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      Special Counsel Who Hunted for a Deep-State Conspiracy Presents Muted Findings

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      John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel, criticized the F.B.I. during a six-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel who for four years pursued a politically fraught investigation into the Russia inquiry, told lawmakers on Wednesday that F.B.I. officials had exhibited confirmation bias — even as he defended his work against Democratic accusations that he became a partisan tool.In a nearly six-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Durham rarely offered new information, repeatedly saying he did not want to go beyond his report. That approach echoed an appearance in 2019 before the same committee by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.The hearing may be the final — official, at least — chapter in the complex saga of the Russia investigation and former President Donald J. Trump’s repeated efforts to reframe it as a deep-state plot, which has been a source of turbulence in American political life for more than six years. Mr. Durham retired after completing his report last month, and Senate Democrats have not invited him to testify.For years, Mr. Trump and his allies stoked expectations that Mr. Durham would find a conspiracy lurking in the origins of the Russia investigation and would prosecute high-level officials. But Mr. Durham developed only two peripheral cases, both of which ended in acquittals, while citing flaws in the F.B.I.’s early investigative steps he attributed to confirmation bias.“There were identified, documented, significant failures of a highly sensitive, unique investigation that was undertaken by the F.B.I.,” Mr. Durham said. “The investigation clearly reveals that decisions that were made were made in one direction. If there was something that was inconsistent with the notion that Trump was involved in a well-coordinated conspiracy with the Russians, that information was largely discarded or ignored.”The hearing was largely a predicable display of partisanship, with each party trading claims about the merits of the underlying investigation into Russia’s attempt to manipulate the 2016 election in Mr. Trump’s favor. Mr. Mueller documented myriad links between Russia and Trump campaign officials, but did not charge any Trump associate with a criminal conspiracy with Russia.Republicans railed against the Russia investigation as unjustified and portrayed it as politically motivated and corrupt, focusing on flawed wiretap applications and text messages in which F.B.I. officials expressed animus toward Mr. Trump.Democrats defended it as legitimate and necessary by turning to the substance of Mr. Mueller’s work. Not only did he indict numerous Russians — and win convictions of multiple Trump associates on other crimes — but he also uncovered how the Trump campaign’s chairman had shared internal polling and strategy with a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant the government says is a Russian intelligence agent, among other things.For large portions of the hearing, Mr. Durham served as a foil for both purposes, as lawmakers on each side asked questions intended to affirm whatever facts or claims they wanted to emphasize.President Donald J. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr and their allies in Congress stoked expectations that Mr. Durham would find a “deep state” conspiracy.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMuch of his own critique of the investigation was familiar territory. The most factually grounded portions — especially errors and omissions in a set of wiretap applications that relied in part on claims in the so-called Steele dossier, a dubious compendium of what turned out to be opposition research indirectly funded by the Clinton campaign — echoed a December 2019 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general. Mr. Durham repeated those findings, but offered no concrete new suggestions for reforms.Other parts were more ephemeral. After Mr. Durham’s initial effort to find intelligence abuses at the heart of the Russia investigation came up empty, he shifted to hunting for a basis to blame the Clinton campaign. He used court filings and his report to insinuate that the campaign set out to defraud the F.B.I. and frame Mr. Trump, although he never charged any such conspiracy. Some Republicans, however, treated that idea as established fact.“What role did the Clinton campaign play in this hoax?” asked Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, adding, “Exactly what was the ‘Clinton Plan?’”But some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters expressed disappointment that Mr. Durham did not live up to the grander expectations that he would put high-level officials in prison and prove a deep-state conspiracy.For example, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, insisted that suspicions about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia emerged because of an operation by Western intelligence agencies — a conspiracy theory that Mr. Durham set out to prove but failed to find evidence to support. Mr. Gaetz said Mr. Durham had let the country down, and compared the special counsel’s inquiry to the Washington Generals, the basketball team whose job is to lose in exhibition games against the Harlem Globetrotters.“When you are part of the cover-up, Mr. Durham, then it makes our job harder,” Mr. Gaetz said.Mr. Durham replied that Mr. Gaetz’s comments were “offensive.”Representative Matt Gaetz suggested that Mr. Durham was part of a cover-up.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesBut while most of the Republicans on the committee gave Mr. Durham a warmer welcome, he did not always say things that supported their position. Mr. Durham called Mr. Mueller a “patriot” and did not contradict any of his findings. He said that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election — and characterized that intelligence operation as a “significant threat.”Pushed by Representative Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, to go beyond his report’s conclusion that F.B.I. agents had acted with “confirmation bias” and accuse them in his testimony of having taken steps motivated by political favoritism, Mr. Durham demurred, saying that “it’s difficult to get into somebody else’s head.”And he said that the F.B.I. had “an affirmative duty” to open some kind of investigation into the allegation that served as the Russia investigation’s basis — an Australian diplomat said that a Trump campaign adviser had made a comment suggesting that the campaign had advance knowledge that Russia would anonymously dump out hacked Democratic emails.Still, he also testified that “in my view,” that information did not amount to “a legitimate basis to open as a full investigation” and that the bureau ought to have opened it as a lower-tier inquiry, like an “assessment” or a “preliminary” investigation. That went slightly beyond his report, which had argued that opening the inquiry at a lower level would have been better.The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, concluded in 2019 that the same information was a sufficient basis to open a “full” counterintelligence inquiry.Throughout the hearing, Democrats pressed Mr. Durham to acknowledge or explain certain findings from a New York Times article in January examining how his inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes.Mr. Durham rarely offered new information, repeatedly saying he did not want to go beyond his report. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesThey asked him, for example, why his longtime deputy, Nora R. Dannehy, resigned from his team in September 2020. The Times reported that she did so in protest after disputes over prosecutorial ethics, including the drafting of a potential interim report before the 2020 election.Mr. Durham spoke highly of Ms. Dannehy but declined to say why she had resigned. He called the Times article “unsourced” but did not deny its findings, adding, “To the extent The New York Times wrote an article suggesting certain things, it is what it is.”Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, asked Mr. Durham whether it was true, as the Times also reported, that when he and Attorney General William P. Barr traveled to Italy to pursue a certain pro-Trump conspiracy theory, Italian officials denied it but passed on a tip about unrelated financial crimes linked to Mr. Trump.Mr. Barr decided the allegation, whose details remain unclear, was too serious to ignore but had Mr. Durham control an investigation into it, and he filed no charges, The Times reported.“The question’s outside the scope of what I think I’m authorized to talk about — it’s not part of the report,” Mr. Durham replied, but added: “I can tell you this. That investigative steps were taken, grand jury subpoenas were issued and it came to nothing.” More

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      Mailbag: Does Trump Represent Half the Country?

