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      Cheryl Hines Didn’t Expect to Be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Running Mate

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      The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress is beloved in Hollywood. In supporting her husband’s campaign, is she normalizing his often dangerous ideas?On a quiet Thursday in May, there was almost no indication that anyone in Cheryl Hines’s house was running for president. A hockey stick poked out from a bush in front of the Spanish colonial home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Leaning up against a wall outside were several surfboards, caked with wax, at least one of which belonged to her husband, the 69-year-old environmental lawyer and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had announced his candidacy for the 2024 Democratic nomination only four weeks earlier. In the foyer, the family’s three dogs wagged their tails near a portrait of Mr. Kennedy’s famous uncle and aunt, John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, by the artist Romero Britto. Over the door hung an even larger portrait, of Ms. Hines and Mr. Kennedy, also by Mr. Britto, a friend of the couple.Ms. Hines, 57, has been in many spotlights during her three decades as a professional actress, most famously for her role as Larry David’s wife on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but this new one is different. After a lifetime of not being particularly political, she finds herself not only married to a man from a storied American political family, but also attached to his long-shot campaign for the highest office in the country. (Mr. Kennedy is the son of former United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.) And it seems clear he will need Ms. Hines, who is in the unique position of being more recognizable to some voters than her candidate husband, to help soften his image for those put off by his crusade against vaccines and history of promoting conspiracy theories, such as the false narrative that Bill Gates champions vaccines for financial gain. “I support Bobby and I want to be there for him, and I want him to feel loved and supported by me,” said Ms. Hines, who is a registered Democrat. “And at the same time, I don’t feel the need to go to every political event, because I do have my own career.”Mr. Kennedy, in an interview with The New York Times a few weeks later, said that he sees his wife as crucial to his success. “I think ultimately if I get elected, Cheryl will have played a huge role in that,” he said. “She’s an enormous asset to me, and I don’t think we’ve really unveiled her in her true power yet.” He added: “She has a gift that she’s kind of mesmerizing when she’s on TV and she’s talking, because she’s so spontaneous and she has this what I would call a quick, a fast-twitch reflex when it comes to conversation.”Friends keep checking in on her. Elections can get ugly, and Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, seemingly by design, will put him in contact with many of this country’s more unconventional voters.After a lifetime of not being particularly political, Ms. Hines finds herself not only married to a man from a storied American political family, but also attached to his long-shot campaign for the highest office in the country.Sophie Park for The New York Times“I’m bracing myself for it,” said Ms. Hines of the public scrutiny that comes with campaigning, while sitting in her home office. On the bookshelf, there’s a plaque of her Hollywood Walk of Fame star and a humorous framed photo of Mr. David in a turtleneck and fake mustache, holding a pipe with a note congratulating her. “It is hard not to live in that space of, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen? And is it going to be as terrible as I think?’”In her first interview since her husband announced his candidacy, Ms. Hines initially appeared at ease. She has done hundreds of interviews throughout her career, and as a seasoned improv actress, is known to be quick on her feet and sharply funny. She cut her teeth in the Groundlings, a Los Angeles-based improv troupe; “Curb” is outlined but unscripted. In some ways, answering questions from a stranger is just another form of: “Yes, and.” With improv, “it’s challenging because you don’t know what’s coming next. You don’t know what the audience is going to shout out,” she said. “‘Where are these two people?’ ‘They’re scooping poop in the lion’s den at the zoo!’ Lights go down. Lights go up.”“You have to commit 100 percent,” she continued, “or it’s not funny or interesting.”But here’s a scenario that would challenge even an improv master: You are beloved by fans and peers, and have managed to steer clear of controversy your entire career, but fall in love with a man who touches it off regularly with his often outlandish claims — a man who was kicked off Instagram along with his anti-vaccine nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, for spreading misinformation during the pandemic. (Instagram reinstated Mr. Kennedy’s personal account earlier this month, because of his candidacy.) Who last year drew criticism and later apologized when, at a rally against vaccine mandates in Washington, he spoke against 5G technology, surveillance and what he called “technological mechanisms for control” and said, “even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” Who just this week suggested “S.S.R.I.s and benzos and other drugs” might be responsible for America’s school-shooting problem. (Mr. Kennedy told The Times that assault rifles “clearly make the world more dangerous and we should figure out a way to limit that impact,” but added, “there’s something else happening.”)Now, he is running for president, and you — “a genuine ray of light,” says the producer Suzanne Todd, and whom actor Alec Baldwin has said “everybody loves” — are along for the ride. After years of being able to distance yourself from your husband’s most problematic views, you now risk being seen as at least tacitly embracing them by standing by and smiling if he says things on the campaign trail that are demonstrably untrue.A note of congratulations from Larry David for Ms. Hines’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesA plaque for Ms. Hines’s star.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesIntroduced by Larry DavidMs. Hines was raised in Tallahassee, Fla., a thousand miles away— geographically and culturally — from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis, Mass., where she and Mr. Kennedy wed in 2014. Her father, who worked in construction, and her mother, an assistant at the Department of Revenue, were private about their politics, if they even had any. “If I ever asked my mom who she voted for, she would tell me it’s nobody’s business and it was her own secret,” Ms. Hines said. “I don’t recall my dad ever once talking about politics or current events, so it was not part of my life. Really, the only thing I knew about the Kennedys was what I learned in public school, in history.”After cosmetology school and the University of Central Florida, her first acting job was at Universal Studios, where she performed the shower scene from “Psycho” up to 15 times a day for a live audience. It was a gig that involved standing in a flesh-colored body suit while an audience member stabbed her with a rubber knife. In her 30s — practically of a certain age in Hollywood years — Ms. Hines was still paying her dues: bartending, working as the personal assistant to the filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner and going to improv classes. Her break came in 1999, when she was cast in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” In 2002, the show won the first of its many Emmys and Golden Globes. Ms. Hines recalled being backstage at the Golden Globe Awards and running into Harrison Ford. When he stopped to congratulate her, she extended her hand and said, “I’m Cheryl Hines. Harrison Ford said, ‘I know who you are,’ and I thought, Oh my God, what?”She and Mr. Kennedy met in 2006 when Mr. David, a longtime friend of Mr. Kennedy’s, introduced them at a ski-weekend fund-raiser in Banff, Canada, for Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental nonprofit co-founded by Mr. Kennedy. Ms. Hines had no plans to ski, “but the next thing you know, we’re in skis and we’re on a ski lift,” she said. “I was looking at Larry like, ‘What is happening?