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      Inside Donald Trump’s Embrace of the Jan. 6 Rioters

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      Two days before former President Donald J. Trump was booked at an Atlanta jail on his fourth indictment, he held an event at his golf club in New Jersey for another group of people facing criminal charges: rioters accused of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Standing next to a portrait of himself portrayed as James Bond, Mr. Trump told the defendants and their families that they had suffered greatly, but that all of that would change if he won another term.“People who have been treated unfairly are going to be treated extremely, extremely fairly,” he said to a round of applause at the event last August in Bedminster, N.J. “What you’ve suffered is just ridiculous,” he added. “But it’s going to be OK.”That private event was emblematic of how Mr. Trump has embraced dozens of Jan. 6 defendants and their relatives and highlights how he has sought to undermine law enforcement when it suits him, while he also puts forth a law-and-order campaign.Recently, however, his celebrations of the Capitol riot and those who took part in it have become more public as he has promoted a revisionist history of the attack and placed it at the heart of his 2024 presidential campaign.Despite the nearly 1,000 guilty pleas and convictions that have been secured in criminal cases stemming from Jan. 6, Mr. Trump has repeatedly described the rioters who broke into the Capitol as “hostages” and has started to open his campaign events with a recording of riot defendants singing the national anthem from their jail cells.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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      Kristi Noem, South Dakota Governor and Trump VP Contender, Is Barred by Tribes

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      Four of South Dakota’s federally recognized Native American tribes have barred the state’s governor, Kristi Noem — a Republican whose name has been floated as a potential running mate for former President Donald J. Trump — from their reservations. The latest blocked Ms. Noem on Thursday.Three of the tribes barred Ms. Noem this month, joining another tribe that had sanctioned the governor after she told state lawmakers in February that Mexican drug cartels had a foothold on their reservations and were committing murders there.Ms. Noem further angered the tribes with remarks she made at a town hall event last month in Winner, S.D., appearing to suggest that the tribes were complicit in the cartels’ presence on their reservations.“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Ms. Noem said.The tribes are the Cheyenne River Sioux, the Rosebud Sioux and the Standing Rock Sioux and the Oglala Sioux, which in February became the first group to bar Ms. Noem from its reservation. Their reservations have a combined population of nearly 50,000 people and encompass more than eight million acres, according to state and federal government counts. Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the third tribal area to have restricted Ms. Noem’s access, extends into North Dakota.The tribes have accused Ms. Noem of stoking fears and denigrating their heritage when she referred to a gang known as the Ghost Dancers while addressing state lawmakers and said that it had recruited tribal members to join its criminal activities.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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      Lawmaker Presses Loro Piana on Reports of Exploiting Indigenous Workers in Peru

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      A freshman congressman is demanding answers from the fashion house Loro Piana, which sources wool from his native Peru and faces accusations of exploiting workers there. A $9,000 designer sweater made out of the ultrarare fur of a South American animal called a vicuña is not exactly a typical area of focus for a member of the U.S. Congress.But when Representative Robert Garcia, a first-term California Democrat and the first Peruvian-born person to serve in the House, saw reports that the luxury design house Loro Piana was not fairly compensating Indigenous workers in Peru who source the rare wool in some of its priciest knit clothing, he decided to use his position to make some noise.“As the first Peruvian American member of Congress and co-chair of the Congressional Peru Caucus, I write regarding concerning reports about the sourcing of vicuña wool by Loro Piana, a subsidiary of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton,” he wrote to company executives last month.He demanded that the fashion house — whose products including shirts, scarves and coats can cost anywhere from $500 to $30,000 — explain how it could raise its prices so steeply while steadily reducing the amount it was paying the people who harvest the raw materials for it.“While Loro Piana’s prices have increased, the price per kilo for fibers paid to the Lucanas community has fallen by one-third in just over a decade; and the villages’ revenue from the vicuña has fallen 80 percent,” Mr. Garcia wrote.A member of the Totoroma community in Puno, Peru, during a vicuña roundup and shearing in 2021.Carlos Mamani/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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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      Judge Rejects Hunter Biden Claim of Selective Prosecution in Gun Case

