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      Who Is Richard Donoghue?

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      Richard P. Donoghue, who served as acting deputy attorney general in the Trump administration, was a crucial witness to President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to use the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election results, and one of several officials there who pumped the brakes on the plan.Mr. Donoghue repeatedly pushed back on Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona, and he refused to go along when Mr. Trump insisted that the department simply “say that the election was corrupt” and “leave the rest to me,” according to notes Mr. Donoghue took of a Dec. 27, 2020, call with Mr. Trump and Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general.On Thursday, Mr. Donoghue was appearing in person before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in a hearing at which aides said the panel would reveal new evidence of Mr. Trump’s bid to use the nation’s law enforcement apparatus to invalidate his defeat and stay in power.Much is already known about Mr. Trump’s efforts and the resistance by Mr. Donoghue and his colleagues, including that the president asked the Justice Department to send letters to state election officials warning them that there had been widespread fraud in the election and to file lawsuits to help his campaign.During a hearing on Tuesday, the House committee played audio of an interview with Mr. Donoghue in which he recounted telling Mr. Trump that there was no suitcase containing fraudulent ballots in Georgia, a popular conspiracy theory that was based on a video selectively edited and shared by Mr. Trump’s allies.Mr. Trump “kept fixating on this suitcase that supposedly had fraudulent ballots,” Mr. Donoghue said in the interview. “I said, ‘No, sir, there is no suitcase.’”Mr. Trump, in his final weeks in office, had also planned to oust Mr. Rosen, when it was clear that he did not have his support to send Georgia state legislators a letter wrongly stating that the department was seriously investigating accusations of voter fraud.Mr. Donoghue convened the department’s senior leaders over the phone, making a plan that the group would resign en masse should Mr. Rosen be fired.Mr. Trump ultimately allowed Mr. Rosen to stay. More

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      Will Merrick Garland Prosecute Trump? Should He?

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      Readers discuss a guest essay weighing factors such as the likelihood of conviction and the political repercussions.Attorney General Merrick Garland.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressDrew Angerer/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “What Garland Needs to Decide Before Charging Trump,” by Jack Goldsmith (Opinion guest essay, June 22):If Professor Goldsmith is right, American democracy has already lost. In spelling out the difficulties that Attorney General Merrick Garland must overcome in order to prosecute Donald Trump in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, Mr. Goldsmith all but concludes that the task is impossible. Prosecution will be portrayed as a political vendetta. Proving Mr. Trump’s guilty intent will be exceedingly hard, making an acquittal likely. And an acquittal will be seen by Mr. Trump and his supporters as a vindication.At the same time, Mr. Goldsmith concedes that a decision not to prosecute Mr. Trump will effectively place the president above the law. This bodes ill should Mr. Trump or someone like him again occupy the Oval Office.Is this really Mr. Garland’s only choice: a trial that threatens to tear an already divided nation apart, or allowing Mr. Trump to get away scot-free at the cost of undermining the rule of law? For the sake of democracy, there must be another option.Stephen NewmanTorontoThe writer is an associate professor of politics at York University.To the Editor:Jack Goldsmith is right to praise Attorney General Merrick Garland for “gathering as much information as possible” before deciding whether to prosecute former President Donald Trump for defrauding the American people and interfering with the work of Congress.Professor Goldsmith is wrong, however, to suggest that Mr. Garland’s decision to indict Mr. Trump would be “a cataclysmic event from which the nation would not soon recover.” The cataclysm is already here, and it is of Mr. Trump’s making, not Mr. Garland’s.Once and for all, we must stop Donald Trump’s big lies, his intimidation of anyone who opposes him and his thinly veiled calls to violence. The only solution is to impose the forceful countermeasures of the law.Mr. Trump rode the whirlwind, and he must now reap the consequences if our democracy is to survive.Eric W. OrtsPhiladelphiaThe writer is a professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.To the Editor:I’m so tired of hearing about the damage we may inflict on the nation and the presidency by holding Donald Trump to the same standard as any other citizen. Such concerns must be weighed against the very real damage caused by future presidents following the precedent he has established, operating the White House like a mob boss and pardoning his cronies when they do his bidding.This is a crossroads for America. We can have only one standard for justice. Afford Donald Trump the same justice as any other citizen and let the chips fall where they may. When in doubt, perhaps it’s time to just default to doing the right thing.Lawrence LobertGrosse Pointe Park, Mich.To the Editor:Jack Goldsmith suggests that, in weighing whether to indict Donald Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland must consider “whether the national interest would be served by prosecuting Mr. Trump.” It is, he argues, “a judgment call about the nature, and fate, of our democracy.”Quite so. And that is why Mr. Goldsmith errs in suggesting that the judgment should be made by Mr. Garland. Rather, it should be made by President Biden in deciding whether to pardon Mr. Trump. That is how the issue was resolved when President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, a compelling precedent for the current situation.Douglas M. ParkerOjai, Calif.The writer served in the White House Counsel’s Office during the Watergate investigations.To the Editor:Jack Goldsmith’s masterful exposition of the problems arising from seeking to hold Donald Trump criminally liable highlights the tragedy of the failure to remove him through the impeachment process. History will judge craven senators like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton as the villains responsible for an American tragedy. They knew better but refused to risk their personal political ambitions.How sad for America that the lessons of “Macbeth” elude so many United States senators.Allan RothAuburndale, Mass.The writer is a lawyer and a retired professor from Rutgers law and business schools.To the Editor:Jack Goldsmith identifies very legitimate concerns facing Attorney General Merrick Garland as he wades through the complexities of indicting, charging and prosecuting Donald Trump. And yet, it seems to me unconscionable and immoral to let Mr. Trump slither away from accountability given the mountain of evidence proving beyond any doubt that he very intentionally attempted to subvert the 2020 election.A possible Plan B? The district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, must move forward immediately and indict and prosecute Mr. Trump under that state’s laws. With the addition of the fruits of the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation, there is now more than enough evidence to charge Mr. Trump with state felony offenses that would likely land him behind bars and prevent him from ever running for public office again, which is the very least of what he deserves and this country needs.Laurie KorenbaumBrooklynThe writer is a former federal prosecutor.To the Editor:The nation is being held hostage by a sore loser. If Donald Trump is not held accountable for the events of Jan. 6, the precedent is set for every future election when the loser doesn’t agree with the outcome. We would invite anarchy in every election.I think it’s a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situation, but the lack of consequences to bad behavior encourages more of the same.Fran HochmanGreat Neck, N.Y. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Says It Has New Evidence of Trump’s Pressure on Justice Dept.

