During the Kash Patel hearing yesterday, Chuck Grassley threw a bunch of new documents out to create a distraction: New informant reports targeting Hunter Biden, several documents he already declassified, and what has been taken to be a single document about the Jack Smith investigation.
He did so, presumably, to point to this entry noting that Jack Smith collected information affecting Turning Point USA — Charlie Kirk’s organization.
I think the item, a subpoena, may not be what it appears. It appears the subpoena itself was served on Event Strategies, the entity which produced January 6, not TPUSA itself. I’m fairly certain that the investigation into the 80 busses TPUSA paid for was investigated earlier, in the first year of the investigation, along with a bunch of other entities that sent busses.
What’s more interesting is it appears that these are two separate documents (indeed, Grassley’s press release refers to “documents”). The most obvious sign of that is that the first page, described as a summary, is dated 1/23/2023. Whereas the other five pages — which appear to match the title of the document, Arctic Frost Bank Record Subpoenas — show subpoena returns with dates long after the date of the summary, going through a subpoena pertaining to Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman to Fidelity completed on July 6, 2023. [Note: The release of this document exposes the banks of dozens of Trump associates, a fairly alarming privacy violation.]
The five pages of subpoenas focus on several topics, largely the following:
- J6 $
- Wire fraud
- Misappropriation
- Payments to lawyers
- Bogus investigations
- Obstruction
- Credit reports
Most of this traces several prongs of investigation that were publicly reported at the time — largely picking up efforts of the January 6 Committee — showing that Trump raised money in the guise of election integrity, but then paid it to people like Brad Parscale or Dan Scavino.
Based on dates, this appears to be a key focus of Jack Smith once he was appointed. This was one prong of the investigation I had hoped would be — but was not — in Jack Smith’s final report.
But it’s barely reflected in the summary dated January 23, 2023.* There’s one line of effort, “Financial Fraud: Allegations of false/misleading representation to raise money post-election.” There’s one possible crime, 18 USC 15343, that might be the applicable crime (or, given that it accompanies 18 USC 371, the charge ultimately focused on the fake electors). But there’s no sign of any campaign finance crimes.
And it’s not entirely clear that the summary is complete. After all, there’s one crime — 18 USC 241, Conspiracy against Rights — ultimately charged against Trump that doesn’t appear at all.
And whether there are more pages to this summary or not, it’s a dated summary. The investigation continued at least six months after that summary, and (given that details from Mike Roman’s phone only appeared in later filings), probably more.
Chuck Grassley and Kash Patel seem to have released a distraction, one targeted to exploit the Charlie Kirk murder, rather than the most informative document it could have.
* A word about timing. DOJ convened a dedicated grand jury on January 31, 2022. The summary is an FBI document, which starts from April 2022, reflecting the delay described in this famous WaPo story. I suspect that the summary reflects only things that happened after April 2022, because known investigative steps — such as those targeting Sidney Powell in September 2021 — don’t appear in it.