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      Christie Attacks Trump in CNN Town Hall, Calling Conduct Detailed in Indictment ‘Awful’

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      A former federal prosecutor, Chris Christie said he expected the government had much more evidence in its case against the former president.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey laced into Donald J. Trump on prime-time television on Monday night, casting the former president as an “angry” and “vengeful” man who bears responsibility for thrusting the nation into another extraordinarily divisive moment, after Mr. Trump became the first former president in American history to face federal charges.During a roughly 90-minute CNN town hall in New York, a high-energy and often-polished Mr. Christie leaned on his background as a former federal prosecutor, saying he believed the indictment was “a very tight, very detailed, evidence-laden indictment, and the conduct in there is awful.” Mr. Christie, who is running for president against Mr. Trump in a Republican primary field the former president dominates, said he believed prosecutors had more evidence than had been put forward so far.Mr. Trump faces 37 criminal counts related to issues including withholding national defense information and concealing possession of classified documents.“This is vanity run amok,” Mr. Christie told the moderator, Anderson Cooper. “He is now going to put this country through this, when we didn’t have to go through it.”“He’s saying, ‘I’m more important than the country,’” Mr. Christie said at another point, as he questioned why Mr. Trump had, according to prosecutors, refused to turn over critical government documents. He suggested the former president missed the “trappings of the presidency.”“We’re in a situation where there are people in my own party who are blaming D.O.J.,” he said, referring to the Justice Department. “How about, blame him? He did it. He kept — he took documents he wasn’t supposed to take.”When he was not tearing into the current Republican front-runner, Mr. Christie could sound like a pre-Trump-era politician. He emphasized the importance of finding common ground and played up his credentials as a blue-state executive, even when some in the audience were plainly skeptical of the idea of compromise.“With all due respect to these governors from red states who have Republican legislatures — man, I’m telling you, I would have given my own right arm to have a Republican legislature for a week,” Mr. Christie said at one point, seeming to draw an implicit contrast with Gov. Ron DeSantis, the powerful and pugnacious Florida Republican and another 2024 candidate who enjoys a supportive legislature in Tallahassee. “But what I learned was that, sometimes, getting 60 percent of what you want isn’t bad.”In Washington, he continued, “you’re going to want somebody tough, who’s a fighter, but who fights to get to an end, to accomplish something for you. We can all fight to get headlines.”He also noted that even with a Republican-controlled Congress for part of his tenure, Mr. Trump failed to deliver on a central campaign promise of securing the southern border.“Not one piece of legislation to change our immigration laws,” he said, bashing Mr. Trump as a “bad executive.” “It is an abject failure, and now he blames Joe Biden for it. But what the heck did you do to make it better?”For the most part, Mr. Christie, who announced his campaign last week, has tried to reintroduce himself to the nation as the Republican candidate most willing to forcefully confront Mr. Trump.But Mr. Christie, who ran a short-lived campaign for president in 2016, has gained little traction in available polling this year and has a more unfavorable rating among Republican voters than any other candidate, according to a recent Monmouth University poll. And he occupies a relatively lonely lane. Most of the other 2024 hopefuls have shied away from much direct criticism of Mr. Trump.“It was like he was Voldemort from ‘Harry Potter’ — nobody wanted to mention his name,” he said of a recent Republican campaign event, adopting a mocking voice. “Like, say his name, man, say his name.”Mr. Christie was once a key adviser to Mr. Trump, and was a relatively early endorser of his 2016 campaign after his own bid collapsed. But he has since condemned Mr. Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and for his incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.In the town hall, Mr. Christie compared Mr. Trump’s lies about a stolen election to how a child might try to explain away a bad grade, by offering a litany of dubious or false excuses.“It’s a child’s reaction. And I just — I beg you to think about this,” he told the Republican-leaning audience. “Don’t allow the showmanship to obscure the facts. The facts are, he lost to Joe Biden. And he lost to Joe Biden, in my opinion, because he lost independent voters.”Mr. Trump lashed out last week in response to Mr. Christie’s earlier criticism, mocking Mr. Christie’s weight and writing on his Truth Social platform, “Hard to watch, boring, but that’s what you get from a failed Governor (New Jersey) who left office with a 7% approval rating and then got run out of New Hampshire.”Mr. Christie made few waves when questioned on issues unrelated to Mr. Trump, but offered a striking admission when a man whose son was killed in the 2017 Las Vegas massacre asked how he would reduce the enormous number of mass shootings in the United States.His response was effectively: I don’t know.“I’m mad because I don’t have a great answer,” he said, after saying that law enforcement needed to be more attentive to warning signs from potential attackers, but that he did not believe restrictions on guns would make a difference — in part because Americans already own hundreds of millions of them. He also said that reducing gun violence was in “tension” with the Second Amendment.When reminded that early in his political career he supported an assault weapons ban, he called that “naïveté” and said he no longer believed it was appropriate.On abortion rights, Mr. Christie declined to take a firm position on gestational limits — or whether he would sign a national ban, should he become president and one were to reach his desk — arguing that the matter was better left up to the states for now.And on Social Security, he reiterated his support for means-testing the program, as he proposed during his 2016 campaign.Time and again, Mr. Christie reinforced a central argument of his campaign: that he would be more responsible than Mr. Trump, but also more productive.“Look, I think the single biggest thing I can contribute to unifying this country is to get rid of Joe Biden and get rid of Donald Trump,” he said. “They are past their sell-by dates, OK? It’s done. It’s time.” More

