The New York Times - USA (2020-07-31)

A16 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2020

has lent his name to digital solici- tations that are among the party’s highest-performing missives. And Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden’s “socially distanced” video released last week not only earned airtime on television news, but was also an organizing tool for the campaign, which tripled email sign-ups in the 24 hours after its initial release, compared with the day before. At the Democratic National Committee, the times that Mr. Obama signs emails have been known internally as “Barack Obama days” for the influx of con- tributions and for a reactivating effect among supporters. “He’s obviously one of our most effective surrogates,” said Tom Perez, the D.N.C. chairman, who hailed the efficiency of virtual fund-raisers and moderated the conversation between Mr. Obama and Mr. Hoffman. “The virtual context means you don’t have to put him and other surrogates on a plane,” Mr. Perez said. “This just allows him to do more events, more efficiently. That’s been a surprise.” Mr. Obama is still said to be con- cerned that appearing in too many virtual fund-raisers will blunt his impact over time — but he re- cently told a former campaign aide that they were far easier than he expected, taking only about an hour of his time, requiring no trav- el and providing a cash return for the Biden team that exceeded his expectations. Mr. Obama’s first fund-raising appearances with Mr. Biden raised $11 million, including $7. million from smaller online contributors and $3.4 million from big donors who got a more private session with the two men, according to the Biden campaign. The Hoffman event raised $5.6 million and the Pritzker event more than $3 million, according to people familiar with the matter. In his private fund-raisers, Mr. Obama has praised Mr. Biden’s character and hailed him as a fu- ture “great president,” almost turning the tables on donors and others who have tried to offer “constructive criticism” to the Bi- den campaign given the stakes of the election. “We have a worthy candidate

At fund-raising events where he
has pulled in more than $24 mil-
lion for Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s cam-
paign in the past two months, for-
mer President Barack Obama has
privately unleashed on President
Trump to party donors, bringing
up past accusations of Mr.
Trump’s “assaulting women” and
warning of his efforts to push “na-
tivist, racist, sexist” fears and re-
sentments.
With less than 100 days until the
presidential election, Mr. Obama
has laid out the stakes of 2020 in
forceful fashion. He has urged
support for Mr. Biden, his former
vice president, while worrying
about the state of American de-
mocracy itself, even making an
oblique reference to Nazi Ger-
many, according to notes made
from recordings of Mr. Obama’s
remarks, donors and others who
have been on the calls.
Even three years out of office,
Mr. Obama remains one of the
Democratic Party’s biggest draws
for giant contributors and small
donors alike. A virtual conversa-
tion on Tuesday with the actor
George Clooney sold out of tickets
that ranged from $250 to as much
as $250,000. (The biggest donors
got access to a small “virtual
clutch” with Mr. Obama.)
Donors who have paid six-fig-
ure sums to see Mr. Obama on
Zoom — he held two other, more
intimate, conversations for do-
nors with Reid Hoffman, the
founder of LinkedIn and a major
Democratic donor, and J.B. Pritz-
ker, the billionaire governor of Illi-
nois — have been privy to wide-
ranging Q. and A. sessions about
the state of politics and unvar-
nished analysis from the former
president.
On Tuesday evening, during the
event with Mr. Clooney, Mr.
Obama was asked what keeps him
up at night these days. He cited
fears of voter suppression and an
effort by Mr. Trump to question
the election’s legitimacy.
Mr. Obama, who has carefully
calibrated his public statements
since leaving office to avoid being
pulled into one-on-one combat
with a current president looking
for a foil, is considerably more

caustic when the cameras are off, according to people who have been on the calls and notes made from recordings. During his conversation with Mr. Pritzker, Mr. Obama spoke about how Mr. Trump has a core base that “filters out any contra- dictory information.” “It’s just glued to Fox News and Breitbart and Limbaugh and just this conservative echo chamber — and so, they’re going to turn out to vote,” Mr. Obama said. “What he has unleashed and what he continues to try to tap into is the fears and anger and resentment of people who, in some cases, really are having a tough time and have seen their prospects, or communi- ties where they left, declining. And Trump tries to tap into that and redirect in nativist, racist, sexist ways.” Mr. Obama’s office did not dispute his private comments but declined to comment further. The former president dis- missed Mr. Trump’s continued focus on the Confederate monu- ments as a distraction amid the coronavirus pandemic — “that’s