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah,’ giving an indication like, ‘That’s Bobby.’” Ms. Hines said she was aware of Mr. Kennedy’s work as an environmental lawyer, but “I still didn’t know too much about the politics of it all.”By then, Ms. Hines was well entrenched in her own philanthropic work: for the nonprofit United Cerebral Palsy, after her nephew was diagnosed, and for under-resourced schools. “Cheryl was always reachable and accessible to me,” said Jacqueline Sanderlin, a former principal and district administrator of the Compton Unified School District. “She wasn’t a mercenary person. She wasn’t doing this for herself.”Ms. Hines’s break came in 1999, when she was cast in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the HBO show created by Mr. David.Jason Merritt/Getty ImagesMs. Hines and Mr. Kennedy spent time together at another ski event in 2011, when they each were going through a divorce, and eventually began dating long distance. Mr. David never intended for them to connect romantically, Ms. Hines noted. (“Poor Larry,” she said, looking up at the ceiling.) Mr. David told her the relationship was a bad idea, which she said was in jest. “It’s part of the fun of Larry. You just know no matter what you say to him, he’s going to say, ‘Why would you do that? Are you crazy?’”She was attracted to Mr. Kennedy’s wit. “Bobby is very smart and funny, although a lot of people don’t see the funny side,” she said. “He also has this sense of adventure that will catapult me outside of my comfort zone, which I find exciting most of the time.” (How about now, with him running for office? “It seems like, ‘What am I getting myself into?’ Yeah, but, scuba diving.”)Their relationship made headlines when tragedy struck: In May of 2012, Mr. Kennedy’s second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, died by suicide at her home in Bedford, N.Y. Ms. Hines stayed on the West Coast while Mr. Kennedy focused on his children. “I gave him the space and time to heal,” she said. “I think grief is very personal.”When Ms. Hines and Mr. Kennedy got married two years later, Mr. Kennedy gave a speech in which he repeatedly called Ms. Hines “unflappable.” “It was to the level where we joked about it afterward,” said Ms. Todd, a close friend of Ms. Hines. “But he’s actually right, because Cheryl is unflappable.”Her career had continued at a clip: “Curb” returned in 2017 after a six-year hiatus. She joined the cast of the film “A Bad Moms Christmas” along with Susan Sarandon and Christine Baranski, guest-starred in a slew of sitcoms and started a podcast about documentaries with the comedian Tig Notaro.Mr. Kennedy had also been busy. In 2016, he founded the World Mercury Project, which became the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that advocates against vaccines for children. He co-wrote a book on vaccines and began posting anti-vaccine propaganda on social media.During the pandemic, Mr. Kennedy became an even louder voice in the anti-vaccine movement, encouraging people to “do your own research,” even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization deemed the Covid vaccines safe and effective.Mr. Kennedy has long expressed skepticism about vaccines, but his intensity grew with his platform and audience. He published another book, “Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” which has blurbs from the former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, the director Oliver Stone and the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, among others. Ms. Hines stayed out of the fray for most of the pandemic. On her Instagram, she shared images of herself wearing a mask, as well as posts about her involvement with Waterkeeper Alliance — notably never mentioning Children’s Health Defense — and didn’t comment on her husband’s vaccine rhetoric. But then Mr. Kennedy made his Holocaust remark, and claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most visible public health leader fighting Covid, was orchestrating “fascism.”“My husband’s opinions are not a reflection of my own. While we love each other, we differ on many current issues,” Ms. Hines wrote on Twitter. The next day, she tweeted again, calling the Holocaust reference “reprehensible.” “The atrocities that millions endured during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything,” she wrote.Ms. Hines’s first acting job was at Universal Studios, where she performed the shower scene from “Psycho” up to 15 times a day.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy said it was a difficult time for them. “I saw how it was affecting her life and I said to her, ‘We should just announce that we are separated,’ so that you can have some distance from me,” he said. “We wouldn’t really be doing anything, we would just — I felt so desperate about protecting her at a time where my statements and my decisions were impacting her.” He said he even wrote up a news release, though it never went out. Ms. Hines said that was never an option, although she was upset with Mr. Kennedy for his choice of words. “It was also frustrating to hear Bobby say things that could so easily be twisted into snippets that misrepresented his meaning and didn’t represent who he is,” she said.Several months later, Mr. Kennedy approached her to say he was considering running for office. “It was definitely a discussion,” Ms. Hines said, “because he said, ‘If you don’t want me to do it, I won’t.’” She ultimately agreed. On June 5, Ms. Hines was pulled into a Twitter Spaces conversation with Mr. Kennedy and Elon Musk, even though she hadn’t intended to participate. After she gave a measured comment about how she feels about her husband running for office — “It’s been really interesting,” she said, slowly, “and at times exciting” — Mr. Kennedy said that, to cope with the campaign, Ms. Hines had joked she was going to “invent a new kind of margarita that had Xanax in it.”Seeing ‘Both Sides’ on VaccinesMr. Kennedy’s traction has been surprising. A recent CNN poll found that Mr. Kennedy had support from 20 percent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters (though not the multiple members of his own family who have publicly said they will support President Biden.) Jack Dorsey, the former chief executive of Twitter, has endorsed him. Steve Bannon has been supportive of Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, floating the idea of a Trump-Kennedy ticket; Alex Jones and other right-wing conspiracy theorists have also expressed enthusiasm. Mr. Kennedy said he has never met Mr. Jones and has “never spoken to Mr. Bannon or Mr. Jones about my presidential campaign.” When asked twice if he would reject an endorsement from Mr. Jones, who lost a $1 billion lawsuit for repeatedly saying the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Conn., was a government hoax, Mr. Kennedy did not respond. Mr. Kennedy said that he would “love to go on Steve Bannon’s show, but Cheryl just can’t bear that,” so he has not. Back at her home in Los Angeles, what Ms. Hines seemed most excited to talk about was Hines+Young, the eco-friendly company she recently started with her 19-year-old daughter, Catherine Young. It is mostly skin care and candles, and one scent is called Hyannis Seagrass. This — the skin care, the podcast, the film and TV projects — was her world, not whatever was happening on the campaign trail.Ms. Hines does have issues she cares about, including school safety, and “bodily autonomy,” which she said includes abortion but more broadly is the ability to “make decisions about our body with a doctor, not with a politician.” (She declined to comment on whether that includes vaccines.) She had no canned answers prepared about her husband’s political career, but unlike in her improv, seemed unsure what to say. “Bobby is very smart and funny, although a lot of people don’t see the funny side,” Ms. Hines said about her husband. “He also has this sense of adventure that will catapult me outside of my comfort zone, which I find exciting most of the time.”Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesOn potentially being first lady: “I haven’t really spent time in that space, because we’re not there yet.” On how much she has prepped for the trail: “Every day I learn a lot.” On which current issues, specifically, she was referring to when she tweeted that she and her husband “differ”: “OK. Let me think here.” There was a 49-second pause then, which didn’t resolve in a clear answer. Ms. Hines, who appeared in a 2006 public service announcement encouraging people to get a whooping cough booster vaccine — and who had her own daughter vaccinated when she was young — had not previously commented on Mr. Kennedy’s views. “I see both sides of the vaccine situation,” she said. “There’s one side that feels scared if they don’t get the vaccine, and there’s the side that feels scared if they do get the vaccine, because they’re not sure if the vaccine is safe. And I understand that.”