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      A hearing at 3 p.m. Thursday will feature the former acting attorney general and other top officials at the department during the Trump era as witnesses.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans to unveil new evidence on Thursday about how President Donald J. Trump tried to manipulate the Justice Department to help him cling to power after he lost the 2020 election, aides said on Wednesday.At its fifth public hearing this month, scheduled for 3 p.m. on Thursday, the panel plans to hear testimony from three former top Justice Department officials who are expected to lay out the ways in which Mr. Trump tried to misuse the attorney general’s office to overturn his defeat, an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with the nation’s law enforcement apparatus for his own personal ends.Committee aides said the panel would detail how Mr. Trump unsuccessfully pushed department officials to falsely declare that there was widespread fraud in the election, file lawsuits to benefit his campaign and appoint a conspiracy theorist as a special counsel to investigate the election. It will also trace his failed efforts to send false letters to state officials to subvert the election results and, finally, to replace the acting attorney general, who refused to go along with his plans.Mr. Trump ultimately backed off after agency officials threatened mass resignations, but the committee is presenting his actions as a critical strand in a multilayered effort by the former president to subvert the election.The witnesses scheduled to testify are Jeffrey A. Rosen, the former acting attorney general; Richard P. Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general; and Steven A. Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.Day Three: Mr. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing.Day Four: The committee used its fourth hearing to show how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors and highlight the pressure that state officials faced to overturn the election.Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a member of the committee, is expected to play a central role in the questioning of witnesses and presentation of evidence. He has hinted that the hearing could reveal more information about members of Congress who sought pardons after Jan. 6.The story of how Mr. Trump attempted to intervene in the workings of the Justice Department to keep himself in office has been well documented by both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Jan. 6 committee, but aides to the House inquiry said Thursday’s hearing will contain new revelations.Time and again, department officials told Mr. Trump after the election that his claims of widespread fraud were false, and prompted him to back down from some of his most extreme propositions.One dramatic moment came in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 3, 2021, when Jeffrey Clark, a little-known department lawyer who had been strategizing about how to keep Mr. Trump in power, suggested that the agency issue a legal opinion to Vice President Mike Pence advising him as to what actions he could take during the joint session of Congress set for three days later, when lawmakers were to meet for the official electoral count that would confirm Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.“That’s an absurd idea,” Mr. Engel interjected, according to testimony he provided to the committee. “It is not the role of the Department of Justice to provide legislative officials with legal advice on the scope of their duties.”Mr. Trump then spoke up and told the Justice Department officials, who repeatedly told him his claims of widespread fraud were false, that they were not to speak to Mr. Pence.“Nobody should be talking to the vice president here,” Mr. Trump said, according to Mr. Engel.Mr. Trump would go on to repeatedly push Mr. Pence to try to overturn the election results.Also at that meeting, Mr. Trump proposed firing Mr. Rosen, who was advising him that the 2020 election was not stolen, and replacing him with Mr. Clark, who was willing to do his bidding.“Sir, I would resign immediately,” Mr. Donoghue spoke up, according to a deposition he gave. “There is no way I’m serving one minute under this guy,” he said of Mr. Clark.Mr. Trump then turned to Mr. Engel and said, “Steve, you wouldn’t resign, would you?” Mr. Engel replied: “Absolutely I would, Mr. President. You’d leave me no choice.”The Justice Department officials were also witnesses to interactions between Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, and Mr. Trump. The committee has called for Mr. Cipollone to testify publicly, but he has so far refused.Mr. Cipollone pushed back against a plan put forward by Mr. Clark, who wanted to distribute official letters to multiple state legislatures falsely alerting them that the election may have been stolen and urging them to reconsider certified election results.“That letter that this guy wants to send — that letter is a murder-suicide pact,” Mr. Cipollone told Mr. Trump, according to Mr. Donoghue. “It’s going to damage everyone who touches it. And we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don’t ever want to see that letter again.”The panel is planning at least two more hearings for July, according to its chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi. Those sessions are expected to detail how a mob of violent extremists attacked Congress and how Mr. Trump did nothing to call off the violence for more than three hours. More

