Politics

It is safe to assume that, at some point in June 2020, the FBI interviewed someone who made an accusation involving Joe Biden.

It’s hard to know much beyond that. The FBI won’t say much about it, despite the energetic prodding of congressional Republicans. At the same time, those same Republicans aren’t interested in sharing with Democrats the details of how they know about this purported interview — very intentionally leaving outside observers with no viable assumption beyond the one identified above.

At the moment the fight centers on a request made by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Senate Budget Committee ranking Republican Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) earlier this month.

The pair sent a letter to the FBI accompanied by a subpoena from Oversight, for a form FD-1023 containing the term “Biden.” In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity this week, Comer alleged that there were so many documents responsive to that request that they were forced to narrow the ask: any document mentioning Biden “and the word ‘five million dollars.’”

If you think that’s vague, fret not. In their initial letter, Comer and Grassley made a specific allegation.

The form, they wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, “describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”

In other words, it alleges a bribe. Allegedly.

This letter was not private. Comer and Grassley sent out a press release about the request, attaching the letter and the subpoena for the media to consume. And at least one media outlet consumed it. Since the beginning of May, Fox News has mentioned “bribe” or “bribery” in the context of Biden more than 100 times. Despite no additional information about the alleged bribe emerging over the subsequent four weeks.

Comer and Grassley insist that’s because the FBI is stonewalling them. But, in a statement to Hannity, the FBI explained why it wasn’t providing any such document to the congressional leaders.

“Releasing confidential source information could potentially jeopardize investigations and put lives at risk,” it explained. “The FBI remains committed to cooperating with Congress’s oversight requests on this matter and others as we always have.”

On the air, Hannity only read that latter part of the statement out loud, to muttered disbelief from his audience. He added, “Well, then hand it over” — as though the reason for not handing it over wasn’t stated in the first sentence.

A form FD-1023 looks like this. (This is a redacted version related to another case made public by the FBI.)

You can see that it includes three components. There’s a header that includes information about the FBI agent conducting the interview and the time and place in which the interview was conducted. (You can see an example here.) There’s the source reporting, which details the information gleaned from the interview. And, finally, there’s a section for agents to sign.

In other words, it is a document that records an allegation and little else. That’s the argument the FBI used to reject the request to release it in the first place.

“An FD-1023 form documents information as told to a line FBI agent. Recording the information does not validate the information, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information known or developed by the FBI,” FBI acting assistant director Christopher Dunham wrote earlier this month. “The mere existence of such a document would establish little beyond the fact that a confidential human source provided information and the FBI recorded it.”

Comer would later tell Fox’s Maria Bartiromo that his request to the FBI included asking “what did you do to investigate this allegation,” though that’s not included in the actual request. But the FBI’s statement to Hannity covers that anyway.

Since the FBI is a favorite target of the political right — an offshoot of former president Donald Trump’s efforts to undercut various investigations into his activities — Comer and Grassley have insisted that the bureau is intentionally and inappropriately stonewalling them. Comer was on Hannity’s show not to rehash their request (or: not only to do that) but to discuss the possibility of holding the FBI in contempt of Congress.

Remember, there is no public information corroborating the idea that this form even exists beyond the assertions of the House Republicans. That they believe there is such a form, of course, suggests that someone told them about it. And, speaking to Hannity, Comer suggested that someone did. Asked if there might be multiple sources alleging some pay-for-play scheme, Comer said, in essence, maybe — but that “the name of the informant is confidential.”

Indicating that there is an informant. (We should recognize that Comer’s reliability in discussing such an informant is shaky; in the Bartiromo interview, he claimed that the informant was “missing,” but then his staff clarified that he was talking about someone else.)

The existence of an informant would, in years past, have meant that the Republicans would at least have some corroboration to their demands. After all, it was formerly the policy of the House Oversight Committee to share information about whistleblowers between the parties. Under Comer’s leadership, though, that is no longer the case.

The previously agreed-to guidelines stipulated that whistleblowers making claims to the committee majority would be asked if they would share their information with the minority. If they declined to do so, the majority committed to not releasing information publicly without sharing it with the minority first.

There exists a transcript of what was alleged by the whistleblower; Comer told Hannity earlier this month that he’d read such a document. It has not been provided to Democrats on the committee.

In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokesperson for the Democratic minority on the committee suggested that Comer was simply hiding the ball.

“[I]n an effort to maximize innuendo on Fox News and dodge accountability, Chairman Comer has continued to insist he has secret evidence that he has concealed from Committee Democrats and the American public,” the statement read in part. “These tactics reflect Republicans’ willingness to weaponize the Committee to achieve their political ends instead of engaging in responsible oversight.”

At the very least, that Republicans are unwilling to share the allegation does not suggest a lot of confidence that it will withstand skeptical scrutiny.

We might take a step back and note that even what limited information we know invites such scrutiny. There was an allegation made to the FBI in June 2020 impugning a man who’d just become the Democratic nominee for president? It is not hard to imagine a motivation for such a claim to emerge at that time. But this has, of course, not dissuaded the conservative media from embracing the story.

It may be the case that there is a legitimate accusation detailing real wrongdoing that is sitting at the FBI or even currently under investigation by it. A whistleblower complaint offered in the summer of 2019, after all, eventually led to the impeachment of Donald Trump.