like his No. 1 priority” — but also characterized it as a menace that “gives you a sense of what this is about.” He then pivoted to what those “darker impulses” have wrought in history. “The endpoint of that we saw in Europe 60 years ago, 70 years ago — what happens when those things get unleashed,” Mr. Obama said, according to the notes. “You don’t nip that in the bud, bad things can happen. Among the most quote unquote civilized soci- eties.” During the event with Mr. Hoff- man, Mr. Obama called out Mr. Trump for stoking “anti-Asian sentiment” when talking about the virus, which the president has called the “kung flu” and “Chinese virus.” “That still shocks and pisses me off,” Mr. Obama said. He went even further as he told the virtual crowd that he hoped his serious- ness of purpose was emanating through the screen. “We already saw this guy win once,” he said. “After he bragged about physically assaulting women — and that didn’t seem to mat-

ter. So, enough said. Let’s get to work.” Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Trump without naming him as he deliv- ered the eulogy at Representative John Lewis’s funeral on Thursday, saying Republican efforts to cur- tail voting rights had left the elec- toral system under attack. “Even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling lo- cations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision,” Mr. Obama said. “George Wallace may be gone,” the former president said, “but we can witness our federal govern- ment sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators.” Mr. Obama sat firmly on the sidelines during the Democratic primary race but has mobilized to help his former vice president. In addition to the four virtual events — his joint appearance with Mr. Biden is still the campaign’s single biggest fund-raising event — he

and we have a worthy platform,” Mr. Obama said. “But you know what, let’s not be so sophisticated that we are constantly finding rea- sons why this isn’t good enough or the candidate’s not doing this or the campaign seems to not be get- ting that quite right.” D.N.C. officials and Biden campaign aides have tried, gingerly, to enlist Michelle Obama to appear in her own online fund-raisers. But the former first lady, who has been focusing her energy on other projects like a new podcast, has told people in her orbit that she does not consider herself a political player. She has committed to virtually appearing at the Demo- cratic National Convention but signaled she would engage more in the campaign at a time and in a fashion of her choosing. So far, Mrs. Obama has neither headlined high-dollar fund-raisers nor signed messages to email lists for Mr. Biden and the D.N.C. In a window into the Obamas’ contrasting approaches, Mr. Obama tweeted a link on Sunday to the Democratic Party’s iwillvote.com voter registration portal, noting that it was 100 days until the election. That tweet, along with a link by the model Kendall Jenner to her 135 million Instagram followers, drove more than 100,000 visitors. That day — within minutes of Mr. Obama’s post — Mrs. Obama also posted a video urging people to register to vote on Twitter. But she linked to her own nonpartisan nonprofit, When We All Vote. “Where we disagree is usually you just think things just have to get super, super bad before folks figure stuff out,” Mr. Obama told Mrs. Obama on her podcast, which debuted on Wednesday. “Well, I hope we’re at that point,” she said, before adding, “We’ll figure it out before we crash into the sun.” Mrs. Obama’s office declined to comment. Mr. Clooney, appearing on Tues- day in a blazer and an unbuttoned white dress shirt, framed this year’s election as a simple choice. “Like, this is easy,” he said. “There’s two candidates here. One claims that our first Black president wasn’t a citizen, and the other was his vice president.”

Privately Slamming Trump, Obama Pulls In Over $24 Million for Biden

By SHANE GOLDMACHER and GLENN THRUSH

President Barack Obama has told potential donors that his former No. 2 will be a “great president.”

