The New York Times - USA (2020-08-06)

A18 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTHURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2020

The effort to get Kanye West on

the ballot as a third-party candi-

date in several states is increas-

ingly looking like an operation run

by President Trump’s allies and

Republican activists that is aimed

at diverting votes from Joseph R.

Biden Jr.

The move, which comes as Mr.

West’s wife, Kim Kardashian

West, has said her husband is

struggling with mental illness, un-

derscores that this will be an un-

usual, and unusually bare-knuck-

led, presidential election.

The strategy became overt on

Tuesday, when Lane Ruhland, a

lawyer who has worked for the

Trump campaign, delivered ballot

signatures to Wisconsin elections

officials on behalf of the West cam-

paign.

Ms. Ruhland worked for the

state Republican Party during

Wisconsin’s recount in the 2016

presidential election. She has

been representing the Trump

campaign in a lawsuit filed this

year against a Wisconsin televi-

sion station for airing an adver-

tisement criticizing the presi-

dent’s coronavirus response.

A spokesman for the law firm

where Ms. Ruhland works, Husch

Blackwell, said she was unavail-

able for comment.

The Milwaukee Journal Sen-

tinel also reported that at least

five other people connected to Mr.

West’s Wisconsin bid are active in

the Republican Party or are

Trump supporters.

Tim Murtaugh, a Trump cam-

paign spokesman, said there was

no legal conflict with a Trump

campaign lawyer’s involvement

in the West operation. “We have

no knowledge of anything Kanye

West is doing or who is doing it for

him,” Mr. Murtaugh said.

Several other people active in

the party are connected to Mr.

West’s candidacy. One operative,

Mark Jacoby, is an executive at a

company called Let the Voters De-

cide, which has been collecting

signatures for the West campaign

in Ohio, West Virginia and Arkan-

sas. Mr. Jacoby was arrested on

voter fraud charges in 2008 while

he was doing work for the Califor-

nia Republican Party, and he later

pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.

Mr. Jacoby, in a statement, said

his company was nonpartisan and

worked for all political parties.

“We do not comment on any cur-

rent clients, but like all Ameri-

cans, anyone who is qualified to

stand for election has the right to

run,” he said.

On Wednesday, Vice reported

that a Republican operative in Col-

orado, Rachel George, was help-

ing Mr. West get on the ballot

there. She did not immediately re-

spond to requests for comment.

New York Magazine reported

on the campaign’s links to two oth-

ers with partisan ties. One is

Gregg Keller, former executive di-

rector of the American Conserva-

tive Union, who has been listed as

a contact for the campaign in Ar-

kansas. Mr. Keller, who did not re-

spond to a message seeking com-

ment, is a Missouri-based strat-

egist. He was under consideration

to be Mr. Trump’s campaign man-

ager in 2015, according to a former

campaign official.

Another person linked to the

West campaign is Chuck Wilton,

who is listed as a convention dele-

gate for Mr. Trump from Vermont

and as an elector with the West op-

eration who could potentially cast

an Electoral College vote for Mr.

West. Mr. Wilton could not be

reached. He and his wife, Wendy, a

Trump appointee at the United

States Department of Agriculture,

have been political supporters of

the president. She hung up imme-

diately when called at her office.

Mr. West missed the deadline to

get on the ballot in many states,

but could serve as a spoiler in oth-

ers, including Wisconsin and

Ohio, where signatures were filed

on his behalf on Wednesday. Mr.

Trump himself suggested last

month that Mr. West could siphon

votes from Mr. Biden.

Mr. West was until recently a

fervent supporter of Mr. Trump

and said they shared a “dragon

energy,” but he declared last

month that he would run for presi-

dent himself.

Mr. West developed a relation-

ship with Jared Kushner, the pres-

ident’s son-in-law, after Ms. Kar-

dashian West worked with Mr.

Trump on criminal justice reform

efforts. Mr. Kushner declined to

comment, but a person close to

him said that while Mr. West had

periodically reached out to him,

Mr. Kushner hadn’t been stoking a

run to divert votes away from Mr.

