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Judge Scott McAfee Orders Fani Willis to Get Rid of Nathan Wade

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Judge Scott McAfee just ruled that either Fani Willis and her office have to step down from the Trump prosecution, or Nathan Wade must go.

Ultimately, dismissal of the indictment is not the appropriate remedy to adequately dissipate the financial cloud of impropriety and potential untruthfulness found here. See Olsen v. State, 302 Ga. 288, 294 (2017) (“Dismissal of an indictment is an extreme sanction, used only sparingly as a remedy for unlawful government conduct.”) (quoting State v. Lampl, 296 Ga. 892, 896 (2015)). There has not been a showing that the Defendants’ due process rights have been violated or that the issues involved prejudiced the Defendants in any way. Nor is disqualification of a constitutional officer necessary when a less drastic and sufficiently remedial option is available. The Court therefore concludes that the prosecution of this case cannot proceed until the State selects one of two options. The District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office, and refer the prosecution to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council for reassignment. See O.C.G.A. § 15-18-5. Alternatively, SADA Wade can withdraw, allowing the District Attorney, the Defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case.

He ruled that their relationship did not create an actual conflict of interest, but did create an appearance of one.

Whether this case ends in convictions, acquittals, or something in between, the result should be one that instills confidence in the process. A reasonable observer unburdened by partisan blinders should believe the law was impartially applied, that those accused of crimes had a fair opportunity to present their defenses, and that any verdict was based on our criminal justice system’s best efforts at ascertaining the truth. Any distractions that detract from these goals, if remedial under the law, should be proportionally addressed. After consideration of the record established on these motions, the Court finds the allegations and evidence legally insufficient to support a finding of an actual conflict of interest. However, the appearance of impropriety remains and must be handled as previously outlined before the prosecution can proceed.

The prosecution will go forward.

He also suggested he would entertain gagging Willis from any further public comment about the case, based on her comments at an Atlanta Church after the allegations were made public.

Here’s the link, via Anna Bower.

Update: Wade has now resigned from the case.

Mike Roman, Donald Trump’s Spy and Vote Fraud Fraudster

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WaPo has an overdue profile of Mike Roman, the guy who threatens blow up the Fani Willis prosecution by exposing a romantic relationship between her and prosecutor Nate Wade.

It describes how the guy who recruited a bunch of the most prominent Republicans in swing states across the country to sign onto fraudulent certificates claiming Trump won had previously served as — basically — a spy, first for the Kochs and then for Trump.

As Mike Roman spoke to a gathering of fellow conservative activists in March 2022, he offered a glimpse of the intelligence-gathering skills he had honed over the previous decade working as an opposition researcher for Donald Trump and Republican megadonors.

“I show my wife this all the time when we go to a hotel,” Roman told the crowd in Harrisburg, Pa., according to an audio recording reviewed by The Washington Post. “She logs on to the Hilton WiFi, and I go on and I ‘tap, tap, tap,’ and I show her everybody else that’s on there and how we could get into their computer.”

But it fails to make a few key points clear. Consider what it means, for example, that this is the guy that the Koch brothers would use to pick Republican candidates to back.

Roman’s unit compiled a “Weekly Intelligence Briefing,” with information about political races and recommendations about where the network’s donors should contribute, according to a person who worked there with Roman and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the organization’s internal operations.

Or consider the real implications that Roman served in Trump’s White House in the guise of “vetting” candidates.

Roman was made a special assistant to the president and White House director of special projects and research, reporting to then-White House counsel Donald McGahn and earning $115,000 per year. Roman was a private investigator of sorts for McGahn’s office, responsible for vetting potentially controversial nominations, according to a former senior administration official.

“It would be like, ‘We’ve heard an appointee might have a shady business deal,’ or ‘Counsel is hearing something about a presidential nominee that could cause a huge problem for us. Can you figure it out?’” the former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive White House work.

Trump in no way eschewed “appointees [with] a shady business deal.” His Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce had fairly astounding shady business deals, as did Trump’s son-in-law (though he was never going to be subject to vetting). The culmination of Don McGahn’s tenure as White House Counsel was installing Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, and the rape allegations against Kavanaugh obscured further problematic allegations still further.