But that complaint was detailed, submitted to Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson and then conveyed — over the White House’s objections — to congressional committee members. It took less than a month for Atkinson to vet the information and determine that it warranted escalation. Ten days after informing Congress, he was briefing members of Congress behind closed doors.

We know no more now about the purported allegation about Biden than we knew when Comer and Grassley first wrote their letter three weeks ago. Nor do congressional Democrats. So that same idea — maybe something happened? — lingers.

A South Carolina judge on Friday moved to pause the state’s six-week abortion ban until it can be reviewed by the state Supreme Court.

Judge Clifton Newman of the South Carolina Circuit Court granted a temporary injunction Friday morning, barely 24 hours after Gov. Henry McMaster (R) signed the measure into law.

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, along with a South Carolina clinic and two of its doctors, immediately filed a lawsuit Thursday to block the ban that took immediate effect with McMaster’s signature.

Friday’s injunction means abortion access in South Carolina reverts back to being legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

“The status quo should be maintained until the Supreme Court reviews its decision,” Newman said, according to the Associated Press. “It’s going to end up there.”

Planned Parenthood called the injunction a “welcome reprieve.”

“While we have a long fight ahead, we will not stop until our patients are again free to make their own decisions about their bodies and futures,” Jenny Black, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said in a statement.

Shortly after news of the injunction, McMaster vowed in a statement to continue fighting for the law and said he hopes the Supreme Court “will take this matter up without delay.”

In a Thursday news release, McMaster said the state was “ready to defend this legislation against any challenges and are confident we will succeed.”

“The right to life must be preserved, and we will do everything we can to protect it,” McMaster said in the release.

The law, which the Republican-led South Carolina Senate passed by a vote of 27-19 on Tuesday, includes exceptions for the patient’s life and health, and for fatal fetal anomalies. It also permits abortion at up to 12 weeks in the case of rape or incest. Doctors who violate it would lose their license and face potential civil lawsuits, felony charges, a fine of up to $10,000 and two years in jail.

The bill is the state’s second recent six-week abortion ban. The first, which passed in 2021, was blocked under federal law but later took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down federal abortion protections from Roe v. Wade. That six-week ban was in effect barely a month and a half before the state Supreme Court temporarily blocked it. In January, the high court struck down the law, calling it “an unreasonable restriction upon a woman’s right to privacy.”

But the makeup of South Carolina’s Supreme Court has changed since it last reviewed a six-week abortion ban. In January, the court had a single female justice, Kaye Hearn, who wrote the lead opinion striking down the ban from 2021. It was Hearn’s last opinion from the bench before she hit the mandatory retirement age weeks later.

South Carolina is one of two states (the other is Virginia) where the legislature selects Supreme Court justices. Earlier this year, the legislature selected Republican Gary Hill as Hearn’s replacement, making the state’s highest court entirely male.

Sandy Senn, one of five women in the state Senate, was among the few Republicans to oppose the six-week ban. She previously told The Washington Post that it would alienate more moderate voters and criticized the measure as an example of the overwhelmingly male Senate exerting control over women. In a text message Friday, Senn said she expected the quick injunction but was less optimistic about what the state Supreme Court will do.

“As far as the Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling, given that we have now reverted to the only state in the nation with an all-male high bench the outcome is anybody’s guess,” Senn said. “Ultimately, the federal government needs to step in to ensure uniformity for women nationwide.”

It’s unclear whether the state’s high court will again find privacy rights a compelling reason to strike the current six-week abortion ban. Senn said that regardless of whatever legal theory the court may use, South Carolina voters strongly favor abortion access — mostly at the first trimester — a fact she said the “overwhelmingly White male legislators in the chamber” are aware of.

That is why she says they refuse to put the issue to voters.

“They know what the outcome would be; they cannot control the voters in the same way they wish to control women, so they voted against the many polls that have been conducted including their own poll of Republican voters,” Senn said. “They think they know better than their own electorate.”

Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Rachel Roubein contributed to this report.

President Biden on Thursday released the country’s first national strategy for combating antisemitism, a landmark lauded by Jewish and anti-hate groups as progress toward addressing the increasing instances of violence and bias toward Jewish people in the United States.

But Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) saw the effort as an attack on those of her political persuasion. “When they say stuff like this, they mean they want to go after conservatives,” she tweeted. “Their tactics are straight out of the USSR’s playbook.”

Her comments quickly attracted criticism from detractors who accused her of conflating a straightforward campaign against antisemitism with an assault on the right — and, by implication, equating conservatives with antisemites.

“So you agree? You think you’re antisemitic?” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) tweeted in a popular meme format from the teen comedy “Mean Girls.”

In response to questions about her tweet, Boebert’s office provided a statement equating the anti-hate effort with censorship of free speech and adding that she does not condone antisemitism.

“This is the latest version of this administration’s failed ‘Ministry of Truth,’” Boebert said in the statement. “The First Amendment guarantees a marketplace of ideas where truth, beauty, and justice ultimately win out.”

Deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates said Boebert was “mistaken.” He added that Biden’s push against hate defied politics and was rooted in long-standing American values.