“So if Bobby is standing up and saying, ‘Well, are we sure that they’re safe and every vaccine has been tested properly? That doesn’t seem too much to ask,” she continued. “That seems like the right question to be asking.” Ms. Hines tried to dodge several questions about her views on vaccines, including “Do you think vaccines are dangerous for children?,” eventually answering in a manner that didn’t criticize her husband or reveal much about her own opinion.And Mr. Kennedy has been asking questions about the safety of vaccines for years, his family name and work as an environmental lawyer giving credibility to his skepticism, which he spreads through Children’s Health Defense. In 2019, family members wrote an open letter in which they said, in part, that although they love Mr. Kennedy, “on vaccines he is wrong” and called him “complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines.” In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate asserted that Mr. Kennedy was one of 12 people responsible for the majority of anti-vaccine content on Facebook. Mr. Kennedy’s campaign website makes no mention of vaccines. Instead, he has positioned himself as a fighter for the middle class and a crusader against corruption, in an effort to appeal to what he has called “all the homeless Republicans and Democrats and Independents who are Americans first.” He wrote in an email to The Times that “the principal villain in the war in Ukraine is Vladimir Putin” but also blamed the war on “State Department and White House Neocons.” In May, he said on Russell Brand’s “Stay Free” podcast that Ukraine is “a victim of U.S. aggression” by way of a “proxy war.” Language included on his campaign website states his intention is to “make America strong again.”Upon learning that an opinion piece in The Washington Post had recently compared her husband to former President Donald J. Trump, Ms. Hines’s eyes widened. She tried to make sense of the observation.“His skin is much thicker than mine, let’s just say that,” she said. Mr. Kennedy’s father was killed while campaigning; his uncle was assassinated in office — a horrific loss for the country, but also for a family. “He doesn’t talk about that,” Ms. Hines said. “He’s not afraid of much. I can’t think of even one thing he’s afraid of.”In an interview with Breitbart News Daily — Mr. Kennedy has appeared frequently on right-wing cable shows and podcasts — he said, in response to a question that involved the phrase “cancel culture,” that Ms. Hines’s career had already suffered because of her support for his candidacy. Ms. Hines clarified: “I haven’t lost any jobs because of my support for his candidacy, but there was a project I’m involved in where there was a pause for discussion about how his candidacy might affect what we are doing but it has been resolved.” Mr. Kennedy added that so far, “I feel a lot of support and love from most of her friends, including Larry.” (In a text, Mr. David clarified: “Yes love and support, but I’m not ‘supporting’ him.”)“It was definitely a discussion,” Ms. Hines said about Mr. Kennedy’s decision to run for president, “because he said, ‘If you don’t want me to do it, I won’t.’”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“But I’m sure there’s people who just don’t talk to me about it, who feel uncomfortable or, you know, whatever,” Mr. Kennedy continued. Ms. Hines said she was getting used to people wanting to talk to her about “their political feelings and thoughts.” Her strategy is to deflect. She said that she responds with a version of, “This is probably something you should talk about with Bobby, although I’m happy to hear your thoughts.” (The day after Mr. Kennedy announced his candidacy, Mr. Reiner, Ms. Hines’s friend and former boss, tweeted his support for President Biden.) Her industry friends, to her relief, are also consumed with their own affairs. “I went to this poker charity tournament the other night, and I thought everybody was going to be really talking to me about politics,” she said. But instead, “everybody was talking about the writers’ strike.”Ms. Hines isn’t a stiff person. Her personality comes out most in the lighter moments: While talking about a scene she recalled from her time with the Groundlings, Ms. Hines broke out into an impersonation of Cher singing “The Hills Are Alive.” She gushed as she talked about her love for her daughter, and how (not completely unlike her character in “A Bad Moms Christmas,” who sniffs her adult daughter’s hair) one of the reasons she wanted to work with her is to keep her close. Ms. Hines is used to talking about her work, too; her upcoming projects include the 12th season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” a new season of the music game show “I Can See Your Voice,” on which she is a judge and the comedic film “Popular Theory.”But when it comes to the campaign, Ms. Hines is more guarded. “This feels different, because it feels like every word is important,” she said. “Before this, really, my world was just about comedy, so I could make light of things. But now I understand people are listening in a different way, and I know that it’s really important to them. ”As the interview wound down, she laid out several Hines+Young body creams on the coffee table to smell. “It’s all about taking care of yourself and relaxing,” she said. “So it’s hilarious that it’s launching right now.”She then walked over to a bookshelf behind the sofa, where white T-shirts with “Kennedy24” printed across the front were rolled up and stacked, like towels at a gym. “I’m going to give you a T-shirt,” she said. “I don’t know who you’re voting for, and you can do whatever you want with it.”She looked around the room again, and then toward the door. “I have all these Kennedy T-shirts.” More

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      DeSantis Backhandedly Defends Trump After Indictment

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      Visitors from a foreign planet might think Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida had been delivered a tremendous gift this week when his main presidential rival was charged with mishandling the country’s national security secrets.But as Mr. DeSantis’s latest speech showed, this is a turn of events he will need to beware.In an address to Republicans in North Carolina on Friday night, his first public remarks since the unsealing of federal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. DeSantis trod carefully and danced quickly past the subject.Previewing how he might criticize the Justice Department’s case without letting Mr. Trump entirely off the hook, he offered a somewhat backhanded defense of the now twice-indicted former president — whose loyal followers Mr. DeSantis is seeking to avoid angering — by drawing on his own experiences as a Navy lawyer.Seeming to muse aloud, Mr. DeSantis asked what the Navy would have done to him had he taken classified documents while in military service. “I would have been court-martialed in a New York minute,” he said, in a riff on Mr. Trump’s hometown.While Mr. DeSantis made his remark in reference to the fact that Hillary Clinton did not face charges over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, his comments could just as easily have applied to Mr. Trump. And they suggested that he believed both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton should have faced charges — or neither.“Is there a different standard for a Democrat secretary of state versus a former Republican president?” he asked. “I think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let’s enforce it on everybody and make sure we all know the rules.”(A yearslong inquiry by the State Department found that Mrs. Clinton had not deliberately or systemically mishandled classified information.)The nature of Mr. Trump’s federal indictment, which emerged in full view on Friday, left Mr. DeSantis and several other Republican presidential contenders ever more wobbly on the tightrope they are walking, trying to defend a rival accused of cavalierly and illegally keeping sensitive documents about U.S. nuclear programs and the country’s vulnerabilities to military attack.Many of these candidates now find themselves in the difficult position of rallying around Mr. Trump even as they seek to differentiate themselves from his legacy while he continues to dominate them in the polls.