AL DRAGO/THE NEW YORK TIMES

When Attorney General
William P. Barr announced a new
top federal prosecutor in Brook-
lyn this month, it was a promotion
for one of his closest advisers in
Washington.
His choice, Seth D. DuCharme,
was not a purely political appoint-
ee. Mr. DuCharme spent most of
his career in Brooklyn prosecut-
ing terrorists and violent gangs,
earning a sterling reputation
among many law enforcement of-
ficers and defense lawyers.
Still, Mr. DuCharme, 49, is step-
ping into the position at a fraught
time for any U.S. attorney whose
office has the jurisdiction to inves-
tigate President Trump’s associ-
ates. With the election just over
three months away, and as politi-
cal polarization intensifies across
the country, Mr. DuCharme is fac-
ing scrutiny from all sides.
“Look, I know people have
strong views about this adminis-

tration and folks in D.C.,” Mr.
DuCharme said in an interview
with The New York Times. “And
all I guess I would ask of them is,
let’s see how I do.”
Mr. DuCharme seemed keenly
aware of the appearances sur-
rounding his promotion. But he
said that using the office to ad-
vance an inappropriate political
agenda would be “inconsistent
with every fiber of my being.”
Last month, Mr. Barr and the
president ousted Mr. DuCharme’s
counterpart in Manhattan,
Geoffrey S. Berman, whose office
had clashed with the Justice De-
partment over sensitive investi-
gations, including the decision to
charge Michael D. Cohen, Mr.
Trump’s former personal lawyer.
The current environment de-
mands a delicate dance by U.S. at-
torneys in high-profile districts.
They must get approval from the
Justice Department in Washing-
ton to charge certain cases while
preserving enough independence
to maintain credibility with their
own rank-and-file prosecutors.
“These are not normal times,”
said Daniel Richman, a former
federal prosecutor who now
teaches at Columbia Law School.

“There’s a new risk here that somebody dispatched from Wash- ington, even with his own distin- guished personal history, will be seen as some minion of the attorney general.” Mr. DuCharme’s office, also known as the Eastern District of New York, has jurisdiction that in- cludes Brooklyn, Long Island and Queens. Like its counterpart in Manhattan, the office is pursuing investigations that have touched the president’s associates. Last year, Brooklyn prosecutors subpoenaed Mr. Trump’s in- augural committee and inter- viewed Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a top fund-raiser and close friend of Mr. Trump. The office has indicted the Chi- nese tech company Huawei, in- flaming tensions between the United States and China, and is negotiating with Goldman Sachs to settle the bank’s role in a scheme that stole billions of dol- lars from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. Mr. DuCharme, a registered Re- publican, has returned to a community of largely left-leaning prosecutors and defense lawyers in New York, some of whom have privately questioned whether he can push back against Mr. Barr when necessary. Longtime colleagues and even courtroom adversaries of Mr. DuCharme said he had a lengthy track record of pursuing cases without partisan motivation, serv- ing under both Republican and Democratic presidents. He rose to become chief of the criminal divi- sion in Brooklyn before his 15- month stint in Washington. “I understand the skepticism, and I’m a flaming liberal, but Seth is a great choice,” said Michael K. Bachrach, a defense lawyer whose clients had been pros- ecuted by Mr. DuCharme. “He’s someone that both sides of the political gamut can be comfortable with.” John Gleeson, a retired federal judge who presided over some of Mr. DuCharme’s cases, said he was confident that Mr. DuCharme would preserve the office’s independence. “I have no reason to think otherwise based on my in- teractions with him,” Mr. Gleeson said. Mr. DuCharme became the act- ing U.S. attorney on July 10 through an unusual legal maneu- ver that allows the president to designate a temporary replace- ment for up to 210 days. In effect, Mr. Barr arranged for

Mr. DuCharme to switch jobs with Richard P. Donoghue, who had served as the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn since January 2018. As Mr. DuCharme returned to Brooklyn, Mr. Donoghue took Mr. DuCharme’s old place in the Jus- tice Department office that over- sees the nation’s federal prosecutors, positioning him to rise should Mr. Trump win re-election. Earlier this year, the Justice De- partment assigned Mr. Donoghue to coordinate investigations in- volving Ukraine — a sensitive role given that federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, broke lobbying laws in his deal- ings there. At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Representative Joe Ne- guse, a Colorado Democrat, sug- gested that Mr. Barr had installed