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      Settling a marital dispute, and a question that gets at a tension within today’s conservatism — in this month’s reader mailbag.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressHelp settle a disputeNate, help me settle a marital dispute. My wife contends that 50 percent of the country are Trump supporters, while I believe the number is closer to 35-40 percent. Knowing that there is not a definitive answer — are we talking about all people, registered voters, etc. — who do you think is closer to being right? — Phil StevensonWhenever possible, it’s important for both partners to feel good with the settlement of a marital dispute. So let me suggest that the answer depends on your preferred definition of a “Trump supporter.”If a Trump supporter is someone who voted for Donald J. Trump or, alternately, someone who will vote for him over President Biden in the next election, I think the answer is closer to your wife’s 50 percent tally. After all, Mr. Trump won 47 percent of voters in 2020 and 46 percent in 2016. I’m open-minded about what he could win in 2024, but if the election were held today it’s reasonable to think he’d win something closer to 50 percent than 37.5 percent, the midway point of your 35-40 percent range.But if being a Trump supporter requires something more than merely preferring him over Mr. Biden, the number of Trump supporters is probably closer to your 35-40 percent range. To take one simple measure: Mr. Trump has around a 40 percent national favorability rating. Another option: Only 35 percent said they wanted him to run for president in an NBC poll taken in April.A.I. and pollingI am curious to know if you think A.I. has a place in the future of polling. — Brian BakerAt the moment, I’m more concerned that A.I. might claim an unintended place in the present of polling: by making it even easier for bots to contaminate online panels. I’m not sure that common data quality measures — like open-ended responses — will work for long.A boost for Haley?Does DeSantis’s decline offer any hope to Nikki Haley— David NewbergerThis is like asking whether the decline of the Mets — one of baseball’s best teams last year — gives any hope to the Washington Nationals (currently the National League’s worst team, but now just 6.5 games behind the Mets!). I suppose it must be good news for the Nats at some level, but the Mets weren’t really their problem. At the moment, Ms. Haley is not plainly outpacing the likes of Tim Scott, Chris Christie or Mike Pence. Ron DeSantis isn’t really her problem.What about Asa?Would love to hear your thoughts on the way Asa Hutchinson’s candidacy may play out. — Merideth TomlinsonWho? I’m joking of course (he’s the former Arkansas governor), but he’ll need to find a way to break out of obscurity in a big field. I would guess he’ll need to dazzle in the debates to even earn a look from most voters. I’m not sure you should count on it, but you never know.Books by candidatesI previously mentioned that I don’t read books by aspiring presidential candidates. Is that always a good idea?I was interested in your description of how you prepare yourself when evaluating candidates. What you do clearly makes sense, EXCEPT you immediately reminded me how I decided to support Barack Obama in 2008. I thought he was not a strong candidate, but he was an interesting person, so I read “Dreams From My Father” … and became a big Obama fan! I imagine I am not the only voter who had this experience. Of course, someone is unlikely to read a book by a candidate unless they are somewhat interested in that person. — Angie BoyterWhen I wrote that I don’t read a presidential candidate’s book, I was mainly thinking about the genre of political books written by someone just about to run for president. These books often weave biographical detail, policy proposals and a political message into a preview of a coming campaign. They largely go unread, but they offer an excuse for TV producers to book a presidential hopeful on their shows. Mr. Obama’s 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” falls into this category.Why don’t I want to read a book like this? I want to know the message a candidate emphasizes in speeches, advertisements and interviews, not the one that makes it into a 100,000-word book.Your experience with “Dreams From My Father” — a literary autobiography — is quite different. The book was widely read, and the content was distinct from what Mr. Obama talked about on the campaign trail. This is pretty unusual; J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” is the only recent example that comes to mind of something like it. Perhaps that’s a case where there’s a better argument for reading the book.On DeSantis and freedomThis isn’t really a question, but it’s an interesting observation that gets at a tension within conservatism nowadays:He’s been popular with Democrats and Republicans alike in Florida for his freedoms, not restrictions. Limiting people’s freedoms, regardless of the topic, will definitely harm him. — John FahrenwaldMr. DeSantis rose to prominence by fighting for freedom from coronavirus restrictions, and this remains an important part of his brand. His budget is branded as a “Framework for Freedom.” His book — which by now you may have guessed I have not read — is titled “The Courage to Be Free.”But as Mr. DeSantis’s fight for freedom has transitioned to a fight against “woke,” his orientation toward “freedom” has become a bit more complicated. He signed a six-week abortion ban. He’s used his authority as governor to crack down on “woke” corporations, and he’s expressed skepticism about giving tax breaks to companies who go on to advance the left’s values. This is emblematic of a broader turn on the intellectual right in which many want to use the power of the government to defend what they say are traditional values and fight the influence of the left in academia, the media and corporate America.This is sometimes called “post-liberal” conservatism. Here, liberal is meant in the classical sense of supporting liberty, free markets and limited government (as it is still used in Europe), not the American sense of liberal: a regulated market economy with a welfare state. In this context, the Republican Party has represented a liberal conservatism for most of the last half-century. The post-liberal conservatives prioritize conserving traditional values over conserving liberty.This post-liberal turn among a segment of conservative intellectual elites may reflect genuine fears of the threat posed by the left to traditional values, but it’s hard to see a political winner here. America is fundamentally a liberal country — again, in the classical, lower-case-l sense. It’s hard to think of anything more deeply embedded in traditional American values than individual liberty and freedom. It is not Hungary. I would guess that the constituency for an explicitly post-liberal conservatism is pretty small; perhaps that’s why Mr. DeSantis continues to brand himself as someone fighting for freedom, even as he increasingly supports measures that arguably restrict it. More

