THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALMONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2020 N A21In July, Ivanka Trump released
a photo of herself cradling a can of
Goya beans in an effort to support
a Trump-friendly company facing
a boycott.
The photo raised concerns
among ethics watchdogs that Ms.
Trump had used her government
position to market a consumer
product.
Now, Ms. Trump’s act of guer-
rilla marketing is causing agita of
another sort.
On Thursday morning, the Lin-
coln Project, an anti-Trump group
made up mostly of Republicans,
posted that image of Ms. Trump
on a billboard in Times Square,
with statistics about Covid deaths
substituting for the beans.
Ms. Trump’s husband, Jared
Kushner, a senior White House ad-
viser, beams from the adjacent
billboard alongside body bags and
a quote, attributed to him in a Van-
ity Fair article, stating that New
Yorkers will suffer during the pan-
demic, and “that’s their problem.”
The billboards sparked a
prompt reaction from the couple’s
lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, who
called them “false, malicious and
defamatory” and threatened to
sue.
“Of course, Mr. Kushner never
made any such statement, Ms.
Trump never made any such ges-
ture, and the Lincoln Project’s
representations that they did are
an outrageous and shameful li-
bel,” Mr. Kasowitz wrote. “If these
billboard ads are not immediately
removed, we will sue you for what
will doubtless be enormous com-
pensatory and punitive damages.”
The Trump family has a history
of suing critics, and Mr. Kasowitz’s
letter was not surprising. But the
billboards were also a reminder of
another point: Should Mr. Trump
lose the election, and should his
daughter and son-in-law return to
New York City, there is no guaran-
tee they will receive a warm re-
ception.
“The reality is if you kill thou-
sands and thousands and thou-
sands of New Yorkers, you’re not
going to re-enter polite society
and go to the Met Ball,” said the
writer Molly Jong-Fast, a senior
adviser to the Lincoln Project.
The couple might be greeted
warmly in some parts of the city,
said Joe Borelli, a councilman
from Staten Island — which voted
for the president in 2016. Mr.
Borelli said he has no insight into
“polite society” but noted that Ms.
Trump and Mr. Kushner “are al-
ways welcome on Staten Island.”
Mr. Borelli, the New York State
co-chairman for the Trump cam-
paign, called the ads “tacky.”
“It’s a reminder why no one will
ever hire the consultants from the
Lincoln Project ever again,” Mr.
Borelli said. “This is what a bunch
of G.O.P. rejects do.”
New York City alone has lost
nearly 24,000 residents to
Covid-19. The pandemic has dev-
astated the city’s economy and its
finances. More than half a million
city residents remain unem-
ployed.
The city is also Ms. Trump’s and
Mr. Kushner’s home base. Ms.
Trump grew up on the Upper East
Side. Her husband grew up in
New Jersey, but made a name for
himself with the purchase of a
Manhattan office building.
New York is President Donald
Trump’s hometown, too. But his
presidency has been marked by a
souring of relations with the city.
He has rejected New York City
residency in favor of Florida and
sought to defund New York City
for its immigration policies. Most
recently, Mr. Trump’s administra-
tion named the city one of several
“anarchist jurisdictions” to which
the federal government should
deny funding.
The curdling of relations be-
tween the Trump family and the
city goes both ways.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has
sparred with the president over
matters ranging from funding to
the president’s insistence that
New York City has become a ghost
town.
“New York City is not a ghost
town, it’s a vibrant city with in-
credible sights, including beauti-
ful billboards that speak the plain
truth about Jared and Ivanka’s
complicit role in the suffering of
millions,” said Mr. de Blasio’s
spokesman, Bill Neidhardt.
The billboards will remain up
through at least Nov. 5, two days
after the election.The Lincoln Project put up ads
with images of Ivanka Trump,
Jared Kushner and body bags.TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP — GETTY IMAGESTrump’s Family
Threatens Suit
Over Billboards
With Virus Toll
By DANA RUBINSTEINcan realistically turn at least some
of those proposals into law.