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      Hillary Clinton’s Emails: A Nation Struggles to Unsubscribe

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      As Donald Trump made history by becoming the first former president to face federal charges, many Republicans tried to change the subject by renewing an eight-year-old controversy.It is the topic the nation just can’t delete from its political conversation: Hillary Clinton’s emails.In the days since Donald J. Trump became the first former U.S. president to face federal charges, Republicans across the ideological spectrum — including not only Mr. Trump and his allies, but also his critics and those who see prosecutors’ evidence as damaging — have insistently brought up the eight-year-old controversy.They have peppered speeches, social media posts and television appearances with fiery condemnations of the fact that Mrs. Clinton, a figure who continues to evoke visceral reactions among the Republican base, was never charged.The two episodes are vastly different legal matters, and Mrs. Clinton was never found to have systematically or deliberately mishandled classified information. Still, Republicans have returned to the well with striking speed, mindful that little more than the word “emails” can muddy the waters, broadcast their loyalties and rile up their base.“Lock her up,” chanted a woman at last weekend’s Georgia Republican Party state convention, where Mr. Trump sought to revive the issue of Mrs. Clinton’s email use. “Hillary wasn’t indicted,” he said in a speech at the event. “She should have been. But she wasn’t indicted.”Campaigning in North Carolina, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida bashed Mrs. Clinton’s email practices while being far more circumspect in alluding to Mr. Trump, his top rival for the Republican nomination.Even former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has made criticizing Mr. Trump a central theme of his presidential campaign, said on CNN recently that the Justice Department “is at fault for not charging Hillary Clinton,” while casting the facts laid out against Mr. Trump as “damning.”“The perception is that she was treated differently,” Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor, a 2024 presidential candidate and Trump critic, said in an interview on Monday. “Perception can become a reality very quickly.”Mr. Hutchinson, once a chief Clinton antagonist from former President Bill Clinton’s home state — he helped guide impeachment proceedings against Mr. Clinton — said he saw distinctions between Mrs. Clinton’s email episode and the charges Trump faced. But, he added, “If the voters say it’s relevant, it becomes relevant politically.”Taken together, the moment offers a vivid reminder of the ways the ghosts of the 2016 campaign continue to shape and scar American politics.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, campaigning in North Carolina, criticized Mrs. Clinton’s email practices.Kate Medley for The New York Times“There are few politicians on the Democratic side of the aisle that raise the ire of Republicans more than Hillary Clinton,” said Neil Newhouse, a veteran Republican pollster.Mrs. Clinton and her supporters, of course, have not forgotten the email saga. After Mr. Trump’s indictment, the episode to many of them serves as a symbol of a political system and a mainstream news media often focused on the superficial at the expense of the substantive.Clinton backers now make light of what they view as comparatively flimsy and unproven accusations she faced about her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. And some relish the fact that the man who crowed about “Crooked Hillary” finds himself facing a range of serious charges and the prospect of prison if he is convicted.Speaking on Monday with the hosts of the “Pod Save America” podcast at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Mrs. Clinton laughed when a host noted the tendency of some Republicans to make parallels to her emails.“When in doubt, right?” she said. “I do think it’s odd, let’s just say, to the point of being absurd, how that is their only response. You know, they refuse to read the indictment, they refuse to engage with the facts.”On Friday, Mrs. Clinton posted an edited photo of herself on Instagram wearing a black baseball hat that reads, in pink letters, “BUT HER EMAILS.” That three-word phrase has become something of a shorthand among Democrats for frustration at the grief she received for how she handled classified correspondence compared with the blowback Mr. Trump confronted for all the legal and ethical norms he busted while in office.She included a link to buy the hat for $32 on the website of her political group. (Asked about that decision, Nick Merrill, who served as a longtime spokesman for Mrs. Clinton and remains an adviser, replied, “We’re seven years past what was widely viewed as, at worst, a stupid mistake. And reminding people that a piece of merchandise exists in order to raise money to preserve our democracy is something I’m very comfortable with.”)Substantively, there are many clear differences between the episodes.A yearslong inquiry