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      House Lays Out Case Against Trump, Branding Him the ‘Inciter in Chief’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentTrial HighlightsDay 2: Key TakeawaysVideo of Jan. 6 RiotHouse ManagersTrump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHouse Lays Out Case Against Trump, Branding Him the ‘Inciter in Chief’The Democratic House impeachment managers opened their case against the former president with a narrative of his monthslong effort to overturn the election and raw footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands, left, with House impeachment managers and staff on Wednesday during a break in former President Donald J. Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021Updated 9:48 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The House impeachment managers opened their prosecution of Donald J. Trump on Wednesday with a meticulous account of his campaign to overturn the election and goad supporters to join him, bringing its most violent spasms to life with never-before-seen security footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.Filling the Senate chamber with the profane screams of the attackers, images of police officers being brutalized, and near-miss moments in which Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers came steps away from confronting a mob hunting them down, the prosecutors made an emotional case that Mr. Trump’s election lies had directly endangered the heart of American democracy.They played frantic police radio calls warning that “we’ve lost the line,” body camera footage showing an officer pummeled with poles and fists on the West Front of the Capitol, and silent security tape from inside showing Mr. Pence, his family and members of the House and Senate racing to evacuate as the mob closed in, chanting: “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!”All of it, the nine Democratic managers said, was the foreseeable and intended outcome of Mr. Trump’s desperate attempts to cling to the presidency. Reaching back as far as last summer, they traced how he spent months cultivating not only the “big lie” that the election was “rigged” against him, but stoking the rage of a throng of supporters who made it clear that they would do anything — including resorting to violence — to help him.The managers argued that it warranted that the Senate break with two centuries of history to make Mr. Trump the first former president to be convicted in an impeachment trial and disqualified from future office on a single count of “incitement of insurrection.”“Donald Trump surrendered his role as commander in chief and became the inciter in chief of a dangerous insurrection,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead manager, told the senators. They watched the footage in silence in the same spots where they had been when the mob breached the building last month.“He told them to ‘fight like hell,’” Mr. Raskin added, quoting the speech that Mr. Trump gave supporters as the onslaught was unfolding, “and they brought us hell on that day.”House managers watching the second day of the trial from an ante room off the floor of the Senate on Wednesday.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThough the House managers used extensive video evidence of the Jan. 6 riot to punctuate their case, they spent just as much time placing the event in the context of Mr. Trump’s broader effort to falsely claim the election had been stolen from him, portraying him as a president increasingly desperate to invalidate the results.“With his back against the wall, when all else has failed, he turns back to his supporters — who he’d already spent months telling that the election was stolen — and he amplified it further,” said Representative Joe Neguse, Democrat of Colorado.After dozens of frivolous lawsuits failed, the managers said, Mr. Trump began pressuring officials in key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia to overturn his losses there. When that failed, he tried the Justice Department, then publicly attempted to shame Republican members of Congress into helping him. Finally, he insisted that Mr. Pence assume nonexistent powers to unilaterally overturn their loss on Jan. 6, when the vice president would oversee the counting of the electoral votes in Congress.“Let me be clear: The president was not just coming for one or two people, or Democrats like me,” said Representative Ted Lieu of California, looking out at senators. “He was coming for you.”At the same time, the managers argued, the president was knowingly encouraging his followers to take matters into their own hands. When an armada of his supporters tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the highway in October, Mr. Trump cheered them on Twitter. He began adopting increasingly violent language, they noted, and did nothing to denounce armed mobs cropping up in his name in cities around the country. Instead, he repeatedly invited them to Washington on Jan. 6 to rally to “stop the steal” as Congress met to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.“When he saw firsthand the violence that his conduct was creating, he didn’t stop it,” Mr. Neguse said. “He didn’t condemn the violence. He incited it further and he got more specific. He didn’t just tell them to fight like hell. He told them how, where and when.”At times, the presentation, delivered by a group of Democrats with extensive courtroom experience, resembled a criminal prosecution — only in this case, the jury was made up of senators who were also witnesses struggling as they relived in graphic detail the trauma of that day.Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands guided them through much of the video, including scenes of rioters inside the Capitol tauntingly calling for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and flooding into her office just after aides had raced to barricade themselves in a conference room and hid under a table.“Nancy! Oh, Nancy! Where are you, Nancy?” one of the invaders could be heard shouting in a singsong voice.“That was a mob sent by the president of the United States to stop the certification of an election,” Ms. Plaskett said. “President Trump put a target on their backs, and his mob broke into the Capitol to hunt them down.”Glued to their desks, some senators recoiled or averted their eyes from the hours of footage, including of their own evacuation as the mob closed in just down a corridor.“It tears at your heart and brings tears to your eyes,” said Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, who could be seen in one of the videos racing back toward the Senate for safety. “That was overwhelmingly distressing and emotional.”Senator Mitt Romney on Wednesday at the Capitol. “That was overwhelmingly distressing and emotional,” he said of the videos the House managers presented.