Newly released court documents show that Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos communicated with several senior campaign officials about his outreach to the Russian government over a period of months. The recipients of Papadopoulos’s emails are not named in the filings, but The Washington Post has identified several individuals based on interviews and other documents. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty this month to lying to federal agents about his outreach to Russia.

“The Campaign Supervisor”: Trump campaign national co-chairman Sam Clovis

Victoria Toensing, an attorney for Sam Clovis, confirmed that several references in court filings to “the campaign supervisor” refer to the onetime radio host from Iowa, who served as Trump’s national campaign co-chairman.

At one point, Papadopoulos emailed Clovis and other campaign officials about a March 24, 2016, meeting he had in London with a professor, who had introduced him to the Russian ambassador and a Russian woman he described as “Putin’s niece.” The group had talked about arranging a meeting “between us and the Russian leadership to discuss U.S.-Russia ties under President Trump,” Papadopoulos wrote. (Papadopoulos later learned that the woman was not Putin’s niece, and while he expected to meet the ambassador, he never did, according to filings.)

Clovis responded that he would “work it through the campaign,” adding, “great work,” according to court documents.

In August 2016, Clovis responded to efforts by Papadopoulos to organize an “off the record” meeting with Russian officials. “I would encourage you” and another foreign policy adviser to the campaign to “make the trip, if it is feasible,” Clovis wrote.

Toensing said Clovis “always vigorously opposed any Russian trip for Donald Trump and/or the campaign.” She said his responses to Papadopoulos were courtesy by “a polite gentleman from Iowa.”

“High-Ranking Campaign Official”: Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski

Emails previously described to The Post indicate that the “high-ranking campaign official” described in court documents is onetime campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. The emails were among more than 20,000 pages that the Trump campaign turned over to congressional committees after review by White House and defense lawyers.

Lewandowski, who was pushed out of his post in June 2016, did not respond to requests for comment.

Papadopoulos wrote to Lewandowski several times to let him know that the Russians were interested in forging a relationship with the campaign, court filings show.

In one email on April 27, 2016, Papadopoulos wrote “to discuss Russia’s interest in hosting Mr. Trump.”

“Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right,” he added.

In May, Papadopoulos forwarded to Lewandowski an offer of “cooperation” from a Russian with links to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Is this something we want to move forward with?” he asked.

There is no indication if or how Lewandowski responded to those messages. But in June, when Papadopoulos emailed him again about Russia, Lewandowski referred him to Clovis because he “is running point,” according to court documents.

[Top campaign officials knew of Trump adviser’s outreach to Russia]

“Another high-ranking campaign official”: Campaign chairman Paul Manafort

The court filings indicate that Papadopoulos emailed “another high-ranking campaign official” on May 21, 2016, with the subject line “Request from Russia to meet Mr. Trump.”

The Post has previously identified this official as Paul Manafort, who was indicted Monday on unrelated criminal charges.

Manafort forwarded Papadopoulos’s email to another campaign official, stating: “We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips,” referring to a trip to Russia. “It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni in August told The Post that the campaign chairman’s response indicated that “any invitation by Russia, directly or indirectly, would be rejected outright.”

“Another campaign official”: Manafort deputy Rick Gates

The Post has previously identified the official who received the May 21, 2016, email from Manafort as his deputy, Rick Gates. Gates was indicted Monday on unrelated criminal charges.

“Senior Policy Advisor”: Unknown

The court filings indicate that on April 27, 2016, Papadopoulos emailed a “senior policy advisor” and wrote, “Have some interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right.”

The Post has not identified this official.

“The Professor”: Joseph Mifsud, director of the London Academy of Diplomacy

According to emails previously described to The Post, the London-based professor who was a key contact for Papadopoulos in his Russian outreach is Joseph Mifsud, who formerly served as a government official in Malta.

Mifsud did not respond to a request for comment Monday. In an email to The Post in August, he wrote that he had “absolutely no contact with the Russian government” and said his only ties to Russia were through academic links.

Papadopoulos met Mifsud in March 2016 while traveling in Italy, according to court records. The professor “seemed uninterested” in Papadopoulos until he learned that he was a campaign adviser, according to court filings.

Five days after Trump named Papadopoulos as one of his advisers during a meeting at The Post, Papadopoulos and Mifsud met in London. The professor brought with him a Russian woman who was introduced as a relative of President Vladi­mir Putin who had connections to senior Russian government officials.

The following month, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he had just returned from Moscow, where he had learned from high-level Russian government officials that Russia had “dirt” on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, including “thousands of emails.”

“The Female Russian National”: Unknown

Court documents show that Papadopoulos corresponded with a “female Russian national” whom he initially believed was Putin’s niece.

At one point, she wrote to him, “The Russian Federation would love to welcome [Trump] once his candidature would be officially announced.”

The Post has not identified the woman.

“A Russian National Connected to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs”: Ivan Timofeev

In April 2016, Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos over email to a man in Moscow who told Papadopoulos that he had connections to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, court records show.

Emails previously described to The Post indicate that the man is Ivan Timofeev, a program director at a Russian government-funded think tank called the Russian International Affairs Council.

Papadopoulos communicated via Skype and email with Timofeev to discuss establishing ties between Russian officials and the Trump campaign.

On Monday, Timofeev declined to comment, referring a reporter to a statement the Russian International Affairs Council posted in August in response to a Post story. The statement said that Papadapoulos had contacted the council and “put forth the idea of a possible visit to Russia by Mr. Trump or his team members.”

“Given the RIAC’s established practice of hosting public meetings with prominent politicians and public figures from the U.S. and other countries, the U.S. initiative was a matter of routine for the Council,” the statement said, pointing out that among the council’s guest speakers was former U.S. ambassador Michael McFaul.

Timofeev told The Post in August that the idea of a meeting with Trump officials was dropped after he received no official request from the Trump campaign for a meeting.

David Filipov in Moscow, Karla Adam in London, and Tom Hamburger and Robert Costa in Washington contributed to this report.

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BUSHNELL TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Michigan State Police say a collision between a buggy and a pickup truck has killed three children and critically injured six other people.

WOOD-TV reports that State Police say the pickup truck crashed into the rear of the buggy about 8:30 a.m. Sunday in Bushnell Township, just southeast of the village of Sheridan in central Michigan.

State Police say the buggy was carrying nine people. Children ages 7, 9 and 12 died in the crash.

The six other people who were riding in the buggy were taken to a hospital in critical condition. Troopers say their injuries are life-threatening.

The driver of the pickup was not injured, and troopers say he was cooperative following the crash.

The crash is under investigation.

