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Over the past week, the Justice Department sent out about 40 subpoenas and took the phones of two top Trump advisors. This is a big step in the criminal investigation of the former president's role in the Jan. 6 riot.
Sources familiar with the investigation told the New York Times on Monday that the department sent subpoenas to close allies of former President Donald Trump and seized the phones of longtime Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn and campaign strategist Mike Roman.
Sources say that federal agents took the two men's phones as proof last week.
Both of them are thought to have been part of a plan to use fake lists of electors to change the results of the 2020 election in their state and keep former President Donald Trump in office.
The Times asked both of them for comments, but neither of them replied.
A report said that the Justice Department sent subpoenas to a wide range of Trump allies, from low-level aides to his top advisors.
Dan Scavino, who used to be in charge of Trump's social media, and Bernard Kerik, who used to be in charge of the NYPD and spread false claims about voter fraud during the 2020 election, were both reportedly called in for questioning.
Many of the subpoenas ask for information about the plan to use "fake electors" in 2020 to send lists of electors who support Trump from swing states that President Joe Biden actually won.
In the past, subpoenas related to the scheme asked lawyers like Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Jeffrey Clark for information. Around the same time, federal investigators took Eastman's and Clark's phones.
Last month, they also sent subpoenas to Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania because of the fake electors plot.
The Times said that some of the subpoenas focus on the activities of the Save America political action committee, which Trump set up after the election to raise money. The new information makes people wonder if Trump got money under the pretense of fighting fake election fraud.
The Justice Department is looking into what Trump and his team did before and on January 6, 2020. The department is also looking into the former president for taking classified papers from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago home.
It is also not related to the investigation that a special House committee started on January 6. However, the Times reports that at least some of the 40 new subpoenas ask for the same records that were given to the House committee to be given to the criminal investigation.
The Justice Department didn't say anything about the paper's conclusions, the article said.