“This is not how justice should be pursued in our country,” Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador, said on Twitter. “The American people are exhausted by the prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics.”Such caution struck a sharp contrast with the two Republican candidates most willing to criticize Mr. Trump.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey called the indictment “devastating,” telling CNN that “the facts that are laid out here are damning.” And in an interview with The New York Times, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas pushed back against claims that Mr. Trump was being treated unfairly and reiterated his belief that he should drop out of the race.“To pejoratively say this is the result of a political prosecution is not in service to our justice system,” Mr. Hutchinson said, adding, “It would be doing a disservice to the country if we did not treat this case seriously.”Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the investigation, urged the public on Friday to understand the “scope and gravity” of the charges.Mr. Trump is expected to appear in Federal District Court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon to face charges including willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice. On his Truth Social website, the former president called Mr. Smith “deranged.”Some voters who attended Mr. DeSantis’s speech in Greensboro, N.C., suggested they were growing weary of the controversy surrounding Mr. Trump, even as they expressed a belief that the charges were politically motivated. (Mr. Trump also faces charges in state court in New York for his alleged role in paying hush money to a porn star.)“Even if he gets elected again, they’re never going to leave him alone. So what’s the point?” said Mary Noble, 70, who voted twice for Mr. Trump but has not made up her mind in the 2024 primary. “He’ll never be effective. That’s my fear.”Tom Wassel, who sells air pollution control equipment and also supported Mr. Trump in both previous elections, did not mind that Mr. DeSantis had touched on the indictment only briefly, and not very forcefully.“I want him to talk about what he’s going to run on,” Mr. Wassel, 70, said.Beyond Mr. Christie and Mr. Hutchinson, Republicans running for president were largely supportive of Mr. Trump, with some arguing that the prosecution amounted to an extraordinary and unfair political vendetta and one going so far as to bluntly promise to pardon him.Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who has positioned himself to secure the backing of Mr. Trump’s supporters if the former president’s legal problems derail his political comeback, said, “I commit to pardon Trump promptly on Jan. 20, 2025.”In a radio interview on Friday before the indictment was unsealed, former Vice President Mike Pence seemed to contrast Mr. Trump’s conduct with his own diligent return of classified documents to the National Archives. But he added that he was “deeply troubled to see this indictment move forward” and took a swipe at what he called “years of politicization” of the Justice Department.Meanwhile, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the Republican nominee for president in 2012 and a leading critic of Mr. Trump, was one of the few G.O.P. officeholders to condemn him, saying the former president had “brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents, but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so.”Jonathan Weisman More

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      FBI Investigating Spy Ring’s Political Contributions

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      Prosecutors are scrutinizing a series of campaign contributions made by right-wing operatives who were part of a political spying operation based in Wyoming.Federal prosecutors are investigating possible campaign finance violations in connection with an undercover operation based in Wyoming that aimed to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns and the offices of elected representatives before the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter and documents related to the case.As part of the operation, revealed in 2021 by The New York Times, participants used large campaign donations and cover stories to gain access to their targets and gather dirt to sabotage the reputations of people and organizations considered threats to the agenda of President Donald J. Trump.In recent days, prosecutors have issued subpoenas for at least two of the people The Times identified as being part of the operation, including Richard Seddon, a former British spy, and Susan Gore, a Wyoming heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, the people said. The subpoenas were reported earlier by CNN.According to one of the subpoenas reviewed by The Times, prosecutors and F.B.I. agents in Washington are seeking a trove of information related to the political spying operation, including documents related to Mr. Seddon’s firm, Branch Six Consulting International, along with at least two other entities registered in his name.Prosecutors also sought communications, documents or financial records tied to Erik Prince, the international security consultant, as well as former operatives who worked for the conservative group Project Veritas and its founder. Mr. Prince and Mr. Seddon are longtime associates.The operatives working for Mr. Seddon made several large political donations — including $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee, which gained them entree to a Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas in 2020. They also made donations to the election campaigns of Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona; Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold; as well as to the Wyoming Democratic Party.Drew Godinich, a spokesman for Ms. Griswold, said she returned that donation.Mr. Seddon used money from Ms. Gore to fund the operation. Ms. Gore has said publicly that she was not aware her money was being used for sabotage operations. Robert Driscoll, a lawyer for Mr. Seddon, declined to comment. Nicholas Gravante, a Manhattan lawyer for Ms. Gore who represents many high-profile clients, also declined to comment.It is not clear if the operatives who made the donations — Beau Maier and Sofia LaRocca — did it at someone’s behest and were reimbursed. Both were named in the subpoena reviewed by The Times. It is also unclear whether the couple had been subpoenaed or were cooperating with federal authorities.The F.B.I. declined to comment.Mr. Seddon closely managed the two operatives, who filed weekly intelligence reports to him about their activities and targets, according to a person with direct knowledge of the operation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the secret details.Under federal law, it is illegal to make campaign donations at the behest of another person and be reimbursed for them. So-called straw donations have been central to several federal investigations.According to interviews and documents obtained by The Times, the operation began in 2018, when Mr. Seddon persuaded several former employees of Project Veritas — the conservative group that conducts undercover sting operations — to move to Wyoming and participate in his new venture.Mr. Seddon, who at the time was working for Ms. Gore, wanted to set up espionage operations in which undercover agents would infiltrate progressive groups and the offices of elected officials, and potentially recruit others to help collect information.It is unclear how much information Mr. Seddon’s operatives gathered, or what else the operation achieved. But its use of professional intelligence-gathering techniques to try to manipulate the politics of several states showed a greater sophistication than more traditional political “dirty tricks” operations.It also showed a level of paranoia in some ultraconservative Republican circles that the electoral map in the United States might be changing to their disadvantage. Specifically, there was a concern that even a bedrock Republican state like Wyoming could gradually turn toward the Democrats, as nearby Colorado and Arizona had.Republicans have sought to install allies in various positions at the state level to gain an advantage on the electoral map. Secretaries of state, for example, play a crucial role in certifying election results every two years, and some became targets of Mr. Trump and his allies in their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.One target of the spying ring was Karlee Provenza, a police reform advocate who won a seat in the Wyoming Legislature representing one of a few Democratic districts in the state. Ms. Provenza said she was heartened that federal authorities had not ignored the episode, while Wyoming officials have not acted.“I am glad to see that the Justice Department is investigating efforts to try to dismantle democracy in Wyoming,” she said. “The actions of Susan Gore and the people she supports have been unchecked since this spying operation was revealed.”In 2017, Mr. Seddon was recruited to join Project Veritas by Mr. Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide and brother of Betsy DeVos, who was Mr. Trump’s education secretary at the time. According to people with knowledge of Mr. Prince’s role, he believed Mr. Seddon could turn Project Veritas into a more professional intelligence-gathering operation.Soon afterward, Mr. Seddon was engineering an effort to discredit perceived enemies of Mr. Trump inside the U.S. government, including a planned sting operation in 2018 against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster. He also helped set up operations to secretly record F.B.I. employees and other government officials. More