“There are three things we have
to do — climate, economic equal-
ity and democracy,” said Senator
Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New
York, who would become the ma-
jority leader if his party wins con-
trol of the Senate. “All three are vi-
tal, and climate is not going to be
the caboose.”
If Mr. Biden wins, he will face a
dilemma he knows well — so
much to do, and so little time. As a
newly inaugurated vice president,
he and Barack Obama dived first
into passing an economic recov-
ery bill in the wake of the 2008 fi-
nancial crisis, then focused on the
Affordable Care Act. By the time
Congress moved to climate
change, the White House’s politi-
cal capital was exhausted.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2010
forced the House to approve com-
plicated legislation to cap carbon
emissions, but that “cap and
trade” bill never even came to a
vote in the Senate. Its passage in
the House helped sweep Demo-
crats from power months later.
“The biggest factor in not get-
ting climate change done in 2010
was health care,” said Phil
Schiliro, who was Mr. Obama’s li-
aison to Congress at the time.
“And this could happen again,
with the other things that have to
come first. The coronavirus is
such an enormous wild card.”
If Mr. Biden wins the White
House but Republicans hold Sen-
ate control, Mr. Biden’s loftiest cli-
mate pledges will certainly die.
In that scenario, “All Biden can
try to do is cobble back together
the Obama environmental
agenda,” said Douglas Brinkley, a
historian who focuses on presi-
dents’ environmental legacies.
That would include, he said, re-
joining the international Paris ac-
cords — the agreement between
nations to fight climate change,
which President Trump is with-
drawing from — and reinstating
Obama-era climate regulations.
And with a 6-3 conservative ma-
jority on the Supreme Court, even
that could be thwarted.
But even a narrow Democratic
majority in the Senate would
leave a President Biden with op-
tions. And this time around, Mr.
Biden wants to do it differently,
not with a stand-alone climate bill
but by tucking climate measures
into broader, popular legislation to
insulate them from partisan at-
tack.
Democrats’ initial pass would
most likely come in an economic
recovery package. The $787 bil-
lion American Recovery and Re-
investment Act passed in 2009,
which Mr. Biden was responsible
for putting in effect, included
about $90 billion in clean energy
infrastructure spending.
With Congress arguing over a
coronavirus relief bill measured in
trillions of dollars, that $90 billion
total is “going to look very small,”
said Senator Edward J. Markey,
Democrat of Massachusetts. “It’s
going to be a big, big, big number
that goes into that stimulus bill.”
An infrastructure bill, long
promised by President Trump,
could follow and include language
from Mr. Biden’s climate plan to
promote construction of 500,000
electric vehicle charging stations
and build 1.5 million new energy-
efficient homes. It is also expected
that a Biden White House would
push aggressively for provisions
to promote trains and high-speed
rail.
“I will fight for a big, bold cli-
mate package,” Mr. Schumer said,
“and as leader, will be focused on
assembling a climate package
that meets the scale and the scope
of the problem.”
If those spending measures
cannot secure enough Republican
support to beat a filibuster, Mr.
Schumer plans to use a budgetary
procedure, called reconciliation,
to muscle through climate spend-
ing and tax policy. Presidents
Trump and George W. Bush used
reconciliation to pass their huge
tax cuts, and Mr. Obama passed
part of the Affordable Care Act us-
ing the rule.
More than a year ago, Mr. Schu-
mer tasked Democrats on the Sen-
ate committees responsible for cli-
mate policy to begin crafting cli-
mate-related tax legislation that
could be bundled into a larger
budget bill. Such policies could in-
clude extending tax credits for
wind and solar power or increas-
ing royalties for oil and gas
drilling on public lands. They
could possibly include a tax on
carbon dioxide emissions, al-
though passage of such a measure
would violate Mr. Biden’s pledge
not to raise taxes on families with
income below $400,000.
“Nothing is off the table,” Mr.
Schumer said.