“If anyone finds opposition to hate threatening, they need to look inward,” Bates said in a statement. “Congresswoman Boebert should also Google the Soviet Union’s long, repulsive history of antisemitism. She might find a result for Joe Biden, who at the time decried antisemitic acts by Soviet communists as ‘shameful.’”

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), who is Jewish, said the goal of fighting antisemitism has nothing to do with targeting conservatives, adding that he would be happy to sit down with Boebert “if she’s struggling with any of this.”

“Combatting antisemitism isn’t an attack on conservatives — it’s a denunciation of antisemitism,” he said in a statement. “Combatting hate is a priority for both Republicans and Democrats, and it should be for every Member of Congress.”

Boebert has a history of controversial and inflammatory statements. In February, she suggested that God used her to stand up to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), whom she indirectly referred to as one of her “demons,” while speaking at a women’s conference at a Dallas church.

Biden on Thursday announced a four-pillar strategy to confront hate in a video address, outlining a plan that includes more than 100 steps for the government to take. The goals include increasing awareness and understanding of antisemitism, ramping up security for Jewish communities, reversing the normalization of discrimination, and improving on collective efforts to counter hate.

“In the past several years, hate has been given too much oxygen, fueling a record rise in antisemitism,” Biden said. “It’s simply wrong. It’s not only wrong, it’s immoral, it’s unacceptable. It’s on all of us to stop it.”

The Anti-Defamation League, a group dedicated to fighting anti-Jewish hatred, counted 3,697 antisemitic incidents last year, a 36 percent increase from the previous year and the highest figure since it began keeping records in 1979.

Last month, a trial began for a Pennsylvania man charged with fatally shooting 11 people and wounding two at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Authorities said the defendant, Robert D. Bowers, regularly posted antisemitic and white-nationalist diatribes on social media before the killing.

Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, said at Thursday’s event that antisemitism threatened to divide the country and erode trust in its institutions.

“Antisemitism delivers simplistic, false, and dangerous narratives that have led to extremists perpetrating deadly violence against Jews,” said Emhoff, who has made fighting antisemitism a central part of his role. “It is on all of us to put an end to the visceral hate that we are seeing across our nation. We cannot normalize this.”

Biden’s plan outlines steps that Congress, state and local governments, tech companies and other businesses, faith leaders, and others can take to combat antisemitism. For instance, it asks tech companies to establish “zero tolerance” policies against antisemitic content on their platforms.

White House officials also touted the scheduled opening next year of the first U.S.-based Holocaust research center as part of the broader effort to increase education about the dangers of antisemitism. Federal agencies are committing to more training around diversity, equity and inclusion to root out workplace discrimination and violence.

A group of more than 25 Jewish organizations applauded Biden’s plan, saying in a statement that they “appreciate the clarity and urgency demonstrated by the White House in releasing its National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.”

On Twitter, antisemitic tweets and account creation surged after Elon Musk took over the platform, The Post previously reported.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who is Jewish, has previously said publicly that he has been bombarded with antisemitic messages on Twitter and has called for the platform to beef up its moderation process.

On Friday, he applauded the administration’s announcement as “tremendously important,” saying it should be welcomed by all Americans no matter their political beliefs.

“No one is interested in going after conservatives — that’s ridiculous,” Moskowitz said. “We’re going after Nazis. And if the fact is that the majority of Nazis are voting for conservatives, then perhaps the better question is: why? Why are a majority of Nazis voting for conservatives? That’s a question that they should ask themselves, perhaps.”

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is set to join the growing field of Republicans seeking the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

A person familiar with his plans said Burgum, a wealthy software entrepreneur, is expected to launch his campaign during a June 7 event. The individual spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of the official announcement. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Burgum’s plans.

Burgum, 66, has served as North Dakota governor since 2016. Over the last few months, he’s been signaling a potential presidential run. In March, he traveled to Iowa to address Story County Republicans and has, over the last few weeks, been filming television ads for a potential presidential bid.

Burgum has not established much of a national political footprint and would be a long-shot in a GOP primary field dominated by former president Donald Trump and the latest candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

A North Dakota native who grew up in Arthur, a town of some 300 people where his family had a grain elevator business, Burgum ran for governor on a platform of fiscal conservatism, promising to curb “runaway spending” and restore the state’s economy, which was struggling because of low energy and farm commodity prices. His tagline in that race was “a new leader for a changing economy.”

Burgum has embraced some staunchly conservative policies, including signing a near-total ban on abortion in his state this year. Burgum has also signed legislation that bans providing gender-affirming care to minors and a bill that bars public schools and government entities from requiring teachers and employees to use a transgender person’s pronouns.

At the same time, he has raised concern about the nation’s political polarization, arguing that 60 percent of Americans are a “silent majority” who are not being represented in the political debate.

“All the engagement right now is occurring on the edge,” Burgum told the Forum editorial board. “There’s definitely a yearning for some alternatives right now.”

Before entering politics, Burgum was an entrepreneur who started a chimney sweeping business and helped build Great Plains Software — mortgaging part of the farmland that his father had left him to invest $250,000 in the company. He led Great Plains Software until it was acquired by Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001, and he remained at Microsoft as senior vice president until 2007. At the time he stepped down to run for governor, Burgum was chairman of Atlassian, a software company based in Australia.

You have been tasked with preparing the goody bags for a child’s birthday party. The hosts would like each bag to contain a roughly equal number of lollipops, candy bars and stickers.