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      In Trump Electors Investigation, Justice Dept. Issues More Subpoenas

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      Federal prosecutors sought information from two men who had worked on behalf of the Trump campaign and a third who signed up as a Trump elector in Georgia, a state won by President Biden.The Justice Department stepped up its criminal investigation of a plan by President Donald J. Trump and his allies to create slates of so-called fake electors in a bid to keep Mr. Trump in power during the 2020 election, as federal agents delivered grand jury subpoenas on Wednesday to at least four people connected to the plan.One of those who received a subpoena, according to two people familiar with the matter, was Brad Carver, a lawyer and official of the Georgia Republican Party who claimed to be one of Mr. Trump’s electors in the state, which was won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.Another subpoena recipient was Thomas Lane, an official who worked on behalf of Mr. Trump’s campaign in Arizona and New Mexico, the people said.A third person, Shawn Flynn, a Trump campaign aide in Michigan, also got a subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter.A fourth subpoena was issued to David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, who also served as a fake elector for Mr. Trump.The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.Day Three: Mr. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing.Day Four: The committee used its fourth hearing to show how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors and highlight the pressure that state officials faced to overturn the election.Mr. Shafer’s lawyer declined to comment. None of the other three men could be reached for comment about the subpoenas.The issuance of new subpoenas was reported earlier by The Washington Post.The fake elector plan is the focus of one of two known prongs of the Justice Department’s broad grand jury investigation of Mr. Trump’s multiple and interlocking attempts to subvert the election. The other has focused on a wide cast of political organizers, White House aides and members of Congress connected in various ways to Mr. Trump’s incendiary speech near the White House that directly preceded the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.This latest round of activity in the Justice Department’s inquiry came amid the House Jan. 6 committee’s high-profile hearings into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse the outcome of the election.It also comes less than a month after an earlier round of grand jury subpoenas revealed that prosecutors were seeking information on any role that a group of pro-Trump lawyers might have played in the fake elector effort. Those lawyers included Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, James Troupis and Justin Clark. Although testimony to the House committee has presented evidence of the roles of some of them in the plan, including Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Chesebro, it is not clear what role, if any, some of the others might have played.The subpoenas, issued by a grand jury sitting in Washington, have also sought records and information about other pro-Trump figures like Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner and a longtime ally of Mr. Giuliani.Many of the lawyers named in the subpoenas were also mentioned on Tuesday at the House select committee’s public hearing exploring Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging pressure campaign to persuade state officials to help him stay in office.At the hearing, the committee for the first time directly connected Mr. Trump to the plan, introducing a recorded deposition from Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, in which she recounted how Mr. Trump called her and put Mr. Eastman on the phone “to talk about the importance of the R.N.C. helping the campaign gather these contingent electors.”The first subpoenas in the fake elector inquiry were largely sent to people in key swing states who almost took part in the plan but eventually did not for various reasons. This new round of subpoenas appears to be the first time that Trump campaign officials were brought into the investigation, marking a small but potentially significant step closer to Mr. Trump himself.The plan to create pro-Trump electors in states won by Mr. Biden was among the earliest and most expansive of several plots by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the election. It involved lawyers, state officials, White House and campaign aides, and members of Congress.The plan was developed as Mr. Trump and his allies sought to promote baseless assertions of widespread election fraud in key swing states and persuade state officials to reverse their certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. It aimed to have the pro-Trump slates in place by the time Vice President Mike Pence oversaw the official certification of electoral votes during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Trump and others close to him mounted a relentless effort in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6 to persuade Mr. Pence either to count the pro-Trump electors and hand Mr. Trump a victory in the Electoral College or to declare that the election was uncertain because competing slates of electors had been received in several states.The idea was to buy Mr. Trump more time to pursue his baseless claims of fraud or potentially to send the election to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation would get a single vote. Because more delegations were controlled by Republicans than by Democrats, Mr. Trump could have won.Adam Goldman More