Many Republicans are ex-
pected to oppose those efforts,
countering that they could harm
the economy, but some gas-and-
coal-state Democrats who balked
at Mr. Obama’s cap-and-trade billsay they have shifted over the
past decade as the politics and re-
ality of climate change have
grown more urgent.
“What’s changed is that it’s got-
ten worse,” said Senator Jon Test-
er, Democrat of Montana, who
said in 2010 that he worried Mr.
Obama’s bill would harm his
state’s agriculture and coal indus-
tries.
“We’re supposed to get our first
frost tonight — in October, a
month late,” Mr. Tester said,
speaking by telephone from his
farm in Big Sandy, Mont. “You re-
ally have to have your head buried
in the sand not to see we’ve got a
problem.”
Senator Bob Casey, Democrat
of Pennsylvania and a Catholic,
said his thinking had been shaped
in part by Pope Francis’ 2015 en-
cyclical, which calls for transfor-
mational change to stop climate
change and environmental degra-
dation.
“We can’t wait 10 more years,”
he said. “I don’t think we can wait
five years.”
Other coal-state Democrats are
not there. Senator Joe Manchin of
West Virginia, who shot a copy of
Mr. Obama’s climate bill in a cam-
paign ad in 2010 and re-upped it in
2018, will play a key role in any cli-
mate debate, particularly if he be-
comes chairman of the Senate En-
ergy Committee.
“I share Vice President Biden’s
concern for tackling climate
change,” Mr. Manchin wrote in anemail, but added that major policy
changes would not be accepted at
face value. “The devil is in the de-
tails,” he said.
With so much legislative expe-
rience, Mr. Biden knows what he
would be up against, but few
would count him out.
“Joe Biden has proved through-
out his career that he can bring
people together to pass conse-
quential legislation,” said Matt
Hill, a spokesman for Mr. Biden.
Michael McKenna, who served
as a liaison to Congress for Presi-
dent Trump, compared a potential
Biden administration to Bill Clin-
ton’s negotiating team.
“They’d say, ‘Here’s what we
can do,’ and then you start looking
for the Venn diagram of what you
could do and what they wanted,”
said Mr. McKenna, a veteran ener-
gy lobbyist. Mr. Biden, he added,
“gets the racket.”
But beyond spending and tax-
ation, real policy changes cannot
pass through reconciliation under
Senate rules. They will need 60
votes and Republican support.
One policy target is a “clean ener-
gy standard” — a law mandating a
fast transition to zero-carbon elec-
tricity generation from wind, so-
lar, hydro and nuclear power. That
would go a long way toward en-
suring that Mr. Biden meets his
campaign pledge of eliminating
planet-warming pollution from
the electricity sector by 2035.
It would also be a tough sell.
“Not going to happen,” Mr. Mc-Kenna predicted. “The progres-
sives are going to be disap-
pointed.”
Other policy proposals that
would need bipartisan support in-
clude the establishment of a new
government research agency fo-
cused solely on solutions to cli-
mate change; a mandate for the
federal government to purchase
hybrid and electric vehicles; and a
measure to promote the wide-
spread use of farm equipment that
captures planet-warming meth-
ane emissions from manure.
Some of the Senate Republicans
that could be partners in such ven-
tures are precisely the ones that
Democrats need to lose in Novem-
ber if they are to capture the ma-
jority: Susan Collins of Maine and
Cory Gardner of Colorado, for in-
stance.
One Republican not up for re-
election, Senator Lisa Murkowski
of Alaska, has spoken of the harm
that climate change has wreaked
on her state. “She will remain
highly engaged in discussions
about clean energy and climate
change,” said a spokeswoman for
Ms. Murkowski, Tonya Parrish.
The rest of the world will be
watching.
“If we have Biden as president,
and he will announce very quickly
that he will rejoin Paris and do
pieces of regulation that he can
control — if he can only muster
that, we should remember that
those will have an impact,” said
Laurence Tubiana, who served as
France’s chief climate ambassa-
dor during the 2015 Paris negotia-
tions.
