In investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said Trump and a string of political aides knew he lost the election. Nonetheless, it also delves into whether they raised money from claims they lost.They are fighting widespread fraud in voting results, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Prosecutors, led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, have released as much as $250 million through the Political Action Committee, arguing that Trump and his aides need the money to fight election fraud. I am trying to determine if I violated federal wire fraud laws because I procured Despite being repeatedly told there was no evidence to support those fraud claims.
Prosecutors are looking at the inner workings of the commission, the Save America PAC, and the Trump campaign’s efforts to prove baseless claims that Trump was tricked into avoiding victory.
Over the past few months, prosecutors have issued multiple subpoenas to make sense of Save America, which was set up shortly after the election as Trump’s primary fundraiser. First round of subpoenasIt highlights various Republican officials and vendors who received payments from Save America before Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 election and Smith was named Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in November. It was something.
More recently, however, investigators have focused on the activities of the 2020 Trump campaign staff and the Community Chest Committee, which includes members of the Republican National Committee. Some of the subpoenas are asking for documents from around Election Day 2020 to the present.
Prosecutors have focused on details of the campaign’s finances, spending and fundraising. For example, who approved the email solicitations sent to a list of small donors, what they knew about the truth of the fraud claims, and so on. people who are knowledgeable about their work. All three areas overlap and may inform prosecutors’ thoughts on whether to proceed with prosecutions in investigations where witness interviews are still taking place.
It was possible that the fundraising effort was criminally rigged. First proposed by the House Select Committee last year It is investigating Trump’s efforts to stay in power.
But the Department of Justice, with its ability to bring criminal charges, was able to obtain broader cooperation from many witnesses. , targeting communications between Trump campaign aides and other Republican officials to determine whether the barrage of fundraising solicitations sent after the election was willfully misleading. .
The fundraising effort is just one focus of Smith’s investigation into Trump’s attempt to reverse his poll defeat.
Prosecutors are also accusing Trump of plans to rally pro-Trump electoral votes from battleground states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Trump’s widespread pressure to block or delay Congressional recognition of Biden’s Electoral College victory is investigating. On January 6, 2021, it will lead to the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters.
On Thursday, former Vice President Mike Pence, a key witness to Trump’s efforts, said: testified for hours before a grand jury Gather evidence during an investigation.
Prosecutors have explored investigations commissioned by the Trump campaign in the immediate aftermath of the election to prove widespread wrongdoing, public statements made by the Trump campaign at the time, fundraisers and ties to the founding of Save America.
Washington Post report first Regarding efforts by the campaign to fund a new round of research into fraud claims and subpoenas.
Trump’s team could argue that the fundraising represented a political speech with broadly vague solicitations, and criminal prosecution of it raises First Amendment issues that could threaten future candidates. Political fundraising materials often contain exaggeration and exaggeration.
Republicans may also argue that the claims Democrats used in their fundraising solicitations are lax. And the Trump campaign may claim that it actually used the money to investigate fraud.
Advisers to the Trump campaign said the “shadow government” was stepping up its attacks on the former president as his approval ratings rose. “Ever since President Trump stepped down the escalator, the ‘political police’ have been pushing witch hunts, and they have been proven wrong each time,” the adviser added.
A representative for the Republican National Committee declined to comment.
Shortly after the election, Trump campaign advisers reached out to Ken Block, owner of Rhode Island-based firm Simpatico Software Systems, to evaluate certain fraud allegations.
Block ended up investigating multiple allegations of possible fraud brought in by Trump aides. He did not produce a final report. But each time he investigated his claims, he said in interviews that he found nothing in it.
“We found no substantive fraud sufficient to disprove everything that came in and overturn the election results,” Block said. He said Trump was isolated from what was happening in the race because he continued to taunt his aides about staying in office and claiming he won the election.
“I was completely cut off from all the madness,” Block said. His company was paid $735,000, records show. He received a subpoena for the documents, but declined to discuss anything related to the grand jury in his interviews.
Days into working with Block and Simpatico, the Trump campaign hired a second firm, Berkeley Research Group. A federal grand jury has received evidence that Barkley was hired at the suggestion of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who oversaw his political activism.
The grand jury is asking questions related to whether Trump was briefed on the Berkeley findings suggesting there was no widespread wrongdoing.
The company eventually filed a report saying it hadn’t done anything wrong to change the outcome of the election, and was paid about $600,000 for the job. A person briefed on the matter said the firm was hired through Kasowitz Benson Torres, a law firm that has long represented Trump in his personal capacity. He was not involved in pursuing allegations of election fraud against Mr.
A deputy attorney for Berkeley Research Group declined to discuss the matter further, saying the company has a “no comment” policy.
During the proceedings of a House committee on Jan. 6, several people close to Trump testified that they told him that no fraud had been done to change the outcome of the vote.
Within two weeks of the election, Trump campaign public relations staff released an internal report exposing many aspects of the conspiracy theory that voting machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems were hacked and used to steal votes from Trump. was drafted. The report was written before pro-Trump lawyers like Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani promoted the Dominion’s false story at press conferences and on television.
As part of an investigation into the Trump campaign’s post-election fundraising, the committee on Jan. 6 identified Salesforce, a vendor that helped the campaign and the Republican National Committee send emails to potential donors. Summoned records from com. The RNC fought back and filed a lawsuit to vacate the subpoena, which a House committee eventually withdrew.
Federal prosecutors in the latest subpoena were looking for documents related to Salesforce in addition to other vendors, according to a person briefed on the matter.