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      To Defeat Boebert, Some Colorado Democrats Change Their Registration

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      BASALT, Colo. — Claudia Cunningham had never voted for a Republican in her life. She swore she couldn’t or her father would roll over in his grave. But ahead of the Colorado primary on Tuesday, she did the once-unthinkable: registered as unaffiliated so that she could vote in the G.O.P. primary against her congresswoman, Lauren Boebert.So did Ward Hauenstein, the mayor pro tem of Aspen; Sara Sanderman, a teacher from Glenwood Springs; Christopher Arndt, a writer and financier in Telluride; Gayle Frazzetta, a primary care doctor in Montrose; and Karen Zink, a nurse practitioner south of Durango.Driven by fears of extremism and worries about what they see as an authoritarianism embodied in Ms. Boebert, thousands of Democrats in the sprawling third congressional district of Colorado have rushed to shore up her Republican challenger, State Senator Don Coram. Their aim is not to do what is best for Democrats but to do what they think is best for democracy.Ms. Boebert speaking at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Casper, Wyo., in May.Natalie Behring for The New York TimesIt is a long shot: Mr. Coram has raised about $226,000 in a late-starting, largely invisible bid to oust a national figure who has raked in $5 million.But as Mr. Arndt noted, anti-Trump Republicans have put aside stark differences with liberal policies and voted for Democrats since 2016. It is time, he said, that Democrats return the favor and put preservation of democracy above all other causes.The Colorado crossover voters are part of a broader trend of Democrats intervening to try to beat back the extremes of the G.O.P., in Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado, Utah and elsewhere.“The center has got to re-emerge,” said Tom Morrison, a lifelong Democrat in rural Pitkin County who voted for Mr. Coram, not only in protest of Ms. Boebert but also of what he calls a rising concern about his party’s leftward drift.A nascent infrastructure is supporting the trend. The Country First Political Action Committee, established by Representative Adam Kinzinger, an anti-Trump Republican from Illinois, has used text messages and online advertising to rally opposition against what the congressman has called the most “toxic” and partisan Republicans. Those include Representatives Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, and Jody Hice, Republican of Georgia, who, with Donald J. Trump’s backing, tried to defeat Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, after he resisted Mr. Trump’s push to “find” the votes to nullify President Biden’s victory there.In Utah, rather than backing a Democrat in a strongly Republican state, 57 percent of the delegates to the state’s Democratic convention, including Jenny Wilson, the Salt Lake City mayor and the state’s most powerful Democrat, endorsed Evan McMullin, a former C.I.A. officer and an anti-Trump Republican. He is running an uphill independent campaign against Senator Mike Lee, a Republican who initially worked to challenge Mr. Biden’s victory.In Colorado, a constellation of small political groups have sprung up to oppose Ms. Boebert’s re-election ahead of next week’s primary, such as Rural Colorado United and the Better Than Boebert PAC, formed by Joel Dyar, a liberal community organizer in Grand Junction, and James Light, an affluent Republican developer who helped create the mega ski resort Snowmass in the 1970s.“Jan. 6 was the breaking point for me,” Mr. Light said. “I couldn’t get anywhere with the national party, so I got behind Don Coram.”Jim Light decided to support Don Coram after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesAdvocates for the strategy point to some success stories. In the Georgia secretary of state race, at least 67,000 people who voted in Georgia’s Democratic primary two years ago cast ballots in the Republican primary, an unusually high number. Mr. Raffensperger cleared the 50 percent threshold to avoid a runoff by just over 27,000 votes.More than 5,400 early or absentee votes cast in the western North Carolina primary that included Mr. Cawthorn similarly came from Democrats who had voted in their party’s primary two years earlier. Mr. Cawthorn lost by fewer than 1,500.In Colorado, voters can cast ballots in the Republican primary if they are registered with the party or as unaffiliated. In Ms. Boebert’s district, Democratic Party officials have tallied about 3,700 more unaffiliated voters in this year’s Republican primary compared with two years ago. They are largely concentrated in the Democratic hubs of Pitkin County, home of Aspen, where one can never be too rich or too liberal, and La Plata County, where Durango is filling with young people.Mike Hudson, a Durango activist who worked for Democratic luminaries like Hillary Clinton and Marian Wright Edelman before “disaffiliating” in January to go to work for Mr. Coram, said the number of independents from both parties mobilizing against Ms. Boebert was “grossly underestimated.”Ms. Boebert’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment. She remains a prohibitive favorite on Tuesday.Almost no one would say that the influx of Democratic voters into Republican primaries this year has been driven by an organized effort.“What did we do to reach out to Democrats? The answer is nothing,” said J.D. Key, Mr. Coram’s campaign manager. “This is completely organic.”Some Democratic officials have tried to stem the effort, worried in part that Mr. Coram will be the more difficult Republican to beat in November, and in part that the newly disaffiliated might not come back. Dr. Frazzetta has emailed patients, left literature in her office, even pressed the compounding pharmacists she works with to consider voting in the Republican primary. Among the blizzard of positive responses was one harshly negative reaction, she said, from a local Democratic Party official.Judy Wender is voting in the Democratic primary to ensure the best candidate will run against Representative Lauren Boebert in the fall.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesA new map has made the district more Republican, but Mr. Trump won the old district with 52 percent of the vote in 2020, not a staggering total. Judy Wender, an Aspen Democrat who has resisted entreaties from friends to disaffiliate, said there was good reason to vote next week in the Democratic primary: Three very different Democrats will be on the ballot, and the right one could be a threat to Ms. Boebert in the fall.Howard Wallach, a retired high school teacher from Brooklyn who runs the Pitkin County Democratic Party with his wife, Betty, was similarly disapproving. The Republican primary ballot includes several candidates from Ms. Boebert’s wing of the party, including a Senate candidate, State Senator Ron Hanks, who marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6; a secretary of state candidate, Tina Peters, who was indicted in March on 10 charges related to allegations that she tampered with election equipment after the 2020 election; and a candidate for governor, Greg Lopez, who has stood by Ms. Peters’s false election claims and said he would pardon her if elected.Mr. Wallach asked: Will these voters new to Republican politics come prepared to choose in those races?Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterm races so important? More

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      A Year Later, Some Republicans Second-Guess Boycotting the Jan. 6 Panel