If Mike Roman was in charge of vetting, he let a lot of epically corrupt people through his “vetting” process.

So yeah, as I noted the moment the Fani Willis scandal broke and this story confirms, it was no surprise that any vulnerabilities Fani Willis had were discovered by Mike Roman.

Going on the offense against the prosecutor was a trademark Roman tactic, according to the former senior official on Trump’s 2020 campaign. “This is a classic Mike Roman move,” the former official said. “When I saw the filing, I said, ‘That’s Mike.’ It’s a good one.”

But once you understand that Roman’s focus has traditionally been trained on Republicans at least as much as Democrats, a lot else begins to make sense.

Update: As someone noted to me on Twitter, Roman had actually gone to RNC by the time Kavanaugh was nominated.

Update: Here’s Fani Willis’ response to Roman’s allegations. She doesn’t deny a personal relationship but says it post-dates when she hired Nate Wade. I’m not going to wade [sic] through it, but will link credible analysis when I see it.

DOJ Will Show that Trump’s Campaign Intended to Cause a Riot at TCF Center in Detroit

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Jack Smith’s team has submitted a 404(b) notice — evidence that may not be intrinsic to the case but that describes Trump’s criminal propensity and helps prove his motive — in Trump’s DC case.

Along with providing examples where Trump continued to target someone (in this case Ruby Freeman) long after his prior targeting of her had resulted in threats and Trump’s celebration of insurrectionists like Enrique Tarrio, DOJ includes a heavily-redacted passage describing a Trump campaign employee’s attempt to cause a riot at the TCF Center, where election workers were counting the votes of Detroiters.

The Government also plans to introduce evidence of an effort undertaken by an agent (and unindicted co-conspirator) of the defendant who worked for his campaign (“the Campaign Employee”) to, immediately following the election, obstruct the vote count. On November 4, 2020, the Campaign Employee exchanged a series of text messages with an attorney supporting the Campaign’s election day operations at the TCF Center in Detroit, where votes were being counted; in the messages, the Campaign Employee encouraged rioting and other methods of obstruction when he learned that the vote count was trending in favor of the defendant’s opponent.

[seven lines redacted]

The Government will also show that around the time of these messages, an election official at the TCF Center observed that as Biden began to take the lead, a large number of untrained individuals flooded the TCF Center and began making illegitimate and aggressive challenges to the vote count. Thereafter, Trump made repeated false claims regarding election activities at the TCF Center, when in truth his agent was seeking to cause a riot to disrupt the count. This evidence is admissible to demonstrate that the defendant, his co-conspirators, and agents had knowledge that the defendant had lost the election, as well as their intent and motive to obstruct and overturn the legitimate results.

This is may be a reference to Mike Roman. Roman — Trump’s Director of Election Day Operations and a key ratfucker in other ways — posted a video falsely claiming that the challengers were being ejected improperly from the counting center.

According to the Election Integrity Project, Roman was also one of the most efficient spreaders of disinformation during the post-election period, wildly out of proportion to his number of Twitter followers (suggesting he had offline ways to help make things go viral).

Trump’s effort to make it harder to count the votes of Black voters has never gotten enough attention — not even though this specific tactic is a replay of Roger Stone’s Stop the Steal efforts in 2016, in some of the very same cities, as well as the Florida Brooks Brother’s riot. But it’s a key part of proving not just that Trump tried to throw out Joe Biden’s votes, but specifically the votes of Joe Biden’s Black supporters.

Trump’s Federated Conspiracies and Racketeering: How Georgia and the Federal Charges May Interact

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The Georgia indictment and Trump’s federal indictment tell the same story. But those stories have some key differences, that will create an interesting prisoner’s dilemma for those involved. The different exposure of Sidney Powell in both and the different treatment of Ruby Freeman show how they’re different.

Sidney Powell’s lawsuits and alleged hacking

The last overt act described in the federal indictment against Donald Trump describes how, at 3:41AM, Mike Pence certified the election for Joe Biden.

123. At 3:41 a.m. on January 7, as President of the Senate, the Vice President announced the certified results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Biden.

But two of the charged conspiracies — the 18 USC 371 conspiracy to defraud the US and the 18 USC 241 conspiracy against rights — go through January 20. Since they are charged as conspiracies, anything Trump’s co-conspirators said and did after January 6 can also be used to prove the case against Trump.