No one has been charged in Sergeant Melgar’s death, which a military medical examiner ruled to be “a homicide by asphyxiation,” or strangulation, said three military officials briefed on the autopsy results. The two Navy SEALs, who have not been identified, were flown out of Mali shortly after the episode and were placed on administrative leave.

The biggest unanswered question is why Sergeant Melgar was killed. “N.C.I.S. does not discuss the details of ongoing investigations,” Ed Buice, the agency’s spokesman, said in an email, confirming that his service had taken over the case on Sept. 25.

Neither the Army nor the military’s Africa Command issued a statement about Sergeant Melgar’s death, not even after investigators changed their description of the two SEALs from “witnesses” to “persons of interest,” meaning the authorities were trying to determine what the commandos knew about the death and if they were involved.

The uncertainty has left soldiers in the tight-knit Green Beret community to speculate wildly about any number of possible motives, from whether it was a personal dispute among housemates gone horribly wrong to whether Sergeant Melgar had stumbled upon some illicit activity the SEALs were involved in, and they silenced him, according to interviews with troops and their families. Other officials briefed on the inquiry said they had heard no suggestion that the Navy commandos had been doing anything illegal.

When contacted separately by telephone on Saturday, Sergeant Melgar’s widow, Michelle, and his brother, Shawn, declined to comment.

Lawmakers have criticized top officers and Pentagon officials for offering a shifting timeline of the events in the Niger attack, and for failing to respond with timely, accurate information about the American military’s role on the continent at a time when President Trump has loosened restrictions on the armed forces to intensify attacks against the Islamic State and Al Qaeda around the world.

Sergeant Melgar, a graduate of Texas Tech University who joined the Army in 2012, was assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., the same unit whose soldiers were attacked by a much larger and heavily armed group of Islamic State fighters near the border between Niger and Mali on Oct. 4.

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According to military officials, Sergeant Melgar was part of a small team in Bamako assigned to help provide intelligence about Islamic militancies in Mali to the United States ambassador there, Paul A. Folmsbee, to protect American personnel against attacks. The sergeant also helped assess which Malian Army troops might be trained and equipped to build a counterterrorism force.

Sergeant Melgar, a native of Lubbock, Tex., was about four months into what military officials said was a six-month tour in Mali, and was living with three other American Special Operations troops in a house provided by the American Embassy.

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Two of those housemates were members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, which has over the past decade carried out kill-or-capture missions in Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, as well as the one that killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011.

According to two senior American military officials, the two SEAL commandos were in Mali at the request of Mr. Folmsbee in a previously undisclosed and highly unusual clandestine mission to support French and Malian counterterrorism forces battling Al Qaeda’s branch in North and West Africa, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, as well as smaller cells aligned with Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. The Americans helped provide intelligence for missions, and had participated in at least two such operations in Mali this year before Sergeant Melgar’s death.

Much is unknown about what happened around 5 a.m. on June 4 in the team house. The initial reports to Sergeant Melgar’s superiors in Germany said he had been injured while wrestling or grappling with the two Navy commandos, according to three officials who have been briefed on the investigation.

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According to one version of events, one of the SEALs put Sergeant Melgar in a chokehold. When the sergeant passed out, the commandos frantically tried to revive him. Failing that, they rushed him to an emergency clinic, where he was pronounced dead.

Spokesmen for the Africa Command, the Special Operations Command, the Defense Department and the Army and Navy investigative services declined to comment, citing the continuing investigation, or did not respond to emails and phone calls on Sunday.

A spokesman for the State Department’s Africa Bureau and Mr. Folmsbee, Nicholas A. Sadoski, directed all questions to the Pentagon. Mr. Sadoski declined to answer questions about what kind of oversight the ambassador exercised over the American military personnel in Mali, how frequently was he briefed on Special Operations missions there and when he learned about Sergeant Melgar’s death.

Why American Special Operations forces are in Mali at all is a story in a nutshell of the American military’s successes and failures in Africa.

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Mali had been one of West Africa’s most stable nations before 2012, and was held up by the Pentagon as a model partner in combating Islamic militants. But when secular Tuareg separatists began an uprising, as they had done in the past, insurgents linked to Al Qaeda took advantage of the deteriorating security situation.

When the militants surged across Mali’s northern desert in 2012, American-trained commanders of the country’s elite army units defected at a critical time, taking troops, trucks, weapons and their newfound skills to the enemy. A confidential internal review completed by the Africa Command after the debacle concluded that there were critical gaps in the American training for Malian troops and senior officers.

With Mali’s army in collapse, the rebels were pushed out by French and Chadian troops early in 2013, and the United Nations established a peacekeeping mission. But the chaos continues today. Various armed insurgents regularly attack Malian forces and the United Nations peacekeepers. To date, 149 peacekeepers have been killed in Mali, making it one of the most dangerous peacekeeping missions in the world.

And terrorists continue to mount deadly attacks, including an assault in June on a resort outside Bamako that killed at least five people.

For the 3rd Special Forces Group, the past year has served as a reminder that Africa remains a dangerous assignment. In addition to Sergeant Melgar and the four soldiers killed in Niger, one soldier committed suicide in Kenya last October and another died in a vehicle accident while on patrol in Niger in February.

Those who knew Sergeant Melgar described him as a soldier’s soldier — he deployed to Afghanistan twice on training missions between July 2014 and February 2016, according to his Army service record — and a devoted father of two sons, 13 and 15, who texted and talked via Skype multiple times a day with his wife while serving overseas.

More than four months later, his death still has many at Fort Bragg and in Lubbock reeling. An online community bulletin board in Lubbock stated: “A Melgar family representative shared that ‘Staff Sgt. Melgar did what most only dream of and excelled at every turn! His life was epic! He is missed dearly every single day.’”

Sergeant Melgar was also honored at the high school he attended in Wolfforth, Tex., Frenship High, during the homecoming football game on Oct. 6.

A final tribute awaits Sergeant Melgar: He is scheduled to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 20.

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Tensions between Republicans and Democrats over the investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election intensified Sunday, with President Trump demanding to know why his campaign is under federal scrutiny while his former opponent Hillary Clinton is not.

The president’s latest outburst over the inquiry led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III surfaced on Twitter as his administration braced for the possibility that the first batch of charges in the case could be publicly announced as soon as Monday. CNN reported that a federal grand jury had approved an indictment, although details of the possible charges and the name of a defendant remained unclear.

Trump issued four tweets over 24 minutes, attacking the Mueller probe as unfair and citing various Clinton controversies that he said warranted investigation.

“Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia, ‘collusion,’ which doesn’t exist,” the president said. “The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!”

Later in the morning, Trump added: “All of this ‘Russia’ talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT!”