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      The Trump Indictment: A Changed Landscape

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      More from our inbox:Our Failure to Support New Parents and BabiesThe indictment followed criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump in a hush-money case brought by local prosecutors in New York.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Is Indicted Over Classified Files” (front page, June 9):The indictment of Donald Trump heralds a new chapter in American history. His trial could come sometime next year during the Republican primary season. He will continue to tell his followers that he has done nothing wrong and that this is all part of a vendetta by the Washington elite.His followers will continue to support him. If he is found guilty in any of his trials, he will appeal. If he is nominated, the appeals process will play out during the election campaign. He could be elected and then have a guilty verdict upheld as he is about to be sworn into office.Mr. Trump and the special counsel Jack Smith serve as the protagonists in the first act of a Shakespearean tragedy. The full effects on America of Mr. Smith’s essential action will not be known until the final act.Sidney WeissmanHighland Park, Ill.To the Editor:Is no one above the law? We are about to find out. The stakes couldn’t be higher if the country hopes to remain a legitimate democracy.Tom McGrawGrand Rapids, Mich.To the Editor:The indictment of Donald Trump on federal criminal charges might improve his odds of receiving the Republican nomination, but it almost certainly means that if nominated, he would lose the general election.It may increase the sympathy and anger of millions of his hard-core supporters. They will give him even more money to run and turn out in even greater numbers in the primaries, but it will not persuade many, if any, supporters of President Biden to vote against him in November 2024.This is not yet a banana republic. The greater number of Americans who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 will continue to believe that this and future indictments are legitimate.Even if Mr. Trump manages to beat all the charges against him, he has been further disgraced by all these legal battles. And the effect of the indictments after the lessons of the Jan. 6 hearings will bring new voters, particularly first-time voters, to Mr. Biden.If he remains healthy, President Biden wins again.Allen SmithSalisbury, Md.To the Editor:Journalists need to get to the meat of the Republicans’ support of Donald Trump’s behavior in the classified documents case and ask them the following questions:Are you saying you do not trust the Florida grand jury, made up of ordinary citizens from a state that twice voted for Mr. Trump? The prosecutor presents the facts, but the grand jurors vote on whether to indict. Do you really think all of them are on an anti-Trump witch hunt?Why are you making judgments about this case when you don’t know the charges or the facts? It sounds as if you are advocating for Mr. Trump to be able to break the law at will with no consequences; do you deny that?Stop allowing Republican politicians to hide behind specious arguments bereft of facts or even common sense. They are spouting anti-democratic nonsense, and the press should be exposing them for what they are.Jean PhillipsFlorence, Ore.To the Editor:In all the discussions, among all the various talking heads, about the various aspects of this new criminal indictment, one significant factor has been overlooked.At no time, during any judicial proceedings, will Donald Trump ever take the witness stand. It will never happen.Stuart AltshulerNew YorkTo the Editor:It is vital that Donald Trump’s trial be scheduled to start no later than four months after his arraignment, so that the trial can be finished well before the Iowa caucuses. This can be done by actions of the judge assigned to the case immediately after the arraignment, setting strict time limits for all pretrial matters.Both parties have experienced attorneys who can promptly complete pretrial matters, including discovery and pretrial motions, within that four-month period so that the trial can end well before the voters have to make their decisions.Robert LernerMilwaukeeThe writer is a retired lawyer who tried many cases in federal courts as a prosecutor or as a defense attorney.To the Editor:Jack Smith, all I can say is thank you. Thank you for believing in our country. Thank you for trying to uphold our democracy. Thank you for your courage.I have tears in my eyes. You have restored my hope. Grateful. Stay well.Dody Osborne CoxGuilford, Conn.Our Failure to Support New Parents and Babies Shuran Huang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Risk to Mothers Lasts a Full Year After Childbirth” (front page, May 28) and “A 3-Month-Old Baby Was Found Dead Near a Bronx Expressway” (nytimes.com, May 29):As a midwife working with pregnant people and new parents, I found these articles — about increasing rates of maternal mortality from hypertension, mental illness and other causes and about parents charged with murder or reckless endangerment — heartbreaking.This represents the total failure of our society to support pregnant people and new parents. After receiving only rudimentary maternity services with limited access to care, new parents are turned out of the medical system without proper follow-up and support. Our health care system has not responded to the increasing challenges of parenting in the modern world, leaving parents and children to face preventable dangers.Patient-centered care in pregnancy and improved postpartum services could prevent the suffering and deaths through early identification of risks and swift intervention. Access to care is far too limited.There has been enough hand-wringing about our horrible statistics. We need immediate investment in maternity services, expanded access to obstetric and midwifery care, mental health services, postpartum care and support for new parents.How many more deaths will it take for us to invest in the well-being and safety of our parents and children?Laura WeilSan FranciscoThe writer is an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.To the Editor:Our nation’s failure to properly care for expectant and new mothers and their babies speaks to a larger problem: Our health care system is siloed and focused on delivering urgent services. We treat pregnancy as an event, focused on a safe delivery and a healthy baby and mother, and our systems respond to problems only when they arise.There is a pressing need to address increasing maternal and infant morbidity and mortality — and the many other health issues across the country that are rapidly getting worse — by considering the entirety of factors that make up a person’s health and well-being. We need to spend more time upstream, creating the vital conditions that are key to good health and well-being, like a healthy environment, humane housing, meaningful work and sufficient wealth.If we increase our investments in order to create the conditions people need to thrive, we can build the long-lasting change that is needed to prevent many serious health problems. This is much harder than treating a single person presenting in the emergency room, but it is a much smarter investment for our long-term health and well-being.Alan LieberMorristown, N.J.The writer is chief operating officer and chief health care strategist for the Rippel Foundation, which is working to rethink systems that have an impact on health and well-being. More

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      Trump’s Indictment Puts Us Into Uncharted Waters