That’s particularly notable for Trump’s Crazy Kraken Conspirator, Sidney Powell. As noted, the only overt act of hers described in Trump’s federal indictment has to do with her lawsuits targeting Dominion.

Those lawsuits don’t figure in the Georgia indictment at all — not even the November 25 one against Georgia explicitly described in the federal indictment. Instead, Powell’s primary criminal exposure in the Georgia indictment has to do with her conspiracy to get access to Dominion data from Coffee County, a conspiracy that — the Georgia indictment alleges — started on December 1, continued through their access of the data on January 7, after which the data continued to be exploited until at least April. Powell’s larger effort to exploit Dominion data, even that obtained in Michigan, plays a part in the RICO conspiracy.

In the federal case, Powell’s lawsuits serve both to justify backstopping of the electoral certification (meaning, you had to have lawsuits to justify having fake electors) and to prove that Trump was magnifying fraud claims from someone — Powell — everyone openly labeled as batshit. If and when Jack Smith ever adds charges — against Powell, Trump, or his PAC — for fraudulent fundraising, his embrace of claims sourced to Powell will be important to prove he knew he was lying in his fundraising.

In the Georgia case, by contrast, she is charged with outright conspiracy to illegally access computers and election fraud associated with accessing the Dominion data.

The overall arc of the conspiracies is the same; the criminal exposure is radically different.

Death threats and interstate entrapment efforts

Paragraph 26 of the federal indictment describes how Rudy Giuliani lied in a Georgia hearing, including but not limited to about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, which resulted in death threats.

26. On December 10, four days before Biden’s validly ascertained electors were scheduled to cast votes and send them to Congress, Co-Conspirator 1 appeared at a hearing before the Georgia House of Representatives’ Government Affairs Committee. Co-Conspirator 1 played the State Farm Arena video again, and falsely claimed that it showed “voter fraud right in front of people’s eyes” and was “the tip of the iceberg.” Then, he cited two election workers by name, baselessly accused them of “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine,” and suggested that they were criminals whose “places of work, their homes, should have been searched for evidence of ballots, for evidence of USB ports, for evidence of voter fraud.” Thereafter, the two election workers received numerous death threats.

Prosecutors are well aware of the import of Trump’s bullying — they made it part of their bid for a protective order. But, probably in an effort to stave off any real claim about charging First Amendment protected speech, such bullying is not charged, not even Trump’s targeting of Mike Pence.

The Georgia indictment, as Rick Hasen also notes, focuses much more on crimes targeting Freeman and Moss.

Rudy is charged for the lies he told on December 10 in Count 7. He and Ray Stallings are charged with soliciting Georgia Representatives to violate their oaths in Count 6.

But in addition to that, Lutheran minister Steve Lee is charged with two counts for trying to trick Freeman, once on December 14 and again on December 15, into confessing to voter fraud that didn’t happen. And he is charged along with Kanye’s publicist, Trevian Kutti, and Black Votes for Trump official Harrison Floyd with another attempt to get her to confess to voter fraud on January 4 and an attempt to get her to lie to the state.

These are alleged crimes that arise from Freeman’s status as a Fulton County election worker and as such are properly the concern of Fani Willis, not Jack Smith.

All of which is to say that even though both the RICO charge and Trump’s conspiracies map the same conduct, they tie to different crimes, with different kinds of exposure for different people.

Prisoner’s Dilemma: Already Charged Co-Conspirators versus Not-Yet Charged Co-Conspirators

One way the Georgia and federal indictments will interact is in the relative pressure between already being charged, in a state with strict pardon rules, and being not-yet charged, in a venue where Trump has pardoned his way out of criminal trouble in the past.

Five people are named as co-conspirators in both: Rudy (CC1 in the federal indictment), John Eastman (CC2), Powell (CC3), Jeffrey Clark (CC4) and Ken Chesebro (CC5).

Some of these people, like Sidney Powell, Trump might not consider pardoning in any case. Plus, Trump’s closest associates have spent the last week or so throwing her under the bus. But thus far at least, Powell’s personal legal risk is far greater in Georgia than federally.