But, she said, spending money
and reinstating rules will not be
enough to meet the emission re-
ductions needed from the world’s
largest economy, nor will that se-
cure the global influence the
United States once had. For that,
she said, “it will be essential to
have a law.”
But Republican filibusters
would stand in the way.
There is another option: elimi-
nating the legislative filibuster to
pass a climate policy bill with a
simple 51-vote majority.
Although the Senate has gotten
rid of the filibuster for judicial and
executive branch confirmations,
leaders in both parties have op-
posed ending it for legislation,
fearing the prospect of absolute
majority rule.
But climate change might lead
Democrats to take a step that has
been considered unthinkable,
some Democrats say.
“If Republicans still think cli-
mate change is a hoax and won’t
play ball, and they take the ball
and go back to their court, we’ll
find other ways to proceed,” said
Senator Thomas Carper, Demo-
crat of Delaware, who will become
chairman of the Senate envi-
ronment committee if his party
wins the Senate.
Mr. Biden has designated Mr.
Carper his climate point man on
Capitol Hill, and the two enjoy a
decades-long friendship from Del-
aware politics.
“Getting rid of the filibuster —
that shouldn’t be the first thing we
should lead with,” Mr. Carper said.
“But Republicans should have in
the back of their minds that it
could come to that.”Beyond Biden’s Climate Plan Lies a Piecemeal Approach
From Page A1Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the final
presidential debate on Thurs-
day at Belmont University in
Nashville, above. Senator Lisa
Murkowski, Republican of
Alaska, right, has spoken of
the harm that climate change
has wreaked on her state.ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMESCHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGESIn the closing days of the cam-
paign, President Trump and his
allies are engaged in a last-ditch
effort to raise questions about the
ethics of former Vice President Jo-
seph R. Biden Jr. by trying to link
Mr. Biden to the international
business dealings of Mr. Biden’s
son, Hunter, and one of his broth-
ers, James.
Their efforts have drawn on a
number of sources, including
emails, photographs of encrypted
text messages and other docu-
ments provided by Tony Bobulin-
ski, a former business associate of
Hunter and James Biden. Many of
those records focus on a proposed
joint venture in 2017, after Mr. Bi-
den left office, with a Chinese part-
ner. The deal ultimately fell apart.
Here are some questions and
answers about the situation.
Was Joe Biden involved in this
deal?
There is no evidence in the
records that Mr. Biden was in-
volved in or profited from the joint
venture.
Encrypted messages, emails
and other documents examined
by The New York Times do not
show Hunter Biden or James Bi-
den discussing any role for the for-
mer vice president in the project.
Mr. Biden’s tax returns, which
he has released, show no income
from any such venture. There is
nothing illegal about doing busi-
ness in China or with Chinese
partners; Mr. Trump long pur-
sued deals in China, had a part-
nership with a government-con-
trolled enterprise and maintained
a corporate bank account there.
The Biden campaign has re-
jected all assertions that the for-
mer vice president had any role in
the negotiations over the deal or
any stake in it.
Andrew Bates, a Biden cam-
paign spokesman, said the former
vice president never had any
stake in the project. “Joe Biden
has never even considered being
involved in business with his fam-
ily, nor in any overseas business
whatsoever,” he said.
At the second presidential de-
bate on Thursday, Mr. Biden said,
“I have not taken a penny from
any foreign source ever in my
life.”
The messages produced by Mr.
Bobulinski appear to reflect a
meeting between him, the former
vice president and James Biden in
May 2017 in Beverly Hills, Calif.
The messages do not make clear
what was discussed.
Mr. Bates did not answer ques-
tions about Mr. Bobulinski’s claim
that he met with the former vice
president. But Mr. Bates said the
Chinese deal never was discussed
by Mr. Biden with members of his
family. “He never had any conver-
sations about these issues at all,”
Mr. Bates said.
