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      California Lawmakers to Propose $25 Million Fund to Litigate Trump Administration

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      California lawmakers will convene a special session on Monday to discuss legislation to bolster the state against potential attacks by Donald J. Trump’s administration, including a proposed fund of up to $25 million to underwrite litigation against the federal government, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.President-elect Trump and fellow Republicans signaled during the campaign that he would target signature California policies if he were to win the election, including environmental protections, safeguards for immigrants, civil rights laws and abortion access. Democratic governors across the country have expressed concerns that the second Trump administration will be better prepared and less restrained.California’s Democratic leaders, who have been working for more than a year on contingency plans in the event of a second Trump term, announced within days of the election that they would begin to meet early this month on plans to “Trump-proof” the nation’s most populous state.“We will work with the incoming administration and we want President Trump to succeed in serving all Americans,” Governor Newsom said in a statement on Monday. “But when there is overreach, when lives are threatened, when rights and freedoms are targeted, we will take action.”The fund for litigation aims to pay for legal resources in the state’s Justice Department and regulatory agencies to “challenge illegal federal actions in court and take administrative actions to reduce potential harm,” according to the governor’s office.The proposed $25 million figure is significantly less than the roughly $42 million that California spent on lawsuits against the federal government during the first Trump administration, when the state sued the government more than 120 times. The smaller number — a fraction of the state’s nearly $300 billion annual budget — is a testament to concern over the risk of a financial shortfall. California’s lawmakers struggled to close a deficit this year.The figure is also a nod to the number of fronts on which the state’s Democrats expect the Trump administration to attack California. Mr. Newsom has already vowed to provide rebates to eligible residents who buy electric vehicles if Mr. Trump ends the $7,500 federal E.V. tax credit. The governor also has floated a possible disaster assistance fund to cover victims of floods and wildfires should Mr. Trump withhold federal aid from the disaster-prone state.California also extends health insurance coverage under the state’s version of Medicaid to low-income residents regardless of immigration status, a program that the next administration has also targeted.But the fund’s size also reflects the state’s success during and after Mr. Trump’s first term in protecting Californians against efforts to weaken state regulations, and the likelihood that Democratic states will work together to challenge Mr. Trump. More

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      Hunter Biden Likely Wouldn’t Qualify for a Pardon Recommendation Under Justice Dept. Criteria

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      Hunter Biden likely would not have qualified for a pardon recommendation under the criteria used by the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which is tasked with identifying and vetting worthy clemency recipients. The office mostly recommends full pardons for people who have already served their sentences.Hunter Biden has not been sentenced, let alone served his sentence.Presidents have unchecked authority to grant clemency to anyone they choose, regardless of the pardon attorney’s recommendations.During his first term in office, President-elect Donald J. Trump routinely granted clemency to people who had not been recommended by the pardon attorney, including to some who had been previously rejected by the office and others who had yet to be sentenced.“Before Trump, reaching into the middle of an ongoing case to give a full pardon was almost unheard-of,” said Margaret Love, who ran the Justice Department’s clemency process from 1990 to 1997 as the United States pardon attorney.Mr. Biden has been under pressure from groups supporting prisoners’ rights to issue more clemency grants at the end of his term.In a statement issued after the announcement of Hunter Biden’s pardon, Zoë Towns, the executive director of the advocacy group FWD.us, said, “It’s time to prioritize clemency for thousands of vetted cases. The President has the opportunity to extend mercy to those serving disproportionately long sentences in federal prisons. We absolutely must turn our attention there.”The pardon attorney has received nearly 12,000 petitions for clemency during President Biden’s term.Mr. Biden has so far issued 157 clemency grants — 25 pardons, which wipe out convictions, and 132 commutations, which reduce prison sentences — according to a tally kept by the pardon attorney. It is not clear if the tally includes the pardon to his son.Mr. Biden has issued fewer clemency grants so far than the 238 — 144 pardons and 94 commutations — issued by Mr. Trump during his first administration. More

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      Biden Pardons His Son Hunter, Citing ‘Political Pressure’

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      President Biden blamed “political pressure” for the collapse of a plea deal for Hunter Biden, but it was the judge overseeing the case who questioned the agreement.Hunter Biden’s plea deal did fall apart in dramatic form at the last minute last year. But it did so after the judge overseeing the case at the time raised issues about its unusual construction, involving two separate agreements meant to work in tandem. That construction violated one of the basic tenets of federal guilty pleas: that any agreement not have any side deals.That the plea agreement fell apart once it faced basic questioning from the judge was an embarrassment to both the prosecutors and the defense lawyers who negotiated it. But that is a far cry from the president’s suggestion that the deal for Hunter Biden to avoid prison time and a felony conviction collapsed because of political pressure. More

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      Analysis: In Pardoning Hunter, Biden Sounds a Lot Like Trump

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      President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump now agree on one thing: The Biden Justice Department has been politicized.In pardoning his son Hunter Biden on Sunday night, the incumbent president sounded a lot like his successor in complaining about selective prosecution and political pressure, questioning the fairness of a system that Mr. Biden had until now long defended.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Mr. Biden said in the statement announcing the pardon. “Here’s the truth,” he added. “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”Mr. Biden’s decision to use the extraordinary power of executive clemency to wipe out his son’s convictions on gun and tax charges came despite repeated statements by him and his aides that he would not do so. Just last summer, after his son was convicted at trial, the president rejected the idea of a pardon and said that “I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process.” The statement he issued Sunday night made clear he did not accept the outcome nor respect the process.The pardon and Mr. Biden’s stated rationale for granting it will inevitably muddy the political waters as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to take office with plans to use the Justice Department and F.B.I. to pursue “retribution” against his political adversaries. Mr. Trump has long argued that the justice system has been “weaponized” against him and that he is the victim of selective prosecution, much like Mr. Biden has now said his son was.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hunter Biden Faced Prison Time for Tax and Gun Charges