On Sunday talk shows, Republicans rallied around Trump and questioned how CNN could have received information about secret grand jury proceedings.

“There are very, very strict laws on grand jury secrecy, so depending on who leaked this to CNN, that’s a criminal violation, potentially,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a longtime friend of Trump’s, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “For us to have confidence in this process, we’ve got to make sure that the grand jury process remains confidential, remains secret, so that the special counsel can work effectively to be able to get to the bottom of all that he’s looking into.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) cast doubt on the objectivity of Mueller’s team, noting that the prosecutor’s staff includes “a lot of individuals, attorneys who played in politics, who’ve given money on the Democratic side.” Of the eight attorneys on the team who have been publicly identified, four made donations to Democrats, including President Barack Obama and Clinton.

“This president won the election solely on the idea that he connected with the American people. No other influence involved,” McCarthy said on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “But the idea of what I’ve watched, of what the Democrats have been doing, it sure raises a lot of questions.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, came to Mueller’s defense and said that he doesn’t agree with Republicans who are calling for Mueller to resign or stop his investigation.

“I would encourage my Republican friends — give the guy a chance to do his job,” Gowdy said on Fox News Sunday. “The result will be known by the facts, by what he uncovers. . . . I would say give the guy a chance to do his job.”

Democratic lawmakers mostly stayed out of the Sunday fray after a week in which Clinton’s 2016 campaign came under fresh scrutiny. The campaign funded political opposition research into Trump that helped create a highly publicized “dossier” on the Republican candidate and fueled some allegations now under scrutiny by Mueller.

The 35-page dossier is composed of 17 memos containing raw intelligence, some of it highly salacious and not independently confirmed. It relies on Kremlin-linked sources and alleges that the Russian government had been trying to support Trump’s candidacy while gathering compromising information that could be used as blackmail. The dossier was published in full by BuzzFeed in January.

It’s unclear how much the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee paid for the opposition research by Fusion GPS, a Washington firm that conducts investigations for private clients. The Clinton campaign paid $5.6 million in legal fees to a law firm from June 2015 to December 2016, according to campaign finance records, and the DNC paid the firm $3.6 million in “legal and compliance consulting’’ since November 2015. It’s impossible to tell from the filings how much of that work was for other legal matters and how much of it related to Fusion GPS.

Trump tweeted Sunday morning that the dossier, which he called “Clinton made Fake Dossier,” could have cost as much as $12 million, although he did not explain how he reached that number.

Compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, the dossier mirrors a separate conclusion reached by U.S. intelligence agencies that the Russian government intervened in the U.S. election in an effort to bolster Trump and harm Clinton, such as through hacking the DNC and distributing materials to WikiLeaks to publish at key moments.

Fusion GPS, which hired Steele to gather information, was first employed to investigate Trump during the Republican primaries by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication that receives financial support from billionaire GOP donor Paul Singer, according to two people familiar with Singer. The Beacon said in a statement that its research ended before Fusion GPS hired Steele and that none of the research that it commissioned is included in the dossier.

In April 2016, an attorney representing Clinton’s presidential campaign and the DNC hired Fusion GPS, which then hired Steele. Brian Fallon, a former spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said he learned about Steele and the dossier after the election. People familiar with the matter told The Washington Post that the Clinton campaign and the DNC did not direct Steele’s activities.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Sunday that “a lot” of the information in the dossier has been corroborated.

“I certainly would have liked to know who paid for it earlier, but nonetheless, that’s just one factor to be considered,” Schiff said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “It doesn’t answer the ultimate question, which is: How much of the work is accurate? How much of it is true? And my colleagues don’t seem particularly interested in that question, but that is really the most important question for the American people.”

Schiff said he has not been told anything about any impending indictments in Mueller’s investigation, noting that such notification would not have been appropriate.

Trump also tweeted Sunday about Clinton’s involvement in what he called the “Uranium to Russia deal,” demanding that the matter receive greater scrutiny.

The 2010 deal approved by the Obama administration while Clinton was secretary of state allowed a Russian nuclear energy agency to acquire a controlling stake in a Canadian-based company that had mining licenses for about 20 percent of U.S. uranium extraction capacity. The company cannot export the uranium.

Earlier this month, House and Senate Republican leaders announced they would investigate the uranium deal, and the House Oversight Committee launched a probe into how the FBI investigated Clinton during the campaign. In the latter investigation, Republicans say they want to know why then-FBI Director James B. Comey publicly announced that the bureau was investigating Clinton but waited months before making a similar announcement about its inquiries into the Trump campaign.

Ed O’Keefe and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.

And now all this nasty weather has a name.

The National Hurricane Center released its 5 p.m. advisory about 25 minutes early Saturday to call it Tropical Storm Philippe. The depression that has been soaking central and western Cuba and spreading rain and thunderstorms northward across the Florida Keys and South Florida, now has sustained winds of 40 mph.

The storm is moving north at 29 mph and the forecast cone has shifted a bit west, putting South Florida into the cone of concern. On the forecast track, the center of Philippe is predicted to move off of the northern coast of Cuba and into the Florida Straits this evening. The storm will then move across the Florida Keys or the southern tip of the Florida peninsula overnight, and across the northwestern Bahamas Sunday morning, the center said in its advisory.

The tropical storm force winds are on the east end of the storm.

While the system was still a depression Saturday afternoon, it spawned a small, brief tornado that touched down just northeast of the intersection of Bird Road and Southwest 97th Avenue in Miami.

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Tropical Storm watch for parts of coastal South Florida as unnamed storm approaches

The coastal area from Golden Beach at the Miami-Dade/Broward county line all the way down to Craig Key was placed under Tropical Storm Watch as Tropical Depression No. 18 remains on its path to Cuba, South Florida and the Bahamas.

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Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has campaigned for a military buildup against the threat from the North, and Japan sits on a stockpile of nuclear material that could power an arsenal of 6,000 weapons. Last Sunday, he won a commanding majority in parliamentary elections, fueling his hopes of revising the nation’s pacifist Constitution.

This brutal calculus over how to respond to North Korea is taking place in a region where several nations have the material, the technology, the expertise and the money to produce nuclear weapons.

Beyond South Korea and Japan, there is already talk in Australia, Myanmar, Taiwan and Vietnam about whether it makes sense to remain nuclear-free if others arm themselves — heightening fears that North Korea could set off a chain reaction in which one nation after another feels threatened and builds the bomb.

In a recent interview, Henry A. Kissinger, one of the few nuclear strategists from the early days of the Cold War still living, said he had little doubt where things were headed.