Biden.

Soon after Mr. West’s an-

nouncement, he explained that he

was going to use a Wakanda-like

management approach, referring

to the fictional country from

“Black Panther.” His running

mate, Michelle Tidball, is a self-

described “biblical life coach”

based in Cody, Wyo., where the

Wests have a ranch. Ms. Tidball,

according to TMZ, once advocat-

ed making beds and doing dishes

as a way to treat mental illness.

During an appearance in South

Carolina last month, Mr. West

broke down crying. He later

tweeted that Ms. Kardashian

West “tried to bring a doctor to

lock me up.” Amid his erratic be-

havior, his wife has spoken out

about her husband’s struggles

with mental illness, and Mr. West

has publicly apologized to his wife

for some of his comments.

A spokeswoman for Mr. West

referred questions to the cam-

paign, which did not respond to re-

quests for comment. A spokes-

woman for the Kardashian family

also had no immediate comment.

Asked about Mr. West’s efforts

on Wednesday evening, Mr.

Trump said he had no knowledge

of what the rapper was doing. He

also spared Mr. West the type of

criticism he usually unleashes

against anyone who opposes him,

as Mr. West ostensibly would be

doing.

A number of Democrats reacted

with disgust to the news of Repub-

lican involvement in Mr. West’s

campaign. “What a disgusting

dirty trick that shows no respect

for voters or whatever Kanye is

going through,” tweeted Ben-

jamin J. Rhodes, who was a top na-

tional security aide to President

Barack Obama.

Trump Allies and Activists

Linked to Kanye West’s Bid

DANNY HAKIM

and MAGGIE HABERMAN

Kanye West is waging a presi-

dential campaign, but some

wonder what his motives are.

RANDALL HILL/REUTERS

Kitty Bennett contributed re-

search, and Stephanie Saul con-

tributed reporting.

dent’s opaque finances. But the
subpoena from the office of the
district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance
Jr., appears to be the first instance
of a criminal inquiry involving Mr.
Trump and his dealings with the
German bank, which lent him and
his company more than $2 billion
over the past two decades.
Deutsche Bank complied with
the subpoena. Over a period of
months last year, it provided Mr.
Vance’s office with detailed
records, including financial state-
ments and other materials that
Mr. Trump had provided to the
bank as he sought loans, accord-
ing to two of the people familiar
with the inquiry.
The bank’s response to the sub-
poena reinforces the seriousness
of the legal threat the district at-
torney’s investigation poses for
Mr. Trump, his family and his
company, which in recent years
have faced — and for the most
part fended off — an onslaught of
regulatory, congressional and
criminal inquiries.
But while the subpoena of
Deutsche Bank indicates the
breadth of Mr. Vance’s investiga-
tion, his inquiry is still at an early
stage, a person briefed on the mat-

ter said.

The district attorney’s office

has spent the past year trying to

obtain Mr. Trump’s personal and

corporate tax returns, and the Su-

preme Court last month upheld

prosecutors’ rights to seek the

documents. But legal wrangling

continues, and Mr. Vance’s office

has said that its investigation will

be hamstrung unless prosecutors

get the tax returns.

Mr. Trump and his company

have denied wrongdoing and have

sought to dismiss the inquiry by

Mr. Vance, a Democrat, as a politi-

cally motivated fishing expedi-

tion. Mr. Trump’s representatives

have accused his former lawyer

and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, of ly-

ing when he told Congress that

Mr. Trump exaggerated the value

of his real estate assets as he

sought loans and in dealings with

his insurance company.

The subpoena to Deutsche

Bank sought documents on topics

related to Mr. Trump and his com-

pany, including any materials that

might point to possible fraud, ac-

cording to two people briefed on

the subpoena’s contents.

The bank’s cooperation with Mr.

Vance’s office is significant be-

cause other investigations that

have sought Mr. Trump’s financial

records have been stymied by le-

gal challenges from the president

and his family.

