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      Ex-FBI Informant, Accused of Biden Lies, Said He Had Russian Contacts

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      Federal prosecutors portrayed the former informant, Alexander Smirnov, 43, as a serial liar incapable of telling the truth about even the most basic details of his own life.A former F.B.I. informant accused of making false bribery claims about President Biden and his son Hunter — which were widely publicized by Republicans — claimed to have been fed information by Russian intelligence, according to a court filing on Tuesday.In the memo, prosecutors portrayed the former informant, Alexander Smirnov, 43, as a serial liar incapable of telling the truth about even the most basic details of his own life. But Mr. Smirnov told federal investigators that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.Those disclosures, including Mr. Smirnov’s unverifiable claim that he met with Russian intelligence officials as recently as three months ago, made him a flight risk and endangered national security, Justice Department officials said. Mr. Smirnov had been held in custody in Las Vegas, where he has lived since 2022, since his arrest last week.He was released from custody on Tuesday on a personal recognizance bond after a detention hearing, said his lawyers, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld.Prosecutors did not specify which story Russian intelligence is said to have been fed to Mr. Smirnov, an Israeli citizen. But they suggested they could not believe anything he said. And they had many tales to choose from.The memo describes Mr. Smirnov as a human hall of mirrors: He fed the F.B.I. bogus information about the Bidens and misled prosecutors about his wealth, estimated at $6 million, while telling them he worked in the security business, even though the government could find no proof that was true.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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      The Quiet Way Democrats Hope to Expand Their Power at the State Level

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      The Democratic Governors Association is beginning a multimillion-dollar effort aimed at appointing more state judges.Locked out of power on the Supreme Court and still playing catch-up against Republicans in the federal judiciary, Democrats are hoping to gain a political advantage on a less visible but still important playing field: the state courts.After flipping the Arizona governor’s seat from Republican to Democratic last year, Gov. Katie Hobbs has appointed 15 judges to the state’s Superior Courts. In five years leading deeply red Kansas, the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, has named two justices to the Court of Appeals and one to the State Supreme Court.Governors have the power to appoint judges in nearly every state. These responsibilities are set to take center stage in political campaigns this year, as the Democratic Governors Association begins a multimillion-dollar effort, called the Power to Appoint Fund, aimed at key governor’s races.The fund, with a $5 million goal, will focus especially hard on two open seats in 2024 battlegrounds: New Hampshire, where the governor has the power to appoint state court justices, and North Carolina, which elects its justices; the next governor will appoint at least one State Supreme Court justice because of the state’s age limit rules.“Before we had our own abortion amendment issue here in the state of Kansas, I honestly didn’t hear much about court appointments except from attorney groups,” Governor Kelly said in an interview. “But since the Dobbs decision and then our own decision here in the state of Kansas, it’s become more of a forefront issue with folks. People, I think, recognize now more than ever the impact that the courts can have on their daily lives.”Pointing to the rightward tilt of the Supreme Court and important statewide court battles, Meghan Meehan-Draper, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, said that voters needed to be reminded of the power “Democratic governors have to appoint judges who are going to uphold the rule of law.”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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      Nikki Haley Again Calls for a TikTok Ban Over Privacy Concerns

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      The Republican Party might have challenges with outreach to Generation Z, but Nikki Haley, appearing in a Fox News town hall event on Sunday, said the answer was not TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform.In a conversation with the “America Reports” co-anchor John Roberts, Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador, criticized President Biden for posting a TikTok clip on the night of the Super Bowl, in an appeal to younger voters. She also hit former President Donald J. Trump, her G.O.P. primary rival, for failing to curtail its use while he was in the White House.“President Trump said he would ban TikTok, and when President Xi asked him not to, that fell to the wayside,” she said, referring to Xi Jinping, China’s leader. “We should have banned it from the beginning. It is incredibly dangerous.”The volleys against both men are part of a broader argument Ms. Haley has been making in recent media appearances and on the campaign trail that it is time for fresh leadership. Her attacks on Mr. Trump, whom she served under as ambassador, have become sharper in particular, as the two head into a primary showdown in South Carolina on Saturday.In the town hall event on Sunday, as she has before, Ms. Haley broke with the isolationist wing of her party on foreign policy and pummeled the former president for his friendly relationship with authoritarian leaders like Mr. Jinping and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. She argued that Mr. Putin “knows exactly what he did” with Aleksei A. Navalny, the outspoken Russian opposition leader who died last week in prison, and chastised Mr. Trump for suggesting he would encourage Russian aggression against U.S. allies in Europe.“I think that’s why it’s so damaging when Trump said that he would choose Putin and actually encouraged to invade NATO allies, instead of standing with our allies,” she said.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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      Poll Ranks Biden as 14th-Best President, With Trump Last