One email sent on May 13, 2017,
by another member of the venture
discusses how the various part-
ners in the deal could theoretically
split up the equity and makes ref-
erence to whether “the big guy”
might get 10 percent. The docu-
ment does not specify who this
person is, saying only “10 held by
H for the big guy ?”
Mr. Bobulinski has said the ref-
erence was clearly to the former
vice president.
Mr. Bates said Mr. Biden “has
never held stock in any such busi-
ness arrangements nor has any
family member or any other per-son ever held stock for him.”What were Hunter and James
Biden doing?
Records produced by Mr. Bobulin-
ski show that in 2017, Hunter Bi-
den and James Biden were in-
volved in negotiations about a
joint venture with a Chinese ener-
gy and finance company called
CEFC China Energy.
The Bobulinski records include
emails, contracts, business plan
documents and photographs of
encrypted messages among the
American partners. The Times
could not independently authenti-
cate all of the records, but the
records referred to in this article
are consistent with interviews
and previous reporting by The
Times. The Biden campaign did
not dispute that Hunter and
James Biden participated in nego-
tiating the deal with the Chinese
company.
The records make clear that
Hunter Biden saw the family
name as a valuable asset, angrily
citing his “family’s brand” as a
reason he is valuable to the pro-
posed venture.
The documents also show that
the countries that Hunter Biden,James Biden and their associates
planned to target for deals over-
lapped with nations where Joe Bi-
den had previously been involved
as vice president. One 42-page
plan includes a section specifi-
cally highlighting former Vice
President Biden’s role in facilitat-
ing increased commerce with Co-
lombia, which is one of the targets
of the joint venture, along with
Luxembourg, Oman and Roma-
nia.
Hunter Biden’s role in the deal,
according to one of the docu-
ments, “was key in relationship
set up, messaging the good will
around the chairman,” referring
to Ye Jianming, the chairman of
CEFC.
The Times reported in 2018 that
Mr. Ye met privately with Hunter
Biden at a hotel in Miami in May
2017, where the Chinese executive
proposed a partnership to invest
in American infrastructure and
energy deals. Planning for the Mi-
ami meeting appears to be re-
flected in some of the messages
released by Mr. Bobulinski.
The documents indicate that
CEFC China initially said it would
send $10 million in early 2017 tothe joint venture.
CEFC focused on trading oil fu-
tures and securing the rights to
overseas oil fields in strife-torn
places like Chad, South Sudan and
Iraq. It was looking to expand its
global ventures, both as an energy
company and a financial backer of
projects, and it turned to Hunter
and James Biden and their associ-
ates, including Mr. Bobulinski, to
help find new deals.
One early version of the busi-
ness plan indicated that Hunter
and James Biden and their Ameri-
can associates “have forged alli-
ances with the highest levels of
government, banking and enter-
prise.”What happened to the deal?
By August 2017, there were signs
of trouble with the deal. Mr. Bobu-
linski wrote to CEFC noting that
the promised $10 million payment
had not been deposited in the
American partners’ bank account.
There is conflicting information
about whether any of this money
was ever delivered by the Chinese
partner. An election-year investi-
gation into corruption allegations
against the Bidens by two Senate
committees, which found no evi-
dence of improper influence or
wrongdoing by the former vice
president, suggested that some
money from CEFC might have
come through, prompting Mr.
Bobulinski to ask James Biden
whether that was the case in a re-
cent message.
Documents from August 2018
suggest that at least parts of the
business venture were shut down
or that there were plans to shut it
down, with one draft document re-
ferring to a “complete liquidation
and dissolution” of the venture’s
main investment vehicle.
CEFC, one of the largest pri-
vately held companies in China,
was declared bankrupt in March
of this year after it was named in a
criminal investigation by the
United States Justice Depart-
ment.Bidens and a China Deal:
What We Actually Know
This article is by Eric Lipton, Ken-
neth P. Vogeland Maggie Ha-
berman.
Tony Bobulinski produced records of negotiations for a joint ven-
ture involving a Chinese company with Biden family members.ANNA MONEYMAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES.