Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained grand jury subpoenas last month for communications between Trump, his campaign, and top campaign staffers and local officials in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
TPM has reviewed a subpoena issued to the Milwaukee County Clerk, dated Nov. 22.
The subpoenas went to at least five counties in swing states where the Trump campaign sought to reverse the election results in 2020.
They are Dane County, Wisconsin, Maricopa County, Arizona, and Wayne County, Michigan, the Washington Post reported. TPM confirmed Tuesday that another subpoena was sent to officials in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and received a copy of the subpoena issued to Milwaukee County.
Smith, who was appointed by Garland last month, is not known to have issued any subpoenas before this batch of demands.
The subpoenas request any and all communications with the Trump campaign, Trump, and a series of aides that include 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien and attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, and Cleta Mitchell.
The subpoena to the Wisconsin counties also asks for communications with attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis. The date range for all of the subpoenas is reportedly for communications between June 1, 2020 to Jan. 20, 2021.
The Milwaukee subpoena obtained by TPM names Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Burke and Daniel Mehochko, a special agent in the FBI’s Washington Field Office. Burke has recently appeared in cases brought in the Eastern District of Virginia.
The subpoenas suggest a broader look at the campaign to reverse the election result than the DOJ has so far shown, nearly two years after the Capitol insurrection.
But the requests under Smith point not only to a broad review, but a deep review as well. Chesebro, for example, drafted the initial memos that sketched out the scheme to install fake, pro-Trump electors in states that Biden won. He also provided legal advice to the Trump campaign as it sought to use the January 6 certification session as a last-ditch platform to reverse Biden’s win.
Other reported recipients of the subpoena — like John Eastman — helmed the Trump campaign’s legal efforts nationwide, and put forth a theory that would have seen Vice President Mike Pence unilaterally reject electoral votes submitted by states that Biden won so that Republican-controlled legislatures could award Trump a victory, contrary to Biden’s winning vote totals in those states.
A California federal judge called Eastman’s activity earlier this year “a coup in search of a legal theory,” and said that he had uncovered evidence to suggest that the conservative movement attorney had misled a Georgia federal court.
Smith, per the Washington Post’s characterization of the subpoena, appears to be reviewing the pressure that Trump and those around him placed on local election officials in the weeks and months before January 6.
In Michigan’s Wayne County, for example, Trump reportedly called the Republican chairwoman of the county board of canvassers after she initially voted against certifying the local election results.
The Trump campaign had also sued to invalidate results in Wayne County, where Detroit is located. That lawsuit included more than 100 affidavits which were not only ridiculed as absurd in the press, but whose incorporation in a subsequent “Kraken” lawsuit led a Michigan federal judge to conclude were fraudulent.
A Maricopa County spokesperson confirmed to TPM that they intend to comply with Smith’s request. The Wayne County Clerk’s office also confirmed to TPM receipt of the subpoena from the DOJ.
Read a copy of the subpoena here:
This is the guy who prosecuted John Edwards for campaign violations when someone paid Edwards’ mistress on his behalf. He also prosecuted the governor of Virginia for bribery, before SCOTUS hollowed out bribery charges.
He’s very aggressive.
About time, no?
As we say in French “Le teeheehee…”
Third.Fourth! I was so excited to think I could be first. I need a different life…LOLThe Force is strong with this one…