by the State Department into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server found that while it increased the risk of compromising classified information, “there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.”The indictment against Mr. Trump, by contrast, accuses him of not only mishandling sensitive national security documents found at his Mar-a-Lago club, but also willfully obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. He has been charged with 37 criminal counts related to issues including withholding national defense information and concealing possession of classified documents.Robert K. Kelner, a Republican lawyer and Trump critic who is a partner in the white-collar defense and investigations practice group at Covington & Burling, said Mr. Trump most likely would not have been indicted had he cooperated with the government’s requests to return classified documents he took from the White House.“There were lots of things to criticize about the way the Hillary Clinton investigation was handled — none of which, however, in any way to my mind, suggests that the case against Donald Trump is unfounded,” Mr. Kelner said.Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted Mr. Trump, seemed to anticipate efforts to bring up Mrs. Clinton’s emails. The indictment cited five statements Mr. Trump made during his 2016 campaign about the importance of protecting classified information.“Hillary wasn’t indicted,” Donald J. Trump said in a speech in Georgia. “She should have been. But she wasn’t indicted.”Jon Cherry for The New York TimesFor veterans of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, the Republican attempt to resurface their old boss’s email server to defend Mr. Trump’s storage of boxes of classified documents in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom and other places would be comical had their 2016 defeat not been so painful.“The best evidence that Trump’s actions are completely indefensible is the Republican Party’s non-attempt to defend it and instead rehash seven-year-old debunked attacks on somebody who is no longer even in politics,” said Josh Schwerin, a former Clinton campaign spokesman who for years after the 2016 election had a recording of Mr. Trump saying his name as his voice mail greeting.Mr. Merrill said that if there was a single word for “particularly acute hypocrisy,” it would apply to Republicans now.For Republicans, “whether you believe she was cavalier, or you believe that she should be tried for treason for the risky position she put Americans in by sending correspondence about yoga or whatever,” he said, “Donald Trump has done the most severe possible thing. It’s not a close call with him.”Trump acolytes are now delighting at the prospect of reviving one of their favorite boogeywomen.“Republicans believe there’s been an unequal application of justice,” said former Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who as chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigated myriad Clinton episodes leading up to the 2016 election. He added, “What is it that Donald Trump did that was worse than Hillary Clinton? Nothing, nothing, nothing.”Timothy Parlatore, a criminal defense lawyer who quit the Trump legal team last month, said he did not believe that Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump or President Biden — who has cooperated with a special counsel’s investigation into his own handling of classified documents after his tenure as vice president — should have been charged for their handling of classified information.Mr. Trump’s Justice Department had four years to prosecute Mrs. Clinton and did not. Mr. Parlatore said that Mr. Trump no longer saw her as a threat — and instead called for an investigation into Mr. Biden and his son.“Here is a big difference,” Mr. Parlatore said. “The Trump administration wasn’t looking at Hillary as being a presidential candidate. The Biden administration is looking at Trump in a different way.”In Boston, Rebecca Kaiser, a political consultant, has worn her “BUT HER EMAILS” hat regularly since she received it as a gift.Sophie Park for The New York TimesFor now, the most devoted Clinton supporters are following her lead and wearing “BUT HER EMAILS” hats as a badge of honor. They appeared in recent days at dog parks, soccer tournaments and Pride events as a sort of celebration of Mr. Trump’s comeuppance.In Boston, Rebecca Kaiser, a political consultant, has worn her “BUT HER EMAILS” hat regularly since she received it as a gift the day before Mr. Trump was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in Manhattan in April.Since then, at Little League and soccer games, the supermarket, the beach and during dates with her wife, Ms. Kaiser has sported the black hat with pink letters, which she said served as a conversation starter about an election that many other Democrats would rather forget.“There are definitely people who notice the hat and very quickly avert their eyes,” Ms. Kaiser said. “There are other people who look at the hat and just roll their eyes. And honestly, I think there are a good amount of people who have no idea what it’s referencing.”Anjali Huynh More