“If they continue to have nuclear weapons,” he said of North Korea, “nuclear weapons must spread in the rest of Asia.”

“It cannot be that North Korea is the only Korean country in the world that has nuclear weapons, without the South Koreans trying to match it. Nor can it be that Japan will sit there,” he added. “So therefore we’re talking about nuclear proliferation.”

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Such fears have been raised before, in Asia and elsewhere, without materializing, and the global consensus against the spread of nuclear weapons is arguably stronger than ever.

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But North Korea is testing America’s nuclear umbrella — its commitment to defend its allies with nuclear weapons if necessary — in a way no nation has in decades. Similar fears of abandonment in the face of the Soviet Union’s growing arsenal helped lead Britain and France to go nuclear in the 1950s.

President Trump, who leaves Nov. 3 for a visit to Asia, has intensified these insecurities in the region. During his presidential campaign, he spoke openly of letting Japan and South Korea build nuclear arms even as he argued they should pay more to support the American military bases there.

“There is going to be a point at which we just can’t do this anymore,” he told The New York Times in March 2016. Events, he insisted, were pushing both nations toward their own nuclear arsenals anyway.

Mr. Trump has not raised that possibility in public since taking office. But he has rattled the region by engaging in bellicose rhetoric against North Korea and dismissing talks as a “waste of time.”

In Seoul and Tokyo, many have already concluded that North Korea will keep its nuclear arsenal, because the cost of stopping it will be too great — and they are weighing their options.

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Capability to Build the Bomb

Long before North Korea detonated its first nuclear device, several of its neighbors secretly explored going nuclear themselves.

Japan briefly considered building a “defensive” nuclear arsenal in the 1960s despite its pacifist Constitution. South Korea twice pursued the bomb in the 1970s and 1980s, and twice backed down under American pressure. Even Taiwan ran a covert nuclear program before the United States shut it down.

Today, there is no question that both South Korea and Japan have the material and expertise to build a weapon.

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All that is stopping them is political sentiment and the risk of international sanctions. Both nations signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but it is unclear how severely other countries would punish two of the world’s largest economies for violating the agreement.

South Korea has 24 nuclear reactors and a huge stockpile of spent fuel from which it can extract plutonium — enough for more than 4,300 bombs, according to a 2015 paper by Charles D. Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists.

Japan once pledged never to stockpile more nuclear fuel than it can burn off. But it has never completed the necessary recycling and has 10 tons of plutonium stored domestically and another 37 tons overseas.

“We keep reminding the Japanese of their pledge,” said Ernest J. Moniz, chief executive of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and an energy secretary in the Obama administration, noting that it would take years if not decades for Japan to consume its fissile material because almost all its nuclear plants have remained offline since the 2011 Fukushima accident.

China, in particular, has objected to Japan’s stockpile, warning that its traditional rival is so advanced technologically that it could use the material to quickly build a large arsenal.

Analysts often describe Japan as a “de facto” nuclear state, capable of building a weapon within a year or two. “Building a physical device is not that difficult anymore,” said Tatsujiro Suzuki, former deputy chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission.

Japan already possesses long-range missile technology, he added, but would need some time to develop more sophisticated communications and control systems.

South Korea may be even further along, with a fleet of advanced missiles that carry conventional warheads. In 2004, the government disclosed that its scientists had dabbled in reprocessing and enriching nuclear material without first informing the International Atomic Energy Agency as required by treaty.

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“If we decide to stand on our own feet and put our resources together, we can build nuclear weapons in six months,” said Suh Kune-yull, a professor of nuclear engineering at Seoul National University. “The question is whether the president has the political will.”

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In Seoul, a Rising Call for Arms

President Moon Jae-in has been firm in his opposition to nuclear weapons. He insists that building them or reintroducing American ones to South Korea would make it even more difficult to persuade North Korea to scrap its own.

Though Mr. Moon has received high approval ratings since his election in May, his view is increasingly a minority one.

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Calls for nuclear armament used to be dismissed as chatter from South Korea’s nationalist fringe. Not anymore. Now people often complain that South Korea cannot depend on the United States, its protector of seven decades.

The opposition Liberty Korea party called on the United States to reintroduce tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea in August after the North tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that appeared capable of reaching the mainland United States.

“If the U.N. Security Council can’t rein in North Korea with its sanctions, we will have no option but to withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty,” Won Yoo-chul, a party leader, said in September.

Given the failure of sanctions, threats and negotiations to stop North Korea, South Koreans are increasingly convinced the North will never give up its nuclear weapons. But they also oppose risking a war with a military solution.

Most believe the Trump administration, despite its tough talk, will ultimately acquiesce, perhaps settling for a freeze that allows the North to keep a small arsenal. And many fear that would mean giving the North the ultimate blackmail tool — and a way to keep the United States at bay.

“The reason North Korea is developing a hydrogen bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles is not to go to war with the United States,” said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the Sejong Institute near Seoul. “It’s to stop the Americans from intervening in armed skirmishes or full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula.”

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The closer the North gets to showing it can strike the United States, the more nervous South Koreans become about being abandoned. Some have asked whether Washington will risk the destruction of an American city by intervening, for example, if the North attempts to occupy a border island, as its soldiers have practiced.

For many in South Korea, the solution is a homegrown nuclear deterrent.

“If we don’t respond with our own nuclear deterrence of some kind, our people will live like nuclear hostages of North Korea,” said Cheon Seong-whun, a former presidential secretary for security strategy.

With nuclear weapons of its own, the South would gain leverage and could force North Korea back to the bargaining table, where the two sides could whittle down their arsenals through negotiations, some hawks argue.

But given the risks of going nuclear, others say Seoul should focus on persuading Washington to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons.

“The redeployment of American tactical nuclear weapons would be the surest way” to deter North Korea, Defense Minister Song Young-moo said last month, but he added that it would be difficult to get Washington to agree to that.

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In Tokyo, Cautious Debate

The discussion in Japan has been more subdued than in South Korea, no surprise after 70 years of public education about the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But Japan has periodically considered developing nuclear weapons every decade since the 1960s.

In 2002, a top aide to Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister then, caused a furor by suggesting Japan might one day break with its policy of never building, possessing or allowing nuclear arms on its territory.

North Korea has reopened that question.

Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister seen as a potential challenger to Prime Minister Abe, has argued that Japan needs to debate its nuclear policy given the threat from North Korea.

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Mr. Abe has stopped short of calling for a re-evaluation of the country’s position on nuclear weapons. But he has increased military spending and echoed Mr. Trump’s hawkish position against the North.

Mr. Abe’s administration has already determined that nuclear weapons would not be prohibited under the Constitution if maintained only for self-defense.