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      Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester Enters Delaware Senate Race

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      Lisa Blunt Rochester, the handpicked successor to retiring Senator Thomas R. Carper, would be the third Black woman in history to win a Senate seat.Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Democrat, announced her campaign on Wednesday for the Delaware Senate seat being vacated by Senator Thomas R. Carper, beginning as the favorite in a race that could make her the third Black woman in U.S. history to win election to the Senate.Ms. Blunt Rochester, 61, a close ally of President Biden’s, made a 3.5-minute biographical video that focuses on her faith, how she overcame the untimely death of her husband and her experience during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, when she prayed while trapped in the House balcony as rioters laid siege to the building.“The run for the Senate for me is also about protecting our democracy, and that includes voting rights, and also for protecting our freedoms, like reproductive rights,” Ms. Blunt Rochester said in an interview.Ms. Blunt Rochester is the only House member in Delaware, a deep-blue state in which the winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored to win the general election. Powerful Democrats, including Mr. Carper, for whom Ms. Blunt Rochester once interned, and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, have indicated support for her candidacy. Mr. Carper said he would do everything in his power to ensure that she won.If elected, Ms. Blunt Rochester, who previously served as Delaware’s labor secretary, deputy secretary of health and social services, and state personnel director, would be the state’s first female senator and first Black senator.She said her first priority would be to push for passage of voting rights legislation, and advocate for eliminating the legislative filibuster to make that possible.During her four terms in the House, Mr. Biden has counted on Ms. Blunt Rochester as a close adviser. She was national co-chairwoman of Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign and is known to keep the president abreast of happenings on Capitol Hill.“When he would call me, he was getting a real broad lay of the land of what’s happening in the House,” she said of Mr. Biden.Ms. Blunt Rochester is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues and both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the more centrist New Democrat Coalition. She has also served in leadership.She said she felt she had the president’s encouragement to run.“It was more us having a conversation about making sure that there was representation in the Senate,” she recalled. “He didn’t say, ‘Hey, Lisa, you should run for Senate.’ He said, ‘Lisa, whatever you decide to do, I think you would be great at it.’”Shortly after Mr. Carper announced his retirement, Mr. Schumer spoke by phone with Ms. Blunt Rochester and told her he believed that she could be a very good senator, according to an aide to the top Democrat.“It was just a very encouraging call, just saying he was looking forward to having a longer and deeper conversation with me, but that he was very excited about the potential of me running,” Ms. Blunt Rochester said. More

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      Few of Trump’s G.O.P. Rivals Defend Justice Dept. Independence

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      The evolution of the Republican Party under the influence of former President Donald J. Trump calls into question a post-Watergate norm.Donald J. Trump has promised that if he wins back the presidency he will appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family.But he’s not the only Republican running for president who appears to be abandoning a long-established norm in Washington — presidents keeping their hands out of specific Justice Department investigations and prosecutions.Mr. Trump, who leads the G.O.P. field by around 30 percentage points in public national polls, wields such powerful influence that only a few of his Republican rivals are willing to clearly say presidents should not interfere in such Justice Department decisions.After Mr. Trump’s vow to direct the Justice Department to appoint a “real” prosecutor to investigate the Bidens, The New York Times asked each of his Republican rivals questions aimed at laying out what limits, if any, they believed presidents must or should respect when it comes to White House interference with federal law enforcement decisions.Their responses reveal a party that has turned so hard against federal law enforcement that it is no longer widely considered good politics to clearly answer in the negative a question that was once uncontroversial: Do you believe presidents should get involved in the investigations and prosecutions of individuals?Mr. Trump’s closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has flatly said he does not believe the Justice Department is independent from the White House as a matter of law, while leaving it ambiguous where he stands on the issue of presidents getting involved in investigation decisions.Mr. DeSantis’s spokesman, Bryan Griffin, wrote in an email that comments the governor made on a recent policy call “should be instructive to your reporting.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said the president can lawfully exert more direct control over the Justice Department and F.B.I. than has traditionally been the case.Jason Henry for The New York TimesIn the comments, Mr. DeSantis says that “the fundamental insight” he gleans from the Constitution is that the Justice Department and F.B.I. are not “independent” from the White House and that the president can lawfully exert more direct control over them than traditionally has been the case.“I think presidents have bought into this canard that they’re independent, and that’s one of the reasons why they’ve accumulated so much power over the years,” Mr. DeSantis said. “We will use the lawful authority that we have.”But the context of Mr. DeSantis’s remarks was mostly about a president firing political appointees and bureaucrats at the Justice Department and the F.B.I., not about a president ordering them to target specific people with investigations and prosecutions. Mr. Griffin did not respond when asked in a follow-up on this point.Mr. Trump has portrayed his legal troubles as stemming from politicization, although there is no evidence Mr. Biden directed Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Mr. Trump. Under Mr. Garland, Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and on Tuesday secured a guilty plea from Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, on tax charges.Especially since Watergate, there has been an institutional tradition of Justice Department independence from White House control. The idea is that while a president can set broad policies — directing the Justice Department to put greater resources and emphasis on particular types of crimes, for example — he or she should not get involved in specific criminal case decisions except in rare cases affecting foreign policy.This is particularly seen as true for cases involving a president’s personal or political interests, such as an investigation into himself or his political opponents.But even in his first term, Mr. Trump increasingly pressed against that notion.William P. Barr, left, Mr. Trump’s attorney general, refused Mr. Trump’s baseless demand that he say the 2020 election had been corrupt.