You start grabbing things from a bowl and stuffing them into bags before you realize that the bowl doesn’t have any lollipops in it. All you’ve been putting in the bags are candy bars and stickers. So you grab the bag of lollipops and start stuffing in suckers.

Then, a voice calls out. It’s Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), infuriated that you’re so biased toward lollipops.

You will hopefully forgive my allegory bleeding over into reality. It was commentary offered by Grothman on the House floor on Thursday, though, that spurred the example.

“Apparently, his first two years, President Biden had appointed 97 federal judges. Of the 97 federal judges, I was expecting maybe 25 or 30 were White guys because I know President Biden wasn’t heavy on appointing more White guys,” Grothman complained. “Five of the 97 judges were White guys. Of those, two were gay. So almost impossible for a White guy who’s not gay to get appointed.”

What with all these lollipops being added, it’s almost impossible for a candy bar to get put into a goody bag! Except, of course, that those goody bags already have a disproportionate number of candy bars. And so it is with White guys on the bench.

Let’s assume that you think the judiciary should reflect the diversity of the country, as Biden does. It is easy to evaluate how close we are to that goal, thanks to the Census Bureau’s assessments of the composition of the population and to analysis of the bench. The American Constitution Society (ACS), for example, has an analysis of the racial and gender composition of the judges who “make up the U.S. Supreme Court, circuit courts, district courts, and the U.S. Court of International Trade.”

And here’s the comparison we get. Notice that we’ve added two measures of the country’s population: both its overall racial composition and the composition of adults (given that relatively few children end up with appointments to the federal judiciary). That orange bar on top — White judges — extends well past the orange bars in the middle and on the bottom because Whites make up a higher percentage of the judiciary than the population.

We can look at this another way. The graph below compares the percentage of judges in each racial group (on the vertical axis) with the percentage of the adult population each constitutes (on the horizontal axis). Any dot above the diagonal line represents a racial group that’s overrepresented in the judiciary — and the farther from the line it sits, the larger that overrepresentation.

You can see that three groups are overrepresented: Native Americans, Blacks and Whites. But Native Americans (and Native Alaskans) are only barely overrepresented. Whites are overrepresented by six percentage points. Hispanics are underrepresented by eight points.

And that’s among adults! Non-White Americans tend to be younger than White Americans, so the imbalance is even more stark when comparing the judiciary to the population in general. Whites are overrepresented by 10 percentage points compared to the population overall.

That doesn’t break out gender. When we do, we see an even more immediately obvious disproportion.

Remember that we’re assuming that you think the judiciary should reflect the diversity of the country. The question, then, is how to fix the imbalance demonstrated above.

You could, as Barack Obama did, make appointments that more closely reflect the population, hoping to slowly adjust the judiciary to align with the population. The ACS estimates that 64 percent of Obama appointees were White and 58 percent men, both lower than the existing percentages of those groups in the judiciary.

And then Donald Trump showed up. Eighty-four percent of his appointees were White and 76 percent were men. The ratio got skewed back the other way very quickly.

If we extend our goody-bag analogy, you could even out the bags by shifting to putting six lollipops in for every three candy bars. But all that does is slow down the effort to reach the proper balance and — remember — you’ve only got a little bit of time to reach your goal. So you could be forgiven for simply trying to balance things out more quickly.

Especially since there’s a guy who keeps offering to help — asking when he can have a turn — who’s wearing a T-shirt saying “Lollipops kill.”

Bringing up the other point: Maybe you don’t think that the judiciary should reflect the country. Maybe you think there’s no difference in the experiences and values of men and women or White and Hispanic people. Perhaps you think that the engine for so many White men graduating from elite universities and getting jobs clerking for high-profile judges is merit. In that case, none of this math matters because it reflects an effort to which you’re indifferent.

It’s not clear from Grothman’s argument where he falls on this divide. But it is clear that he views Biden’s efforts with disdain — that he was prepared to view them with disdain before seeing the numbers but had more disdain afterward. So he decided to make it part of his speech.

This is revealing about an existing undercurrent in American politics. Efforts to address imbalances on race and gender, to fix examples of bias, are presented as themselves being examples of bias. It’s inverting the blame: You’re appointing too many non-White judges! — after a disproportionate number of White judges have already been confirmed to the bench. You’re trying to increase turnout among non-White voters! — after systemic imbalances have already ensured a more-White electorate.

You’re only adding lollipops! — after the goody bags are already out of whack. You can’t fix a problem without fixing it.

And that’s assuming you want to fix the problem.

How important was flipping the [Wisconsin Supreme] court to the overall fight for abortion rights nationwide?

— Asked April 11 in our election live chat

Liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz’s victory in Wisconsin has major implications specifically in the state, but it does send a broader message nationally. In Wisconsin, it means the Supreme Court — now controlled by liberals after the election — there is likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban in the next year. But, nationally, it shows that Democrats are still able to galvanize voters with a message focused on preserving abortion rights.

Now, that doesn’t mean every state is following this trend of preserving abortion rights as it is still on the line in states across the country. For example, in Florida, we just recently saw the state Senate pass a six-week abortion ban that is backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

And in North Carolina, one of the last states in the South with abortion access, Republicans have passed a 12-week abortion ban. Gov. Roy Cooper (D) vetoed the bill, but Republicans in the state legislature overrode his veto.