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      The decision by Representative Kevin McCarthy not to appoint Republicans to the committee has given Democrats the chance to set out an uninterrupted narrative.WASHINGTON — The four hearings held in the past few weeks by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, with their clear, uninterrupted narratives about President Donald J. Trump’s effort to undercut the peaceful transfer of power, have left some pro-Trump Republicans wringing their hands with regret about a decision made nearly a year ago.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, chose last summer to withdraw all of his nominees to the committee — amid a dispute with Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her rejection of his first two choices — a turning point that left the nine-member investigative committee without a single ally of Mr. Trump.Mostly in private, Republicans loyal to Mr. Trump have complained for months that they have no insight into the inner workings of the committee as it has issued dozens of subpoenas and conducted interviews behind closed doors with hundreds of witnesses.But the public display this month of what the panel has learned — including damning evidence against Mr. Trump and his allies — left some Republicans wishing more vocally that Mr. Trump had strong defenders on the panel to try to counter the evidence its investigators dig up.“Would it have made for a totally different debate? Absolutely,” said Representative Brian Mast, Republican of Florida. “I would have defended the hell out of him.”Among those second-guessing Mr. McCarthy’s choice has been Mr. Trump.“Unfortunately, a bad decision was made,” Mr. Trump told the conservative radio host Wayne Allyn Root this week. He added: “It was a bad decision not to have representation on that committee. That was a very, very foolish decision.”The committee employed more than a dozen former federal prosecutors to investigate the actions of Mr. Trump and his allies in the buildup to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.With former television producers on staff, the committee has built a narrative told in chapters about the former president’s attempts to cling to power.As it has done so, the committee has not had to contend with speechifying from the dais about Mr. Trump’s conservative policy achievements. There has been no cross-examination of the panel’s witnesses. No derailing of the hearings with criticism of President Biden. No steering the investigation away from the former president. Ultimately, there has been no defense of Mr. Trump at all.The committee presented considerable evidence this month of Mr. Trump’s role, laying out how the former president pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to unilaterally overturn his election defeat even after he was told it was illegal.The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.Day Three: Mr. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing.Day Four: The committee used its fourth hearing to show how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors and highlight the pressure that state officials faced to overturn the election.On Tuesday, the panel directly tied Mr. Trump to a scheme to put forward fake slates of pro-Trump electors and presented fresh details of how the former president sought to bully, cajole and bluff his way into invalidating his 2020 defeat in states around the country.The committee has also used prominent Republicans as witnesses to make its case, leaving Mr. Trump’s allies with an impossible task: How are they to defend him — even from the outside — when the evidence against him comes from Republican lawyers, a widely respected conservative judge, his campaign advisers and even his own daughter?The effectiveness of the hearings in putting Mr. Trump at the heart of the effort to overturn the election results has drawn the attention of, among others, Mr. Trump. He has made plain this week that he wants more Republicans defending him, and is displeased as the hearings play out on national television without pro-Trump voices.The only Republicans on the committee are two who have lined up squarely against Mr. Trump: Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. They were appointed by Ms. Pelosi, not Mr. McCarthy.Mr. McCarthy figured in July that it was better politically to bash the committee from the sidelines rather than appoint members of his party acceptable to Ms. Pelosi. He has said he had to take a stand after she rejected two of his top picks for the panel: Representatives Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio.Ms. Pelosi said she could not allow the pair to take part, based on their actions around the riot and comments they had made undercutting the investigation. (Mr. Jordan has subsequently been issued a subpoena by the committee because of his close dealings with Mr. Trump.) The speaker’s decision led directly to Mr. McCarthy’s announcement that Republicans would boycott the panel.