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      President Biden may owe his place in the top third to his predecessor: Mr. Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Donald J. Trump from the Oval Office.President Biden has not had a lot of fun perusing polls lately. He has a lower approval rating than every president going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower at this stage of their tenures, and he trails former President Donald J. Trump in a fall rematch. But Mr. Biden can take solace from one survey in which he is way out in front of Mr. Trump.A new poll of historians coming out on Presidents’ Day weekend ranks Mr. Biden as the 14th-best president in American history, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant. While that may not get Mr. Biden a spot on Mount Rushmore, it certainly puts him well ahead of Mr. Trump, who places dead last as the worst president ever.Indeed, Mr. Biden may owe his place in the top third in part to Mr. Trump. Although he has claims to a historical legacy by managing the end of the Covid pandemic; rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure; and leading an international coalition against Russian aggression, Mr. Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Mr. Trump from the Oval Office.“Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” wrote Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, the college professors who conducted the survey and announced the results in The Los Angeles Times.Mr. Trump might not care much what a bunch of academics think, but for what it’s worth he fares badly even among the self-identified Republican historians. Finishing 45th overall, Mr. Trump trails even the mid-19th-century failures who blundered the country into a civil war or botched its aftermath like James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson.Judging modern-day presidents, of course, is a hazardous exercise, one shaped by the politics of the moment and not necessarily reflective of how history will look a century from now. Even long-ago presidents can move up or down such polls depending on the changing cultural mores of the times the surveys are conducted.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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      MAGA’s Violent Threats Are Warping Life in America

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      Amid the constant drumbeat of sensational news stories — the scandals, the legal rulings, the wild political gambits — it’s sometimes easy to overlook the deeper trends that are shaping American life. For example, are you aware how much the constant threat of violence, principally from MAGA sources, is now warping American politics? If you wonder why so few people in red America seem to stand up directly against the MAGA movement, are you aware of the price they might pay if they did?Late last month, I listened to a fascinating NPR interview with the journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman regarding their new book, “Find Me the Votes,” about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. They report that Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis had trouble finding lawyers willing to help prosecute her case against Trump. Even a former Georgia governor turned her down, saying, “Hypothetically speaking, do you want to have a bodyguard follow you around for the rest of your life?”He wasn’t exaggerating. Willis received an assassination threat so specific that one evening she had to leave her office incognito while a body double wearing a bulletproof vest courageously pretended to be her and offered a target for any possible incoming fire.Don’t think for a moment that this is unusual today. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s federal Jan. 6 trial, has been swatted, as has the special counsel Jack Smith. For those unfamiliar, swatting is a terrifying act of intimidation in which someone calls law enforcement and falsely claims a violent crime is in process at the target’s address. This sends heavily armed police to a person’s home with the expectation of a violent confrontation. A swatting incident claimed the life of a Kansas man in 2017.The Colorado Supreme Court likewise endured terrible threats after it ruled that Trump was disqualified from the ballot. There is deep concern for the safety of the witnesses and jurors in Trump’s various trials.Mitt Romney faces so many threats that he spends $5,000 per day on security to protect his family. After Jan. 6, the former Republican congressman Peter Meijer said that at least one colleague voted not to certify the election out of fear for the safety of their family. Threats against members of Congress are pervasive, and there has been a shocking surge since Trump took office. Last year, Capitol Police opened more than 8,000 threat assessments, an eightfold increase since 2016.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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      Could Long Covid Be the Senate’s Bipartisan Cause?