The Japanese public is largely opposed to nuclear weapons with polls indicating fewer than one in 10 support nuclear armament.

But Japan’s relations with South Korea have long been strained, and if Seoul armed itself, those numbers could shift.

Some analysts say the discussion is aimed at getting additional reassurance from Washington. “We always do that when we become a little upset about the credibility of the extended U.S. deterrence,” said Narushige Michishita, a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

Tobias Harris, a Japan analyst at Teneo Intelligence, a political risk consultancy, said Japan would rethink its position on nuclear weapons if it suspects the United States would let it down.

“We’re kind of in uncharted waters as far as this goes,” he said. “It’s hard to know exactly what the threshold is that will lead the Japanese public’s switch to flip.”

Correction: October 28, 2017

An earlier version of this article misstated the amount of plutonium Japan stores overseas. It is 37 tons, not 37 million tons.

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“He likes and respects Mr. Manafort and appreciates the work he did for him during the three months he was with the campaign. He likes General Flynn personally, but understands that they have their own path with the special counsel,” Mr. Cobb said. “I think he would be sad for them, as a friend and a former colleague, if the process results in punishment or indictments. But to the extent that that happens, that’s beyond his control.”

Mr. Mueller is investigating whether Mr. Manafort violated federal tax laws or lobbied on behalf of foreign officials without registering. His team is also investigating Mr. Manafort for possible money laundering, a line of inquiry he took over this spring from federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to lawyers and federal officials. Many of the activities Mr. Mueller is scrutinizing date back years, well before Mr. Manafort joined the Trump campaign.

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“Mr. Manafort has said from the beginning neither he nor anyone else in the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to undermine the 2016 election,” said Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Mr. Manafort. “Finally, everyone seems to be coming to that same conclusion.”

The special counsel is also examining Mr. Flynn’s financial ties to Russia and whether he concealed lobbying he did last year for Turkey.

The White House has given Mr. Muller’s team documents related to Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn, as well as the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and other topics. Mr. Trump has instructed all White House staff members to cooperate with investigators, Mr. Cobb said.

Mr. Mueller has begun interviewing White House staff members, but he has not yet asked to speak with Mr. Trump. “We’d have to address that in the future if they see a need to talk to him,” Mr. Cobb said.

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Mr. Cobb said none of the White House documents turned over to Mr. Mueller showed evidence that that anyone colluded with Russia, or that Mr. Trump tried to obstruct justice. The president is fully cooperating with the special counsel, he said.

“I think the path that he chose of trying to minimize conflict and maximize cooperation is one that benefits the country as he tries to erase this cloud,” Mr. Cobb said. “Which I think he will ultimately achieve.”

He did not say when he believed that would happen, but he predicted the end of the investigation was nearing.

“I don’t think that it’s far away,” he said.

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Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said there will be “hell to pay” if any wronging is uncovered in the awarding of multi-million dollar contracts after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.

With more than 75 percent of Puerto Rico still without electricity in Maria’s wake, U.S. lawmakers are calling for an investigation into why the island turned to a small, for-profit company instead of the mutual-aid network of public utilities usually called upon to coordinate power restoration after disasters.

Rossello made the warning on Thursday amid mounting controversy. On Wednesday, he asked the DHS inspector general to complete a review of the Whitefish contract by next week to answer questions, though he noted in his letter that the contract appeared to comply with FEMA regulations.

A spokesperson for the DHS inspector general’s office confirmed that they have started an inquiry into the contract and will look for any “inappropriate relationships.”

Eight congressional Democrats wrote to the Interior Dept. inspector general asking for a separate investigation, specifically mentioning concerns about any possible Whitefish connection to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke — who is from Whitefish, Mont., the same town where the company is based — or any other ties to the Trump administration.

Alvin Baez/Reuters

“Whitefish is primarily financed by a private equity firm that is run by a contributor to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. We’re concerned that Whitefish might have overstated its connections with the Trump administration to obtain the contract,” the Democrats wrote in the letter sent Wednesday afternoon.

Complicating matters are concerns over the relationship between Whitefish founder Andy Techmanski and Interior Secretary Zinke.

Zinke and Whitefish have confirmed the families know one another — in their small hometown, “everyone knows everyone,” the Interior Department said.

Both parties also insist that Zinke did not advocate on Whitefish’s behalf.

Whitefish Energy lists Dallas-based HBC Investments as one of its investors on its website. One partner in that company, Joe Colonnetta, along with his wife, has donated to the Republican party and Republican campaigns over the years, according to FEC filings. In 2016 Colonnetta donated at least $25,000 to committees supporting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

A spokesman for Whitefish Energy and Colonnetta said Thursday that his donations had “no influence whatsoever to impact the contract.”

Alvin Baez/Reuters

Montana-based Whitefish Energy was awarded a $300 million Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) contract to repair downed transmission lines crisscrossing the mountains, the company confirmed to ABC News.

Founded in 2015, Whitefish — which had just two full-time employees when the contract was signed — says it has mobilized a team of nearly 300 subcontractors in Puerto Rico, with more on the way.

“Our rates are competitive and our work is top rate,” spokesperson Chris Chiames told ABC News, adding that the company is uniquely qualified to tackle the situation in Puerto Rico due to the CEO’s experience in “rugged and remote terrain.”

But officials are questioning why PREPA chose to work with Whitefish instead of reaching out to the American Public Power Association (APPA), which normally matches states hit by disasters with nearby public power utilities who offer up crews and equipment to assist.

“To date, PREPA has not requested aid from the association,” the association confirmed. “The entire electric utility industry is standing by to send help as requested.”

PREPA Executive Director Ricardo Ramos said Tuesday he ruled out APPA assistance because it would have required the agency, which is currently bankrupt, to handle logistics for crew lodging and food.

Other power restoration companies were ruled out because they required a large upfront deposit, which PREPA cannot afford to pay, he said.

Ramon Espinosa/AP

Under the Whitefish contract, the agency paid $3.7 million for initial “mobilization of personnel and equipment,” with further advance payments not being required.

“Whitefish was the only company — it was the first that could be mobilized to Puerto Rico. It did not ask us to be paid soon or a guarantee to pay,” Ramos told reporters in Spanish. “For some reason, someone in the United States has to be upset, because they aren’t here, that I have hired Whitefish — but that is their problem.”

The company says it called Puerto Rico before Maria hit to pitch its own services.

Whitefish “showed up at the right place at the right time and that’s how they got the contract,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told ABC News. “We want to see restoration pick up. Every day that they’re without power is a day that economy isn’t functioning and it’s another day people are suffering.”

