Justice Department criminal prosecutors are now looking into nearly every aspect of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — including a voter fraud conspiracy, efforts to promote baseless allegations of voter fraud and how money was leaked to support those various efforts — according to sources and copies of the new subpoenas obtained by CNN.
The probe also spans the cogs of Trump’s sprawling legal machine that has ramped up his efforts to challenge his election loss — with many of the recipients of more than 30 subpoenas issued in recent days asked to hand over communications with several Trump lawyers.
The sweeping effort has many in Trump’s world concerned about the potential legal significance of the arrest in a federal investigation.
The flurry of investigative activities included seizure warrants, including one served on Boris Epshteyn for his phone, according to several people familiar with the matter. Epshteyn remains a close associate of the former President and his business and fundraising politics.
The expanding pool of subpoena recipients also includes prominent Trump lawmakers, such as his former White House adviser Dan Scavino, who continued to work for Trump after he left office.
The subpoena’s language and activity bring together the seemingly distant parts of the Justice Department’s investigation.
The Justice Department previously obtained grand jury testimony, conducted investigations, and uncovered extensive documents about protest organizing and fundraising, efforts in and around the White House to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of the election results, and for the fake voters. This new round of subpoenas comes with more specific requests about the unsubstantiated allegations of massive voter fraud that were passed on to lawmakers, law enforcement and others.
In one of the new subpoenas seen by CNN, along with demands to contact a long list of Trump insiders and fake voters, investigators are seeking documents related to raising and spending money. Prosecutors are interested in the financing surrounding the Jan. 6 rally, bids to challenge the results and the Trump-aligned political organization formed after the election to promote claims of fraud.
The assistant U.S. attorneys signing the subpoenas work as part of a team led by District Attorney Thomas Windom in the U.S. Attorney’s office, according to court records and multiple people familiar with the investigation. Two U.S. Attorney supervisors also appear in the subpoenas, indicating that the latest sweep serves both the ongoing investigation into voter fraud and the prosecutor’s office’s larger mission to target planning violence before Jan. 6, according to sources familiar with its work. group.
The subpoenas also ask the recipients to identify all communication methods they have used since the fall of 2020 and turn over to the DOJ anything the House committee investigating has requested on Jan. 6, 2021 — whether they cooperated with the House panel or not.
“Now they’re locking up people closer and closer to the President to learn more and more about what the President knew and when he knew it,” David Laufman, a lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said Monday on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
There is no public indication that the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 probe overlaps with the federal investigation into the Trump White House’s handling of classified documents and the seizure of material from Mar-a-Lago. But the latest developments in the 2020 election investigation come as the document probe has already put Trump allies on high alert for potential legal exposure.
While those around Trump have dismissed the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 riot as political, there is a palpable shift in attitude toward the Justice Department investigation as allies and advisers recognize the importance of joining a federal investigation. according to many people in Trump’s orbit. The Trump-world figures now swept up in the investigation claim the department is on a fishing expedition to block privileged communications.
“It’s very distressing for me as an American and as a prominent lawyer for Donald Trump,” said Bruce Marks, a lawyer whose communications are of interest to investigators, according to the newly issued subpoenas.
Notorious for leaking, a normally bustling Trump world has been largely silent since the dozens of grand jury subpoenas sent out in recent days. Some subpoenas have spent the past few days trying to find the right lawyers and understand the scope of what the Justice Department is asking them to do. Others, already embroiled in other Trump investigations, know the drill — keep quiet until the dust settles.
The flurry of investigative activity came just as the Justice Department is grappling with the so-called 60-day rule, an internal policy that discourages prosecutors from taking public action in cases that are set to affect upcoming elections.
Previously, investigators sought records of interactions with a dozen Trump officials, mostly lawyers and those working with voter fraud, including Rudy Giuliani, Epstein and John Eastman.
But the latest subpoenas also seek contact with new names: high-profile right-wing Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Cleta Mitchell, as well as Marks, a Philadelphia-based lawyer who helped with Trump’s campaign appeals and a high-profile court case in which the Giuliani tried and failed to throw away all of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes.
Marks told CNN on Tuesday that he was among Trump’s lawyers after the election and frequently referred to and communicated with Giuliani and Epstein via text messages and emails about post-election efforts. Epstein was assisting Giuliani in many of his efforts to block the outcome of the vote electing Joe Biden.
The warrant served on Epshteyn, looking for his phone, is another sign of how the investigation has escalated.
In June, the Justice Department seized the phone of Eastman, the Trump lawyer who pioneered the far-fetched legal theory that Pence could suspend congressional certification of Biden’s victory. Federal investigators also searched that month the home of a former Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clarke, who was at the center of Trump’s efforts to pressure the department into supporting his conspiracies.
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Prosecutors’ willingness to obtain a warrant for Epshteyn’s phone suggests they see the campaign strategist — who is currently a Trump adviser — as playing an integral role in Trump’s 2020 election machinations. When agents seized and imaged the phone, he was also subpoenaed for documents, according to some CNN sources.
Epshteyn did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment about the investigation on his phone. The New York Times was the first to report the seizure of his phone.
The wider net the department is now casting is also evident in the types of Trump-world figures who received the latest round of calls. They include former campaign manager Bill Stepien and Sean Dollman, who worked on Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign as finance director, as well as Scavino, Trump’s former deputy chief of staff and architect of Trump’s social media presence .
Bernard Carrick, a former New York police commissioner who worked with Giuliani to find evidence of voter fraud in the weeks after the 2020 election, was also subpoenaed, as was Women for America First, the pro-Trump group that organized the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol.
Kerik was approached by a handful of agents who tried to ask him questions, which he refused to answer and so they issued him a subpoena, a person familiar with the incident said. The agents asked if he would be willing to speak with an attorney present. Eventually the agents handed him the document.