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesSenator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican, conceded that the managers had “done a good job connecting the dots” and recreating a “harsh reminder of what happens when you let something like that get out of hand.” Five people died in connection to the mayhem, including a Capitol Police officer, and more than 100 were injured.But for all of the power of their case, the managers’ task remained an exceedingly steep one, and it was unclear if they had made any headway. Senators voted narrowly to proceed with the trial on Tuesday, but only six Republicans joined Democrats in deeming it constitutional to judge an official no longer in office, foreshadowing Mr. Trump’s likely acquittal.Many of the same Republicans who had been hostile to hearing the case did not dispute on Wednesday the horror of the attack, but they suggested it was the rioters, not the former president who retains heavy sway over their party, who are culpable.“Today’s presentation was powerful and emotional, reliving a terrorist attack on our nation’s capital,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. “But there was very little said about how specific conduct of the president satisfies the legal standard.”Short of persuading 34 Republicans to join Democrats to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to convict, the Democratic managers directed their arguments at the American public and at history in an attempt to bury Mr. Trump’s popular appeal and lay down a clear marker for future presidents.The trial was proceeding at a blistering pace. Prosecutors were expected to take several more hours on Thursday before Mr. Trump’s lawyers will have two days to mount a defense. The Senate could render a verdict as soon as the weekend.Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who made a much-criticized debut on Tuesday, are expected to assert that the former president was not trying to incite violence or interfere with the electoral process. Rather, they will argue, he merely wanted to urge his supporters to demand general election security reforms, an argument that requires ignoring much of the evidentiary record.Though they have sought not to repeat Mr. Trump’s outlandish claims that the election was “stolen” from him, the lawyers will also insist they amount to constitutionally protected free speech for which the Senate cannot punish him.The House managers, though, argued that Mr. Trump clearly incited the attack, thus violating his oath of office to protect the Constitution. Prosecutors walked senators through his speech just before the mob closed in, playing again and again clips of him urging the thousands on hand to “fight like hell” alongside others, shot from the crowd, featuring a drastic response from the audience: “Take the Capitol.”A National Guard soldier in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday. Guard troops have been on patrol there since last month.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York Times“This violent attack was not planned in secret,” Ms. Plaskett said. “The insurgents believed they were doing the duty of their president — they were taking his orders.”To bolster their analysis, the managers turned to an unlikely group: the hundreds of people already charged with executing the riot who in interviews and court records leave little doubt that they believed they were delivering to Mr. Trump what he asked for.But it was all a prelude to a vivid recreation of the attack itself meant to drive home the enormity of what the managers said Mr. Trump had unleashed. Mindful that individual lawmakers still had only a limited view of the day, they used a computer generated model of the Capitol to show in precise detail the mob’s movements over time relative to members of Congress.In one jarring scene, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader at the time, was shown literally running with a security detail through the basement of the Senate in search of safety. Representative Eric Swalwell of California, another of the impeachment managers, told senators he had counted 58 steps between where senators could be seen scurrying toward a secure location and where armed extremists were massing.Instead of intervening to help as the Capitol fell, the managers asserted that Mr. Trump simply stood back and watched in a “dereliction of duty” as the second and third in line to the presidency were put in peril. Citing news reports and accounts from Republican senators themselves who contacted the White House desperate for the president to call off the attack or send in security reinforcements, the managers said the evidence suggested Mr. Trump refused because he was “delighted” with what he saw unfolding.“When the violence started, he never once said the one thing everyone around him was begging him to say,” Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas said. “‘Stop the attack.’”Emily Cochrane More

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      What Do ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ Mean to the G.O.P.?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat Do ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ Mean to the G.O.P.?These politicians are still bowing to their alpha — Trump.Opinion ColumnistFeb. 10, 2021Credit…Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesIt cannot be said often enough: The first rule of politics is survival.This is a sad but pervading truth. We like to think that politicians are driven above all else by a sense of public service, a fundamental belief in the efficacy of government and in the defense of democracy.Surely that is true of some. But we are ever reminded that too many elected officials’ primary impulse is the pursuit, acquisition and maintenance of power. Power is the politicians’ profession. So just like a pack of animals, they willingly, gleefully subjugate themselves to the one among them with the most power.We see that playing out before our eyes in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection, a high crime of which he is clearly guilty.All but six Republican senators voted that the trial itself was unconstitutional, even though constitutional scholars overwhelmingly disagree.These politicians are still bowing to their alpha — Trump. In the early days of Trump’s presidency, Republicans in Congress either cozied up to him or sat in silence as his demagogy ensnared and entranced the Republican base.For years — decades even — the conservative elite had alternately tolerated, recruited or activated racists, white nationalists and white supremacists. The elite have their own versions of these biases, but they thought themselves more erudite and tactical, not