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      Judge Maryellen Noreika declined to dismiss the charges against the president’s son, saying Mr. Biden’s lawyer failed to show prosecutors had been motivated by animus.The federal judge presiding over Hunter Biden’s gun case in Delaware on Friday rejected Mr. Biden’s claim that he was being subjected to selective prosecution, saying it was “nonsensical” that the Biden Justice Department would target the president’s son.Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, has filed a flurry of motions in the Delaware gun case and a separate indictment in California on tax charges, accusing the government of unfairly singling out his client at the instigation of Republicans and seeking to dismiss the charges. None of those challenges have been successful so far.Judge Maryellen Noreika, who scuttled a plea deal reached between prosecutors and Mr. Biden last summer, said that Mr. Lowell failed to provide evidence that prosecutors had been motivated by animus against Hunter Biden.The “defendant’s claim is effectively that his own father targeted him for being his son, a claim that is nonsensical under the facts here,” Judge Noreika wrote in her 25-page decision.The judge also rejected Mr. Lowell’s claim that David C. Weiss, the special counsel and U.S. attorney in Delaware, had only decided to bring charges against Hunter Biden because of pressure from Republicans in Congress who claimed attempts to reach a plea agreement last year were a “sweetheart deal” intended to protect the Bidens.“Regardless of whether congressional Republicans attempted to influence the executive branch, there is no evidence that they were successful in doing so,” she wrote.A federal grand jury in Wilmington indicted Hunter Biden in September on charges that he lied about his drug use on an application for a Colt pistol in 2018.In response to a question on the form about whether he was using drugs, Mr. Biden said he was not, an assertion that prosecutors concluded was false. Mr. Biden has publicly acknowledged his struggles with addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol and had been in and out of rehab around the time of the gun purchase.If convicted, Mr. Biden could face up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines. But nonviolent first-time offenders who have not been accused of using the weapon in another crime rarely get serious prison time for the charges.The decision to file criminal charges against President Biden’s troubled son was an extraordinary step for the Justice Department and Mr. Weiss after the last-minute collapse of a deal that would have granted Hunter Biden broad immunity from future prosecution on gun and tax charges without serving prison time.In December, a separate federal grand jury in Los Angeles charged the president’s son with a scheme to evade federal taxes on millions in income from foreign businesses.Hunter Biden faces three counts each of evasion of a tax assessment, failure to file and pay taxes, and filing a false or fraudulent tax return, according to the 56-page indictment.Both trials are scheduled to begin in June, although the schedules are subject to change. More

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      Johnson Floats Voting on Senate Ukraine Bill, With Conservative Policies as Sweeteners

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      The Republican speaker has weighed bringing up a $95 billion Senate-passed bill to aid Ukraine and Israel in tandem with a separate package geared toward mollifying G.O.P. critics.Shortly after congressional leaders met with Japan’s prime minister in Speaker Johnson’s ceremonial office in the Capitol on Thursday morning, the conversation turned to Ukraine aid.Mr. Johnson was in the middle of another agonizing standoff with the ultraconservatives in his conference, after they had blocked legislation to extend a major warrantless surveillance law that is about to expire. His chief Republican antagonist, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, had intensified her threat to oust him. But on Ukraine, he offered his counterparts an assurance.“We’re going to get this done,” he vowed.His comments, confirmed by multiple people familiar with the meeting, were consistent with what Mr. Johnson has been saying for weeks, both publicly and privately: that he intends to ensure the House will move to assist Ukraine, a step that many members of his party oppose.Even as right-wing Republicans have sought to ratchet up pressure on their speaker, Mr. Johnson has continued to search for a way to win the votes to push through a Ukraine aid. He is battling not only stiff resistance to the idea among House Republicans, but also mounting opposition among Democrats to sending unfettered military aid to Israel given the soaring civilian death toll and humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.Mr. Johnson has yet to make any final decisions on how he plans to structure a new round of American military assistance to Ukraine.Some Republicans have increasingly expressed interest in structuring the aid as a loan, an idea that Mr. Johnson has publicly floated and that former President Donald J. Trump previously endorsed. Mr. Trump raised again the idea again after a private meeting with Mr. Johnson at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Friday.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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      Trump Co-Defendants Argue for Dismissal of Charges in Documents Case