“When Pelosi wrongfully didn’t allow them, we should’ve picked other people,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Punchbowl News. “We have a lot of good people in the Republican Party.”Mr. Trump has grumbled openly about the makeup of the panel, according to a person familiar with his remarks. Some members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus have also privately complained about the lack of pro-Trump Republicans on the panel, the person said.Those close to Mr. McCarthy argue that the Democrats who control the committee would most likely not have allowed his nominees much power or influence over the panel’s work.The hearings will pick up again on Thursday with a session devoted to Mr. Trump’s effort to install a loyalist at the top of the Justice Department to carry out his demands for more investigations into baseless claims of election fraud.The panel is planning at least two more hearings for July, according to its chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi. Those hearings are expected to detail how a mob of violent extremists attacked the Capitol and how Mr. Trump did nothing to call off the violence for more than three hours.Asked on Tuesday about the former president’s comments about the Jan. 6 committee, Mr. McCarthy instead talked about inflation and gas prices.“They focused on an issue the public is not focused on,” he said of the committee. Mr. McCarthy added that he spoke with Mr. Trump this week.One of the Republicans whose nomination Mr. McCarthy withdrew from the committee, Representative Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, was a defense lawyer before being elected to Congress.Ms. Pelosi had approved of Mr. Armstrong serving on the panel, along with Representative Rodney Davis of Illinois and Representative Troy Nehls of Texas.Mr. Armstrong said he had watched the hearings as the committee laid out evidence in a “choreographed, well-scripted way.”Had he been allowed to serve on the committee, he would have tried to steer the investigation and its questions at public hearings into security failures at the Capitol, he said, echoing a line of criticism that many Republicans have tried to direct at Ms. Pelosi.“It would be a lot less scripted. We’d ask questions,” Mr. Armstrong said. “There are real questions to be answered. My heart goes out to the law enforcement officials. They needed more people down there.”Still, he said, he stands by the decision made by Mr. McCarthy, who is considered the leading candidate to become speaker if Republicans win control of the House in the midterm elections in November.“I was in the room when we made that decision, and I still think it was the right decision,” he said, arguing that House Republicans had to take a stand after Ms. Pelosi removed Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks. “I think it was the only option.”Mr. Trump’s comments have sparked much discussion among House Republicans over whether it was the right decision.“Everybody’s got a different opinion on that,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma. “Personally, I think the leader made the right call. The minute the speaker decides who the Republican members are, it turned against the legitimacy of it.”Representative Daniel Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, said he would have preferred to see an exchange of opposing views on the panel. “Let the public see how that debate goes,” he said. “That would have been better, of course.”But Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the attack on the Capitol and is retiring from Congress, said he saw nothing but hypocrisy and foolishness in Mr. Trump’s complaints. He noted that Mr. Trump made the strategic error of opposing a bipartisan commission, with no current lawmakers involved, to investigate the attack on the Capitol.That commission would have had to finish its work last year. Instead, Mr. Trump’s miscalculation led to the creation of the House Jan. 6 committee, which is continuing to investigate him, Mr. Upton said.“Trump opposed the bipartisan commission,” Mr. Upton said. “Once again, he’s rewriting history.”Stephanie Lai More