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      The Trump Case and the Bathroom Files

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      More from our inbox:Affirmative Action in College Admissions: Race or Class?The Slow Runner via Department of JusticeTo the Editor:Re “U.S. Justice System Put on Trial as Trump Denounces the Rule of Law” (news analysis, front page, June 11):Contrary to this analysis of the documents case against former President Donald Trump, what is being tested is not the credibility of the justice system. Mr. Trump’s completely predictable efforts to undermine confidence in the legal process are pure bluster.What is actually at stake is the credibility of the political system. At any other time in United States history, a candidate for president charged with serious federal crimes that led to profound questions about his judgment and commitment to protecting the nation’s secrets would be decisively rejected by the voters.Instead, early indications are that Mr. Trump’s base remains staunchly loyal to him. American democracy is imperiled if a significant segment of the voting public cannot see through dangerous, self-serving posturing.In Abraham Lincoln’s first great speech, the Lyceum Address in 1838, he predicted that an aspiring tyrant would someday seek power, and he warned, “It will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.”Nearly 190 years later, Lincoln’s wisdom is truer than ever.Steven S. BerizziNorwalk, Conn.To the Editor:Re “Trump Put U.S. at Risk, Indictment Says” (front page, June 10):As the mother of a U.S. Marine reservist, I am sickened beyond belief to read that U.S. government top-secret information was stored in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.Our son and tens of thousands of other servicemen and women put their lives on the line in service and sacrifice to this country. To think that a man who was elected president could be so malevolent as to break the law for his own selfish reasons is incomprehensible.Kathryn KleekampSandwich, Mass.To the Editor:It is at once not surprising and mind-boggling to read the indictment of Donald Trump for his mishandling of classified documents (“The Trump Classified Document Indictment, Annotated,” June 10).It is not surprising because his alleged misconduct is consistent with his arrogant quip years ago that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. And it is mind-boggling because so many Republicans — no doubt celebrating in private — continue to publicly support Mr. Trump in order to not alienate his base.There are certain moments that are, or should be, above politics. This is one of them. This is a time for somber reflection and a commitment to, and respect for, the rule of law.Larry S. SandbergNew YorkTo the Editor:Re “The Greater Trump’s Opposition, the Greater His Support as a Martyr,” by Damon Linker (Opinion guest essay, June 10):I consider myself a liberal, but I am not feeling “giddy,” as Mr. Linker puts it, over the former president’s indictment. I am not gloating or smacking my lips but feeling sad, because the Republican Party has let it come to this low point.I’m sad because Republicans have let themselves be guided by political polls rather than common sense and a regard for ethics and patriotism. They have followed Donald Trump down this dismal road, which has sullied the office of the presidency, and there seems to be no end in sight.Chase WebbPortland, Ore.To the Editor:Re “Trump Appointee Was Randomly Assigned to Case, Clerk Says” (news article, June 11):The supposedly random assignment of Judge Aileen Cannon to the Trump criminal case will be another test of the frequent pronouncements by members of the federal judiciary, including several Supreme Court justices, that politics never crosses the courtroom threshold.Will Judge Cannon have learned nothing from the surprisingly strident appeals court slap-down of her troubling and seemingly politically based previous rulings, or will she proceed as the fair and impartial judge she swore to be?It is not only the public’s perception of the judiciary but also the future direction of the country that may hang in the balance.Stephen F. GladstoneShaker Heights, OhioThe writer is a lawyer.Affirmative Action in College Admissions: Race or Class? Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “I’m in High School. I Hope Affirmative Action Is Rejected and Replaced With Something Stronger,” by Sophia Lam (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, June 5):The facts are clear: The vast majority of Asian Americans support affirmative action. Amplifying the voices of the Asian American minority that oppose affirmative action without this essential context privileges their position at the expense of the 69 percent of Asian Americans who believe that affirmative action offers communities of color better access to higher education.Regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling, we will continue to stand in solidarity with communities of color and fight for policies that increase equal access to educational opportunities for all, particularly the underrepresented children of our multiracial society.Michelle BoykinsNiyati ShahWashingtonMs. Boykins is the senior director of strategic communications at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC. Ms. Shah is its director of litigation.To the Editor:Sophia Lam is entirely right. What is most puzzling about college admissions is that no colleges, including the most prestigious, are focused on diversity in such a socioeconomic-based way. “Underprivileged” includes many immigrants, people of color and all Americans from working-class backgrounds.If a socioeconomic standard were applied, clearly African Americans and other students of color would benefit, but it would not be solely for their skin color.Soft or hard quotas make Americans (and the Supreme Court for more than 40 years) uncomfortable. Why doesn’t Harvard, Princeton or Yale take this common-sense step?Howard FishmanHaddon Township, N.J.The Slow Runner Desiree Rios for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “For This Runner, There Is No Shame in Bringing Up the Rear” (front page, June 3):I enjoyed reading about Martinus Evans, the founder of Slow AF Run Club. I am now 71 and have been running since 1980 and used to be near the front in races. But now I’ve slowed to be near the back of the pack.I too have been taunted by people in the crowds during the New York City Marathon about going too slow. His encouragement to all runners is excellent.I too tell every slow runner in my club (New Hyde Park/Mineola Runners) to just get out there. I will stay with any runner, even if they have to walk. I’ve competed in marathons, half-marathons and triathlons and believe that no runner is too slow.Some people in clubs have become elitist and don’t want to be bothered with slower runners. Shame on them. Once they were very slow too. How soon they forget.This article is very important to show that there is support for all types and shapes of runners. Running is life-changing and lifesaving.Jeffrey SalgoQueens More

