C M Y K Yxxx,2020-01-26,A,001,Bs-4C,E1

VOL. CLXIX . . . . No. 58,584 © 2020 The New York Times Company SUNDAY, JANUARY 26, 2020

WASHINGTON — PresidentTrump’s legal defense teammounted an aggressive offense onSaturday as it opened its side inthe Senate impeachment trial byattacking his Democratic accus-ers as partisan witch-hunters try-ing to remove him because theycould not beat him at the ballotbox.

After three days of argumentsby the House managers prosecut-ing Mr. Trump for high crimes andmisdemeanors, the president’slawyers presented the senators aradically different view of thefacts and the Constitution, seek-ing to turn the Democrats’charges back on them while de-nouncing the whole process as il-legitimate.

“They’re asking you to tear upall of the ballots all across thecountry on your own initiative,take that decision away from theAmerican people,” Pat A. Cipol-lone, the White House counsel,said of the House managers.“They’re here,” he added mo-ments later, “to perpetrate themost massive interference in anelection in American history, andwe can’t allow that to happen.”

From the White House, Mr.Trump weighed in on Twitter withattacks on prominent Democratsincluding Representative AdamB. Schiff of California, the leadprosecutor for Democrats, Sena-tor Chuck Schumer of New York,the Democratic leader, SpeakerNancy Pelosi and RepresentativeAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez of NewYork, portraying his impeach-ment trial as a forum for convict-ing them instead.

“Our case against lyin’, cheatin’,liddle’ Adam “Shifty” Schiff,Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, NervousNancy Pelosi, their leader, dumbas a rock AOC, & the entire RadicalLeft, Do Nothing Democrat Party,starts today at 10:00 A.M.,” hewrote.

The abbreviated Saturday trialsession, which opened earlier

Trump’s Defense BeginsBy Accusing DemocratsOf Election Interference

Attacks on 2 Fronts:Senate and Twitter

By PETER BAKER

Jay Sekulow, a lead lawyer on President Trump’s impeachment defense team, addressing the Senate on Saturday morning.U.S. SENATE TV

Continued on Page 19

WASHINGTON — The ghost ofHoward H. Baker Jr., the Republi-can senator from Tennessee whoturned against Richard M. Nixonduring Watergate, is hoveringover Senator Lamar Alexander.

Mr. Alexander, a third-term Re-publican from Tennessee who isretiring at the end of this year, hassaid that no one outside his familyhas had more influence on himthan Mr. Baker, the former Senatemajority leader who is remem-bered for the penetrating questionhe posed as Nixon stared downimpeachment: “What did thepresident know, and when did heknow it?”

Now Mr. Alexander may holdthe fate of another Republicanpresident who is facing removalfrom office in his hands. He is oneof four Republican moderates whohave expressed openness tobringing witnesses into PresidentTrump’s impeachment trial — andthe only one who is not running forre-election and arguably has noth-ing to lose.

Yet as the Senate heads towarda vote on the matter, Mr. Alexan-der — who has broken with Mr.Trump over trade, the border walland health care — does not appearready for a Howard Baker mo-ment. He has said he will make adecision about witnesses after Mr.Trump’s team presents its defenseand senators have an opportunityto ask questions, but he does notsound eager to defect.

“As the House managers havesaid many times, they’vepresented us with a mountain ofoverwhelming evidence,” he toldreporters in the Capitol on Friday.“So we have a lot to consider al-ready.”

Mr. Alexander’s caution sug-gests what Republicans in Ten-nessee and around the country al-ready know: that the HowardBaker wing of their party, the onepopulated by moderate-leaningconservatives willing to reachacross the political aisle, is virtual-

A G.O.P. Wild Card Likely to Be Tame

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Continued on Page 18

“American Dirt” seemed poisedto become one of this year’s big-gest, buzziest books.

When it came up for auction in2018, the novel — about a desper-ate Mexican mother and son whoflee for the United States borderafter a drug cartel massacrestheir family — set off a biddingwar and sold to a publisher forseven figures. It drew rapturousendorsements from novelists likeStephen King and Sandra Cis-neros, and got glowing advancereviews from industry publica-tions that hailed the book aspropulsive and heart-wrenching.

The author, Jeanine Cummins,has said she hoped the novelwould drive discussions about im-migration policy, and open “a backdoor into a bigger conversationabout who we want to be as acountry.” Since then, “AmericanDirt” has certainly ignited a vig-orous conversation — but hardlythe one the author and publisherintended.

Even before the book hit

shelves this past week, a growingchorus of online critics was chal-lenging the hoopla, accusing Ms.Cummins, who identifies as whiteand Latina, of having exploitedthe experience of migrants and re-packaging it as opportunistic“trauma porn” for a predomi-nantly white publishing industry.

Criticism intensified on Tues-day, after Oprah Winfrey anointed

As Novel on Migrants Outsells,Its Author Becomes the Story

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLERand ALEXANDRA ALTER

Jeanine Cummins, who wrotethe novel “American Dirt.”

HEATHER STEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 16

DES MOINES — SenatorBernie Sanders has opened up alead in Iowa just over a week be-fore the Democratic caucuses,consolidating support from liber-als and benefiting from divisionsamong more moderate presiden-tial candidates who are clusteredbehind him, according to a NewYork Times/Siena College poll oflikely caucusgoers.

Mr. Sanders has gained sixpoints since the last Times-Sienasurvey, in late October, and is nowcapturing 25 percent of the vote inIowa. Pete Buttigieg, the formermayor of South Bend, Ind., andformer Vice President Joseph R.Biden Jr. have remained stagnantsince the fall, with Mr. Buttigiegcapturing 18 percent and Mr. Bi-den 17 percent.