Last month, the Supreme Court

dealt a blow to congressional in-

vestigations into the president’s

finances when it ordered lower

courts to reconsider whether

Deutsche Bank and Mazars USA,

Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, had

to comply with congressional sub-

poenas seeking his records. The

ruling meant that the subpoenas

would not be enforced until after

the presidential election in No-

vember, if at all.

Mr. Vance’s office declined to

comment.

Whatever records the Manhat-

tan prosecutors obtain are subject

to grand jury secrecy rules and

might never become public unless

the district attorney’s office

brings charges and introduces the

documents as evidence at a trial.

Even if investigators uncover

what they think is evidence of

fraud, criminal charges could be

hard to prove. Valuing real estate

assets involves subjective esti-

mates and other assumptions,

making it difficult to prove that

someone intended to commit

fraud. The New York Times re-

ported previously that some

Deutsche Bank officials viewed

Mr. Trump’s financial statements

as based on wildly optimistic as-

sumptions and, in some cases, re-

duced his estimates of his assets’

values by up to 70 percent.

Some of the insurance and bank

issues that have drawn scrutiny

from reporters are also too old to

be the focus of a criminal case.

Tax returns can be crucial evi-

dence for proving that a defendant

misstated the value of assets, said

Daniel R. Alonso, who was Mr.

Vance’s top deputy from 2010 to

2014 and is now in private prac-

tice. “Tax returns are an obvious

place to look because of the preci-

sion required by tax authorities,”

he said.

The district attorney’s investi-

gation has been proceeding in fits

and starts since it began in the

summer of 2018. Almost immedi-

ately, Mr. Vance paused the inqui-

ry at the request of the United

States attorney’s office in Manhat-

tan, which had prosecuted Mr. Co-

hen and was investigating

whether others at the Trump Or-

ganization had committed crimes

in the course of arranging the

hush-money payments.

In early 2019, Mr. Cohen testi-

fied on Capitol Hill that Mr. Trump

had inflated the value of his assets

at times to obtain financing from

Deutsche Bank, including in 2014

when he bid unsuccessfully for the

Buffalo Bills football team. Mr. Co-

hen also told federal prosecutors

in Manhattan about insurance

claims the Trump Organization

had filed that he believed had

been inflated.

Last summer, after federal

prosecutors concluded their in-

vestigation of the hush-money

payments without bringing addi-

tional charges, Mr. Vance’s office

resumed its inquiry. In August

2019, the office served a subpoena

on Mazars, seeking the presi-

dent’s tax returns and other finan-

cial records going back to 2011.

Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit last

September seeking to block

Mazars from complying. The case

is still being litigated nearly a year

later, even after the Supreme

Court’s ruling last month affirm-

ing Mr. Vance’s right to criminally

investigate the president. The jus-

tices said that Mr. Trump could go

back to the lower court, where he

first sued, and raise other objec-

tions to the subpoena.

Shortly after Mr. Trump filed his

suit last year, Mr. Vance’s office

provided the judge who has been

overseeing the case, Victor Mar-

rero, a two-page summary of its

secret grand jury investigation,

which was not made available to

the public or to Mr. Trump. Days

later, at a hearing in federal court

in Manhattan, Judge Marrero said

the inquiry “clearly is very com-

plex” and “involves a lot of par-

ties, extends over many, many

years.”

While Deutsche Bank has been

cooperating with prosecutors, Mr.

Vance’s office made it clear to

Judge Marrero last month that its

inquiry had been stalled without

the tax returns.

“It’s been nearly a year since

we served our subpoena,” Carey

R. Dunne, a senior prosecutor un-

der Mr. Vance, told the judge, “and

this lawsuit’s been very success-

ful since then in delaying our abil-

ity to gather the central evidence.”

That delay, Mr. Dunne added,

made it “ever more likely that the

grand jury will be prevented from

evaluating the evidence before

the statutes of limitation expire.”