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      The judge did not rule on motions by lawyers for Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who are accused of helping the former president obstruct government efforts to recover classified material.Lawyers for co-defendants of former President Donald J. Trump argued in federal court in Florida on Friday to dismiss charges of aiding in the obstruction of efforts to recover classified documents.It was a rare hearing of the documents case in which Mr. Trump did not take center stage. His co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, are loyal Trump employees, accused of conspiring with the former president to hide boxes containing classified government materials after Mr. Trump left office.Prosecutors also accused them of plotting to destroy security camera footage of the boxes being moved.Judge Aileen M. Cannon considered the defense lawyers’ arguments in her Fort Pierce, Fla., courtroom but ended the two-hour hearing Friday without making a decision on whether the charges against the two men should be dismissed. She also did not announce a date for the trial to begin, despite holding a hearing more than a month ago on the matter.Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira often take a back seat in the case against Mr. Trump. But each faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the most serious offenses.Mr. Nauta, 41, is Mr. Trump’s personal aide and served as his military valet when Mr. Trump was in the White House. He spent 20 years in the Navy, taking an honorable discharge in September 2021, according to his service records.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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      $7.4 Billion More in Student Loans Are Canceled, Biden Administration Says

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      The announcement is the latest in a piecemeal approach the White House is using to target more specific subsets of borrowers.The Biden administration announced an additional $7.4 billion in student loan cancellations for some 277,000 borrowers on Friday, building on plans announced earlier this week to provide debt relief for millions of borrowers by the fall if new rules the White House has put forward hold.The latest round of relief reflects a strategy the White House has embraced by taking smaller, targeted actions for subsets of borrowers that it hopes will add up to a significant result, after a larger plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in debt was struck down by the Supreme Court last year.It also comes as President Biden aims to shore up support with young voters who may be disproportionately affected by soaring education costs, but who may be drifting away over his policy on Israel and the war in Gaza.Taken together with previous actions, the announcement on Friday brought the total to $153 billion in debt forgiven, touching around 4.3 million borrowers so far, the administration said. The administration hopes to forgive some or all loans held by some 30 million borrowers total. The administration said the 277,000 people it identified would be notified by email on Friday.“We’ve approved help for roughly one out of 10 of the 43 million Americans who have federal student loans,” Miguel A. Cardona, the education secretary, told reporters ahead of the announcement.The new round of cancellations involves three categories of borrowers who qualified under existing programs, with the bulk of the forgiveness going to around 207,000 people who borrowed relatively small amounts — $12,000 or less — and were enrolled in the administration’s income-driven repayment plan, known as SAVE.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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      D.N.C. Helped Pay Biden’s Legal Bills in Special Counsel Investigation

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      Even as some of President Biden’s top campaign officials were attacking Donald J. Trump’s campaign for soliciting donations to pay his legal fees, the Biden-aligned Democratic National Committee was helping pay for lawyers in the special counsel investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents.The D.N.C. has directed at least $1.7 million to lawyers since July to cover the president’s representation in the documents inquiry, a figure that pales in comparison to Mr. Trump’s use of supporters’ donations to pay his hefty legal fees. The former president has spent more than $100 million on legal bills since leaving office, relying almost entirely on donations.Federal Election Commission records show that since the investigation began last year, the D.N.C. has paid $1.05 million to Bob Bauer, the president’s lawyer. The party committee has also paid $905,000 to Hemenway & Barnes, a Boston firm that employs Jennifer Miller, a lawyer whom the special counsel’s report identified as a “personal counsel for Mr. Biden.”The party’s payments to cover Mr. Biden’s lawyers — first reported by Axios on Friday — are roughly in line with amounts donors spent to pay for legal defenses for President Barack Obama during his first term.The Biden campaign has repeatedly amplified the Trump campaign’s use of donor money to pay the former president’s legal bills in his four criminal cases.As recently as last weekend, top Biden campaign officials celebrated their fund-raising prowess with jabs at Mr. Trump for asking donors to subsidize his lawyers.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