpers that if Mr. Trump did not hold on to power, there would be “combat here on U.S. soil” and that thousands of Oath Keepers would most likely join the fray.When Mr. Alpers told Mr. Rhodes that he did not want civil war and did not condone the chaos at the Capitol, the Oath Keepers leader said that he had only one regret about that day.“We should have brought rifles,” Mr. Rhodes said, adding, “We could have fixed it right then and there.”Mr. Alpers said he was horrified by Mr. Rhodes’s remarks and had second thoughts about passing any messages to Mr. Trump or to people in his orbit.“Asking for civil war to be on American ground and, understanding as a person who has gone to war, that means blood is going to get shed on the streets where your family is,” he testified. “That’s not a distant land, that’s right there.”From the outset of the trial, some of the strongest evidence prosecutors have presented to the jury has come directly from the mouth of Mr. Rhodes, who has emerged as a man obsessed with supporting Mr. Trump and keeping Joseph R. Biden Jr. out of the White House. Recordings and text messages have shown Mr. Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper with a law degree from Yale, to have been in thrall to baseless fears that Mr. Biden was a “puppet” of the Chinese government bent on the destruction of the country he had just been chosen to lead.One former member of the group testified last month that he had called the authorities in November 2020 after sitting through a video meeting during which Mr. Rhodes urged his followers to “fight” on behalf of Mr. Trump.“The more I listened to the call,” the witness, Abdullah Rasheed, told the jury, “it sounded like we were going to war against the United States government.”Other former Oath Keepers have testified that they believed Mr. Rhodes’s language about using violence to support Mr. Trump and his personal attacks against Mr. Biden became increasingly extreme, even dangerous, in the months between the election and the final certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6.One former member told the jury that he quit the organization in December 2020 after Mr. Rhodes posted a letter on the Oath Keepers’ website urging Mr. Trump to seize data from voting machines across the country that would purportedly prove the election had been rigged. In the letter, Mr. Rhodes also begged Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, a more than two-centuries-old law that he believed would give the president the power to call up militias like his own to suppress the “coup” that was seeking to unseat him.In the message Mr. Rhodes sought to pass through Mr. Alpers, he warned Mr. Trump that he and his family would be “imprisoned and killed” if Mr. Biden managed to take office, urging him to use “the power of the presidency” to stop his opponent.“Go down in history as a savior of the Republic,” Mr. Rhodes wrote, “not a man who surrendered it to deadly traitors and enemies who then enslaved and murdered millions of Americans.”Despite the efforts by prosecutors to depict Mr. Rhodes as a man prepared to derail the election, as one trial witness put it, “by any means necessary,” some government witnesses have admitted under questioning from the defense that they were not aware of any predetermined plan to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 and interfere with the certification process.To win a conviction on the seditious conspiracy charge, prosecutors need to convince the jury that Mr. Rhodes and his co-defendants entered into an agreement to use force to disrupt the execution of laws governing the transfer of presidential power.A video of Mr. Rhodes speaking during an interview with the House Jan. 6 committee was shown at a hearing in June.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressFor reasons that remain unclear, prosecutors decided not to call as witnesses any of the three former Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges and cooperated with the government’s investigation of Mr. Rhodes and his co-defendants.One of the cooperating witnesses, William Todd Wilson, told the government during his plea negotiations that on the evening of Jan. 6, Mr. Rhodes was still trying to persuade Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. By Mr. Wilson’s account, Mr. Rhodes tried to get an intermediary to call the president from a hotel near the Capitol and have him mobilize the Oath Keepers to forcibly stop the transition of power.Another cooperating witness, Joshua James, was poised to testify that Mr. Rhodes at one point hatched a plan to have a group of Oath Keepers surround the White House and keep away anyone — including members of the National Guard — who tried to remove Mr. Trump from the building.Before the defense begins its case, lawyers for Mr. Rhodes and the others are likely to make arguments seeking to dismiss the charges, claiming a lack of evidence — a common maneuver in criminal trials.Mr. Rhodes, who has promised from the start that he will testify, could take the witness stand by the end of the week. More