Donald Trump is under investigation by the Justice Department as part of its criminal investigation into attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a report.
Prosecutors in recent days have asked witnesses to testify before a grand jury over conversations with the former president, his lawyers and other close advisers about “false voters,” according to the report. The Washington Post.
Attorneys for the Department of Justice have asked “hours of detailed questions about meetings Mr. Trump presided over in December 2020 and January 2021; his campaign to overturn the election; and what instructions he gave his lawyers and advisers about false voters and sending voters back to the states,” two sources told the newspaper on Tuesday.
The unnamed sources told the paper that some questions focused on Mr Trump’s direct role in the “fake voter” scheme led by Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.
Prosecutors received phone records in April from top Trump White House officials, including his then Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the After reported.
“The Washington Post and other news organizations have previously written that the Justice Department is investigating the conduct of Eastman, Giuliani and others in Trump’s orbit. But the level of prosecutors’ interest in Trump’s actions has not been previously reported, nor has the assessment of senior Trump aides’ phone records,” the paper said.
Two individuals familiar with the investigation told the paper there were two “main leads of the investigation that could eventually lead to additional Trump investigation.”
The sources told the newspaper that the first incendiary conspiracy and conspiracy includes conspiracy to obstruct government proceedings, the kind of charges already filed against the leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, who did not enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, but aided in planning what happened there.
The After says the second possible fraud could be related to the “fake voter” scheme or the pressure Trump and his allies are putting on the Justice Department to falsely claim electoral fraud.
It comes on the same day that Attorney General Merrick Garland told… NBC Nightly News that the DoJ planned to prosecute anyone “criminally responsible for disrupting the peaceful transfer of power from one government to another.”
“Look, the Justice Department has done the most extensive investigation in its history,” he said.
“And the committee also conducts an extremely broad investigation. Inevitably there are things they find before we find them. And it is inevitable that there will be things that we find that they have not found. That is what you get when you have two broad investigations running at the same time.”
Mr Garland gave a rare interview on an ongoing investigation after he became the target of the left’s anger over his speed and was accused on Twitter of walking it slow during an election year.
But in recent days, former chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, Marc Short, and his attorney, Greg Jacob, have both appeared before the grand jury in Washington DC.
Trump was also in Washington on Tuesday to deliver his first speech since leaving the White House for Florida in January 2021.
In the speech to the America First Policy Institute, Mr. Trump claimed that he had ordered the Secret Service to evacuate homeless camps in Washington DC.