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesIn the spring of 2018, Mr. Trump told his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, that he wanted to order the Justice Department to investigate his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, and James B. Comey Jr., the former head of the F.B.I. Mr. McGahn rebuffed him, saying the president had no authority to order an investigation, according to two people familiar with the conversation.Later in 2018, Mr. Trump publicly demanded that the Justice Department open an investigation into officials involved in the Russia investigation. The following year, Attorney General William P. Barr indeed assigned a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, John Durham, to investigate the investigators — styling it as an administrative review because there was no factual predicate to open a formal criminal investigation.Mr. Trump also said in 2018 and 2019 that John F. Kerry, the Obama-era secretary of state, should be prosecuted for illegally interfering with American diplomacy by seeking to preserve a nuclear accord with Iran. Geoffrey S. Berman, a former U.S. attorney in Manhattan whom Mr. Trump fired in 2020, later wrote in his memoir that the Trump Justice Department pressured him to find a way to charge Mr. Kerry, but he closed the investigation after about a year without bringing any charges.And as the 2020 election neared, Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham to file charges against high-level former officials even though the prosecutor had not found a factual basis to justify any. In his own memoir, Mr. Barr wrote that the Durham investigation’s “failure to deliver scalps in time for the election” eroded their relationship even before Mr. Barr refused Mr. Trump’s baseless demand that he say the 2020 election had been corrupt.Where Mr. Trump’s first-term efforts were scattered and haphazard, key allies — including Jeffrey B. Clark, a former Justice Department official who helped Mr. Trump try to overturn the 2020 election — have been developing a blueprint to make the department in any second Trump term more systematically subject to direct White House control.Against that backdrop, Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the long-shot G.O.P. challengers, has pledged to pardon Mr. Trump if Mr. Ramaswamy wins the presidency. He said that as a constitutional matter, he thinks a president does have the power to direct prosecutors to open or close specific criminal investigations. But he added that “the president must exercise this judgment with prudence in a manner that respects the rule of law in the country.”Vivek Ramaswamy said he would respect the post-Watergate norm regarding Justice Department independence.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAsked if he would pledge, regardless of his views on what the law may technically allow presidents to do, to obey the post-Watergate norm, Mr. Ramaswamy replied: “As a general norm, yes.”Two Republican candidates who are both former U.S. attorneys unequivocally stated that presidents should not direct the investigations or prosecutions of individuals. Tellingly, both are chasing votes from anti-Trump moderate Republicans.Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor who was a U.S. attorney in the George W. Bush administration, said he knew “just how important it is to keep prosecutors independent and let them do their jobs.”“No president should be meddling in Department of Justice investigations or cases in any way,” Mr. Christie added. “The best way to keep that from happening is with a strong attorney general who can lead without fear or favor.”And Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor and congressman who served as a U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration, said that “preserving an independent and politically impartial Department of Justice in terms of specific investigations is essential for the rule of law and paramount in rebuilding trust with the American people.”A spokesman for former Vice President Mike Pence, Devin O’Malley, was terse. He said a president could remove senior law enforcement officials and expressed some support for Justice Department independence. But he declined to add further comment when pressed.“Mike Pence believes that the president of the United States has the ability to hire and fire the attorney general, the F.B.I. director, and other D.O.J. officials — and has, in fact, pledged to do so if elected — but also believes the D.O.J. has a certain level of independence with regard to prosecutorial matters,” Mr. O’Malley said.Mr. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, through a spokesman, expressed some support for Justice Department independence.John Tully for The New York TimesMost other candidates running against Mr. Trump landed in what they apparently deemed to be a politically safer space of blending general comments about how justice should be administered impartially with vague accusations that the Biden-era Justice Department had targeted Republicans for political reasons.Many did not specifically point to a basis for those accusations. Among a broad swath of conservatives, it is taken as a given that the F.B.I. and Justice Department must be politically motivated against them on a variety of fronts, including the scrutiny over the 2016 Trump campaign’s links to Russia, the prosecution of people who rioted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the Trump documents case.Matt Gorman, a senior communications adviser for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, declined to say whether or not Mr. Scott believed presidents should interfere in specific investigations. He pointed only to Mr. Scott’s comments on the most recent “Fox News Sunday” appearance.In those remarks, Mr. Scott said: “We have to clean out the political appointments in the Department of Justice to restore confidence and integrity in the D.O.J. Today, we want to know that in our justice system, Lady Justice wears a blindfold and that all Americans will be treated fairly by Lady Justice. But today, this D.O.J. continues to hunt Republicans while they protect Democrats.”Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, also provided an ambiguous answer through her spokeswoman, Chaney Denton. She pointed to two specific conservative grievances with law enforcement: Seven years ago, Hillary Clinton was not charged over using a private email server while secretary of state, and the Trump-era special counsel, Mr. Durham, wrote a report this year criticizing the Russia inquiry.