CNN
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The FBI, conscious of not wanting to appear partisan, had to go months without launching a formal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s role in efforts to subvert the 2020 election. The Washington Post reported Monday, though the episode does not appear to have significantly hampered prosecutors’ ability to look at Trump for federal crimes over the past two years.
Shortly after the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, senior Justice Department and FBI officials dismissed as premature a plan to investigate Trump allies as part of their investigation and , initially avoided naming him as a target, the Post reported, citing multiple familiar sources.
Prosecutor JP Cooney, the Post said, pushed to expand the investigation to look into possible ties between extremists and some in Trump’s orbit and proposed to do so in February 2021. But in addition to feeling it was premature , senior officials who initially rejected this proposal were also weary of the political risks and straying from standard investigative procedure, according to the Post.
Instead, top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, encouraged prosecutors to build cases up the ladder as they initially faced cases against Trump supporters who participated in the Capitol riots. About a year before special counsel Jack Smith was appointed to examine Trump, his inner circle and on January 6, prosecutors were investigating coordinated efforts to support the riots, including looking at political figures, and He gave them the green light to make a decision. case to Trump if the evidence led to it, CNN previously reported.
Citing a review of internal documents, court files, congressional records, contemporaneous handwritten notes and interviews with current and former officials, The Post recounts for the first time meetings and discussions, particularly within the FBI at an early and difficult time in the unprecedented criminal investigation. . Now under the purview of the special counsel, the investigation surrounding Trump and the 2020 election has moved very quickly, particularly to secure grand jury testimony from top White House officials and even the ‘former Vice President Mike Pence.
However, officials early on rejected a proposal that would have refined the documents used by Trump to pressure Pence not to certify the 2020 election, according to the Post.
After his confirmation in March 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland, along with Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and FBI Director Christopher Wray, doubled down on a bottom-up approach that focused first in pursuit of the riots, the Post said. Garland’s early attempts to avoid allegations of a politically motivated investigation worried some within the department, who told the Post that he slowed investigative efforts.
The DOJ and FBI declined to make Garland, Monaco and Wray available for interviews to the newspaper, he reported.
But each has discussed the general methods of research. Monaco told CNN in January 2022, a year after Trump left office, that federal prosecutors were looking into the use of false Electoral College certifications to try to declare Trump the winner of the presidency. Garland, on the one-year anniversary of the Capitol attack, said in a speech that the department was building investigations by “laying the groundwork” and following the facts to hold “perpetrators, at any level” accountable.
The department last summer began ramping up its investigation directly into Trump, particularly using multiple subpoenas to secure hard-to-get documents and testimony from a grand jury in Washington.
CNN reported at the time that the department had subpoenaed GOP officials in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania in late June 2022, and by September had subpoenaed more than 30 people in the former president’s orbit, including officials from the 2020 campaign.
In announcing Smith as special counsel, Garland said Smith “has built a reputation as an impartial and determined prosecutor.”
