By Brendan O’Brien and Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (RockedBuzz via Reuters) – The special counsel overseeing two federal investigations related to Donald Trump issued grand jury subpoenas to local election officials in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin as part of an inquiry into efforts to overturn the leak. ‘former Republican president in the 2020 US election.
Two of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Nov. 22 subpoenas that were sent to Wisconsin officials in Milwaukee and Dane counties requested “any communications in any form to, from, or involving” Trump or his campaign between 1 June 2020 and his last day as president on January 20, 2021, according to copies seen by RockedBuzz via Reuters.
The subpoenas also requested disclosures involving a list of Trump’s attorneys during the 2020 campaign, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Justin Clark, Jenna Ellis and Cleta Mitchell.
On Nov. 18, three days after Trump announced his 2024 presidential run, US Attorney General Merrick Garland named Smith to take over the two Justice Department investigations. The other investigation focuses on Trump’s handling of sensitive government documents after he left office.
A Maricopa County spokesman in Arizona confirmed it had received a subpoena and said officials would comply, but declined to provide further details. A Michigan Wayne County spokesman declined to confirm or deny the existence of a subpoena.
The subpoenas, first reported by the Washington Post, were issued just days after Smith, who served as a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague, began his job.
In the investigation into the documents, FBI agents carried out a court-approved search Aug. 8 of the Trump estate in Mar-a-Lago. About 100 documents marked as classified were among the thousands of documents seized. The investigators are also investigating a possible obstruction of the probe. The department said 13,000 documents totaling about 22,000 pages were recovered.
The subpoenas sent to officials in Wisconsin, Arizona and Michigan resemble those previously sent to other witnesses, including Republican Party leaders and elected state officials in key states since the 2020 election.
The Justice Department is investigating a failed attempt by Trump allies to overturn the 2020 results by sending batches of fake voter lists — for the state-by-state system that determines presidential election winners — to the U.S. National Archives and trying to prevent Congress from certifying the electoral victory of Democrat Joe Biden.
Reporters covering the federal courthouse in Washington on Tuesday also saw former White House aide Stephen Miller enter the building to appear before a grand jury for the second time in two weeks. Miller is the latest former White House executive and vice president to appear before a grand jury in recent months.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; Additional reporting by Katharine Jackson in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham and Tim Ahmann)
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