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      Former President Donald Trump finds himself once again facing indictment, this time in federal court, after an investigation into his handling of classified documents after departing the White House. The prospect of putting Mr. Trump on trial for serious crimes and sending him to prison has many Americans feeling giddy: Finally, justice might be done.Such reactions are understandable, but news of Mr. Trump’s legal jeopardy shouldn’t blind us to the political jeopardy that now confronts the nation.Other countries have tried, convicted and imprisoned former presidents, but the United States never has. We’ve been fortunate in this regard. Legal processes establish and maintain legitimacy by the appearance of impartiality. But when a public figure associated with one political party is prosecuted by officials associated with another, such appearances can become impossible to uphold. This is especially so when the public figure is a populist adept at exposing (and accusing opponents of concealing) base and self-interested motives behind righteous rhetoric about the rule of law.This corrosive dynamic is even more pronounced when the public figure is not only a former official but also a potential future one. Mr. Trump is running for president against President Biden, whose attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed the special counsel Jack Smith. That’s a scenario seemingly tailor-made to confirm and vindicate Mr. Trump’s longstanding claim that he’s the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt.We don’t have to speculate about the immediate political consequences. Public-spirited and law-abiding Americans believe the appropriate response of voters to news that their favored candidate faces indictment is to turn on him and run the other way. But the populist politics that are Mr. Trump’s specialty operate according to an inverse logic. Before the end of March, polls of the Republican primary electorate showed him hovering in the mid-40s and leading his nearest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by about 15 points. By the end of May, Mr. Trump was in the mid-50s and leading Mr. DeSantis by roughly 30 points.What happened at the end of March to elevate Mr. Trump’s standing? He was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.Hard as it may be for some of us to believe, Mr. Trump’s indictment by the special counsel on federal charges could well boost him further, placing him in a position of even greater advantage against his rivals for the Republican nomination.That possibility typically prompts one of two responses from Democrats: one narrowly political (not to say cynical), the other more high-minded and focused on the law and public morals.The political response sees Mr. Trump benefiting in the G.O.P. primaries from indictment as a good thing, because the former president appears to be the most beatable alternative for Mr. Biden to face in the fall of 2024, and that will be even truer when Mr. Trump is embroiled in a federal trial on major charges and facing possible prison time. What’s good for Mr. Trump in the primaries, in other words, will be terrible for him in the general election.This may well be true, but not necessarily. Anyone who becomes one of two major party nominees has a shot at winning the White House. That’s especially true in our era of stark partisan polarization and intense negative partisanship. That Mr. Trump would be running against an opponent with persistently low approval ratings who will be 81 years old on Election Day 2024 only makes a Biden-Trump matchup more uncertain.The other response dismisses such concerns entirely. Let justice be done, we are told, though the heavens fall. To weigh political considerations in determining whether someone, even a former and possibly future president, should be prosecuted is to supposedly commit a grievous offense against the rule of law, because no one is above the law and the consequences of holding him or her to account shouldn’t matter.This is a powerful argument and one seemingly vindicated in the case of Mr. Trump, who has now managed to get himself ensnared in legal trouble in multiple jurisdictions dealing with a wide range of possible crimes. At a certain point, the logic of the law applying to everyone equally demands that the process be seen through.But that doesn’t mean we should deny the gravity of the potential consequences. Mr. Trump is not a standard-issue politician who happened to run afoul of corruption statutes. He’s a man who rose once to the presidency and seeks to return to it by mobilizing and enhancing mass suspicion of public institutions and officials. That’s why one of the first things he said after announcing the indictment on Thursday night was to proclaim it was “a DARK DAY for the United States of America.” It’s why die-hard supporters like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio tweeted: “Sad day for America. God Bless President Trump.” It’s likely that tens of millions of our fellow citizens agree with the sentiment.To most Americans, such a reaction to news of Mr. Trump’s indictment seems unimaginable. But it’s clearly something sincerely felt by many. Our country has a history of lionizing outlaws — folk heroes who defy authority, especially when they claim to speak for, channel and champion the grievances and resentments of ordinary people against those in positions of power and influence. From the beginning of his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump has portrayed himself as just such a man of defiance, eager to serve as a tribune for those who feel left behind, denigrated and humiliated by members of the establishment.That’s why the more concerted opposition Mr. Trump has faced from law enforcement, the mainstream media, Congress and other prominent people in our country and culture, the more popular he has become within his party. Efforts to rein him in — to defeat him politically and legally — have often backfired, vindicating him and his struggle in the eyes of his supporters.There’s no reason at all to suppose the prospect of Mr. Trump’s ending up a convicted criminal would disrupt this dynamic. On the contrary, it’s far more likely to transform him into something resembling a martyr to millions of Americans — and in the process to wrest those devoted supporters free from attachment to the rule of law altogether.How politically radical could the base of the Republican Party become over the 17 months between now and the 2024 presidential election? There’s really no way to know. We are heading into uncharted and turbulent waters.Damon Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter Notes From the Middleground and is a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.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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      Indictment Brings Trump Story Full Circle

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      The former president assailed Hillary Clinton for her handling of sensitive information. Now, the same issue threatens his chances of reclaiming the presidency.There was a time, not that long ago really, when Donald J. Trump said he cared about the sanctity of classified information. That, of course, was when his opponent was accused of jeopardizing it and it was a useful political weapon for Mr. Trump.Throughout 2016, he castigated Hillary Clinton for using a private email server instead of a secure government one. “I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,” he declared. “No one will be above the law.” Mrs. Clinton’s cavalier handling of the sensitive information, he said, “disqualifies her from the presidency.”Seven years later, Mr. Trump faces criminal charges for endangering national security by taking classified documents when he left the White House and refusing to return all of them even after being subpoenaed. Even in the what-goes-around-comes-around department of American politics, it is rather remarkable that the issue that helped propel Mr. Trump to the White House in the first place now threatens to ruin his chances of getting back there.The indictment handed up by a federal grand jury at the request of the special counsel Jack Smith effectively brings the Trump story full circle. “Lock her up,” the crowds at his campaign rallies chanted with his encouragement. Now he may be the one locked up if convicted on any of the seven reported counts that include conspiracy to obstruct justice and willful retention of documents.The indictment is the second brought against the former president