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      President Biden not only spared his son Hunter the humiliation of two felony convictions — he also saved him from what might have been a significant stretch of time in a federal prison.Hunter Biden, 54, pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles in September for falsifying records and failing to file returns dating to a period when he was hooked on crack, alcohol and easy cash.He faced up to 17 years in federal prison during a scheduled sentencing hearing in Los Angeles on Dec. 16, but would most likely have served no more than 36 months behind bars, according to sentencing experts.A jury in Wilmington, Del., in June found Mr. Biden, the president’s younger son, guilty of three felony counts for lying on a federal firearms application after an extraordinary seven-day trial. That trial made painfully public Mr. Biden’s crack addiction, reckless behavior and ruinous spending — narrated by three former romantic partners, including the widow of his brother, Beau Biden.The gun conviction came with a stiffer maximum sentence, 25 years, but he was expected to face a shorter sentence — of up to 16 months — during a hearing scheduled in Delaware on Dec. 13.The sentences would most likely have run concurrently, with Hunter Biden serving the longer stretch.On Sunday, Hunter Biden’s legal team filed paperwork in both jurisdictions informing both judges that the pardon had rendered the hearings moot. More

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      Read Joe Biden’s Statement About Pardoning Hunter

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      President Biden issued the following statement on Sunday night.Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter.From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given noncriminal resolutions.It is clear that Hunter was treated differently. The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the courtroom — with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kash Patel Would Bring Bravado and Baggage to F.B.I. Role

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to run the F.B.I. has a record in and out of government that is likely to raise questions during his Senate confirmation hearings.Few people tapped for any top federal post, much less a job as vital as F.B.I. director, have come with quite so much bravado, bombast or baggage as Kash Patel.On Saturday, Mr. Patel, 44, a Long Island-born provocateur and right-wing operative, was named by President-elect Donald J. Trump to lead the F.B.I., an agency he has accused of leading a “deep state” witch hunt against Mr. Trump. The announcement amounted to a de facto dismissal of the current director, Christopher A. Wray, who was appointed to the job by Mr. Trump and still has almost three years left on his 10-year term.Mr. Patel’s maximum-volume threats to exact far-reaching revenge on Mr. Trump’s behalf have endeared him to his boss and Trump allies who say the bureau needs a disrupter to weed out bias and reshape its culture.But his record as a public official and his incendiary public comments are likely to provoke intense questioning when the Senate weighs his nomination — and determines whether he should run an agency charged with protecting Americans from terrorism, street crime, cartels and political corruption, along with the threat posed by China, which Mr. Wray has described as existential.Here are some of the things Mr. Patel has said and done that could complicate his confirmation.He was accused of nearly botching a high-stakes hostage rescue.In October 2020, Mr. Patel, then a senior national intelligence official in the Trump administration, inserted himself into a secret effort by members of SEAL Team Six to rescue Philip Walton, an American who was 27 at the time and had been kidnapped by gunmen in Niger and taken to Nigeria.Mr. Patel, whose involvement broke with protocol, assured the State and Defense Departments that the Nigerian government had been told of the operation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wisconsin Democratic Chair Says He Is the One to Revive a Distressed Party

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      Ben Wikler, who has led the Wisconsin Democratic Party since 2019, announced a bid to be national party chair with a platform to “unite, fight, win.”Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic chairman and a prolific party fund-raiser with deep connections in Washington, announced on Sunday that he was entering the race to lead the Democratic National Committee.Mr. Wikler, 43, has led Wisconsin Democrats since 2019, and he has served as a top official at MoveOn, the progressive advocacy group. He said in an interview that he aimed to do for the national party what he did in Wisconsin, where he presided over the rebuilding of a party weakened by years of full Republican control of the state’s government.Mr. Wikler, whose start in politics came in part as a research assistant for Al Franken, joins a field of party-chair hopefuls that includes Ken Martin, the Minnesota Democratic chairman; Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor; and James Skoufis, a little-known New York state senator. While Mr. Martin has said he has endorsements from 83 of the 448 voting members of the D.N.C. (and Mr. O’Malley has said he has endorsements from three, and Mr. Skoufis does not have any), Mr. Wikler would not say his level of support when asked.That was not the only question Mr. Wikler declined to answer in an interview this weekend. He would also not say which state he thinks should vote first in the 2028 presidential primary or whether President Biden should have sought re-election.“My platform in this race is unite, fight, win,” Mr. Wikler said. “Uniting starts not with recriminations but with reckoning and with curiosity and data. And then you use all that to inform the way that you fight the next battle.”Jaime Harrison, the departing party chairman, is not seeking re-election. Others considering entering the race include former Representative Max Rose of New York; Chuck Rocha, a strategist who worked on Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign in 2020; and Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan state legislator. Mr. Harrison has scheduled the meeting for the vote to replace him for Feb. 1 in Oxon Hill, Md.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More