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      in Elections

      Your Summer Politics Quiz

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(min-width:480px){.lede-question-adventure .multiple-choice-question .response p,.lede-question-adventure .multiple-select-question .response p{font-size:17px;line-height:1.625rem}}.lede-question-adventure .multiple-choice-question .text-block.lede-question p,.lede-question-adventure .multiple-select-question .text-block.lede-question p{text-align:center;font-size:20px;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto}@media only screen and (min-width:480px){.lede-question-adventure .multiple-choice-question .text-block.lede-question p,.lede-question-adventure .multiple-select-question .text-block.lede-question p{font-size:27px}}.quiz figcaption:first-of-type,.quiz figure:first-of-type img{max-width:600px;margin:0 auto} Thomas Barwick/Getty ImagesHey, people, it’s officially summer! Many Americans find it soothing to take a vacation from politics this time of year, but I know you just can’t let it go.
      Here’s a solstice quiz. Pick the best answer for each question:
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      Judge Allows Dominion’s Defamation Suit to Include Fox Corporation

      by

      The decision broadens the possible legal exposure to the highest ranks of the Fox media empire.A judge presiding in the defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems ruled this week that the cable channel’s parent company, Fox Corporation, can be included in the suit, broadening the possible legal exposure to the highest ranks of the Fox media empire.Dominion had argued that Fox Corporation should also be part of the litigation because its two most senior executives, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, played “a direct role in participating in, approving and controlling” statements that fed false perceptions of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.In a decision, Judge Eric M. Davis of Delaware Superior Court said Dominion had “adequately pleaded” facts supporting its claim that Fox Corporation was “directly liable” for what Fox News put on the air. He reasoned that the Murdochs were widely known to have a hand in shaping Fox News coverage. Judge Davis also said it was reasonable to infer that Fox Corporation had “participated in the creation and publication of Fox News’s defamatory statements.”Dominion’s suit against Fox News, filed in March 2021 in Delaware, where both companies are incorporated, seeks at least $1.6 billion in damages.“The truth matters,” Dominion’s lawyers wrote in their initial complaint. “Lies have consequences. Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process. If this case does not rise to the level of defamation by a broadcaster, then nothing does.”Fox News and its parent company have denied that the statements in question were defamatory in the first place, arguing that what was said on Fox broadcasts about Dominion was, in part, protected expressions of opinion. Included were various unsubstantiated allegations from Fox News hosts and guests that Dominion was somehow complicit in a conspiracy to steal votes from former President Donald J. Trump.Separately, Judge Davis denied a claim from Dominion to extend its suit to Fox Broadcasting, the television and entertainment division of the Fox brand that is home to shows including “MasterChef” and “The Simpsons.”Fox News moved to dismiss the Dominion suit late last year, but that motion was rejected.The lawsuit is in the discovery phase, the process through which Dominion lawyers are combing through internal Fox communications in search of evidence. Dominion’s lawyers will need to prove that people at the network acted with “actual malice,” meaning they either knew the allegations against Dominion were false or they recklessly disregarded facts that would have shown them to be false. More