We have reached one of those points in reporting on Donald Trump’s post-presidency retention of documents when it’s useful to take a step back.

On Thursday, The Washington Post teased out another aspect of this complicated situation. According to people familiar with the investigation, the government has evidence that Trump’s team practiced moving documents he took from the White House — the implication being that they rehearsed hiding them. Then, shortly before inviting the Justice Department to come pick up a cache of documents, the Trump employees apparently put that practice to use.

This has been the subtext to the investigation from the outset: Trump had things he wanted to keep despite not being authorized to do so. The timeline of events, delineated below, reinforces that idea.

The question, then, is why. What use did they serve?

In recent weeks, we’ve gotten more insight in that regard, as well. Consider Trump’s response when asked at CNN’s town hall event earlier this month whether he showed documents marked as classified to anyone after leaving the White House.

“Not really,” he said, insisting (falsely) that he had the right to do so anyway. When pressed on it, he reeled his response back a bit: “Not — not that I can think of.”

“Prosecutors separately have been told by more than one witness that Trump at times kept classified documents out in the open in his Florida office, where others could see them, people familiar with the matter said,” The Post reported this week, “and sometimes showed them to people, including aides and visitors.”

Since news first emerged of the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, the nature of that place has been a complicating factor. It’s not simply that Trump took presidential records from the White House to his home or even that some of those documents were marked as classified. It’s that he took them to a facility where he hosts paying customers, political supplicants and publicly accessible events.

The idea that Trump sought to retain those documents despite requests from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is reinforced by The Post’s report about boxes being moved before the Justice Department’s first visit. But the full timeline below, building in part on a Washington Post timeline compiled by Rosalind S. Helderman, makes that intent harder to ignore.

Jan. 20, 2021. Trump leaves the White House, bringing a number of boxes containing documents and other material with him to his home at Mar-a-Lago. Some of the documents he kept there were marked as classified.

May 6. Realizing that documents are missing, NARA contacts Trump about obtaining them.

Jan. 18, 2022. After being prodded repeatedly, Trump’s team in late December informs NARA that it has documents to return. After being packed with Trump’s personal oversight, they are shipped from Florida to Washington, where NARA discovers that the material includes a number of documents marked as classified.

Early February. Trump asks an attorney to tell NARA that all of the requested material has been returned. The attorney, not knowing if this is true, declines to do so.

Feb. 9. NARA sends a referral to the Justice Department centered on concerns that Trump has been in possession of that material, that some of it has been mixed in with other records, and that some documents have been torn up.

April. NARA informs Trump that it will turn over the material to the FBI following a Justice Department request. Trump’s attorneys object, claiming executive privilege. NARA rejects that idea, and the material is turned over to the FBI in May.

May. At some point in April or early May, Trump and aides reportedly practice moving material that he didn’t want to turn over.

May 11. Trump’s team is served with a subpoena for “any and all documents or writings in the custody or control of Donald J. Trump and/or the Office of Donald J. Trump bearing classification markings” — notably, not just documents that were actually classified.

June 2. Trump aide Walt Nauta and another Mar-a-Lago employee reportedly move a number of boxes of papers into a storage area at Mar-a-Lago.

That evening, a lawyer contacts the Justice Department and invites officials to come pick up documents responsive to the subpoena.

June 3. Jay Bratt and several FBI agents arrive at Mar-a-Lago to collect the material. They are given a single envelope containing 38 documents. Trump attorney Christina Bobb signs an affidavit asserting, “Any and all responsive documents accompany this certification.”

While there, Bratt views the storage room. Attorneys for Trump reportedly prevent his team from looking in any of the boxes there.

Nauta later helps load an SUV in which Trump would depart for Bedminster, N.J.

June 8. Bratt emails Trump’s lawyers and asks that the storage room be secured and that the material in it not be disturbed.

June 24. The Trump Organization receives a subpoena for footage from security cameras at Mar-a-Lago beginning in January. This footage reportedly includes images showing Nauta moving boxes — but it also contains unexplained gaps.

Aug. 8. FBI agents arrive at Mar-a-Lago to execute a search warrant. They retrieve a number of boxes, including material with classification markings, both from the storage room and from Trump’s office. Some of the documents found in the office — many marked with high levels of classification — are separated into a leather-bound box.

November. Attorneys working for Trump search Bedminster, Trump Tower in New York and a storage unit in Florida. Several documents with classification markings are found at the latter location.

Trump attorney and ally Boris Epshteyn had reportedly tried to block the search at Bedminster.

There are a number of legal questions raised here, of course, ones being adjudicated by special counsel Jack Smith.

There is also a political question — about Trump’s apparent interest in again subverting governmental boundaries to satisfy his own interests. Independent of Smith’s determinations, that question deserves to be considered.

With the threat of government default looming, the unions representing anxious federal workers have pressed the Biden administration for guidance on what a debt ceiling calamity might mean for their millions of members.

So far, the official answer has been consistent: We have nothing to tell you.

“‘We’re saying, ‘We don’t have a handle on this, and we need to get a handle on it,’” said Jefferson Friday, general counsel for the 100,000-member National Federation of Federal Employees, who was planning at a Zoom meeting Friday to bear down again on officials at the Office of Personnel Management. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t know anything.’ Or whatever they did know, they weren’t allowed to tell us.”