“The Department of Justice should be impartial, but unfortunately it is not today,” Ms. Denton said. “The Durham Report, the non-prosecution of Hillary Clinton, and other actions make it clear that a partisan double standard is being applied. The answer is not to have both parties weaponize the Justice Department; it’s to have neither side do it.”“The Department of Justice should be impartial,” a spokeswoman for Nikki Haley said, without getting into specifics.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWhen specifically pressed, Ms. Denton declined to say whether Ms. Haley believes presidents should get involved in prosecutions or investigations of individuals.One recent entrant to the race, Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami, disavowed the post-Watergate norm, putting forward a premise that law enforcement officials are currently politically biased and so his White House interference would be to correct that purported state of affairs.“I certainly would not promise that I would allow a biased department operate independently,” he said in part of a statement. “I believe it is the president’s responsibility to insist that justice is delivered fairly without bias or political influence.”A spokesman for Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Lance Trover, was even more vague.“Gov. Burgum believes that citizens’ faith in our institutions is the foundation of a free and just society and will not allow them to be a political enforcement extension of the party in power as we have seen in failed countries,” he said. “If Americans have distrust in the Justice Department when he takes office, he will do what it takes to restore the American people’s faith in the Department of Justice and other bedrocks of our democracy.” More

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      Take Bobby Kennedy Jr. Seriously, Not Literally

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      In 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination and ran a close second in the New Hampshire primary. The near upset by McCarthy, a Minnesota progressive, helped convince Johnson that he should not run for re-election, opening the way for Robert F. Kennedy. History might have been very different if tragedy hadn’t intervened that June at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.Could a similar scenario (minus any violence) unfold again, with President Biden in the role of L.B.J., Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the role of McCarthy, and a more credible Democrat than Kennedy in the role of his dad, ultimately winning the nomination?There are good reasons to doubt it. There are also good reasons to wish for it — which is why I find myself in the weird position of cheering a candidate whose politics I detest and whose grip on reality I question.Among the reasons for doubt: Kennedy is a crank. His long-held anti-vaccine views sit poorly with most Democrats. He has said the C.I.A. killed his uncle and possibly his father, that George W. Bush stole the 2004 election, and that Covid vaccines are a Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci self-enrichment scheme. He repeats Kremlin propaganda points, like the notion that the war in Ukraine is actually “a U.S. war against Russia.” He has nice things to say about Tucker Carlson.Further reason: We aren’t living in 1968, or even 1967. Thousands of draftees aren’t being killed in a faraway war. Liberals have come to like Biden more during his presidency, whereas they came to like Johnson a lot less. McCarthy was a serious man who had held a high office for nearly 20 years when he challenged Johnson. Kennedy’s a princeling activist with a troubled past who has never held elected office.Also, the prospect of Donald Trump back in the White House focuses the mind in a way not even the prospect of a Nixon presidency did. Many Democrats may have quietly wanted Biden to step aside instead of run. Now that he’s running, the safe call seems to be to rally behind him, lest a challenger help sink his chances. That’s what another Kennedy, Teddy, helped do to another Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter, in 1980.But what if it isn’t the safe call? What if the 15 percent to 20 percent of the Democratic voters who support Kennedy, according to recent polls, are sending some messages other voters need to hear — and not because they are drawn to conspiratorial nonsense?The most obvious message is one that too many Democrats want to wish away: Biden is a weak candidate against almost any Republican, including Trump, and he’s probably even weaker with Kamala Harris as his running mate.Sixty-six percent of registered voters think Biden is too old to be president and 59 percent have doubts about his mental fitness, according to a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll conducted last week. Sixty-three percent think the economy is on the “wrong track.” Thirty-three percent of voters cite inflation as their chief concern; only 19 percent cite guns and 11 percent women’s rights. If an election were held now, Harris found, Trump would get 45 percent of the vote to Biden’s 39 percent (with 15 percent undecided). Trump’s federal indictment seems to have barely made a dent.These numbers are terrible — and that’s despite declining inflation and rock-bottom unemployment. What happens to Biden’s candidacy if the economy takes a turn for the worse in the next 12 months, or a foreign adversary springs its own version of the Tet offensive on the administration?There’s a second, more powerful message implicit in Kennedy’s candidacy: a profound undercurrent of discontent with a party that is losing touch with its once-powerful, even dominant, populist roots. This is the party whose base has substantially shifted from the high school- to the college-educated; from factory floors and service jobs to breakout rooms on Zoom; from champions of free speech to promoters of speech codes and trigger warnings; from questioning authority (including scientific authority) to offering — and demanding — unblinking fidelity to it.The spirit of rebellion in America today now rests mainly on the Republican side. It may be the ultimate reason for Trump’s enduring, even outlaw, appeal.Which is why Kennedy’s candidacy is resonating more widely than nearly anyone expected. As with Trump in 2015, the media is treating his message “literally, but not seriously,” to borrow the political reporter Salena Zito’s important insight. His supporters may be doing just the opposite: taking him seriously for being the voice of revolt, irrespective of how they feel about his specific views.Will this be enough to deny Biden the nomination? Probably not. Then again, not many political observers in 1967 saw what was coming. There’s an unfulfilled hunger for a liberal leader who can capture Kennedy’s spirit without his folly.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      What Happens if a Presidential Candidate Is Convicted?