Mr. DuCharme as a way to exert more control over those investigations, although it was not clear whether the role would stay in Brooklyn after Mr. Donoghue’s departure. In Washington, Mr. DuCharme had also served for nine months as a counsel to Mr. Barr and was closely involved in the investigation into the origins of the F.B.I.’s Russia probe, according to emails obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight. Democrats in Congress have accused Mr. Barr of pursuing the investigation with political mo- tives to justify Mr. Trump’s con- tention that the F.B.I. had no legiti- mate reason to investigate his campaign. Mr. DuCharme was an architect of the Justice Department’s approach to the MS-13 street gang. Last week, the department an-

nounced a case that charged an al- leged MS-13 leader with a terrorism crime for the first time. He also advised Mr. Barr not to bring federal charges against a police officer in the 2014 death of Eric Garner in Staten Island. The decision followed a yearslong debate inside the Justice Depart- ment under both the Obama and Trump administrations. Mr. DuCharme grew up in a dif- ferent Brooklyn — a rural town with the same name in Connecti- cut. He is a lifelong hunter who hung an elk head from his office wall for many years. He also writes poetry and has performed his work at live venues in New York. After graduating from Hamil- ton College, Mr. DuCharme worked as a federal marshal in Brooklyn, chasing fugitives and driving inmates on buses. While

he was attending law school at Fordham University, the Sept. 11 attack happened, fueling his de- sire to become a counterterrorism prosecutor, he said. At the Eastern District, his sig- nature initiative was a program that offered alternative outcomes for people who could have faced terrorism-related charges. For in- stance, some defendants were charged with fraud, allowing them to avoid the stigma of a terrorism conviction. Deirdre von Dornum, the chief federal defender in Brooklyn, re- called one plea deal that Mr. DuCharme had negotiated: He al- lowed a mentally ill young man who had run at a law enforcement officer with a knife in his pocket to be released into therapy after a year in prison. “Seth was willing to listen no matter how frightening the facts were,” Ms. von Dornum said. “He really does see every defendant as a person.” Mr. DuCharme takes over an office where morale has suffered in recent months, partly because of Mr. Donoghue’s heavy-handed re- action to the civil unrest in New York City, according to people familiar with the office. Last month, Mr. Donoghue brought an indictment that stacked a series of terrorism-related charges against two lawyers accused of firebombing an empty police car so they would face a 45- year mandatory minimum sen- tence if convicted on all counts. That decision sparked debate in the office. The supervising prosecutor on the case objected to Mr. Donoghue’s approach and asked to be switched to another role, according to people familiar with the dispute. Mr. DuCharme has recused himself from the case because his wife, Dyan Finguerra-DuCharme, is a partner at a law firm that em- ployed one of the defendants. Asked if he would have brought the same indictment, Mr. DuCharme responded: “I don’t know. That’s a hard hypothetical to answer.” Because his tenure may be short — if Joseph R. Biden Jr. de- feats Mr. Trump, he could nomi- nate a new slate of U.S. attorneys — Mr. DuCharme said he would focus in the near term on violent crime, given the recent rise in shootings. “I have no doubt I will disap- point some folks,” he said. “But if you look at where I’ve come from, how long I’ve worked here and the amount of time I’ve had to build empathy with this community, give me a chance.”

“Look, I know people have strong views about this admin- istration and folks in D.C.,” Seth DuCharme said. “And all I guess I would ask of them is, let’s see how I do.”

SEPTEMBER DAWN BOTTOMS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Barr’s U.S. Attorney Pick

For Brooklyn Is Facing

Scrutiny From All Sides

By NICOLE HONG

A delicate dance for

federal prosecutors in

high-profile districts.

BD

The New York Times - USA (2020-07-31)

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