brash and brazen. They would use surgical tools of voter suppression, states’ rights campaigns and defense of marriage and the unborn to advance their goals in a way they saw as honorable.But Trump saw the voters that the elites kept under the stairs, the ones they want to excite only around election time. He saw the resentment and rage in them. He saw that their voices had been muted and their tongues chastened.He drew them out. He let them vent. He allowed them to see they were indeed the majority of the party. He offered to be their leader, their white knight of white power, and they accepted. They grew loud and strong and he fed them red meat. They rampaged and he basked in the glow of the blaze.Leader and followers had found each other. Now the traditional Republicans were on the run or on the ropes. Rather than become victims of the mob, they yielded to it. They tried to tap into it. They tried to grab the reins of it.But this mob had only one leader: Trump. It was a cult of personality. It was a religion with one god. And that god is a jealous god. And vindictive. And mean.Anyone who would dare forsake Trump runs the risk of being smote by him, and targeted by his minions. To diverge from Trump is essentially to abdicate power, and for a career politician that is a fate worse than death.So, we watch the impeachment trial, with the impressive and clear presentation by the House impeachment managers of evidence that we already knew and some that we didn’t. We are reminded of just how heinous an episode that attempted insurrection was, that people were killed and injured.We are reminded that there were those in that band of terrorists who wanted to take even more murderous actions, but simply didn’t happen upon the opportunity and targets.And, in the end, you have to ask yourself only one question to convict Trump: Would this attempted insurrection have happened without him? The answer is no.For months Trump lied about the election and pumped into his followers the fallacy that something had been stolen from them and that they needed to fight with all they had to reclaim it. Then there are all the things he said on the eve of the assault on the Capitol, during it and even after it.Trump refused to accept that his white power presidency was coming to an end, in part because of Black and brown voters in some key states, so he asked his white power patriots to come to his defense, to help overturn a fair election.They responded, loyally, to the party leader who had truly seen them, who didn’t condemn their bigotries but amplified them. They saw themselves in Trump, and they still do.The Republicans in Congress are still afraid of their own base, their own constituencies in their own districts and states, because the Trump rot reaches down to the root. Their voters belong to Trump, therefore their futures are in Trump’s hands.Trump is essentially running a defection minority government from political exile.Republicans dare not cross him, even if they know that he is wrong, even if they know that what he did to incite the insurgency is wrong, even if they know that voting to convict him is right.Right and wrong have taken on new meanings in this Republican Party: to be right is to side with Trump, unwaveringly, while the only wrong is to do the opposite.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why Bill Cassidy Broke With Senate Republicans and Backed Trump’s Trial

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentliveTrial HighlightsDay 2: Key TakeawaysVideo of Jan. 6 RiotWhat to Expect TodayWhat Is Incitement?Trump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Bill Cassidy Broke With Senate Republicans and Backed Trump’s TrialThe Louisiana senator, usually a reliable conservative vote, angered Republicans by voting to continue with the impeachment trial. But he has increasingly shown an inclination toward pragmatism.Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, voted this week to move forward with the Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana did not just vote this week with Democrats to proceed with the impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump — he also effectively shamed his fellow Republican senators by voicing, and acting on, what many of them were surely thinking.Mr. Cassidy blistered Mr. Trump’s lawyers as “disorganized” and seemingly “embarrassed by their arguments,” explaining that their poor performance and the compelling case by the Democratic House impeachment managers had persuaded him to break from his party’s attempt to dismiss the proceedings on constitutional grounds.“If I’m an impartial juror, and one side is doing a great job, and the other side is doing a terrible job, on the issue at hand, as an impartial juror, I’m going to vote for the side that did the good job,” he told reporters on Tuesday. He did, though, emphasize on Wednesday that his view on constitutionality did not “predict my vote on anything else,” namely whether to convict Mr. Trump, saying only that he had an “open mind.”By becoming the only Senate Republican to switch his position from the one he held last month on a similar question about the constitutionality of holding an impeachment trial for a person no longer in public office, however, Mr. Cassidy delighted Louisiana Democrats, angered Republicans in his home state and presented himself as a one-man testimony of why Mr. Trump’s eventual acquittal is all but inevitable.“There is literally nothing that the Trump lawyers could do to change any of these other Republicans’ minds,” said Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat. “They couldn’t have tanked it on purpose any worse than they did, and they still only lost one.”That Mr. Cassidy was that sole senator to be lost, joining the five Republicans who also sided with Democrats in January on the constitutionality of the trial, may have seemed surprising at first glance. After all, he has been a fairly reliable conservative vote since being elected to the Senate in 2014, and Louisiana just handed Mr. Trump a 19-percentage-point victory over President Biden.Yet Mr. Cassidy, a 63-year-old physician, also has an iconoclastic streak and can be quirky. A devoted fan of his alma mater’s football program, Mr. Cassidy can rattle off the precise number of Louisiana State University football players who have left college early to be drafted into the N.F.L.One fellow Louisianian, former Representative Cedric Richmond, who in 2014 said that the “dude is weird,” put it more delicately on Wednesday. “He has always been independent,” said Mr. Richmond, a Democrat who served in Congress with Mr. Cassidy and is now a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, calling the senator’s vote a “profile in courage.”Mr. Cassidy is part of an increasingly vocal group of red-state Senate