The 2.1 million employees who keep the vast federal government afloat find themselves in a precarious limbo as talks between the White House and House Republicans to raise the country’s borrowing limit approach a June 1 deadline, when the Treasury Department warns that the government might no longer be able to pay its bills. Bipartisan negotiations were proceeding Friday, but the White House and House Republicans hadn’t yet reached a final agreement to avert the crisis.

If a default happens, the government could halt many day-to-day operations, from staffing national parks at the start of tourist season to researching the newest coronavirus vaccines at the National Institutes of Health. Millions of federal contractors could go unpaid. Benefit checks for veterans and other disabled Americans may not go out.

And unlike a shutdown — an unpleasant but predictable stoppage that federal employees have become accustomed to weathering — no one knows how a default in Washington would actually play out.

The personnel agency and the Office of Management and Budget, which also oversees the federal workforce, did not respond to requests for comment. The White House has consistently signaled its confidence that a compromise will be reached with Republicans.

“We are committed to not having missed payments and raising the debt ceiling so that’s not a situation we face,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said this week at a Wall Street Journal CEO Council event. “We’re not involved in planning for what happens if there’s a default.”

Meanwhile, federal employees are bombarding their union headquarters with daily emails about whether they’ll be forced to work without pay and if the value of their government-managed stock portfolios will plummet.

“I’m one of those that doesn’t have a savings account to fall back on,” said Josephine Jones, who retired from the Environmental Protection Agency and now works there part time doing clerical work for $16.10 an hour.

“To be honest with you, I’ve tried not to listen to this subject on the news,” Jones said Thursday, taking a walk on her lunch break in the courtyard of the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and International Trade Center. She’s in her 80s and lives in the District. “I’d rather wait and just find out if I’m going to be furloughed. This is really going to affect me.”

Privately, federal managers say they are trying to game out how their agencies would proceed in the face of a default — even without specific direction from the White House.

“It’s a voyage of exploration, but not in a good way,” said one senior budget official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss planning for a default. “It’s sailing off the end of the world to see if [a default] is really there.”

The official said he has received “nothing” from the White House budget office on any of these topics. “I don’t know where to go with this.”

The government has never defaulted on its debt, despite coming within hours of catastrophe in 2011, the last standoff between the parties over raising the country’s borrowing limit. While a failure to resolve the current impasse draws comparisons to a government shutdown, the scenarios are very different.

During a shutdown, shorthand for a lapse in appropriations, it’s at least clear whether any government functions will be funded since Congress has generally agreed on a budget for some agencies. A default, though, would leave Treasury to decide which bills it could pay, creating little certainly about, for example, whether the Smithsonian would stay open to visitors, the IRS would continue to process tax returns or inspectors with the EPA would be able to monitor air pollution.

“Totally uncharted and troubling waters,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. “Unlike a shutdown, there is no certainty about what will be funded and what won’t, and no track record.”

To buy time and conserve cash without new borrowing options, a burst of new tax revenue or quick opportunities to slow spending, Treasury has asked federal agencies if they have flexibility to put off some payments that are due before early June.

Some offices are retrieving plans they sent the OMB before the government entered a 35-day partial shutdown in December 2018, blueprints that lay out which employees would be directed to work and which would be furloughed. Agencies have received budgetary allocations for the current quarter of the fiscal year, allowing them to draw money to pay expenses as they arise, including employee salaries. But it’s possible that money would need to be used for other obligations.

It’s also possible that a short default could cause minimal disruption if it fell within the government’s biweekly pay periods. However, since federal paychecks reflect compensation for time already worked and are sent about a week later, the government might not be able to pay for work done before money runs out.

Among the biggest questions coursing through federal offices is whether furloughed employees would be paid later, as they are in government shutdowns caused by funding lapses.

After every shutdown, those who had to come to work have been guaranteed back pay — a practice lawmakers enshrined in law. But that law does not cover a debt default, which would leave it up to Congress to pass new legislation to ensure that federal employees are paid.

Relatively speaking, the payroll for the civilian workforce is not the biggest-ticket expense the Biden administration would have trouble paying in a default. Federal salaries and benefits, minus the military and the U.S. Postal Service, come to about $28 billion a month and $50 billion for contractors, according to the federal budget. That’s dwarfed by Social Security checks and Medicare payments, for example.

Still, Jack Lew, who was director of the White House budget office during the 2011 standoff, said federal employees are right to be worried about their paychecks.

“This is the kind of thing where you don’t have a track record because it’s always been avoided,” said Lew, who later served as President Barack Obama’s treasury secretary. “The thing I think people have to realize is, it’s not a neat and orderly, ‘You do this, and you don’t do that.’ The process by which checks are paid is not easy to micromanage.”

As the Obama administration approached default in 2011, there were more questions than plans, Lew said — about what operations could cease; what bills to pay and not pay, under what laws; and which functions of government to give priority. The answer “was clear as mud.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), whose constituents include tens of thousands of federal employees and contractors, said in an email to The Washington Post that “federal employees face a double jeopardy” with a debt default. “On top of the negative impacts all Americans will face from rising interest rates and a likely recession, they also are at risk of going without pay.”

Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, which has 90,000 members at the Defense Department and other agencies and aerospace contractors, said he is hearing more concerns from his members as June 1 looms, “and they’re more worried about a default than they were about a government shutdown.”

“Even if they reach a deal, it doesn’t mean their TSP won’t be depleted,” Biggs said, referring to the hit financial markets took that affected the government’s savings and investment plan for employees, known as the Thrift Savings Plan, even after a default was averted 12 years ago.

Keith Williams, an EPA contractor in IT with two young children who works in the Reagan building, said he’s saved just a month’s rent for a crisis. “If the EPA is not working, I don’t work,” he said Thursday.

The 2011 compromise to avoid a default resulted in a decade of spending cuts across the government, a scenario under consideration now as well, albeit for a shorter duration. That’s also making employees at some struggling agencies nervous. The Social Security Administration, for instance, is already reeling from eroding customer service coming out of the coronavirus pandemic, in part because thousands of employees quit or retired and not all of them have been replaced in the tight labor market.

“The agency is already in a public service crisis,” said Rich Couture, chief contract negotiator for the American Federation of Government Employees at Social Security, “and now we’re looking at some type of spending caps.”

At the Forest Service, wildland firefighters who recently received a temporary pay boost of $700 per paycheck through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 are worried that any deal to avert a debt default could impede their efforts to make the raise permanent. The labor market is already causing applications for seasonal firefighting jobs to plunge across the government this year, said Warner Vanderheuel, a firefighter based in northern Michigan who is general vice president of the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Forest Service Council.

“It was really weighing on us how precarious the pay supplement is before this debt crisis,” he said.

Tony Romm contributed to this report.

A federal judge rejected a challenge to the government’s ability to disarm defendants as part of their criminal sentences, one of the first decisions to uphold the constitutionality of a gun ban for people on probation for misdemeanors since a watershed Supreme Court decision last year set a new test to evaluate such limits.

Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington issued the ruling temporarily barring gun possession by Daniel Shaw, a Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack defendant who pleaded guilty last November to one count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing.

“[W]hile Shaw’s role in the mob was minor, the fact of his participation in an insurrection whose aim was to impair the peaceful transfer of power suggests that a firearms restriction during his probationary period is appropriate,” Boasberg wrote on Thursday. “The nature of that event puts Shaw’s offense very far from the types of negligent infractions that some circuits have held do not warrant a firearms restriction.”

Courts have struggled to determine when and how the government may restrict the possession of firearms since the Supreme Court radically redrew the legal landscape in last June’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Boasberg noted. At least 58 courts have rejected challenges to legal prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons, but his opinion is the first to address firearms restrictions as a misdemeanor probation condition in the District and apparently one of the first nationwide.

Federal defenders representing Shaw, 56, of Santa Rosa, Calif., challenged the gun ban condition in Shaw’s sentence to two years’ probation, including 10 days of incarceration, imposed March 17. Shaw entered the Capitol despite witnessing police deploying stun grenades and tear gas to keep rioters out.

Shaw’s attorney quoted the Supreme Court’s reasoning in finding the Second Amendment generally protects the rights of law-abiding Americans to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense, and striking down a New York law that required a holders to show a “special need.”

“When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct,” wrote Elisse Larouche, assistant federal public defender for the northern district of California. While the court has found that the protections apply only to “ordinary, law-abiding citizens,” the government had not established a historical “tradition of generally prohibiting misdemeanants from possessing firearms,” Larouche argued.

“Prohibiting misdemeanant probationers from possessing firearms is not relevantly similar to disarming detainees, felons, or any of the other comparison groups proffered by the government,” she concluded, urging the court to reject Shaw’s probation ban.

Prosecutors disagreed, and Boasberg in his ruling said both sides argued the case too broadly. The question is not whether misdemeanor offenders can be permanently barred from possessing firearms under the constitution, but simply whether they can be while on probation.

People sentenced for crimes fundamentally have their rights restricted, the judge noted, and many forms of criminal punishment limit offenders’ liberty, such as incarceration, home detention or mandatory community service.

Probationers may be subjected to many requirements in addition to weapons bans, including warrantless searches, compelled provision of DNA samples, or prohibitions against running for office, engaging in political activity, using computers, contacting children or traveling.

Federal sentencing law generally requires that punishments be no greater than necessary under each case’s particular circumstances to achieve goals including deterrence, protecting the public, promoting respect for the law and providing correctional treatment. Courts handing down probation restrictions typically must factor in the specific purposes served, the legitimate needs of law enforcement and — what Boasberg called an “admittedly mushy” additional element — “the extent to which constitutional rights enjoyed by law-abiding citizens should be accorded to probationers.”

Boasberg found that Shaw was already on probation for driving under the influence with a minor child when he trespassed at the Capitol, and the firearms restriction would deter another future offense, facilitate his supervision and promote public safety, particularly since he received little prison time.

Ultimately, he found, like the First Amendment right to free speech and the Fourth Amendment right to due process, the Second Amendment “right is the quintessential example of a right that is susceptible to limitation during a term of probation.”

“After all, if there are any rights probationers can be deprived of — and, as discussed above, there certainly are — then a right that inherently applies with full force only to law-abiding citizens should be no exception,” he concluded.