Subpoena of Deutsche Bank Records Signals Broader Criminal Case Against Trump

From Page A

Over $2 billion in loans

has drawn attention

over the years.

tive and more digital, with more
on social media.”
Other than the party chairman,
Tom Perez, a small handful of
Democratic officials will travel to
Milwaukee from out of state to at-
tend the convention. Some Wis-
consin officials may deliver
speeches from the crowd-free
soundstage at the city’s conven-
tion center, where Mr. Biden was
to deliver his nomination accept-
ance speech. He will now do that
from his home state, Delaware.
President Trump and Republi-
cans, who moved most of their
convention from Charlotte, N.C.,
to Jacksonville, Fla., before can-
celing the made-for-TV portion of
their event, have been slower to
give up on the prospect of an in-
person convention despite the se-
rious health risks, and 336 dele-
gates are still set to gather in
North Carolina.
Party conventions once had a
different kind of drama to them.
Much to the chagrin of political
junkies, the days of convention
floor flights over who would be a
party’s presidential nominee are
long past. Not since 1980, when
Edward M. Kennedy forced a vote
to free delegates from a commit-
ment to President Jimmy Carter,
has there been any real question
about whom a major party would
nominate, though Mr. Trump did
face some opposition from Repub-
licans at his convention in 2016.
In recent years, convention
week has meant prime-time tele-
vised addresses from famous
names and up-and-comers, highly
produced balloon drops and dele-
gates in patriotic regalia, all as a
way to introduce voters to the can-
didate and to kick off the general
election. It was a place to conduct
party business, and also to throw
actual parties — lavish events to
reward donors and bigwigs,
where celebrities mingled with
state party chairs.
An introduction is less essential
than ever in 2020, with both major
candidates universally known by
the American electorate, but
Democrats still need to engage
volunteers and flatter their foot
soldiers, while communicating
with a screen-weary homebound

American electorate.

“Can you get a bounce? Yes,”

said Leah D. Daughtry, who ran

the party’s 2008 and 2016 conven-

tions. “Can you make it interest-

ing? That’s the challenge. You’ve

got to make it interesting.”

Though a virtual convention

will be a challenge, Democrats ar-

gued on Wednesday that the deci-

sion to forgo an in-person address

reinforced a sharp contrast Mr. Bi-

den has been pressing throughout

the public health crisis: He takes

the coronavirus outbreak seri-

ously, and Mr. Trump does not. It

is critical, allies have said, that Mr.

Biden serve as a role model who

adheres firmly to the public health

guidelines Mr. Trump has often

flouted.

“I’ve wanted to set an example

as to how we should respond indi-

vidually to this crisis,” Mr. Biden

said at a fund-raiser on Wednes-

day. “Science matters.”

Mr. Trump is sure to suggest

that Mr. Biden, who has done very

little in-person campaigning since

the pandemic hit, is simply hiding

back in his home state, even

though for the millions expected

to watch his address on television

and other screens, the experience

of seeing Mr. Biden from a sound-

stage in Delaware will not be

much different than it would have

been in an empty convention cen-

ter in Milwaukee.

For Mr. Trump, an August con-

vention was seen as an opportuni-

ty to demonstrate that the country

was firmly on the path to eco-

nomic recovery, having van-

quished the pandemic. Mr.

Trump’s allies moved cities to en-

sure they could give the president

the look and feel of a pre-virus cor-

onation.

But now, with just weeks to go

before the president accepts his

renomination, and plans in two

separate cities foiled, Republicans

are still tossing out ambitious

ideas of how to create a spectacle

that will appeal to Mr. Trump’s

supporters and earn high ratings

on television.

Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump

are visibly energized by crowds,

and advisers must consider how

they can deliver convention-

bump-inducing speeches without

roaring audiences, or in Mr. Bi-

den’s case, even the smattering of

party officials who could have

made the journey to Wisconsin.

Democratic donors who are not

traveling to Milwaukee will soon

receive swag bags in the mail that

are filled with commemorative

pins, buttons and the formal cre-

dentials that would have been

waiting for them at their hotels.

