The special counsel investigating Donald Trump has new emails, letters and other documents from election officials in battleground states, as the federal probe accelerates into whether the former president should face criminal charges for efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
(Bloomberg) — The special counsel investigating Donald Trump has new emails, letters and other documents from election officials in battleground states, as the federal probe accelerates into whether the former president should face criminal charges for efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Two years after the US Capitol attack and with the 2024 election cycle looming, Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of Justice Department prosecutors are combing through new testimony and evidence. He’s set to make critical decisions about whether to bring charges, possibly in a matter of weeks, according to people familiar with the matter.
Officials in several states confirmed they have complied with an early round of grand jury subpoenas from Smith’s office. One set of material reviewed by Bloomberg from a key battleground in Nevada shows Trump’s 2020 campaign representatives lobbing accusations of fraud and mismanagement at local officials in the days after the election.
Attorneys working under Smith are also poring over dozens of interview transcripts from the congressional panel that just wrapped up its own Jan. 6 probe, said people familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be named to discuss information not yet public. That includes testimony from White House aides who said Trump knew he lost the election and at least one Republican official who linked the former president to efforts to seat alternate slates of electors in some states he lost.
“You can tell that it’s moving quickly,” said Brian Kidd, a former federal prosecutor who served under Smith at the Justice Department.
Kidd, now a partner at Morrison & Foerster, said the information that’s come out so far about Smith’s activity – like the recent round of subpoenas to officials in 2020 battleground states – shows that concerns the probe would slow down after Attorney General Merrick Garland decided to appoint a special counsel were unfounded.
Smith Back in DC
Smith recently arrived back in Washington from Europe, where the former war crimes prosecutor was recovering from a cycling accident in the weeks since his appointment, to steer the unprecedented investigations into Trump, according to the people.
The Justice Department hasn’t publicly addressed the logistics of Smith’s office and declined to comment.
Smith is overseeing two distinct Trump investigations: one into the former president’s handling of government documents and the other into the Jan. 6 attack and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Smith has largely kept in place existing teams of prosecutors, according to other people familiar with the investigation. One person said that at least 20 people — a mix of assistant US attorneys and officials from Washington and other offices — are handling components of the Jan. 6 investigation.
Two other people familiar with the Jan. 6 investigation said that they had been communicating with the same prosecutors before and after Smith’s appointment, which they saw as a sign of continuity.
Grand jury subpoenas sent by Smith’s office show prosecutors have continued to focus on the Trump campaign’s post-election activities. Subpoenas went to officials in seven states that Joe Biden won and where Trump and his allies used pressure campaigns on politicians and election officials to try to undermine vote tallies and create “fake” slates of pro-Trump electors.
Fraud Allegations
State and county officials in Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico and Nevada confirmed they’ve complied with subpoenas. Officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin declined to comment or didn’t immediately respond.
Bloomberg reviewed 35 pages of emails, letters and other documents that Clark County, Nevada, sent to Smith’s office on Dec. 22. The emails show cordial exchanges before the election as county officials fielded questions about deadlines and voter information from representatives of Trump’s 2020 campaign. After the election, however, the tone shifts, with the campaign accusing the county of failing to protect mail ballots “from fraud and abuse” and of “stonewalling” Republican poll watchers.
Smith’s other probe — into how Trump handled government documents the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate — is further along to the point where some prosecutors believe they have enough evidence to charge the former president but there’s concern among others about bringing such a politically charged case. Trump has already declared he’s running for president again in 2024.
Trump’s decision to give up the fight over thousands of documents seized by the FBI last summer closed a rare public window into the government’s activities. Trump’s lawyers appeared in court last month amid reports that the Justice Department had asked to hold Trump in contempt. Media outlets (including Bloomberg News) have asked the court to disclose information about that proceeding, but a judge hasn’t ruled yet.
Next Steps
Some charging decisions could be made within weeks, especially if Smith moves to pressure individuals into cooperating. The special counsel’s office and Justice Department leaders realize that the historic investigations and the potential for politically explosive indictments and trials will collide with the 2024 presidential election calendar as the year goes on, according to people familiar.
Trump maintains an early lead to secure the Republican nomination for president with an energized base of supporters who will likely see any effort to prosecute him as an unjustified political witch hunt by a Justice Department weaponized by the Biden administration.
Investigators are also going through deposition transcripts provided by the now-defunct congressional committee and will have to decide if they want to bring in any of those witnesses for more questioning or to testify before a grand jury.
“You want to make sure you understand what they said before, what follow up needs to be done, and for those witnesses you think might be valuable, there’s a whole bunch of work to see if what they said can be corroborated,” said Kelly Currie, a partner at Crowell & Moring and former colleague of Smith’s at the Justice Department.
The Jan. 6 committee made a criminal referral against Trump last month for illegally engaging in a conspiracy to make false statements to Congress by submitting fake electoral certificates. The panel presented its findings as hard evidence that Trump and his associates committed crimes, particularly by creating fake electors.
It will be up to Smith and his team to wade through the newly released transcripts from the committee and sort through what evidence is incriminating to Trump and what may actually help his defense.
The committee relied on parts of a recorded interview with Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, who connected Trump directly to the conspiracy to create fake electors. But a 59-page transcript of her deposition released this week shows she said the alternate electors were only to be put forward if the Trump campaign won court cases contesting results in battleground states.
She also said Trump “very much” believed that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to reject the electors for Biden, which speaks to Trump’s state of mind at the time.
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