Shaw argued that he possesses firearms for hunting and for self-defense, has long enjoyed hunting with his son and friends, and shown he is “a responsible custodian of his Second Amendment rights,” with no indication of misuse or dangerous behavior warranting this deprivation of his liberty and property rights.

No matter how the nation’s debt limit debate is resolved, there’s a related, but less noticed issue that will continue to plague America well after the partisan recriminations subside.

“The federal government faces an unsustainable long-term fiscal future” is the blunt warning in a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the government’s main auditor.

Washington is dawdling on a fiscal path that cannot be tolerated, and the predicament is unlikely to be resolved soon.

The $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit in fiscal 2022 was the fourth largest in U.S. history. Yet, that amount represents a 50 percent drop from the year before. Higher tax revenue and lower coronavirus pandemic relief spending contributed to the decline. At the same time, the nation’s debt held by the public grew by $2 trillion, for a total of $24.2 trillion. Budget deficits are annual expenditures over revenue and increase the debt. The nation’s debt amounts to the accumulated deficits over time.

As wonky as deficit and debt debates are, the real-world consequences can be severe. They include painful choices like reducing expenses, which Republicans generally favor. That could mean cutting programs that serve the poor, the sick and the old. Raising taxes on the rich, which Democrats favor, is another option, but Republicans object. Finding some combination of more revenue and less spending is the long-term challenge our current hostile, two-party system finds difficult to navigate.

But without a durable solution, “the underlying conditions driving the unsustainable fiscal outlook pose serious economic, security, and social challenges if not addressed,” Gene L. Dodaro, comptroller general of the United States and GAO’s head, wrote to President Biden and congressional leaders in a letter accompanying the May 8 GAO report. “Congress and the administration will need to make difficult budgetary and policy decisions to address the key drivers of the debt and change the government’s fiscal path.”

In this seventh annual report on the nation’s fiscal health, GAO outlined points that Congress should consider in a fiscal sustainability plan. That plan should address factors that propel deficits, but the solutions also divide partisans.

This report sounds much like the first, issued in 2017, when Dodaro declared himself “deeply concerned” about the nation’s finances. Yet, during an interview he sounded more determined than discouraged about continued congressional dithering. The magnitude of fiscal problems was demonstrated by GAO’s decision to issue a rare press release on the report. Of GAO’s 427 reports this year, only eight were announced with press releases.

With its dogged political neutrality, GAO again urged Congress to develop a long-term plan for a sustainable fiscal future. The auditors said the plan should:

• “Assess the drivers of the primary deficit, such as mandatory and discretionary spending as well as revenue — including tax expenditures, such as deductions and tax credits.”

• Consider alternatives to dysfunctional, debt limit crises, like we are now experiencing, including setting a debt limit as part of the budget process and allowing Treasury “to propose a change in the debt limit that would take effect absent congressional disapproval.”

• Incorporate rules and goals to manage debt by controlling spending and revenue to meet debt targets.

“Right now, there are no guardrails,” Dodaro said. “We have no national policy. How much debt do we want to have? How much do we think we can afford to have?”

But rather than planning ahead, the political debate is framed around how much “to spend in the next year,” Dodaro added. “So we’re not taking a long-term view.”

Politicians are loath to make those difficult decisions.

“Unfortunately, political incentives in Washington are such that most members of Congress want to avoid fiscal policy as much as they can get away with,” said David Ditch, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. One benefit of the current debt limit debate, he added, is it “forces members to start thinking about” fiscal issues.

That means confronting the significant issues that foster long-term unsustainable deficits, including, Dodaro said, “underlying demographic changes that are driving up health care costs at a time when our population is also aging” and living longer. He expects life expectancy rates “to get closer to normal patterns,” following the coronavirus induced reductions.

Longer lives mean greater Medicare and Social Security costs. “And this is particularly an issue at a time of rising interest rates,” he added, that increase the government’s cost to borrow money.

But “the fiscal deficit is not the only deficit we face,” said Sharon Parrott, president of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “We also have a deficit in the investments that broaden opportunity and improve well-being, including investments in children, workers, marginalized communities, health care and education. Failing to make these kinds of investments keeps our child poverty rate higher than in other wealthy countries, as just one example, with research documenting how this shortchanges their future and the nation’s as a whole.”

Among the options that GAO presented to deal with the fiscal dilemma is raising tax collections in a way that won’t raise tax rates, which Republicans reject. That’s closing the tax gap — the difference between what taxpayers owe and the amount they pay. Last year, officials estimated the net tax gap for 2014-2016 was $428 billion.

“Given the size of the tax gap each year, even modest increases in compliance could yield significant financial benefits and help improve the government’s fiscal condition,” GAO reported. “Improving tax enforcement and addressing the tax gap is a persistent issue and is on our High-Risk List.”

GAO has previously recommended “targeted legislative actions to reduce the tax gap,” including giving the IRS authority to correct certain errors in information provided by taxpayers and setting professional requirements for tax preparers.

So far, Congress has not acted.

That leaves America without “any national policy or sort of guiding light road map toward what kind of fiscal policy we want to pursue, which would give a lot more certainty to average people, as well as the markets, as well as all those who rely on all the federal government’s activities,” Dodaro told The Washington Post.

“I think it’s a much more prudent way to deal with our issues.”