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      Trump’s Candidacy: Evaluated by 11 Opinion Writers

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      As Republican candidates enter the race for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Donald Trump, the former president. More

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      G.O.P. Faces Trump Indictment: Loyalty or Law and Order

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      The candidates challenging Donald Trump have to decide how to run against the indicted former president. And it could determine where the party goes from here.The federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump has left the Republican Party — and his rivals for the party’s nomination — with a stark choice between deferring to a system of law and order that has been central to the party’s identity for half a century or a more radical path of resistance, to the Democratic Party in power and to the nation’s highest institutions that Mr. Trump now derides.How the men and women who seek to lead the party into the 2024 election respond to the indictments of the former president in the coming months will have enormous implications for the future of the G.O.P.So far, the declared candidates for the presidency who are not Mr. Trump have divided into three camps regarding his federal indictment last Thursday: those who have strongly backed him and his insistence that the indictment is a politically driven means to deny him a second White House term, such as Vivek Ramaswamy; those who have urged Americans to take the charges seriously, such as Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson; and those who have straddled both camps, condemning the indictment but nudging voters to move past Mr. Trump’s leadership, such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.The trick, for all of Mr. Trump’s competitors, will be finding the balance between harnessing the anger of the party’s core voters who remain devoted to him while winning their support as an alternative nominee.Mr. Trump is due to appear in court on Tuesday in Florida. The danger for Republicans, after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, is that encouraging too much anger could lead to chaos — and to what pollsters call the “ghettoization” of their party: confined to minority status by voters unwilling to let go of the fervent beliefs that have been rejected by the majority.That point was laid bare Sunday by a new CBS News/YouGov poll that found 80 percent of Americans outside the core Republican voter base saw a national security risk in Mr. Trump’s handling of classified nuclear and military documents, while only 38 percent of likely Republican primary voters discerned such a risk.In the same poll, only 7 percent of Republicans said the indictment had changed their view of the former president for the worse; 14 percent said their views had changed for the better; and the majority, 61 percent, said their views would not change. More than three-quarters of Republican primary voters said the indictments were politically motivated.A separate ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that 61 percent of Americans viewed the charges as serious, up from 52 percent in April when pollsters asked about the mishandling of classified documents. Among Republicans, 38 percent said the charges were serious, also up, from 21 percent in this spring. But only about half of Americans said Mr. Trump should be charged, unchanged from April.“Base voters see the double standard in politics. I continue to hear, ‘When are they going to indict the Bidens?’” said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman and senior adviser to Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor and Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. But, he added, “65 percent of our primary voters are just tired of all the drama and I think are looking for a new generation of Republicans to take us out of the wilderness.”Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, campaigning in Iowa early this year. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMs. Haley has embodied that balancing act, saying in one statement, “This is not how justice should be pursued in our country,” and also, “It’s time to move beyond the endless drama.”Mr. Trump’s closest rival for the 2024 nomination, Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, captured the same spirit when he mused on Friday that he “would have been court-martialed in a New York minute” if he had taken classified documents during his service in the Navy. He was referring to Hillary Clinton — who has returned as a Republican boogeyman this week — and her misuse of classified material as secretary of state, but the double meaning was clear, just as it was when he said, “There needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let’s enforce it on everybody.”Those urging voters to read the charges facing Mr. Trump — the mishandling of highly classified documents on some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and his subsequent steps to obstruct law enforcement — are a lonelier group in the broader Republican Party. Just two former governors running for president — both former prosecutors — Mr. Christie of New Jersey and Mr. Hutchinson of Arkansas, are aligned with a scattering of other leaders like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who was the only Republican senator to vote to remove Mr. Trump from office twice.But their voices are likely to be amplified in the coming days by a media eager to give them a microphone. Mr. Christie will hold a town-hall meeting on CNN on Monday night, while Mr. Hutchinson, the longest of long shots for the nomination, has given a flurry of interviews.“The Republican Party should not dismiss this case out of hand,” Mr. Hutchinson said in an interview. “These are serious allegations that a grand jury has found probable cause on.”On Sunday morning, Mr. Trump’s former attorney general, William P. Barr, weighed in on Fox News Sunday, saying he was “shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were.” “If even half of it is true, he’s toast,” Mr. Barr said. “It is a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning. This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here — a victim of a witch hunt — is ridiculous.”The critics of Mr. Trump also have an appeal that goes to the center of the party’s identity: law and order. Republicans are still attacking Democrats on the rise of street crime after the pandemic even as they attack the F.B.I., the Justice Department, the special prosecutor and the federal grand jury system.“If Congress has the ability to have oversight over the Department of Justice, I encouraged them to do it vigorously and fairly and ask all the questions they need,” Mr. Christie said on CNN. “But what we should also be doing is holding to account people who are in positions of responsibility and saying, if you act badly, there has to be penalties for that. There has to be a cost to be paid.”But voters eager to believe the dark tales spun by Mr. Trump of a nefarious “deep state,” of “Communists” bent on the destruction of America, are receiving encouragement from candidates who are ostensibly Mr. Trump’s rivals. For them, the calculation appears to be capturing the former president’s voters if his legal troubles finally end his political career.“I am personally deeply skeptical of everything in that indictment,” Mr. Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur and author, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, adding, “I personally have no faith whatsoever in those vague allegations.”Other candidates were less blunt but equally willing to challenge the integrity of the justice system, a system, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said, “where the scales are weighted” against conservatives.The language of Trump supporters after his indictment last Thursday has alarmed some experts.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesIn truth, the conservative world is divided. Some figures have, predictably, rallied around Mr. Trump with irresponsible rhetoric that appeared to call for violence.“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and 75 million Americans just like me. And most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.,” said Kari Lake, the failed candidate for governor of Arizona.More surprisingly were the voices on the Trumpist right who have voiced their concerns — over the charges and over their impact on the Republican Party’s future. When Charlie Kirk of the pro-Trump Turning Point USA called for every other Republican candidate for the presidency to drop out of the race in solidarity with Mr. Trump, Ann Coulter, the right-wing bomb thrower, responded, “That’s nothing! I’m calling on EVERY REPUBLICAN TO COMMIT SUICIDE in solidarity with Trump!” — acknowledging that rallying around the former president could send the party to oblivion.Mike Cernovich, a lawyer and provocateur on the right, criticized the indictment as a “selective prosecution,” but also said, “Trump walked into this trap.”How the party, and its 2024 candidates, respond will matter, to the country and to the party’s political fortunes. The core Republican voter might stand with Mr. Trump, but most Americans most likely will not. It is a dilemma, acknowledged Clifford Young, president of U.S. public affairs at the polling and marketing firm Ipsos.“For the average American in the middle, they’re appalled,” he said, “but for the base, not only is support being solidified, they don’t believe what is happening.” “Heck,” he added, “they believe he won the election.” More

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      Trump Supporters’ Violent Rhetoric in His Defense Disturbs Experts