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      The Constitution and American law have clear answers for only some of the questions that would arise. Others would bring the country into truly uncharted territory.Not since Eugene V. Debs campaigned from a prison cell more than a century ago has the United States experienced what might now happen: a prominent candidate with a felony conviction running for president. And never before has that candidate been someone with a real chance of winning.Former President Donald J. Trump faces no campaign restrictions. Though he has been charged with dozens of felonies across two cases, one federal and one in New York, verdicts are a long way off. And there are many uncertainties, including whether the proceedings will hinder Mr. Trump’s campaign in practical ways or begin to hurt him in the polls in a way they have not so far.But if he is convicted on any of the felony counts, things get more complicated — and the Constitution and American law have clear answers for only some of the questions that would arise.Others would bring the country into truly uncharted territory, with huge decisions resting in the hands of federal judges.Here is what we know, and what we don’t know.Can Trump run if he is convicted?This is the simplest question of the bunch. The answer is yes.The Constitution sets very few eligibility requirements for presidents. They must be at least 35 years old, be “natural born” citizens and have lived in the United States for at least 14 years.There are no limitations based on character or criminal record. (While some states prohibit felons from running for state and local office, these laws do not apply to federal offices.) Would his campaign be restricted?To offer an obvious understatement, it would be logistically difficult to run for president from prison. No major-party candidate has ever done it. Mr. Debs ran for the Socialist Party in 1920 and received about 3 percent of the vote.But Mr. Trump’s campaign staff could handle fund-raising and other campaign activities in his absence, and it is very unlikely that Mr. Trump could be disqualified from appearing on ballots.The Republican and Democratic Parties have guaranteed spots on general-election ballots in every state, and the parties tell election officials whose name to put in their spot. States could, in theory, try to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot by passing legislation requiring a clean criminal record, but this would be on legally shaky ground.“We let states set the time, place and manner” of elections, said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School who specializes in election law, “but I think the best reading of our Constitution is you don’t let the state add new substantive requirements.”While that view is not universal among legal experts, it won in court in 2019, when California tried to require candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on primary ballots. A federal district judge blocked the rule, saying it was most likely unconstitutional. The California Supreme Court also unanimously blocked it as a violation of the state constitution, and the case never reached the U.S. Supreme Court.Could he vote?Probably not.Mr. Trump is registered to vote in Florida, and he would be disenfranchised there if convicted of a felony.Most felons in Florida regain voting rights after completing their full sentence, including parole or probation, and paying all fines and fees. But it is highly unlikely that Mr. Trump, if convicted, would have time to complete his sentence before Election Day.Since Mr. Trump also has a residence in New York, he could switch his voter registration there to take advantage of its more permissive approach: Felons in New York can vote while on parole or probation. But, as in Florida and almost every other state, they are still disenfranchised while in prison.So if Mr. Trump is imprisoned, he will be in the extraordinary position of being deemed fit to be voted for, but unfit to vote.What happens if he is elected from prison?No one knows.“We’re so far removed from anything that’s ever happened,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s just guessing.”Legally, Mr. Trump would remain eligible to be president even if he were imprisoned. The Constitution says nothing to the contrary. “I don’t think that the framers ever thought we were going to be in this situation,” Professor Levinson said.In practice, the election of an incarcerated president would create a legal crisis that would almost certainly need to be resolved by the courts.In theory, Mr. Trump could be stripped of his authority under the 25th Amendment, which provides a process to transfer authority to the vice president if the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” But that would require the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare Mr. Trump unable to fulfill his duties, a remote prospect given that these would be loyalists appointed by Mr. Trump himself.More likely, Mr. Trump could sue to be released on the basis that his imprisonment was preventing him from fulfilling his constitutional obligations as president. Such a case would probably focus on the separation of powers, with Mr. Trump’s lawyers arguing that keeping a duly elected president in prison would be an infringement by the judicial branch on the operations of the executive branch.He could also try to pardon himself — or to commute his sentence, leaving his conviction in place but ending his imprisonment. Either action would be an extraordinary assertion of presidential power, and the Supreme Court would be the final arbiter of whether a “self pardon” was constitutional.Or President Biden, on his way out the door, could pardon Mr. Trump on the basis that “the people have spoken and I need to pardon him so he can govern,” Professor Chemerinsky said.What if he’s elected with a case still in progress?Again, no one knows. But a likely outcome would be that a Trump-appointed attorney general would withdraw the charges and end the case.The Justice Department does not indict sitting presidents, a policy outlined in a 1973 memo, during the Nixon era. It has never had reason to develop a policy on what to do with an incoming president who has already been indicted. But the rationale for not indicting sitting presidents — that it would interfere with their ability to perform their duties — applies just as well in this hypothetical scenario.“The reasons why we wouldn’t want to indict a sitting president are the reasons we wouldn’t want to prosecute a sitting president,” said Professor Chemerinsky, who has disagreed with the department’s reasoning. “My guess is, if the Trump prosecution were still ongoing in some way and Trump were elected, the Justice Department — which would be the Trump Justice Department — would say, ‘We’re following the 1973 memo.’”Like so much else here, this would be legally untested, and it is impossible to say what the Supreme Court would do if the question reached it.In its Clinton v. Jones ruling in 1997, the court allowed a lawsuit against President Bill Clinton to proceed. But that case was civil, not criminal, and it was filed by a private citizen, not by the government itself.Charlie Savage More

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      What Republicans Say About Their Risky Balancing Act on Abortion

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      The historic Dobbs ruling has hurt the party electorally, but G.O.P. lawmakers are still moving to pass more restrictive laws. These two realities represent the defining political fallout of the end of Roe v. Wade.In the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, one of the country’s most emotionally charged issues has come to be defined by two seemingly contradictory political realities.In competitive general elections, abortion rights emerged as among the greatest electoral strengths for Democrats and, often, a clear liability for Republicans: Americans say at record levels that they support at least some access to the procedure, and the issue has fueled Democratic victories across the nation.At the same time, Republican-dominated state legislatures have moved rapidly to sharply limit or ban access to abortion. Activists are demanding that G.O.P. presidential candidates make firm commitments about federal restrictions, and are urging ever-further-reaching legislation in the states.This headlong rush into risky territory for the national Republican Party — and the extraordinary backlash against some of those measures — represents the enduring political fallout of the Supreme Court decision, which transformed a partisan standoff 50 years in the making.Anti-abortion activists and some Republican strategists applaud the approach of many state legislatures, arguing that voters expect their lawmakers to deliver on upholding one of the core tenets of the conservative movement.“If you can, you must,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the major anti-abortion rights group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “To fail to do that would, politically, would be a disaster for pro-life voters who put them in office.”Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said Republican candidates needed to be “very clear on what it means to be ambitious for life.” Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesBut as the anniversary of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe arrives on Saturday, interviews with more than a dozen Republican lawmakers, strategists and anti-abortion activists paint a portrait of a party still struggling to find a consensus on abortion policy, and grappling with how to energize core base voters on the issue without alienating swing voters.Many observers see the wave of new restrictions, which vary in gestational limit and exceptions and have sometimes been held up in court, as a function of several factors: years of promises and pent-up energy on the right; deeply held convictions about when life begins; and gerrymandering that has often left Republican lawmakers more worried about far-right primary challenges than about turning off moderate voters in general elections.But for a critical slice of Republicans — those who represent competitive districts in state legislatures or in Congress, who support some degree of abortion rights, or, in some cases, presidential candidates — the issue presents a particularly difficult balancing act.Their decisions and calculations are at the heart of the tensions over the abortion debate within the Republican Party in the post-Roe era.“I was hearing from both sides strongly,” said State Representative Mike Caruso of Florida, a Republican who opposed a measure — ultimately signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis — that forbids abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, with a few exceptions. “It was pretty much a ban on abortion.”“I’ve got seven children, been through nine pregnancies,” he added. “I don’t think I ever knew, we ever knew, that we were pregnant prior to six weeks.”But, demonstrating the vastly different views on the issue within the party, State Representative Mike Beltran of Florida said that while he voted for the measure, “frankly, I don’t think it goes far enough.”“All these bills were huge compromises,” said Mr. Beltran, who said he personally opposed abortion rights without exception, suggesting that if a mother’s life was in danger, barring ectopic pregnancies, the answer could often be to deliver the fetus, even months prematurely. “We should suffer electoral consequences if we don’t do what we said we would do.”State Representative Mike Beltran of Florida opposes abortion rights without exception.Tori Lynn Schneider, via SipaAnti-abortion activists and lawmakers have vigorously made a version of that argument to Republican candidates, sometimes citing polling to show lawmakers what they believe voters in a particular state will accept. (Some of these surveys are commissioned by abortion opponents, and their findings can be at odds with public polling.)“It’s a fundamental issue to Republicans to protect life,” said Tami Fitzgerald, the executive director of the North Carolina Values Coalition. She supported the state’s new ban on most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, though she wants restrictions that go much further, calling a six-week ban “step two.”“A candidate needs the pro-life voters in order to win,” she added.In an interview this month, Ms. Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony urged candidates to be “very clear on what it means to be ambitious for life” while seeking to draw contrasts with Democrats on the issue, warning of the risks of being defined by the other side.This is not a “theoretical messaging moment,” she said. “This is real life.”In the presidential contest, though, some of the candidates have tried to skirt questions about what national restrictions they would support. Contenders including former President Donald J. Trump — who helped muscle through Supreme Court justices who made overturning Roe possible — have indicated that they think the issue should be resolved by the states, though Mr. Trump has also been vague on the issue.“Their hesitancy to communicate has been frustrating,” Ms. Dannenfelser said, referring broadly to the field. But the debate stage, she said, is “going to be where the rubber meets the road, and our bright-red line saying that you must have a 15-week or better limit or we can’t support you.”Yet when Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina last year proposed a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with some exceptions, he ignited immediate resistance from numerous fellow Republicans, evidence that some in the party see political peril in a national ban.Senator Lindsey Graham last year proposed a federal ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, and faced immediate resistance.Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersAnd polling has shown that most Americans support at least some abortion rights, especially early in pregnancy.A Gallup survey released last week found that a record-high 69 percent of Americans, including 47 percent of Republicans, believed that abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy.“That just makes me wonder if maybe there is some room for nuance there within the party,” said Lydia Saad, the director of U.S. social research at Gallup. “But nuance isn’t generally very successful in politics.”In some states, Republican lawmakers have cast bans with some exceptions that begin after 12 weeks, toward the end of the first trimester, as something of a middle ground. And from Nebraska to South Carolina, there have indeed been lawmakers who said they could not back a six-week ban but indicated that they were more comfortable with 12 weeks, even as such proposals have drawn condemnation from some in local business and medical communities.In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the 12-week ban. He and other abortion rights supporters warned that the measure would interfere with critical medical decisions and create dangerous barriers for women seeking abortions.But Republicans, who recently gained narrow veto-proof majorities in North Carolina, quickly sought to override Mr. Cooper’s move. The effort forced some of their members into contortions.Republicans in North Carolina overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban.Kate Medley for The New York TimesState Representative Ted Davis Jr., a Republican, indicated during his campaign last year that he backed the state’s law allowing abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. When the state legislature took up the 12-week measure, he skipped the vote.But citing factors including loyalty to his caucus, frustration with the other side and constituents who, he said, seemed split on the veto override, he ultimately joined fellow Republicans to override the veto, helping to ensure that the more restrictive measure prevailed.Still, he tried to draw a distinction between the two votes.