WaPo: Feds Probe Trump Effort To Block 2020 Election

Federal prosecutors are asking witnesses about former President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election, the Washington Post reports.

The DOJ got access to phone communications records of former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the paper reported. Prosecutors obtained Meadows’ records and those of other top former Trump administration officials in April, per the report.

The Post’s report suggests that the Trump investigation has become far broader than was previously known, encompassing not only the violence of Jan. 6 and efforts to replace Biden electors with false, pro-Trump ones but also the broader attempt to block the results of the election from going through.

It comes after questions about the DOJ’s approach, with some progressives and former federal prosecutors suggesting that Attorney General Merrick Garland was moving too slowly, and that he had wasted time by spending the first year of the investigation focusing on the violence of Jan. 6 itself and not the broader scheme.

The Post reported that after the first year, prosecutors increased their focus in 2022 on potential fraud in the the fake elector scheme. That, the newspaper reported, has been running on a parallel track to another investigation, into seditious conspiracy allegations that focus on the planning of the Jan. 6 attack.

Two aides to Vice President Mike Pence recently appeared before a federal grand jury in D.C.

The Post reported that prosecutors have asked witnesses appearing before the same grand jury about “about conversations with Trump, his lawyers, and others in his inner circle” involved in the fake elector scheme. That has included “hours of detailed questions” about meetings that Trump held in December 2020 and January 2021, his efforts to pressure Pence, and the scope of Trump’s involvement in the fake elector scheme.

Read the Post’s story here.