Some had the option of “conven-

tion packages” that promise activ-

ities like “taste of the trail” (for do-

nating $250,000) and “afternoon

briefings and other convention

week daytime content” ($100,000)

or a “prime-time convention pass”

($50,000) — despite the largely

virtual nature of the festivities.

The decision to keep Mr. Biden

away from what was left of the

Milwaukee convention — an

event that in June was moved out

of the city’s basketball arena to a

smaller convention center, while

delegates were told to stay home

— came after epidemiologists de-

termined it would not be safe for

even 300 people to gather in one

place from across the country.

“When it became clear in past

days that the pandemic was not

abating, we took these actions,”

Mr. Perez said in an interview

Wednesday. “We have an abso-

lutely top-shelf team of people

producing the convention and

while it will be different from any

convention before, I think it has

real possibility to be more exciting

and exhilarating than ever be-

fore.”

Moving the remaining conven-

tion segments planned for Mil-

waukee is a blow to the city, which

has lost the chance to show how

pleasant Wisconsin summers are

to a global audience — and the

hundreds of millions of dollars in

economic impact envisioned

when Mr. Perez awarded the city

the convention in 2018.

“I completely understand the

decision,” said Alex Lasry, the fi-

nance chairman for the conven-

tion’s host committee, but he add-

ed he was deeply disappointed for

the city.

“For us to go there in person, we

would put a whole bunch of people

from Milwaukee and surrounding

areas in harm’s way — not going

to do that,” said Representative

Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana

Democrat who is a co-chairman of

Mr. Biden’s campaign. “The con-

vention is a big TV production

anyway. We’re still going to have

that, we’ll still have our speakers,

make our case for why Joe Biden

should be the next president.”

While Mr. Biden will formally

accept the nomination from Dela-

ware, other Democrats will ap-

pear on television screens from

satellite locations from across the

country. Stephanie Cutter, a vet-

eran of the John Kerry and Barack

Obama presidential campaigns, is

still in the process of filling the two

hours of nightly airtime.

Wisconsin officials are still ex-

pected to give speeches at the con-

vention center in downtown Mil-

waukee, but leading Democrats,

including Mr. Obama, Michelle

Obama and Jill Biden, are ex-

pected to deliver their addresses

from elsewhere.

Hours after Democrats an-

nounced their entire convention

would be conducted virtually, the

Republican National Convention

released health protocols for its

scaled-back party gathering,

which plans for 336 delegates to

meet for four days in Charlotte in

late August.

The Republican proposal in-

cludes “pre-travel Covid-19 test-

ing of all participants before arriv-

al in Charlotte,” temperature

checks, social distancing and

mask-wearing. The Democratic

convention had required every-

one inside the convention’s securi-

ty perimeter to test negative for

the virus each day before entry.

The conventions may be tradi-

tional in only this way: marking

the start to a fall campaign that,

like everything else this year, will

be different from any other in

modern American history.

The get-out-the-vote effort

won’t have armies of volunteers

knocking on doors to remind vot-

ers to go to the polls. Instead it will

mean countless texts and phone

calls and video chats to show peo-

ple the proper procedures to apply

for and send back an absentee bal-

lot — and for some voters, in

states like Wisconsin that have

more restrictive vote-by-mail

laws, how to find a legal witness to

co-sign their ballot envelope so it

can be counted.

For 2020, the days of neighbor-

to-neighbor in-person campaign-

ing are essentially over.

“You don’t even want to try,”

said Gilberto Hinojosa, the Texas

Democratic Party chairman. “You

don’t want to upset the voter. The

easiest way to lose a voter is to an-

ger them by exposing them to

Covid-19.”

Allies say Joseph R. Biden Jr. serves as a role model who adheres to the health guidelines President Trump has often flouted.

MICHELLE V. AGINS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Biden Won’t Go to Milwaukee for Convention

From Page A

Annie Karni contributed report-
ing.