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      Senator Roger Marshall’s voice was shaking with emotion as he made the case for speedy and focused research into long Covid. Marshall, the junior senator from Kansas, is a Republican and a medical doctor. But addressing the first-ever Senate hearing on long Covid last month, he wanted the audience to know that his interest wasn’t just professional and it definitely wasn’t just political. It was also personal.One of his loved ones, he explained, suffered from severe long Covid. “We’ve taken my loved one to dozens of doctors,” he said. “I’ve talked to 40, 50, 60, 80. I’ve read everything there is to read about long Covid, talked to other members of the Senate that have had long Covid. What are they doing? So I share your frustration.”It was personal for many in the audience, as well. Four years after the Covid pandemic began, leaving millions of people suffering from long-term health effects, the hearing had been announced with about a week’s notice — a scramble for people who were ill and, in many cases, in dire financial straits. But somehow the room was overflowing.Many in attendance told me they were worried that the political polarization around everything pandemic-related would thwart even belated progress on this important issue. I came away with a very different view.Bernie Sanders, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, kicked off the hearings by making an impassioned plea on behalf of the patients. He said the medical establishment had been too dismissive of their plight, and he conceded that Congress had not done nearly enough to help.But it was Marshall who spoke with precision about the scientific literature. He rattled off the leading theories about why some people with long Covid are debilitated and described specific symptoms in detail.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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      At Rally in Michigan, Trump Lashes Out at Judge Who Fined Him $355 Million

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      Former President Donald J. Trump vented about his latest legal defeat to freezing supporters at a Michigan rally on Saturday night, a day after a New York judge fined him nearly $355 million plus interest in his civil fraud case.The Republican front-runner for his party’s presidential nomination, Mr. Trump denied that he had conspired to manipulate his net worth, which he was found liable of by Justice Arthur F. Engoron in a ruling that could wipe out Mr. Trump’s entire cash stockpile.“This judge is a lunatic,” he said in his opening salvo at his rally, held inside an airport hangar in Oakland County about 30 miles from Detroit.Mr. Trump used a similar line of attack against Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, who had accused him of exaggerating his wealth in the lengthy case. Barred by the judge for three years from serving in top roles at any New York company, including portions of his own Trump Organization, Mr. Trump cast aspersions on the justice system and said he had been persecuted.Mr. Trump’s visit to Michigan overlapped with the first day of early, in-person voting in the state, which is using both a primary and a caucus-style convention to award delegates for the first time in Republican Party contests.At the rally, the Trump campaign placed large signs urging supporters to take advantage of early voting.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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      Haley Calls Navalny a ‘Hero,’ Saying Trump Must Answer for His Death

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      Nikki Haley on Saturday called Aleksei A. Navalny, the outspoken Russian opposition leader, “a hero” and amped up the pressure on former President Donald J. Trump to respond to the news of his death. She said Mr. Navalny had died at the hands of President Vladimir V. Putin and that Mr. Trump needed to “answer to that.”Speaking with reporters outside her rally at a park in Irmo, S.C., Ms. Haley praised Mr. Navalny for calling out Mr. Putin for corruption and fixing elections. She said he had fled his country only to return “to fight the good fight.”“And then he was arrested, and now Putin has done to him what Putin does to all of his opponents — he kills them,” she said, before turning to Mr. Trump, her rival in the G.O.P. primary. “And Trump needs to answer to that. Does he think Putin killed him? Does he think Putin was right to kill him? And does he think Navalny was a hero?”Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and a United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, has been running on her foreign policy experience and has long criticized her former boss over what she has described as his love of dictators and authoritarian leaders. She has only continued to ratchet up the criticism of him as they head into a primary showdown in her home state on Feb. 24.Mr. Trump has not yet commented publicly on Mr. Navalny’s death. On Saturday he did attack President Biden and said in a post online that “I am the only one who can bring Peace, Prosperity, and Stability like I did during my first term. America will be respected and feared (if necessary!) again.”On Friday, soon after the news of Ms. Navalny’s death broke, Ms. Haley went further than most Republicans in attacking Mr. Trump for his past remarks in praise of Mr. Putin. At her rallies since, she has underscored Mr. Trump’s cozy relationship with the Russian leader and sought to sound the alarm over his suggestions that he would encourage Russian aggression against U.S. allies in Europe.On Saturday, she also addressed the news that Russia was developing a nuclear space weapon with the potential to destroy satellites, calling for the prevention of war in space.Russian authorities announced on Friday that Mr. Navalny, who was serving multiple sentences in Russia, had died in a prison inside the Arctic Circle. President Biden has said that U.S. officials did not have a full understanding of the circumstances, but that he believed that “there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”In the news conference on Saturday, Ms. Haley asked of Mr. Trump: “Why does he always side with dictators?” More