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      The former president’s allies have portrayed the indictment as an act of war and called for retribution, which political violence experts say increases the risk of action.The federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump has unleashed a wave of calls by his supporters for violence and an uprising to defend him, disturbing observers and raising concerns of a dangerous atmosphere ahead of his court appearance in Miami on Tuesday.In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Mr. Trump — including a member of Congress — have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons. The allies have painted Mr. Trump as a victim of a weaponized Justice Department controlled by President Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election.The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Mr. Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him.Experts on political violence warn that attacks against people or institutions become more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or calls for violence with impunity. The pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was drawn to Washington in part by a post on Twitter from Mr. Trump weeks earlier, promising that it would be “wild.”The former president alerted the public to the indictment on Thursday evening in posts on his social media platform, attacking the Justice Department and calling the case “THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.”“Eye for an eye,” wrote Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, in a post on Twitter on Friday. His warning came shortly before the special counsel in the case, Jack Smith, spoke to the public for the first time since he took over the investigation of Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents.On Instagram, Mr. Trump’s eldest son’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, posted a photo of the former president with the words, “Retribution Is Coming,” in all capital letters.In Georgia, at the Republican state convention, Kari Lake, who refused to concede the Arizona election for governor in 2022 and who is an ardent defender of Mr. Trump, emphasized that many of Mr. Trump’s supporters owned guns.“I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden — and the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one is for you,” Ms. Lake said. “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”The crowd cheered.Ms. Lake added: “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”Political violence experts say that even if aggressive language by high-profile individuals does not directly end in physical harm, it creates a dangerous atmosphere in which the idea of violence becomes more accepted, especially if such rhetoric is left unchecked.Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, wrote “Eye for an eye” on Twitter on Friday in response to news of the indictment, before its particulars were released.Al Drago for The New York Times“So far, the politicians who have used this rhetoric to inspire people to violence have not been held accountable,” said Mary McCord, a former senior Justice Department official who has studied the ties between extremist rhetoric and violence. “Until that happens, there’s little deterrent to using this type of language.”The language used by some right-wing media figures was more stark.On Pete Santilli’s talk show, the conservative provocateur declared that if he were the commandant of the Marine Corps, he would order “every single Marine” to grab President Biden, “throw him in freakin’ zip ties in the back of a freakin’ pickup truck,” and “get him out of the White House.”One of his guests, Lance Migliaccio, said that if it were legal and he had access, he would “probably walk in and shoot” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and someone Mr. Trump has identified as one of his enemies.So far, the reactions from Mr. Trump’s supporters have been more intense and explicit than those expressed after Mr. Trump was indicted in a separate case by the Manhattan district attorney Alvin L. Bragg in late March.Shortly before that indictment, Mr. Trump posted an article on Truth Social, his social media platform, that included a photo of himself holding a baseball bat on one side, and Mr. Bragg in an adjacent photo. Dueling crowds of pro-Trump and anti-Trump protesters appeared in Lower Manhattan when Mr. Trump was arraigned there in April.On Saturday, in his first public remarks since the latest indictment on seven charges related to the retention of classified documents and efforts to obstruct justice, Mr. Trump attacked those investigating him as engaged in “demented persecution.”The F.B.I. has been the target of much criticism from far-right Republican lawmakers and the former president’s supporters. In the wake of the heated partisanship, F.B.I. field offices are reporting all threats related to their personnel or facilities to the Washington headquarters, in an unusual step. A law enforcement familiar with the move said the F.B.I. was trying to get a handle on the number of threats around the country directed at the agency.Despite whatever security precautions are taken for Mr. Trump’s appearance on Tuesday, security experts said that the rhetoric and the threats from it were unlikely to subside and would likely become more pronounced as the case moves forward and the 2024 election nears.“Rhetoric like this has consequences,” said Timothy J. Heaphy, the lead investigator for the select House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in the White House after his presidency. “People who we interviewed for the Jan. 6 investigation said they came to the Capitol because politicians and the president told them to be there. Politicians think that when they say things it’s just rhetoric, but people listen to it and take it seriously. In this climate politicians need to realize this and be more responsible.”On Instagram on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump posted a mash-up video of himself swinging a golf club on the course and an animation of a golf ball hitting President Biden in the head, superimposed with footage of Mr. Biden falling at a public event in recent days after he tripped over something onstage.It was hardly the first time that figures on the right have issued calls for war or violence to support the former president, or the first time that Mr. Trump has appeared to summon his supporters to amass on his behalf.In the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol, the notion that a civil war was drawing near was prevalent in right-wing circles. Extremist leaders like Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia, and Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, often rallied their groups with incendiary references to the cleansing violence of the American Revolution. Both men have been convicted of sedition in connection with the Capitol attack.More broadly, on far-right websites, people shared tactics and techniques for attacking the building and discussed building gallows and trapping lawmakers in tunnels there.The federal courthouse in Miami where Mr. Trump is expected to appear Tuesday afternoon for his arraignment. Gerald Herbert/Associated PressThe recent bout of warlike language coming in response to Mr. Trump’s indictment echoed what took place among Republican officials and media figures last summer after the F.B.I. searched Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, as part of the documents investigation and hauled away about 100 classified records.“This. Means. War,” The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump outlet wrote at the time, setting the tone for others. Hours later, Joe Kent, a Trump-endorsed House candidate in Washington State, went on a podcast run by Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime political adviser, and declared, “This just shows everyone what many of us have been saying for a very long time. We’re at war.”Indeed, within days of the heated language that followed the search of Mar-a-Lago, an Ohio man armed with a semiautomatic rifle tried to breach the F.B.I. field office near Cincinnati and wound up killed in a shootout with the local police.Jonathan Swan More

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      Trump to Speak at Georgia and North Carolina Republican Conventions