Hiring a company like Whitefish, which relies on subcontractors rather than a staff of trained personnel “didn’t make a lot of sense,” Sergio Marxuach, policy director at the nonpartisan Center for a New Economy, told ABC News. “This is one of the reasons people down here really hate PREPA — they do business behind closed doors and it ends up costing a lot of money.”

How Whitefish rates compare with competitors remains unclear.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency says it was not involved in the selection and the White House said Friday that the decision to award the contract to Whitefish came from “local authorities.”

“[The awarding of the contract was] not something that the federal government played a role in,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders at Friday’s press briefing. “But as we understand, there is an ongoing audit and we’ll look forward to seeing the results of that later.”

FEMA has “significant concerns” how PREPA procured the Whitefish contract and it “has not confirmed whether the contract prices are reasonable,” the agency said in a statement.

FEMA said it has not reimbursed PREPA for any money spent on the Whitefish contract, and that it will verify that PREPA followed regulations “to ensure that federal money is well spent” before handing over any payment.

Directly contradicting a clause in the Whitefish contract that reads, “PREPA hereby represents and warrants that FEMA has reviewed and approved of this Contract, and confirms that this Contract is an acceptable form to qualify for funding from FEMA,” FEMA insists the agency was not involved in PREPA’s decision and that the clause is inaccurate.

FEMA issued the following statement:

The decision to award a contract to Whitefish Energy was made exclusively by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA). FEMA was not involved in the selection. Questions regarding the awarding of the contract should be directed to PREPA.

Any language in any contract between PREPA and Whitefish that states FEMA approved that contract is inaccurate.

FEMA has not provided any reimbursement to Puerto Rico to date for the PREPA contract with Whitefish Energy. Regardless, FEMA will verify that the applicant (in this case PREPA) has, in fact, followed applicable regulations to ensure that federal money is properly spent.

Based on initial review and information from PREPA, FEMA has significant concerns with how PREPA procured this contract and has not confirmed whether the contract prices are reasonable. FEMA is presently engaged with PREPA and its legal counsel to obtain information about the contract and contracting process, including how the contract was procured and how PREPA determined the contract prices were reasonable.

It is important for all applicants for FEMA Public Assistance to understand and abide by Federal requirements for grantee procurement. Applicants who fail to abide by these requirements risk not being reimbursed by FEMA for their disaster costs.

FEMA continues to focus on the expedited restoration of essential services in support of the Governor’s recovery goals.

ABC’s Jennifer Metz and Joshua Hoyos contributed to this report.

President Trump delayed on Thursday evening the release of thousands of pages of classified documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination, bowing to pressure from the CIA, FBI and other federal agencies still seeking to keep some final secrets about the nearly 54-year-old investigation.

The president allowed the immediate release of 2,800 records by the National Archives, following a last-minute scramble to meet a 25-year legal deadline. After lobbying by national security officials, the remaining documents will be reviewed during a 180-day period.

In a memo released by the White House, Trump said: “I am ordering today that the veil finally be lifted. At the same time, executive departments and agencies have proposed to me that certain information should continue to be redacted because of national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns. I have no choice — today — but to accept those redactions rather than allow potentially irreversible harm to our nation’s security.”

Early Friday morning, the president, who has trafficked in conspiracy theories himself, tweeted assurances that he wants to disclose as much as possible: JFK Files are being carefully released. In the end there will be great transparency. It is my hope to get just about every thing to the public!”

What happened when JFK was killed View Graphic What happened when JFK was killed

The records were put online at 7:30 p.m. The thousands of field reports, cables and interview summaries from dozens of FBI, CIA and congressional investigators reveal the minutiae of a chase for information that spanned decades and covered continents. Usually typed, stamped “Secret” and often annotated by hand, the files are a paper trail of detective grunt work, leads exhausted, dead-ends encountered, sources checked and rechecked.

Many of the files highlight the desperate search for Lee Harvey Oswald’s possible connections to communists, Cubans, or both in the months before he shot Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

[Strippers, surveillance and assassination plots: The wildest JFK Files]

Several show the FBI’s often extraordinary efforts to identify suspected communists in the United States. Dozens of them amount to brief records on individuals whose names were drawn from the mailing list of a publication called “The Worker.”

Some documents summarize internal discussions within Communist Party meetings after the assassination, discussing whether Oswald was innocent and whether communists would be blamed for Kennedy’s death. Agents ran down rumors from prisoners and poets.

One FBI memo from April 1964 details Director J. Edgar Hoover’s interest in connecting key players. He tells the New York field office to check out a tip that, prior to the assassination, “a meeting took place at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club in Dallas,” attended by Ruby, a man whose name is illegible, and Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit, who was shot by Oswald as he fled from the scene of the Kennedy shooting.

Oswald, a troubled former Marine who had temporarily defected to the Soviet Union at one point, was killed by Ruby at Dallas police headquarters on live television — a stunning turn that fueled decades of conspiracy theories.

Latest release from the JFK assassination records View Graphic Latest release from the JFK assassination records

The government was facing a Thursday deadline for disclosing the records, and Trump had tweeted twice that the documents would be made public.

“The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow,” he promised Wednesday. “So interesting!”

Given Trump’s enthusiasm, legions of assassination scholars, professionals and hobbyists had been waiting throughout the day to begin a reading frenzy. Any delay or limitations of the release could only be ordered by the president.

In his memo Thursday night, Trump said that any agency wanting to continue withholding documents after April 26 “should be extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement of full disclosure of records.”

Some of the material that assassination experts had been most eager to review was not included in the documents released Thursday. The missing records include a 338-page file on J. Walton Moore, the head of the CIA office in Dallas at the time of the killing, and an 18-page dossier on Gordon McClendon, a Dallas businessman who conferred with Ruby just before he shot Oswald. Several files on notorious anti-Castro Cuban exiles were apparently withheld, including those focusing on Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch, who had been accused of a 1976 airline bombing that killed 73 people.

Researchers had hoped the release would shed new light on Oswald’s movements and contacts in the months before he shot Kennedy. Historians were particularly eager for new details of Oswald’s six-day trip to Mexico City, where he met with Cubans and Soviets two months before the assassination.

None of those documents appeared to be in the batch released Thursday. Nor were there revelations on Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, both of whom were longtime CIA operatives of interest to assassination theorists.

If the cache of material did not deal a blow to the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald acted as the lone gunman in Dealey Plaza, it did contain fascinating historical nuggets, big and small. Among them was a price list that Cuban exiles agreed they would pay to kill Cuba’s revolutionary leaders: $100,000 for Fidel Castro and $20,000 each for Che Guevera and Raul Castro. A 1963 CIA cable from Mexico City describes Oswald visiting the Soviet embassy, where he insisted on speaking what was described as “terrible hardly recognizable Russian.”