The rise of Mr. Sanders hascome at the expense of his fellowprogressive, Senator ElizabethWarren: she dropped from 22 per-cent in the October poll, enough tolead the field, to 15 percent in thissurvey. Senator Amy Klobuchar,who is garnering 8 percent, is theonly other candidate approachingdouble digits.

The changing fortunes of thetwo liberal candidates, and thesecondary position of the twoleading centrists, underscores thevolatile nature of the Democraticprimary after more than a year ofcampaigning, as voters wrestlewith which of the contenders candefeat President Trump. At vari-ous times over the past six monthsMs. Warren and Mr. Buttigieg hadsurged in Iowa, only to fall back,while Mr. Biden’s strength hasebbed and flowed here even as heremained at the top of the polls na-tionally.

But Mr. Sanders, a self-de-scribed democratic socialist fromVermont making his second runfor the White House, appears to bepeaking at the right time: thismonth was the first time he hasfinished atop a poll in Iowa, afteralso leading a Des Moines Regis-ter-CNN survey two weeks ago.The Times-Siena poll’s margin oferror was plus or minus 4.8 per-centage points.

Despite Mr. Sanders’s ascent,

Sanders SeizesA Lead in IowaAs Warren Dips

By JONATHAN MARTINand SYDNEY EMBER

Continued on Page 17

When the RevolutionaryGuards officer spotted what hethought was an unidentified air-craft near Tehran’s internationalairport, he had seconds to decidewhether to pull the trigger.

Iran had just fired a barrage ofballistic missiles at Americanforces, the country was on highalert for an American counter-attack, and the Iranian militarywas warning of incoming cruisemissiles.

The officer tried to reach thecommand center for authoriza-tion to shoot but couldn’t getthrough. So he fired an antiair-craft missile. Then another.

The plane he hit, which turnedout to be a Ukrainian jetliner with176 people on board, crashed andexploded in a ball of fire.

Within moments, the top com-manders of Iran’s RevolutionaryGuards realized what they haddone. And from that moment, theybegan to cover it up.

For days, they refused to telleven President Hassan Rouhani,whose government was publicly

denying that the plane had beenshot down. When they finally toldhim, he gave them an ultimatum:come clean or he would resign.

Only then, 72 hours after theplane crashed, did Iran’s supremeleader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,step in and order the governmentto acknowledge its fatal mistake.

The New York Times pieced to-gether a chronology of those threedays by interviewing Iranian dip-lomats, current and former gov-ernment officials, ranking mem-bers of the Revolutionary Guardsand members of the supremeleader’s inner circle and by exam-ining official public statementsand state media reports.

The reporting exposes the gov-

Iran’s 72-Hour Lie, From Jet Crash to ConfessionBy FARNAZ FASSIHI President’s Threat to

Quit Forced Endto a Cover-Up

Continued on Page 8

LANGFANG, China — The typi-cal market in China has fruits andvegetables, butchered beef, porkand lamb, whole plucked chickens— with heads and beaks attached— and live crabs and fish, spewingwater out of churning tanks. Somesell more unusual fare, includinglive snakes, turtles and cicadas,guinea pigs, bamboo rats, bad-gers, hedgehogs, otters, palm civ-ets, even wolf cubs.

The markets are fixtures in

scores of Chinese cities, and now,for at least the second time in twodecades, they are the source of anepidemic that has spread fear,taxed the Communist Party bu-reaucracy and exposed the epide-miological risks that can spawn inplaces where humans and wildlifeconverge.

The novel coronavirus that hasalready killed at least 41 and sick-ened more than 1,370 in China andaround the world is believed tohave spread from exactly one ofthese places: a wholesale marketin Wuhan, a city in central China,

where vendors legally sold liveanimals from stalls in close quar-ters with hundreds of other.

“This is where you get new andemerging diseases that the hu-man population has never seenbefore,” said Kevin J. Olival, a biol-ogist and vice president of re-search with EcoHealth Alliance, anonprofit research organization,who has tracked previous out-breaks.

While the exact path of thepathogen has not yet been estab-

In China’s Markets, a Stew of Emerging VirusesBy STEVEN LEE MYERS

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, the suspected source of a new outbreak.HECTOR RETAMAL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Continued on Page 13

A rise in anti-Semitism and dehumaniz-ing political attacks has some fearingthat the death camp’s horrific lessonscould be forgotten. PAGE 10

INTERNATIONAL 4-13

75 Years After AuschwitzFor residents of towns just a short tripfrom the border with Iowa, the chancesof seeing a presidential hopeful in theflesh are slim to none. PAGE 14

NATIONAL 14-20

The Vicarious PrimaryThe Times Privacy Project investigatedthe largely unregulated smartphonedata collection industry and found ithad a shocking potential for abuses.

SPECIAL SECTION

One Nation, Tracked Ezra Klein PAGE 2

SUNDAY REVIEW

U(DF47D3)W+"!&!_!?!"

Stock traders are accused of siphoning$60 billion from state coffers in Europe,in a scheme that one called “the devil’smachine.” PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

The Great Tax Robbery

Printed in Chicago $6.00

Cloudy. A few morning flurriesnortheast. Highs in the 30s to themid-40s. Cloudy tonight. Lows in the20s to the lower 30s. Cloudy tomor-row. Details, SportsSunday, Page 8.

National Edition