Republicans who, having spent more time in their careers confirming judges than legislating, are eager to work with Mr. Biden and their Democratic colleagues.Mr. Cassidy signaled his very public turn toward pragmatism less than a month after cruising to re-election last year by 40 points.First, he became the most prominent Louisiana Republican, and one of only a few G.O.P. senators in the South, to acknowledge in November that Mr. Biden had won the election.Then he left no doubt about his intentions with a decidedly Louisiana touch. He showed up at a Capitol Hill news conference in December bearing Mardi Gras beads to make the case for state and local aid in a coronavirus relief package, warning that cities like New Orleans were being financially battered without tourist dollars.In joining a bipartisan Senate “gang” after his landslide re-election to push for what eventually became the $900 billion measure that Mr. Trump signed in December, a seemingly liberated Mr. Cassidy indicated that he would use his next, and perhaps final, six-year term as a constructive force in Congress for a state confronting profound economic, public health and environmental challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.“I’m 63 years old, I am a senator because I love my country, I love my state, and I am going to work my hardest for my state and my country,” he said after that December news conference, adding with a shrug: “I want my state and my country to do well and what comes, comes.”If that approach makes for a sharp contrast with Senator John Kennedy — his fellow Louisiana Republican, who delights in dishing one-liners on cable television — it puts him in league with an emerging group of G.O.P. lawmakers more interested in accruing legislative accomplishments than Fox News appearances.This coalition includes some of the Republican senators who visited the White House to discuss the next virus package with Mr. Biden this month. Their ranks include not just moderate stalwarts like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska but also more conservative lawmakers like Todd Young of Indiana, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Jerry Moran of Kansas.“We’re looking for solutions,” said Mr. Young, who until recently was the chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm and is eager to turn back to policy.Mr. Schatz, who is friendly with some of these senators, put a finer point on their motivation: “If I’m going to suffer through the Trump era, then I may as well enact some laws.”In Louisiana, though, the thoroughly Trumpified Republican Party expects only continued fealty to the former president.Mr. Cassidy confronted immediate criticism for his vote and comments on Tuesday.“I received many calls this afternoon from Republicans in Louisiana who think that @SenBillCassidy did a ‘terrible job’ today,” Blake Miguez, the State House Republican leader, wrote on Twitter, repurposing Mr. Cassidy’s critique of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. “I understand their frustrations and join them in their disappointment.”Even a fellow member of the Louisiana congressional delegation, Representative Mike Johnson, weighed in. “A lot of people from back home are calling me about it right now,” noted Mr. Johnson, a Republican, who said he was “surprised” by Mr. Cassidy’s move.Perhaps he should not have been.As Stephanie Grace, the longtime political columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, wrote in a December piece anticipating Mr. Cassidy’s shift, he “has long been part of bipartisan efforts to solve problems, even if his solutions probably go too far for some Republicans and stop way short of what many Democrats want.”Mr. Cassidy, a former Democrat like Mr. Kennedy and many Southern Republicans their age, has long been less than dogmatic on health care, a viewpoint he formed working in his state’s charity hospitals. This has always been more than a little ironic to Louisiana political insiders, given that in 2014 he unseated Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, thanks to conservative attacks on former President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act. (On Wednesday, Ms. Landrieu said of Mr. Cassidy, “Many people in Louisiana are proud of him, including me.”)Yet by 2017, during the heated debate over whether to repeal the health care law, Mr. Cassidy was warning that to kick people off their insurance or make coverage unaffordable would only shift costs back to taxpayers by burdening emergency rooms.“If you want to be fiscally responsible, then coverage is better than no coverage,” he said at the time, conceding that Congress had established “the right for every American to have health care.”Such remarks, like much else policy-related in the Trump era, were overshadowed by the incessant White House drama. But Mr. Cassidy’s turn toward the political middle isn’t lost on Louisiana Democrats now.“He seems to be developing this moderate, deal-making persona,” said Mandie Landry, a state representative from Louisiana. “Kennedy has become so out there and embarrassing that it gives Cassidy some space, especially if he’s not running again.”That was clear enough from the senator’s comportment on Wednesday morning, when he seemed to evoke the most memorable lyrics of the Louisiana-inspired song “Me and Bobby McGee”: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”Happily striding to the microphone set up for television cameras in the Capitol basement to take questions, Mr. Cassidy acknowledged that the reaction in Louisiana to his vote had been “mixed.”Then he continued.“It is Constitution and country over party,” he said of his approach. “For some, they get it. And for others, they’re not quite so sure. But that’s to be expected.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Georgia Prosecutors Open Criminal Investigation of Trump Call

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionKey TakeawaysTrump’s RoleGeorgia InvestigationExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGeorgia Prosecutors Open Criminal Investigation of Trump CallFulton County prosecutors have initiated a criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s January phone call to the Georgia secretary of state asking him to “find” votes.Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was overseeing the electoral process in the state.Credit…Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockRichard Fausset and Feb. 10, 2021, 9:57 a.m. ETATLANTA — Prosecutors in Fulton County have initiated a criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia’s election results, including a phone call he made to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Mr. Trump pressured him to “find” enough votes to help him reverse his loss.On Wednesday, Fani Willis, the recently elected Democratic prosecutor in Fulton County, sent a letter to numerous officials in state government, including Mr. Raffensperger, requesting that they preserve documents related to Mr. Trump’s call, according to a state official with knowledge of the letter. The letter explicitly stated that the request was part of a criminal investigation, said the official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters. The inquiry makes Georgia the second state after New York where Mr. Trump faces a criminal investigation. And it comes in a jurisdiction where potential jurors are unlikely to be hospitable to the former president; Fulton County encompasses most of Atlanta and overwhelmingly supported President Biden in the November election.The Fulton County investigation comes on the heels of a decision Monday by Mr. Raffensperger’s office to open an administrative inquiry. Ms. Willis has been weighing for several weeks whether to open an inquiry, after Mr. Trump’s phone call to Mr. Raffensperger on Jan. 2 alarmed election experts who call it an extraordinary intervention into a state’s electoral process.That call was one of several attempts Mr. Trump made to persuade top Republican officials in the state to uncover instances of voting fraud that might change the outcome. He also called Gov. Brian Kemp in early December and pressured him to call a special legislative session to overturn his election loss. Later that month, Mr. Trump called a state investigator and pressed the official to “find the fraud,” according to those with knowledge of the call.Former prosecutors said Mr. Trump’s calls might run afoul of at least three state laws. One is criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, which can be either a felony or a misdemeanor; as a felony, it is punishable by at least a year in prison. There is also a related conspiracy charge, which can be prosecuted either as a misdemeanor or a felony. A third law, a misdemeanor offense, bars “intentional interference” with another person’s “performance of election duties.”Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia was reaffirmed after election officials recertified the state’s presidential election results in three separate counts of the ballots: the initial election tally; a hand recount ordered by the state; and another recount, which was requested by Mr. Trump’s campaign and completed by machines. The results of the machine recount show Mr. Biden won with a lead of about 12,000 votes.Mr. Biden was the first Democrat to win the presidential election in Georgia since 1992. Mr. Trump accused Gov. Brian Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger, both Republicans, of not doing enough to help him overturn the result in the weeks after the election. Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensberger had each resisted numerous attacks from Mr. Trump who called the governor “hapless” and he called on the secretary of state to resign.The Georgia investigation comes as Mr. Trump is also facing an ongoing criminal fraud inquiry into his finances by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., and a civil fraud inquiry by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. The mere beginning of an investigation into the polarizing former president could be a career-defining moment for Ms. Willis, who took office in January. She is the first African-American woman to hold the job in Georgia’s most populous county, and has already faced some daunting challenges: Atlanta is coming off a year with a high number of homicides, and Ms. Willis has promised an ambitious set of changes to the office, as well as a review of her predecessor’s controversial handling of the police shooting of a Black man, Rayshard Brooks, in June.If Mr. Trump were to be convicted of a state crime in New York or Georgia, a federal pardon would not be applicable. In Georgia, Mr. Trump cannot look to Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, for a state pardon, and not just because the two have a fractured relationship. In Georgia, pardons are granted only by the state board of pardons and paroles.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why Thousands of Republicans Are Leaving the Party

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeMurder Charges?The Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘There’s Nothing Left’: Why Thousands of Republicans Are Leaving the PartyVoting registration data indicates a stronger-than-usual flight from the G.O.P. since the Capitol riot, with an intensely fluid period in American politics now underway.In the days and weeks after the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, thousands of Republicans left the party. In some states, the surge in registration changes was particularly noticeable. Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesNick Corasaniti, Annie Karni and Feb. 10, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETIn the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the phone lines and websites of local election officials across the country were jumping: Tens of thousands of Republicans were calling or logging on to switch their party affiliations.In California, more than 33,000 registered Republicans left the party during the three weeks after the Washington riot. In Pennsylvania, more than 12,000 voters left the G.O.P. in the past month, and more than 10,000 Republicans changed their registration in Arizona.An analysis of January voting records by The New York Times found that nearly 140,000 Republicans had quit the party in 25 states that had readily available data (19 states do not have registration by party). Voting experts said the data indicated a stronger-than-usual flight from a political party after a presidential election, as well as the potential start of a damaging period for G.O.P. registrations as voters recoil from the Capitol violence and its fallout.Among those who recently left the party are Juan Nunez, 56, an Army veteran in Mechanicsburg, Pa. He said he had long felt that the difference between the United States and many other countries was that campaign-season fighting ended on Election Day, when all sides would peacefully accept the result. The Jan. 6 riot changed that, he said.“What happened in D.C. that day, it broke my heart,” said Mr. Nunez, a lifelong Republican who is preparing to register as an independent. “It shook me to the core.”The biggest spikes in Republicans leaving the party came in the days after Jan. 6, especially in California, where there were 1,020 Republican changes on Jan. 5 — and then 3,243 on Jan. 7. In Arizona, there were 233 Republican changes in the first five days of January, and 3,317 in the next week. Most of the Republicans in these states and others switched to unaffiliated status.A crowd cheering for Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris as they spoke at the Chase Center after winning the election on Nov. 7. Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesVoter rolls often change after presidential elections, when registrations sometimes shift toward the winner’s party or people update their old affiliations to correspond to their current party preferences, often at a department of motor vehicles. Other states remove inactive voters, deceased voters or those who moved out of state from all parties, and lump those people together with voters who changed their own registrations. Of the 25 states surveyed by The Times, Nevada, Kansas, Utah and Oklahoma had combined such voter list maintenance with registration changes, so their overall totals would not be limited to changes that voters made themselves. Other states may have done so, as well, but did not indicate in their public data.Among Democrats, 79,000 have left the party since early January.But the tumult at the Capitol, and the historic unpopularity of former President Donald J. Trump, have made for an intensely fluid period in American politics. Many Republicans denounced the pro-Trump forces that rioted on Jan. 6, and 10 Republican House members voted to impeach Mr. Trump. Sizable numbers of Republicans now say they support key elements of President Biden’s stimulus package; typically, the opposing party is wary if not hostile toward the major policy priorities of a new president.“Since this is such a highly unusual activity, it probably is indicative of a larger undercurrent that’s happening, where there are other people who are likewise thinking that they no longer feel like they’re part of the Republican Party, but they just haven’t contacted election officials to tell them that they might change their party registration,” said Michael P. McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida. “So this is probably a tip of an iceberg.”But, he cautioned, it could also be the vocal “never Trump” reality simply coming into focus as Republicans finally took the step of changing their registration, even though they hadn’t supported the president and his party since 2016.Kevin Madden, a former Republican operative who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, fits this trend line, though he was ahead of the recent exodus. He said he changed his registration to independent a year ago, after watching what he called the harassment of career foreign service officials at Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial.Kevin Madden, a former Republican operative who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, changed his registration to independent a year ago.Credit…Evan Vucci/Associated Press“It’s not a birthright and it’s not a religion,” Mr. Madden said of party affiliation. “Political parties should be more like your local condo association. If the condo association starts to act in a way that’s inconsistent with your beliefs, you move.”As for the overall trend of Republicans abandoning their party, he said that it was too soon to say if it spelled trouble in the long term, but that the numbers couldn’t be overlooked. “In all the time I worked in politics,” he said, “the thing that always worried me was not the position but the trend line.”Some G.O.P. officials noted the significant gains in registration that Republicans have seen recently, including before the 2020 election, and noted that the party had rebounded quickly in the past.“You never want to lose registrations at any point, and clearly the January scene at the Capitol exacerbated already considerable issues Republicans are having with the center of the electorate,” said Josh Holmes, a top political adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader. “Today’s receding support really pales in comparison to the challenges of a decade ago, however, when Republicans went from absolute irrelevance to a House majority within 18 months.”He added, “If Republicans can reunite behind basic conservative principles and stand up to the liberal overreach of the Biden administration, things will change a lot quicker than people think.”In North Carolina, the shift was immediately noticeable. The state experienced a notable surge in Republicans changing their party affiliation: 3,007 in the first week after the riot, 2,850 the next week and 2,120 the week after that. A consistent 650 or so Democrats changed their party affiliation each week.But state G.O.P. officials downplayed any significance in the changes, and expressed confidence that North Carolina, a battleground state that has leaned Republican recently, will remain in their column.“Relatively small swings in the voter registration over a short period of time in North Carolina’s pool of over seven million registered voters are not particularly concerning,” Tim Wigginton, the communications director for the state party, said in a statement, predicting that North Carolina would continue to vote Republican at the statewide level.Trump supporters gathered to protest at the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix on the day of Mr. Biden’s inauguration.Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesIn Arizona, 10,174 Republicans have changed their party registration since the attack as the state party has shifted ever further to the right, as reflected by its decision to censure three Republicans — Gov. Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain — for various acts deemed disloyal to Mr. Trump. The party continues to raise questions about the 2020 election, and last week Republicans in the State Legislature backed arresting elections officials from Maricopa County for refusing to comply with wide-ranging subpoenas for election equipment and materials.It is those actions, some Republican strategists in Arizona argue, that prompted the drop in G.O.P. voter registrations in the state.“The exodus that’s happening right now, based on my instincts and all the people who are calling me out here, is that they’re leaving as a result of the acts of sedition that took place and the continued questioning of the Arizona vote,” said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican strategist in Arizona..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.For Heidi Ushinski, 41, the decision to leave the Arizona Republican Party was easy. After the election, she said, she registered as a Democrat because “the Arizona G.O.P. has just lost its mind” and wouldn’t “let go of this fraudulent election stuff.”“The G.O.P. used to stand for what we felt were morals, just character, and integrity,” she added. “I think that the outspoken G.O.P. coming out of Arizona has lost that.”This is the third time Ms. Ushinski has switched her party registration. She usually re-registers to be able to vote against candidates. This time around, she did it because she did not feel that there was a place for people like her in the “new” Republican Party.