A long draft report by the House Select Committee on Assassinations concludes that the theory that Cuba ordered the killing in response to CIA attempts to kill Fidel Castro was unlikely.

“The Committee does not believe Castro would have assassinated President Kennedy, because such an act, if discovered, would have afforded the United States the excuse to destroy Cuba,” the draft states.

The release of the documents was mandated by a 1992 act of Congress meant to finally clear the official cupboards of classified material that had been shrouded in controversy and hearsay for decades.

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush on Oct. 26, 1992, required that “each assassination record shall be publicly disclosed in full . . . no later than the date that is 25 years after the date” of its enactment.

But there was an out: The president would have the right to withhold some records that, if revealed, would harm national security and outweigh “the public interest in disclosure.” The law also requires the administration to publish an unclassified explanation for the postponement in the Federal Register.

David L. Boren, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who co-
sponsored the records release law, said in a statement Thursday to The Post: “It was my intention that all documents be released in unredacted form except for in the most rare, exceptional circumstances involving current and continuing national security concerns.”

Trump had been lobbied to withhold some of the files by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, according to Trump confidant Roger Stone.

Stone, a political consultant who wrote a book alleging that Lyndon B. Johnson had Kennedy murdered, pushed Trump to release everything and hailed the president’s decision as a victory on Twitter.

But in an interview Wednesday, Stone said he worried that the intelligence community might still persuade his friend not to release all the papers, or that the files might be heavily redacted. He cited a previous release of classified material that left researchers disappointed.

“If the data dump that the National Archives did in July of a small amount of JFK-related material is any indication, the fallback of the intelligence agencies appears to be redact and withhold as much of this information as possible,” Stone said. “They’ll use the broad rubric of national security. If the censorship is so great to make the president’s order meaningless, it’ll get litigated in the courts.”

In a statement, the CIA said its redactions were meant to protect national security interests — the names of CIA assets and current and former CIA officers, intelligence-gathering methods and sensitive partnerships that remain viable today.

But the agency also vowed to release all of its Kennedy assassination records. “Every single one of the approximately 18,000 remaining CIA records in the collection will ultimately be released, with no document withheld in full,” the statement said. Those CIA documents, come April, could still retain redactions. The statement said the redacted information in the 18,000 pages represents less than 1 percent of all CIA information in the collection.

Many of the documents were created in the 1990s, making some of the information more sensitive and recent than older documents from decades ago.

The National Archives has had custody of the records since the Warren Commission published its investigative findings in 1964.

In 1991, Oliver Stone released his movie, “JFK,” which suggested that Kennedy was killed in a grand conspiracy involving the CIA, the FBI and the military. At the end of the film, audiences were informed that many of the investigative documents would not be released until 2029. Soon, protests erupted, and Congress passed the assassination records act that was signed into law a year later.

[You can thank Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie for the JFK document release]

By the early 1990s, only a sliver of the Warren Commission’s papers — just 2­ percent — had been concealed, either partially or in full, according to the National Archives. Since then, the archives has made periodic releases of its repository, which totals more than 5 million pages. In a recent article on its website, the archives said that 88 percent of its documents are fully open; 11 percent have been released but with redactions; and 1 percent has been fully withheld.

In early 2016, the website GovernmentAttic.org obtained through the Freedom of Information Act the list of what was then more than 3,600 records that had been entirely withheld. Titles of the documents included “Personality File on Lee Harvey Oswald” and “Tape of Mr. William K. Harvey’s Interview, 4/10/75,” a reference to the legendary CIA officer who oversaw the agency’s plots to kill Fidel Castro.

A majority of Americans believe others besides Oswald were involved in the shooting, according to repeated Gallup polls conducted over the past 50 years. Since the Warren Commission concluded its investigation, historians and journalists have written extensively about how the CIA deliberately concealed information about Oswald’s interactions with Cubans or Soviets in Mexico City before the killing.

Conspiracy theories have dogged the investigation in part because of the Warren Commission’s marching orders. President Lyndon B. Johnson told the members of his handpicked investigative board that he wanted to squash the raging public fears that a foreign power or communist operatives had killed Kennedy. He told Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren that the country was “confronted with threatening divisions and suspicions” and that it was the commission’s “patriotic mission” to squelch “dangerous rumors.”

Warren was a close and loyal ally of Kennedy’s. He short-circuited some areas of investigation that could embarrass the president. He personally — and privately — interviewed former first lady Jackie Kennedy, a key witness, rather than allow his staff to pose their own questions.

Johnson himself had worried that a foreign power may have been involved, according to a 1969 interview with Walter Cronkite.

“I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections,” Johnson told the television newsman.

Johnson later asked that this portion of the interview be deleted from the public broadcast.

Philip Shenon, author of a 2013 book on the Warren Commission, interviewed one of the commission’s chief investigators, David Slawson, for Politico two years ago and showed him documents that had been declassified in the 1990s but that Slawson had never seen. Slawson’s conclusion: The CIA tampered with surveillance evidence of Oswald in Mexico City that would have revealed the agency knew of Oswald’s threat well before the assassination.

Even the CIA publicly acknowledged in 2014 that ­John McCone, its director at the time of the assassination, participated in a “benign cover-up,” according to a paper by agency historian David Robarge. His article said McCone was “complicit in keeping incendiary and diversionary issues off the commission’s agenda.”

The agency historian wrote that McCone purposely did not tell the commission about CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro, some of which had been planned at the Mexico City station.

“Without this information,” Shenon concluded in a 2015 Politico story, “the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots.”

During a White House conference call with reporters Thursday, CNN reporter Jim Acosta asked whether the documents would contain information on any role the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) might have played in the assassination — a false charge Trump had raised during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“Honestly, we’re not going to comment on the content of the files,” a National Archives official replied.

carol.leonnig@washpost.com

Greg Miller, Michael E. Miller, Michael E. Ruane, Rachel Weiner, Tom Jackman, Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky, Jenna Johnson, Michael S. Rosenwald and Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.

Read more:

Zapruder captured JFK’s assassination in riveting detail. ‘It brought him nothing but heartbreak.’

JFK’s assassin: Lee Harvey Oswald’s eerie calm the day before he pulled the trigger

JFK assassination conspiracy theories: The grassy knoll, Umbrella Man, LBJ and Ted Cruz’s dad

JFK’s last birthday: Gifts, champagne and wandering hands on the presidential yacht

‘Foul traitor’: JFK assassination records reveal KGB defector’s 3-year interrogation

People celebrate after the Catalan regional parliament passed a declaration of independence from Spain in Barcelona on Friday. (Yves Herman/Reuters)

BARCELONA — Spain’s prime minister announced Friday he would dismantle the Catalan government, suspend its ministers, dissolve its parliament, take over regional police and call home any Catalan diplomats abroad — just hours after the breakaway region declared independence.

