Justice Dept. steps up Trump electors probe
The Justice Department stepped up its criminal investigation of a plan by President Donald J. Trump and his allies to create slates of so-called fake electors in a bid to keep Trump in power during the 2020 election, as federal agents delivered grand jury subpoenas Wednesday to at least four people connected to the plan.
One of those who received a subpoena, according to two people familiar with the matter, was Brad Carver, a lawyer and official of the Georgia Republican Party who claimed to be one of Trump’s electors in the state, which was won by Joe Biden.
Another subpoena recipient was Thomas Lane, an official who worked on behalf of Trump’s campaign in Arizona and New Mexico, the people said.
A third person, Shawn Flynn, a Trump campaign aide in Michigan, also got a subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter.
A fourth subpoena was issued to David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, who served as a fake elector for Trump.
The fake elector plan is the focus of one of two known prongs of the Justice Department’s broad grand jury investigation of Trump’s multiple and interlocking attempts to subvert the election. The other has focused on a wide 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 storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
This latest round of activity in the Justice Department’s inquiry came amid the House Jan. 6 committee’s hearings into Trump’s efforts to reverse the outcome of the election.
The subpoenas, issued by a grand jury sitting in Washington, have also sought records and information about other pro-Trump figures like Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner and longtime ally of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
At Tuesday’s hearing, the committee for the first time directly connected Trump to the fake electors scheme, introducing a recorded deposition from Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, in which she recounted how Trump called her “to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors.”
The first subpoenas in the fake elector inquiry were largely sent to people in key swing states who almost took part in the plan but eventually did not for various reasons. This new round of subpoenas appears to be the first time that Trump campaign officials were brought into the investigation, marking a small but potentially significant step closer to Trump himself.
The plan was developed as Trump and his allies sought to promote baseless assertions of widespread election fraud in key swing states and persuade state officials to reverse their certification of Biden’s victory.