The Justice Department stepped up its criminal investigation into a plot by Donald J. Trump and his allies to create so-called fake voter lists in an attempt to keep Trump in power during the 2020 election, as federal agents served subpoenas from the grand jury. Wednesday to at least three people connected to the plan.
One of those served with a subpoena, according to two people familiar with the matter, was Brad Carver, a lawyer and Georgia Republican Party official who claimed to be one of Trump’s electors in the state, which was won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Another recipient of the subpoena was Thomas Lane, an official who worked on behalf of the Trump campaign in Arizona and New Mexico, the people said.
A third person, Sean Flynn, a Trump campaign aide in Michigan, also received a subpoena, according to people familiar with the matter. The issuance of new citations was first reported by The Washington Post.
None of the three men could be reached for comment on the subpoenas.
The bogus election plan is the focus of one of two known strands of the Justice Department’s sweeping grand jury investigation into Trump’s multiple and intertwined attempts to subvert the election. The other has focused on a broad cast of political organizers, White House aides and members of Congress connected in various ways to Trump’s incendiary speech near the White House that directly preceded the January 6 takeover of Capitol Hill. 2021.
The Topics of the House Committee Hearings on January 6
This latest round of activity in the Justice Department investigation came amid high-profile House select committee hearings into Trump’s efforts to reverse the election result. It also comes less than a month after an earlier round of grand jury subpoenas revealed that prosecutors have been seeking information about the role a group of pro-Trump lawyers played in the bogus election effort. Those attorneys included Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, James Troupis, and Justin Clark.
The subpoenas, issued by a grand jury in Washington, also seek records and information on other pro-Trump figures such as Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner and longtime Giuliani ally.
Many of the lawyers named in the subpoenas were also mentioned Tuesday at the House select committee public hearing that explored Trump’s wide-ranging pressure campaign to persuade state officials to help him stay in office.
At the hearing, the committee for the first time directly connected Trump to the plan, presenting a recorded statement from Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, in which she recounted how Trump called her and put Eastman on the phone “to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign rally these contingent voters.”
The first subpoenas in the bogus election investigation were largely sent to people in key states who almost participated in the scheme but ultimately didn’t for various reasons. This new round of subpoenas appears to be the first time Trump campaign officials have been involved in the investigation, marking a small but potentially significant step closer to Trump himself.
The plan to create pro-Trump voters in states won by Biden was one of the first and most extensive of several plots by Trump and his allies to overturn election results. It involved lawyers, state officials, White House and campaign aides, and members of Congress.
The plan unfolded as Trump and his allies sought to promote baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in key swing states and persuade state officials to revoke their certification of Biden’s victory. His goal was to have pro-Trump lists by the time Vice President Mike Pence oversees the official certification of electoral votes during a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.
Trump and others close to him made a relentless effort in the weeks leading up to January 6 to persuade Pence to either count pro-Trump voters and give him a victory in the Electoral College or declare that the election was uncertain because lists of competing voters had been received in several states.
The idea was to buy Trump more time to continue his baseless claims of fraud or potentially send the election to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation would get a single vote. Because more delegations were controlled by Republicans than Democrats, Trump could have won.
adam goldman Y glenn thrush contributed report.
Reference-www.nytimes.com