in recent months, but in many ways it eclipses the first in terms of both legal gravity and political peril. The first indictment, announced in March by the Manhattan district attorney, charged Mr. Trump with falsifying business records to cover up hush money to an adult film actress who alleged that they had a sexual tryst. The second is brought by a federal prosecutor representing the nation as a whole, the first in American history against a former president, and concerns the nation’s secrets.While Mr. Trump’s defenders have tried to brush off the first as the work of a local elected Democrat concerning issues that, however unseemly, seem relatively petty and happened before he took office, the latest charges stem directly from his responsibility as the nation’s commander in chief to safeguard data that could be useful to America’s enemies.Republican voters may not care if their leader slips money to a porn star to keep quiet, but will they be indifferent about impeding authorities seeking to recover clandestine material?Perhaps. Mr. Trump certainly hopes so. The Manhattan indictment only seemed to boost his poll ratings rather than hurt him. And so he immediately cast the latest indictment as part of the most extravagant conspiracy in American history, one that in his telling seems to involve a wide range of local and federal prosecutors, grand jurors, judges, plaintiffs, regulators and witnesses who have all lied for years to set him up while he is the one truth teller, no matter what the charges.“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election,” he wrote on his social media site, making multiple misleading assertions in a single sentence. “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”So far, his core supporters have stuck with him and even some of those running against him for the Republican nomination next year have criticized the investigations against him. But he recently was found liable for sexual abuse in a civil trial, his company has been found guilty of 17 counts of tax fraud and other crimes and he still faces two other possible indictments stemming from his effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, leading to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The question, politically at least, is whether the accumulation of all those allegations will someday weigh him down among Republican voters who otherwise like him, especially if there is a third and maybe a fourth indictment. At least some of his rivals for the party nomination are counting on the fatigue factor eventually draining his support.As for Mrs. Clinton, whether she was feeling a little schadenfreude on Thursday night, the defeated candidate herself was not saying. But she and her allies have long believed that the reopening of the email investigation by James B. Comey, then the F.B.I. director, just days before the 2016 election cost her the victory that so many polls had forecast.Mr. Trump will try to turn this around on his pursuers, arguing that the fact that he has been indicted where Mrs. Clinton was not is proof that he is being unfairly persecuted.Never mind that the facts of the cases are different, that he seemed to go out of his way to intentionally thwart authorities trying to recover the secret documents for months while investigators concluded that Mrs. Clinton was not willfully trying to violate the law. But it will be a useful political argument for Mr. Trump to insist that he is a victim of double standards.Why, given the 2016 campaign, he did not recognize the potential danger of mishandling classified information and take more care about it is another matter. But he spent much of his presidency disregarding concerns about the security of information and the rules about preserving government documents.He disclosed highly classified information to Russian officials visiting him in the Oval Office. He posted sensitive satellite imagery of Iran online. He kept using an unsecured mobile phone even after being told it was monitored by Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies. He tore up official documents and threw them to the floor once he was done with them despite laws requiring that they be saved and cataloged, leaving aides to collect the ripped-up pieces and tape them back together.Even when confronted with the consequences of his actions, Mr. Trump never expressed concern. He was the president, after all, and he could do what he pleased. Even during the investigation into the classified documents that he took to Mar-a-Lago, he has defended himself by asserting that he had the power to declassify anything he chose just by thinking about it.But he is no longer president. Now he will face not just primary voters who will decide whether he has been disqualified from the presidency, but a prosecutor who says he will enforce laws concerning the protection of classified information.Mr. Trump will be booked as an accused criminal and, absent an unforeseen development, ultimately will be judged by a jury of his peers.What a difference seven years makes. More

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      Trump Investigations: Where Other Notable Inquiries Stand

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      Former President Donald J. Trump faces a host of investigations around the country, at both the state and federal levels, into matters related to his business and political careers.Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts filed by prosecutors in Manhattan related to his role in what they described as a hush-money scheme to cover up a potential sex scandal in order to clear his path to the presidency in 2016. A Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.And Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the documents case, is also examining Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat at the polls in 2020 and his role in the events that led to the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Here is where notable inquiries involving the former president stand.Manhattan Criminal CaseThe Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, brought the case over Mr. Trump’s role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who was poised during the campaign to go public with her story of a sexual encounter with him.Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time, paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. Once he was sworn in as president, Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen.While paying hush money is not inherently criminal, Mr. Bragg accused Mr. Trump of falsifying records related to the payments and the reimbursement of Mr. Cohen, who is expected to serve as the prosecution’s star witness.In court papers, prosecutors also cited the account of another woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model. Ms. McDougal had tried to sell her story of an affair with Mr. Trump during the campaign and reached a $150,000 agreement with The National Enquirer.Rather than publish her account, the tabloid suppressed it in cooperation with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, prosecutors say. (Mr. Trump has denied having affairs with either Ms. Daniels or Ms. McDougal.)The case is scheduled to go to trial in March.Georgia Criminal InquiryProsecutors in Georgia recently indicated that they would announce indictments this summer in their investigation of Mr. Trump and some of his allies over their efforts to interfere with the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state.Mr. Trump and his associates had numerous interactions with Georgia officials after the election, including a call in which he urged the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find 11,780 votes” — the number he would have needed to overcome President Biden’s lead there.Legal experts say that Mr. Trump and others appear to be at “substantial risk” of prosecution for violating a number Georgia statutes, including the state’s racketeering law.A special grand jury was impaneled in May of last year in Fulton County, and it heard testimony from 75 witnesses behind closed doors over a series of months. The jurors produced a final report, but the most important elements of it — including recommendations on who should be indicted and on what charges — remain under seal.But the forewoman, Emily Kohrs, has said that indictments were recommended against more than a dozen people, and she strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was included among those names. “You’re not going to be shocked,” she said. “It’s not rocket science.”Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, will ultimately decide what charges to seek and then bring them before a regular grand jury. She recently indicated that she would do so during the first three weeks of August.Jan. 6 InquiriesA House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol spent a year and a half examining the role that Mr. Trump and his allies played in his efforts to hold on to power after his electoral defeat in November 2020.In December, the committee issued an 845-page report detailing the events that led to the attack on the Capitol that concluded that Mr. Trump and some of his associates had devised “a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”The panel also accused Mr. Trump of inciting insurrection and conspiracy to defraud the United States, among other federal crimes, and referred him and some of his allies to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.The referrals were largely symbolic, but they sent a powerful signal that a bipartisan committee of Congress believed the former president had committed crimes.Mr. Smith’s office has been conducting its own investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, building on months of work by other federal prosecutors in Washington who have also filed charges against nearly 1,000 people who took part in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The special counsel’s office has focused its attention on a wide array of schemes that Mr. Trump and his allies used to try to stave off defeat, among them a plan to create false slates of pro-Trump electors in key swing states that were won by Mr. Biden. Prosecutors under Mr. Smith have also sought information about Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising operation after the election.The special counsel’s office has recently won important legal battles in its inquiry as judges in Washington have issued rulings forcing top Trump administration officials like former Vice President Mike Pence and the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify in front of a grand jury.It is unclear what charges, if any, might come from the federal investigation. But prosecutors continue to pursue a variety of angles. They recently subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who might have been involved in firing the cybersecurity official whose agency judged the 2020 election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter.New York State Civil InquiryIn a September lawsuit, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, accused Mr. Trump of lying to lenders and insurers by fraudulently overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars.Ms. James is seeking to bar the Trumps, including Mr. Trump’s older sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, and his older daughter, Ivanka, from running a business in New York.She has already successfully requested that a judge appoint an independent monitor to oversee the Trump Organization’s use of its annual financial statements.Because Ms. James’s investigation is civil, she cannot file criminal charges. She could opt to pursue settlement negotiations in hopes of obtaining a swifter financial payout. But if she were to prevail at trial, a judge could impose steep financial penalties on Mr. Trump and restrict his business operations in New York.Ms. James’s investigators questioned Mr. Trump under oath in April, and a trial is scheduled for October.Reporting was contributed by More

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      This Is Not the Time for a Third Presidential Candidate

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      I’ve long been a fan of No Labels, the organization that works to reduce political polarization and Washington gridlock. I spoke at its launch event in 2010. I’ve admired the Problem Solvers Caucus, a No Labels-inspired effort that brings Republicans and Democrats in Congress together to craft bipartisan legislation. Last September, when No Labels wanted to go public with its latest project, I was happy to use my column to introduce it to people.That project is a $70 million effort to secure ballot access for a potential third presidential candidate in 2024. America needs an insurance policy, the folks at No Labels argued. If the two major parties continue to go off to the extremes, then voters should have a more moderate option, a unity ticket of Republicans and Democrats who are willing to compromise to get things done.In the nine months since my column appeared, No Labels analysts have conducted polling that they believe shows that their as yet to be selected third candidate could actually win the White House. Today, they argue, the electorate is roughly evenly split among those who lean Democratic, those who lean Republican and the unaffiliated. There’s clearly an opening for a third option.Furthermore, voters are repelled by the thought of a Joe Biden-Donald Trump rematch. Large majorities don’t want either man to run. Fifty-nine percent of voters surveyed in that No Labels analysis said if that happened, they would consider voting for a third moderate candidate. If the No Labels candidate won just 61 percent of this disaffected group and the remainder was split evenly between two other candidates, he or she would capture a plurality of the electorate and could win the presidency.This is a unique historic opportunity, the No Labels folks conclude, to repair politics and end the gridlock on issues like guns, abortion and immigration.Others disagree. Official Washington, especially Democratic Washington, has come down on No Labels like a ton of bricks.Moderates are now at war with one another. The centrist Democratic group Third Way produced a blistering research memo arguing that a third presidential candidate would have no chance of winning. It would siphon off votes from Democrats and hand the White House back to Trump.The analysts at Third Way point out that no third-party candidate has won any state’s electoral votes since 1968. There is no viable path to 270 electoral votes. The No Labels candidate would have to carry not just swing states, but also deep-blue states like Maryland and Massachusetts and deep-red ones like Utah and Montana, which is not going to happen.The simple fact is, the Third Way analysts argue, Democrats need moderates more than Republicans do. Because there are more conservatives than progressives in America, Democrats need to get 60 percent of the self-identified moderate votes to win nationally, they say, while Republicans need to get only 40 percent. You suck those voters away to a third party and you’ve just handed the keys to the Oval Office to Trump.Personally, I have a lot of sympathy for the No Labels effort. I’ve longed for a party that would revive the moderate strain in American politics exemplified by Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, John McCain and contemporaries like Michael Bloomberg.If the 2024 election was Bernie Sanders versus Ron DeSantis, I’d support the No Labels effort 1,000 percent. An independent candidate would bring this moderate tradition into the 21st century, and if Sanders or DeSantis ended up winning, his agenda might not be my cup of tea, but I could live with him.Donald Trump changes the equation. A second Trump presidency represents an unprecedented threat to our democracy. In my view, our sole focus should be to defeat Trump. This is not the time to be running risky experiments, the outcomes of which none of us can foresee.Furthermore, I’m persuaded that a third candidate would indeed hurt Biden more. Trump voters are solidly behind him, while Biden voters are wobbly. Then there’s the group of voters called the “double-haters.” They dislike both candidates. The Wall Street Journal recently quoted Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, who said Biden was up by 39 points with such voters.Finally, if America wants a relative moderate who is eager to do bipartisan deal making, it already has one. In fact, he’s already sitting in the Oval Office. Joe Biden doesn’t get sufficient credit, but he has negotiated a bunch of deals on infrastructure, the CHIPS Act, guns, the debt limit. As long as Biden is running, we don’t need a third option.I’m not saying my friends at No Labels have chosen the wrong strategy. I’m saying this is not the right election to carry out their strategy. I wouldn’t blame them for keeping their options open for a few more months (something unexpected might happen). But if it’s still a 50-50 Biden-Trump race in the fall, I hope they postpone their efforts for four years. With Trump on the scene, the potential rewards don’t justify the risks.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