“I look up to the Jeffry Flakes and the Cindy McCains,” she said. “To see the G.O.P. go after them, specifically, when they speak in ways that I resonate with just shows me that there’s nothing left in the G.O.P. for me to stand for. And it’s really sad.”Mr. Nunez, the Army veteran in Pennsylvania, said his disgust with the Capitol riot was compounded when Republicans in Congress continued to push back on sending stimulus checks and staunchly opposed raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.“They were so quick to bail out corporations, giving big companies money, but continue to fight over giving money to people in need,” said Mr. Nunez, who plans to change parties this week. “Also, I’m a business owner and I cannot imagine living on $7 an hour. We have to be fair.”Though the volume of voters leaving the G.O.P. varied from state to state, nearly every state surveyed showed a noticeable increase. In Colorado, roughly 4,700 Republican voters changed their registration status in the nine days after the riot. In New Hampshire, about 10,000 left the party’s voter rolls in the past month, and in Louisiana around 5,500 did as well.Even in states with no voter registration by party, some Republicans have been vocal about leaving.Mayor Michael Taylor of Sterling Heights, Mich., did not vote for Mr. Trump a second time in 2020.Credit…Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesIn Michigan, Mayor Michael Taylor of Sterling Heights, the fourth-largest city in the state, already had one foot out the Republican Party door before the 2020 elections. Even as a lifelong Republican, he couldn’t bring himself to vote for Mr. Trump for president after backing him in 2016. He instead cast a ballot for Mr. Biden.After the election, the relentless promotion of conspiracy theories by G.O.P. leaders, and the attack at the Capitol, pushed him all the way out of the party.“There was enough before the election to swear off the G.O.P., but the incredible events since have made it clear to me that I don’t fit into this party,” Mr. Taylor said. “It wasn’t just complaining about election fraud anymore. They have taken control of the Capitol at the behest of the president of the United States. And if there was a clear break with the party in my mind, that was it.”Mr. Taylor plans to run for re-election this year, and even though it’s a nonpartisan race, community members are well aware of the shift in his thinking since the last citywide election in 2017.He already has two challengers, including a staunch Trump supporter, who has begun criticizing Mr. Taylor for his lack of support for the former president.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why Trump's Second Impeachment Is a Visceral Reckoning

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentliveLatest UpdatesKey TakeawaysReporter AnalysisWhere Senators StandHouse ManagersTrump’s LawyersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storynews analysisThe First Trial Seemed Abstract. This One Is a Visceral Reckoning Over Trump.At issue will be many aspects that defined Donald Trump’s presidency: his relentless assaults on truth, his fomenting of divisions, his shattering of norms and his undermining of an election.House impeachment managers watching the prosecution’s display of video from the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol during the trial on Monday. The video made clear how different this trial will be from the one a year ago.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 9, 2021Updated 9:23 p.m. ETThis was no phone call transcript, no dry words on a page open to interpretation. This was a horde of extremists pushing over barricades and beating police officers. This was a mob smashing windows and pounding on doors. This was a mass of marauders setting up a gallows and shouting, “Take the building!” and “Fight for Trump!”As the United States Senate opened an unprecedented second impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday amid the echoes of history, the House managers prosecuting him played powerful video images of last month’s deadly assault on the Capitol that made abundantly clear how different this proceeding will be from the first.Where the case against Mr. Trump a year ago turned on what might have seemed like an abstract or narrow argument about his behind-the-scenes interactions with a far-off country, Ukraine, the case this year turns on an eruption of violence that Americans saw on television with their own eyes — and that the senators serving as jurors experienced personally when they fled for their lives.Rather than a judgment of where foreign policy turns into political excess, this sequel trial amounts to a visceral reckoning over Mr. Trump’s very presidency. At issue in the Senate chamber over the coming days will be many of the fundamental aspects that defined Mr. Trump’s four years in power: his relentless assaults on truth, his deliberate efforts to foment divisions in society, his shattering of norms and his undermining of a democratic election.Still, this trial may end up with the same verdict as the last one. On a test vote on the constitutionality of prosecuting a president after he leaves office, 44 Republicans on Tuesday stood by Mr. Trump, a measure of his enduring sway within his party and a signal that he most likely will win the 34 votes he needs for acquittal given the two-thirds supermajority required for conviction.But if the six Republicans who voted to proceed also vote to convict him for inciting an insurrection, it will be the most senators to break from a president of their own party in any impeachment trial in American history.“I would not have thought it when I was sitting on the Senate floor trying the first impeachment — it turns out that was just the opening act,” said Norman L. Eisen, a lawyer for House Democrats during last year’s trial on Mr. Trump’s pressure on Ukraine for political help. “The second one crystallizes all the anti-democratic elements that characterized Trump’s tenure and his Ukraine high crimes but brings them to an even higher pitch.”The emotional punch of this case was evident on the Senate floor on Tuesday. Sitting in what amounted to the crime scene, the same chamber they evacuated just a month ago moments before Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed in, some of the senators watched raptly as the scenes of violence played out on the screens before them. Others turned away.The lead House manager, Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, choked up as he recounted bringing his daughter and son-in-law to the Capitol that day, just a day after burying his 25-year-old son, only to have them sending farewell texts and making whispered goodbye phone calls because “they thought they were going to die.”Damage from the mob attack remained at the Capitol even as the impeachment trial got underway. Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times“Make no mistake about it, as you think about that day, things could have been much worse,” said Representative David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island, another of the managers. “As one senator said, they could have killed all of us.”Mr. Trump’s defense team recognized the power of the other side’s presentation, with one of his lawyers, Bruce L. Castor Jr., admitting that the managers had done a good job in offering their case and even acknowledging that voters rejected Mr. Trump. But they complained that the House team was playing to emotions rather than law or reason, trying to rile up senators with inflammatory images and then twisting his words to unfairly blame the violence on Mr. Trump.David I. Schoen, another of the former president’s lawyers, said the videotape was “designed by experts to chill and horrify you and our fellow Americans” as if an impeachment trial “were some sort of blood sport.”“It is again for pure, raw, misguided partisanship,” Mr. Schoen added. “They do not need to show you movies to show you that the riot happened here. We will stipulate that it happened and you know all about it.”There is, of course, a certain paradox in a lawyer for a reality-show president complaining about the power of visual images. The longtime star of “The Apprentice” appreciates better than most how to tell a story on television.There was no compelling video in the Ukraine case, just recordings of people testifying to events the viewers could not watch themselves. None of the senators who rendered last year’s verdict felt physically threatened by Mr. Trump’s telephone call with Ukraine’s president seeking help smearing his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.“This impeachment is a more of a made-for-television event, which is something the former president surely understands,” said Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer. “Where the previous one involved many narrative strands, a long span of time and very little action, this one offers a compact story with escalating tensions and a violent conclusion.”It also raises a broader indictment of Mr. Trump, one that may not seem quite so removed to everyday Americans who had little interest in Ukraine or saw Mr. Trump’s interventions there as politics as usual.When House Democrats moved to impeach Mr. Trump the first time, they debated whether to advance as many as 10 articles of impeachment charging him with all sorts of crimes, including obstructing the Russia investigation, authorizing hush money for women to cover up sexual affairs, illegally diverting money to his border wall and profiting personally from his office.Instead, they opted for the more circumscribed case involving Ukraine because they thought it was easiest to prove.Even some Republican senators agreed by the end of last year’s trial that Democrats had proved the case — they just did not deem it significant enough to merit conviction and removal from office. As a result, Mr. Trump emerged emboldened by his acquittal.This time, other than his staunchest allies, most Republican lawmakers are not defending Mr. Trump’s actions nor arguing that they were not impeachable. Instead, they have focused on process or politics, maintaining that it is unconstitutional to try a former president or a distraction from serious issues like fighting the coronavirus pandemic.But the case that will play out over the next week will put the most aberrant elements of Mr. Trump’s presidency on display. For four years, he played to the crowd, stirring anger, whipping up us-against-them conflicts and at times encouraging violence. He peddled dishonest versions of reality to suit his political needs and told supporters not to believe anyone but him. He undercut faith in democratic institutions and pushed boundaries other presidents would not have.The House’s impeachment managers heading to the Senate chamber at the start of the trial.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesAll of which played out in the months that led to the election on Nov. 3 and the Capitol siege on Jan. 6 and will now be scrutinized — how he promoted flagrantly bogus fraud complaints to try to cling to power even after voters rejected him, how he pressured state and local officials to subvert election results in his favor, how he revved up supporters to march on the Capitol by telling them their country was at stake.Michael W. McConnell, a conservative former appeals court judge and author of “The President Who Would Not Be King,” said the impeachment articles in the Ukraine case were weak. The abuse of power charge “stated a plausible ground” for removal but was “not so compelling,” while the obstruction of Congress article “was not legally sound” on its face.“This time, although the articles of impeachment were badly drafted, the charges are significantly more serious, unquestionably amounting to high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said. “I suspect that is why Mr. Trump’s defenders are desperately searching for a rationale for voting not to convict that is not based on defending or excusing what he did.”Mr. Trump benefits from the tribal nature of today’s politics. Much as they may not like him, most Republican lawmakers have stuck to their side of the fence — criticizing Mr. Trump’s actions was one thing, but joining hands with Democrats in a politically charged up-or-down verdict on his presidency is another. Similarly, polls show broad condemnation of Mr. Trump’s actions but only somewhat more support for conviction this time than last time.That is why Mr. Trump’s defense team played its own videos on Tuesday showing some Democrats calling for his impeachment almost from the minute he took office, arguing that their current drive is just the latest chapter in a campaign of retribution, a point intended to rally Republicans behind him again.And so while the Trump presidency is over, the struggle over the Trump presidency is not. For the next week, it will play out in gritty, angry, ugly words and images until its destined denouement.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Lie After Lie: Listen to How Trump Built His Alternate Reality

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      The 38-minute video below shows how Donald J. Trump’s persistent repetition of lies and calls to action over two months created an alternate reality that he won re-election. Mr. Trump’s words, which were echoed and amplified by the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, are a central focus of his second impeachment trial. […] More