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      Donald J. Trump will speak on Saturday at the state G.O.P. conventions in Georgia and North Carolina, as his federal indictment dominates the political landscape.In his first two campaign stops since facing federal charges, Donald J. Trump on Saturday will begin publicly prosecuting the case against the prosecutors prosecuting him.Mr. Trump’s two speeches at the Georgia and North Carolina state G.O.P. conventions were planned before he was indicted on Thursday. The appearances on Saturday afternoon and evening will allow the former president to rally support before throngs of activists and elected officials as the most popular Republican in the country and the front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination.Mr. Trump’s indictment, the details of which were unsealed on Friday by the Justice Department, has dominated the political landscape, forcing many of his rivals into the sometimes uncomfortable position of defending the politician they are trailing in the polls. In the unsealed indictment, federal prosecutors revealed for the first time how Mr. Trump had remained in possession of some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets, showing them off to visitors.“This indictment will be another political Rorschach test in that what you see depends on where you stand,” said David Urban, a former top adviser to Mr. Trump in his 2016 campaign.The papers Mr. Trump kept included plans for retaliating to a foreign attack and details of American nuclear programs, according to the indictment. One image displayed boxes stacked next to a toilet in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.“Secret,” he bragged in a taped conversation, according to the indictment. “This is secret information. Look, look at this.”Several people close to Mr. Trump and his team privately acknowledged the facts in the case were damaging. But they were uncertain it would have any more impact on Republican voters than a number of other scandals that did little to change public opinion.Mr. Trump’s team is preparing to march forward, claiming he is being victimized.The former president, who was already said to be angry on Thursday night in the first hour after the indictment, was enraged when the charges were unsealed and shared with him on Friday, according to a person who spoke with him. He returned from the golf course in time to watch Jack Smith, the special counsel bringing the charges, speak on television, the person said. The indictment was filled with information from people who work with him, and Mr. Trump had already been skeptical of some aides who might have revealed certain details to the special counsel, the person said. He was especially focused on a photo of documents spilled out over the storage room floor at Mar-a-Lago, according to another person who spoke with him.Kari Lake, the failed Arizona candidate for governor who headlined a Georgia Republican Party dinner on Friday, said that no one in the G.O.P. base trusts the charges.“We see it’s just a bunch of bogus lies,” said Ms. Lake, who clings to the falsehood that her own election was stolen in 2022, in addition to Mr. Trump’s in 2020. “He’s the front-runner and they have to constantly throw things in front of his path to stop him.”Ms. Lake said Republican mistrust of the nation’s institutions runs deep. “We’ve learned that the F.B.I. is corrupt, the C.D.C., the F.D.A., the C.I.A.,” she said. “We’ve just learned a lot over the past few years.”Mr. Trump has attacked Mr. Smith, the special counsel, as “deranged, a “psycho” and a “lunatic.”Even more aggressive Trump pushback is expected in Georgia and North Carolina. The Trump team is hoping for live television coverage, which has been a rarity in his 2024 run, and sees the two appearances as a valuable opportunity for free coverage.While many leading Republicans snapped in line behind Mr. Trump the moment he revealed that he was being indicted on Thursday, party strategists have concerns about how the charges will shape any potential general election matchup with President Biden. The last two midterm elections and Mr. Trump’s own 2020 loss show that his combative approach to politics — and the accumulation of allegations against him, including his indictment in April by a Manhattan grand jury — has turned off independent and swing voters.Michael Caputo, a former senior Trump adviser who is now an executive at Americano Media, a new conservative Hispanic media outlet, said the charges “virtually assure” that Mr. Trump will win the Republican nomination in 2024.But they could have the opposite effect in a general election contest with Mr. Biden, he said, even as he dismissed the charges as part of a Democratic conspiracy.“It will be the new ‘Russia collusion hoax,’” Mr. Caputo said, using a phrase that Republicans have used in deriding the investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russian officials and whether he obstructed justice. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. It’s to have him under investigation.”In Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump reacted to his indictment with a sense of angry defiance, according to two people who interacted with him. He still made time for the golf outing on Friday, joined by a Republican member of Congress from Miami, where he is slated to appear in court on Tuesday. Cable coverage included helicopter shots of Mr. Trump making his way down the fairway.“It’s not really a different day for President Trump,” one of Mr. Trump’s attorneys, Alina Habba, said on Fox News in the hours after his indictment. “This is something he’s gone through before.”Maggie Haberman More

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      The Trump Documents Case Puts the Justice System on Trial