The Spanish Senate gave the central government in Madrid unprecedented powers over Catalonia on Friday, sharply escalating a constitutional crisis in the center of western Europe.

In addition, the central government called for a clean slate and announced there would be “free, legal and clean” elections in late December.

The announcement of the get-tough measure against Catalonia came just hours after the Catalan parliament in declared independence and the streets of Barcelona filled with celebrants, drinking sparking wine and waving Catalan flags. Many wept openly. Others came out to taunt the National Police sent to the region by Madrid.

The day’s escalation came fast and furious.

First there were two votes — one for independence, one to restore constitutional rule — that came in dueling sessions of parliaments in Barcelona and Madrid.

The central government easily won permission to take over control of Catalonia. Meanwhile, secessionists in Catalonia faced bitter recriminations from Catalan foes who called the move for nationhood a coup and a historic blunder, a month after a referendum that backed a split from Spain.

The widening impasse has left little middle ground in Spain for possible compromises and has spilled over to the European Union, whose leaders fear another internal crisis after major upheavals such as Britain’s exit from the bloc and the financial meltdown in Greece.

Immediately after the vote for independence, European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted: “For EU nothing changes. Spain remains our only interlocutor. I hope the Spanish government favours force of argument, not argument of force.”

Tusk’s remark mirrors fears in Catalonia that the Spanish government will employ police and harsh tactics to take back control of the region.

[Catalonia’s independence vote: What you need to know]

After the day’s votes, the Trump administration came down on the side of Madrid. “Catalonia is an integral part of Spain, and the United States supports the Spanish government’s constitutional measures to keep Spain strong and united,” the State Department said in a statement.

What happens now is unclear, though the newly declared republic will struggle to assert itself. Spain’s Constitutional Court will almost certainly declare it illegal, the central government will try to take over the Catalan regional ministries, and few countries in Europe have shown any willingness so far to recognize an independent Catalonia.

The final ballot was 70 to 10 in favor of the declaration of independence in the Catalan Parliament, where 55 deputies declined to vote, showing the deep divisions. 

“We have won the freedom to build a new country,” Catalonia’s regional vice president, Oriol Junqueras, tweeted.

Encarna Buitrago was with her friends in a flag-waving crowd in front of the parliament in Barcelona when independence was declared. Many began to weep at the news.

“Now we need to support our Catalan government. To go out to the streets! And now it’s up to the people,” said Buitrago, a pensioner. “If we are all together, we can do it.”

After the Senate invoked the never-before-used Article 155 of Spain’s 1978 constitution, the central government could move swiftly to remove the Catalan regional president, suspend his ministers and assume authority over the region’s public media, police and finances. 

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is applauded of the members as he arrives for the Senate’s extraordinary plenary session. (Chema Moya /EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told the Senate that his government had repeatedly tried to rein in the secessionists in Catalonia. He scoffed at Puigdemont’s offers of “dialogue” to end the impasse. 

“The word dialogue is a lovely word. It creates good feelings,” Rajoy said. “But dialogue has two enemies: those who abuse, ignore and forget the laws, and those who only want to listen to themselves, who do not want to understand the other party.”

Rajoy urged the Senate to approve Article 155 “to prevent Catalonia from being abused.”

“Catalans must be protected from an intolerant minority that is awarding itself ownership of Catalonia, and is trying to subject all Catalans to the yoke of its own doctrine,” the prime minister said.

Other Spanish political parties also spoke out against Catalonia’s declaration. Pedro Sanchez, leader of the Spain’s Socialist party, said despite his disagreements with Rajoy’s government, “faced with the challenge of territorial integrity of Spain, there can be no nuance. Spain without Catalonia and vice versa is a mutilated Spain and Catalonia.”

[Whatever happens in Catalonia, anger with Spain is a sign of things to come]

In Barcelona, shouts of “Independence!” and “Democracy!” rose from an antechamber where hundreds of onlookers, including dozens of regional mayors, had gathered. 

People wave Catalan separatist flags as they gather at Sant Jaume square in Barcelona on Friday. (Juan Medina/Reuters)

The eruption was answered by disdain from anti-secessionists in the chamber. A member of the Catalan Socialist Party, Daniel Fernández, asked: “What is this? The storming of the Bastille?”

Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the left-wing national party Podemos, who defended Catalonia’s right to vote, added his voice to those criticizing Catalonia’s separatists.

“We are against the declaration of independence, not just because it is illegal, but because it is illegitimate,” he said. The Oct. 1 referendum was important “but doesn’t give them the right to declare independence,” Iglesias told journalists.

As for the invocation of Article 155, Iglesias said its coming implementation “will break one of the pillars of our living together.”

Carlos Carrizosa of the Citizens party decried the prospect of a declaration of independence, comparing it to a coup. He pointed at Puigdemont and said: “You, president, have been pro-independence your whole life. This whole plan was already laid out.”

“This movement is textbook populism, full of magical thinking, that reality has destroyed. You are willing to sacrifice all, for your pure fanaticism,” said Alejandro Fernández, a Catalan lawmaker whose Popular Party is also running the central government.

On Thursday, facing a looming deadline to act, Puigdemont appeared in the government palace in Barcelona and denounced what he described as heavy-handed negotiation tactics by the central government in Madrid.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont smiles after the Catalan regional parliament declared independence from Spain on Friday. (Albert Gea/Reuters)

“I have considered the possibility of calling elections,” Puigdemont said. But he ruled it out because “there are not enough guarantees” from the central government not to seize control of the region. He ultimately left the decision to the regional parliament.

Puigdemont reportedly sought a promise from Rajoy that the Spanish Senate would not vote on Article 155.

More than 2 million people cast ballots earlier this month for independence, though the turnout for the referendum was around 40 percent of eligible voters.

During the vote, Spanish national police and Guardia Civil paramilitary officers used harsh tactics, in some cases beating voters with rubber batons and dragging people away from the ballot boxes.

The president of Spain’s Basque region, Inigo Urkullu, a key intermediary between Rajoy and Puigdemont, told journalists that the situation in Catalonia “was very worrying” and required “responsibility” on the part of the two sides.” 

Rolfe reported from Madrid. Raul Gallego Abellan contributed to this report.

Read more         

Meet the two jailed activists behind Catalonia’s independence movement  

How fake news helped shape the Catalonia independence vote

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world            

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