“What concerns me is what’s going to happen in the future as far as access to abortion,” he said. “Are Republicans now going to try to restrict it even further?”Other lawmakers have sought to punish women who seek abortions, or those who help them. Some Republican lawmakers in South Carolina moved — unsuccessfully — to treat abortion at any stage of pregnancy as homicide, which can carry the death penalty.That measure would have given “more rights to a rapist than a woman who’s been raped,” said Representative Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican who flipped a seat from a Democrat in 2020. “That’s where the conversation has gone.”Abortion-rights supporters protesting outside the Supreme Court last June on the day Roe was overturned.Shuran Huang for The New York Times“They listen to some of the extreme voices, and they operate and vote and legislate out of fear,” she said. “They’re not hearing from the rest of the electorate, the 95 percent of the folks who vote in elections. They’re hearing from the 5 percent who say, ‘You’re not Republican if you don’t want to ban abortions with no exceptions.’”Even in her conservative state, there were pockets of Republican resistance to efforts to pass a near-total abortion ban. A six-week ban passed the legislature but is now tied up in court.“I probably will draw a primary challenger,” conceded State Senator Katrina Shealy, who opposed that measure, with its many requirements for women seeking abortions. She has already been censured by a local Republican county party.Some on the far right, she suggested, “don’t want people to wear masks. They don’t want people to get vaccines.”They believe, she said, that “they should have full rights — but don’t let women make this decision. And that’s not right.” More

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      Judge in Trump Documents Case Sets Tentative Trial Date as Soon as August

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      The judge, Aileen M. Cannon, set an aggressive schedule for moving the case forward, though the proceedings are likely to be delayed by pretrial clashes.The federal judge presiding over the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump in the classified documents case set an aggressive schedule on Tuesday, ordering a trial to begin as soon as Aug. 14.While the timeline set by the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, is likely to be delayed by extensive pretrial litigation — including over how to handle classified material — its brisk pace suggests that she is seeking to avoid any criticism for dragging her feet or for slow-walking the proceeding. In each of four other criminal trials she has overseen that were identified in a New York Times review, she has initially set a relatively quick trial date and later pushed it back.The early moves by Judge Cannon, a relatively inexperienced jurist who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020, are being particularly closely watched. She disrupted the documents investigation last year with several rulings favorable to the former president before a conservative appeals court overturned her, saying that she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene. Brandon L. Van Grack, a former federal prosecutor who has worked on complex criminal matters involving national security, said the trial date was “unlikely to hold” considering that the process of turning over classified evidence to the defense in discovery had not yet begun. Still, he said, Judge Cannon appeared to be showing that she intended to do what she could to push the case to trial quickly.“It signals that the court is at least trying to do everything it can to move the case along and that it’s important that the case proceed quickly,” Mr. Van Grack said. “Even though it’s unlikely to hold, it’s at least a positive signal — positive in the sense that all parties and the public should want this case to proceed as quickly as possible.”But it is not clear that the defense wants the case to proceed quickly. Mr. Trump’s strategy in legal matters has long been to delay them, and the federal case against him is unlikely to be an exception. If a trial drags past the 2024 election and Mr. Trump wins the race, he could, in theory, try to pardon himself — or he could direct his attorney general to drop the charges and wipe out the case.In public remarks after the indictment against Mr. Trump and one of his aides, Walt Nauta, was filed two weeks ago in Federal District Court in Miami, the special counsel, Jack Smith, who oversaw the investigation, said he wanted a speedy trial.The schedule that Judge Cannon set forth in her order on Tuesday clearly does that, requesting that all pretrial motions be filed by July 24.She also ruled that the trial — and all the hearings in the case — will be held at her home courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., a small town in the northern portion of the Southern District of Florida. Mr. Trump’s arraignment was held in the federal courthouse in Miami.Pretrial proceedings in the case are highly unlikely to be done by August. Legal experts have identified a series of complicated matters that Judge Cannon, the defense and the prosecution will have to work through before the matter is ready to go in front of a jury.For one thing, following Judge Cannon’s orders, Mr. Trump’s lawyers started the process of obtaining the security clearances needed to deal with the significant classified evidence issues in the case only last week. The background check process to obtain the clearances can take months.Mr. Trump’s legal team is also still in flux. Mr. Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., is still interviewing Florida-based lawyers to assist him with the case. He expects to have someone in place when Mr. Nauta is arraigned next week.Beyond the array of legal tactics that Mr. Trump’s lawyers may use to attack the validity of the charges against him, the parties in the case will also have to engage in significant closed-door litigation over how to handle the classified evidence at the heart of the government’s prosecution. Mr. Trump has been accused of illegally holding on to 31 individual national defense documents, many of which were marked as top secret.Much of the secret litigation will take place under the aegis of the Classified Information Procedures Act. If the government does not agree with any of Judge Cannon’s rulings involving the act, it can pause pretrial proceedings and appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. (The defense would have to wait until after any conviction to appeal an evidentiary issue under the act.)Mr. Trump’s lawyers are expected to file a battery of pretrial motions, including one claiming that he is being selectively prosecuted while other public officials investigated for mishandling classified material — chief among them, Hillary Clinton — did not face charges.The former president’s legal team may also file motions accusing prosecutors of various types of misconduct or seeking to suppress audio notes by one of his lawyers, which the government obtained before the indictment and was filed by piercing the traditional protections of attorney-client privilege.Depending on how seriously Judge Cannon considers the claims made in those filings, she could order additional briefs, attestations and hearings, further slowing down the process.The preliminary court calendar underscores how Mr. Trump’s decision to press ahead with his political campaign, now a key part of his defense, could affect the broader presidential primary race. The first Republican debate is scheduled for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee. Mr. Trump has not said whether he is attending and has signaled he might skip the first two debates.The second debate is scheduled for September, and there is expected to be one each month through the end of the year. Depending on the court calendar, Mr. Trump’s political plans could again coincide with court dates.What’s more, this is not Mr. Trump’s only court proceeding. His trial in a Manhattan state court, on charges stemming from hush money payments to a porn actress during the 2016 presidential campaign, is set to begin in March. A second defamation trial, brought by a New York writer who claimed Mr. Trump raped her decades ago, is set to begin in January.The former president is also facing the prospect of at least one more indictment. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., may bring charges in connection with his efforts to stay in office. Mr. Smith, the special counsel, is also still investigating issues related to Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election. More