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      The former president’s efforts to defend against multiple felony counts by discrediting law enforcement pose a grave challenge to democracy.Former President Donald J. Trump has a lot at stake in the federal criminal case lodged against him. He could, in theory, go to prison for years. But if he winds up in the dock in front of a jury, it is no exaggeration to suggest that American justice will be on trial as well.History’s first federal indictment against a former president poses one of the gravest challenges to democracy the country has ever faced. It represents either a validation of the rule-of-law principle that even the most powerful face accountability for their actions or the moment when a vast swath of the public becomes convinced that the system has been irredeemably corrupted by partisanship.Mr. Trump, his allies and even some of his Republican rivals have embarked on a strategy to encourage the latter view, arguing that law enforcement has been hijacked by President Biden and the Democrats to take out his strongest opponent for re-election next year. Few if any of them bothered to wait to read the indictment before backing Mr. Trump’s all-caps assertion that it was merely part of the “GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.” It is now an article of faith, a default tactic or both.Jack Smith, the special counsel, and his prosecutors knew that defense was coming and have labored to avoid any hint of political motivation with a by-the-book approach, securing the assent of judges and grand jurors along the way. Moreover, their indictment laid out a damning series of facts based on security camera video, text messages and testimony from within Mr. Trump’s own team; even some who have defended him in the past say it will be harder to brush aside the evidence in a courtroom than in the court of public opinion.In the public arena, though, it may be a one-sided fight. Mr. Trump and his allies can scream as loudly as they can that the system is unfair, but prosecutors are bound by rules limiting how much they can say in response. To the extent that Democrats defend prosecutors, it may only buttress the point Mr. Trump is trying to make to the audience he is trying to reach.“I think the verdict on democracy ultimately comes down to Republican leaders and Republican voters,” said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida who left the party during the Trump presidency. “Their current weaponization narrative is dangerous and destabilizing, but seems to reflect the party’s early consensus. If they don’t pivot soon to due process and faith in the system, I think we could have very dark days ahead. I do worry.”Mr. Trump has attacked the Justice Department and Jack Smith, the special counsel in the case, calling him a lunatic.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesPolls suggest that Mr. Trump has made headway in persuading at least his own supporters that any and all allegations against him are just political. After the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, brought state charges against him related to hush money paid to an adult film actress, the former president’s support among Republicans rose, rather than fell.While 60 percent of all adults surveyed by CNN afterward approved of the charges, 76 percent agreed that politics played a role in the prosecution. As for the effect on America’s system, 31 percent said the indictment strengthened democracy, while 31 percent said it weakened it.All of which indicates that the system’s credibility is on the line in a way it has not been before. Many have criticized American justice over the years for systemic racism, excessive punishment, mistreatment of women subjected to assault or other issues, but they did not command the bullhorn of the presidency. When past presidents like Richard M. Nixon or Bill Clinton got in trouble, they defended themselves aggressively, but did not call the whole system into question.“In 1972 to 1974, the Republicans participated as good-faith members of the process,” said Garrett Graff, the author of “Watergate: A New History,” published last year. “They saw their roles as legislators first and Republicans second. They definitely were skeptical” initially of the allegations against Nixon, “but they followed the facts where they led.”Even Nixon’s sharp-tongued vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, was careful about disparaging the justice system broadly. “Agnew, of course, was Nixon’s attack dog, but mainly against the press, not the F.B.I. or the special prosecutor,” Mr. Graff said.Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is holding nothing back as he assails “the ‘Thugs’ from the Department of Injustice” and calls Mr. Smith a “deranged lunatic.” Republicans like Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona have called for dismantling the F.B.I. “We have now reached a war phase,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday. “Eye for an eye.” Elon Musk said the authorities were showing “far higher interest in pursuing Trump compared to other people in politics.”Several of Mr. Trump’s competitors for the Republican presidential nomination joined in. Former Vice President Mike Pence compared the indictment to leaders of “third-world nations” who “use a criminal justice system in their country against their predecessors.” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said “the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society.”The former president’s defenders generally do not address the substance of the 37 counts against him, but instead make a case of selective prosecution that resonates powerfully among many Republicans: What about Mr. Biden? What about Hunter Biden? What about Hillary Clinton?They point to the origin of the Russia investigation against Mr. Trump, citing the recent report by the special counsel John H. Durham that harshly criticized the F.B.I. for its handling of the case even though it did not come up with any new blockbuster revelations of politically motivated misconduct nor result in the conviction of any major figure.They point to Republican congressional inquiries that they say hint at wrongdoing by the Bidens even without confirmation. They point to the continuing federal criminal investigation of the president’s son Hunter, suggesting it has been impeded. And they point to the fact that the president himself is also under investigation over retaining classified documents yet not charged.The differences between the cases, however, are stark, making apples-to-apples comparisons complicated. In the documents investigation, for instance, Mr. Biden’s advisers by all accounts so far returned the papers to the authorities promptly after discovering them. Mr. Pence did the same after a voluntary search found that the former vice president had kept classified documents, and he was recently cleared by the Justice Department because there was no evidence of willful violations of the law.Mr. Trump, by contrast, refused to hand over all the documents he had taken from the White House — even after being subpoenaed for them. According to the indictment, he orchestrated an expansive scheme to hide papers and feed lies to authorities seeking them. On two occasions, the indictment charged, Mr. Trump showed secret documents to people without security clearance and indicated that he knew he was not supposed to.As for seeking to weaponize the Justice Department, there was ample evidence that Mr. Trump sought to do just that while in office. He openly and aggressively pushed his attorneys general to prosecute his perceived enemies and drop cases against his friends and allies, making no pretense that he was seeking equal and independent justice. His friends-and-family approach to his pardon power extended clemency to associates and those who had access to him through them.He chipped away at so many norms during his four years in office that it is no wonder that institutions have faced credibility problems. Indeed, he has made clear that he does not respect the boundaries that constrained other presidents. Since leaving office, he has called for “termination” of the Constitution so that he could be returned to power without waiting for another election and vowed that he would devote a second term to “retribution” against his foes while pardoning supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the transfer of power.There is no known evidence, on the other hand, that Mr. Biden has played any role in the investigations against Mr. Trump. Unlike the voluble Mr. Trump, he has made a point of not even publicly commenting on individual prosecutions, saying he respects the autonomy of the Justice Department.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has been sensitive to the matter of perception and sought to insulate the inquiries by appointing Mr. Smith, a career prosecutor who is not registered with either political party, as a special counsel with a guarantee of independence absent manifest wrongdoing on his part.But that was never going to convince Mr. Trump or his most fervent supporters of the fairness of the process. At bottom, the former president and front-runner for his party’s nomination to be the next president is being charged by a prosecutor appointed by an appointee of the man he hopes to beat. It is a recipe for distrust, especially when stoked by a defendant who has mastered the politics of grievance and victimhood.Will that result in lasting damage to democracy? Even some who support charging Mr. Trump fear that it may. Still, some who have studied politically fraught investigations counseled patience. There will be fireworks. Many will doubt the credibility of the system. But in the end, they said, the system will survive just as it has for more than two centuries.“It’s messy and uncomfortable for the generation living through it, but the system is durable enough to win out,” said Ken Gormley, the president of Duquesne University and the author of books on Watergate and the Clinton investigations. “As painful as the next year is likely to be as the criminal justice system grinds forward toward a fair verdict in the Mar-a-Lago documents case — whatever that outcome may be — we are fortunate that our predecessors have spent 234 years shoring up the bulwark.” More