Last week, a freshly indicted Steve Bannon told listeners on his radio show that the feds were, once again, coming for MAGA. The FBI had conducted 35 “raids” on Trump allies and GOP officials, he said.
At first, it was unclear what he was referring to. But recent reporting shows that Bannon, while getting the “raid” part wrong, underballed the total count.
Per multiple reports, FBI agents served nearly 40 people connected to Trump’s super PAC and the effort to create fake slates of electors with subpoenas last week, in some cases reaching to the high-ranking officials in the former administration.
The subpoenas suggest that federal prosecutors are examining Trump’s attempt to stay in office after losing the election not only as it concerned Jan. 6, but in its broader, fuller form: from the decision to claim that the election was fraudulent after Biden pulled ahead in key states, to the choice to create false slates of electors, and to the planning of rallies where Trump and others egged on crowds to pressure Mike Pence into unilaterally rejecting Biden electoral votes.
The subpoenas appear to follow the trail blazed by the Jan. 6 Committee, which in 2021 and the early months of 2022 issued its own batches of subpoenas to some of those who received them last week.
Only some of those who received the DOJ subpoenas have had their identities confirmed.
The FBI also, the New York Times reported, took a phone belonging to two Trump advisers: Boris Epshteyn, a co-commentator on Bannon’s podcast, and Mike Roman, a Trump adviser who made his name in the 2008 election by claiming that the “New Black Panther Party” was intimidating voters en masse.
Roman resurfaced in 2016 as a Trump adviser, and played a key role in the 2020 electors scheme by reportedly delivering false elector slates to Capitol Hill, where they were to be presented to Vice President Mike Pence.
The overall scope of the probe isn’t really clear at this point, though it seems to have two tracks: Trump’s PAC, Save America, and the fake electors scheme.
Other reports say that the subpoenas are seeking information about speakers at the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse, where Trump and others addresses supporters before they broke into the Capitol. Women for America First, the group that organized the rally, received a subpoena.
The fake electors scheme stands at the heart of Trump’s effort to overthrow the election, and saw the Trump campaign organize slates of fake electors in states across the country that it had lost. People signed documents falsely claiming that they had been selected as electors for the states in question, allowing, in the minds of Trump campaign attorneys, the states to either “recertify” them as the “real” victors of the 2020 election, or to give Mike Pence a way to “choose” them as the legitimate electors from the states.
It’s not clear under what statutes the investigation is proceeding.
Among those who received subpoenas were Bernie Kerik, the Rudy Giuliani associate, and Dan Scavino, Trump’s social media guru, and Stephen Miller, the Trump adviser.
The Times reported that the subpoena to Kerik came from the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, and asked about the fake electors scheme.
Other recipients of the subpoenas are less well-known. William Russell, a special assistant to Trump, reportedly got one, as did Brian Jack, the Trump White House’s political director.
In a Monday night broadcast, Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson said that his producers had obtained a copy of one subpoena that went out to an unknown recipient.
He said that the subpoena asked for information about, among other things, “Any claim that the Vice President and/or the President of the Senate had the authority to reject or choose not to count presidential electors.”
Carlson added a list of names of those who he said had received subpoenas, including many members of the legal team that assembled around Trump to argue that the 2020 presidential election result should be overturned.
Well, thank you January 6th committee.
With all of these witnesses who will inevitably turn on Trump to save their own skins, I really don’t see him avoiding jail.
“The mistake you make, don’t you see, is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You’re trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can’t. One’s got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can’t put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning.” ― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Eenie, poenae, whiney shmoe. Remember folks, the DoJ doesn’t do press releases for subpoenae. The only way we learn of them is the whining of the recipients.
“Keep the Aspidistra Flying”
Helena Bonham Carter was in that very underrated movie.