Others, though, may think seriously about how much harder it would be to get a pardon for Georgia than a Federal indictment, where the next Republican President, possibly including Donald Trump, would be able to pardon them.

In other words, if people who are likely to be indicted by Jack Smith think the charges in Georgia are at all serious, they may flip sooner rather than later, which will likely lead them to cooperate in the DC case as well.

There’s a reason why prisoner’s dilemma is the basis for so much game theory. The way these two competing indictments intersect may rewrite that doctrine, something called Trump defendant dilemma.

Then consider the timing. Later this month — potentially on August 28, three days after all Willis defendants have to turn themselves in — Jack Smith’s prosecutors will fight for a January 2 trial date, which is ambitious. Last night, Fani Willis said she wanted to bring all 19 defendants to trial within 6 months, which would be late February or March.

Even if one or both of those dates would hold, it might require Alvin Bragg be willing to reschedule his own trial on the hush payment cover-up.

But if even just one of these trials goes forward on such an ambitious schedule, it would mean that this Trump defendant dilemma will be playing out even as GOP primary voters go to the polls.

The Bubble Three

One of the most interesting other ways the Georgia indictment and the federal one will interact is in how the three men on the bubble — Mike Roman, Boris Epshteyn, and Mark Meadows — respond. While we’re not yet sure whether Boris or Roman is CC6 in the federal indictment, there’s more support right now for it being Boris. Both men had their phones seized by DOJ in September. Both men sat (or said they’d sit) for proffers with Jack Smith’s team; neither has been (publicly) charged by DOJ yet.

Roman is charged in the Georgia indictment, both with the RICO charge and the Trump side of each of the fake elector charges. He’s the guy who was interacting directly with people in Georgia (and with CC4, Robert Sinners, who cooperated even with the January 6 Committee). If Roman actually did start cooperating with Jack Smith’s team, there’d be no down-side to doing so with Willis’ team, either.

Boris, by contrast, is almost certainly CC3; Act 109, describing a Chesebro email to Eastman and CC3 matches this passage from the January 6 Report.

By that point, Chesebro and Eastman were coordinating their arguments about the fake-elector votes and how they should be used. On January 1, 2021, Chesebro sent an email to Eastman and Epshteyn that recommended that Vice President Pence derail the joint session of Congress. In it, he raised the idea of Vice President Pence declaring “that thereare two competing slates of electoral votes” in several States, and taking the position that only he, or possibly Congress, could “resolve any disputes concerning them.”122

So Boris is not facing the charges that can’t be pardoned but may he facing the charges that can be.

Finally, there is Meadows. The slim exposure for Meadows in this indictment — he is charged in the RICO charge and the solicitation charge tied to the Raffensperger call — may explain why he was not listed as a co-conspirator, yet, for the Jack Smith indictment. The most damning acts attributed to him in the indictment were:

  • Sometime in December: Meeting with Johnny McEntee and asking him for a plan to throw out half the electoral votes in some states
  • December 22: Unsuccessfully attempting to enter the audit site in Georgia
  • December 27: Offering Trump campaign funds if it would help get signature verification done by January 6

Other than that, Meadows’ actions entail setting up phone calls on which Trump lied and solicited unlawful acts. Meadows has a superb lawyer and might try his luck with these charges.

If any of these men cooperated — if any already is (though I really think Meadows is not) — then it would provide both prosecutors a pivotal person in the conspiracies (and, in Boris’ case, the stolen documents conspiracy as well).

As I said above, the interaction of these two indictments, along with the uncertainty as Jack Smith continues to investigate, creates a fierce game of prisoner’s dilemma. And that’s before Smith charges any financial crimes tied to fraudulent fundraising.

Update: Meadows has moved to remove the charges against him to federal court — a move he may have more success doing than Trump.

The Various Kinds of Georgia Crimes in the RICO Indictment

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There’s so much good reporting out of Georgia that I’m going to mostly leave close coverage of the Georgia case to them going forward.

But the Georgia prosecution will interact with Jack Smith’s ongoing investigation in interesting ways. To explain how, I want to first show that the indictment is, fundamentally, about protecting the integrity of Georgia’s government and elections. To see that, it helps to read counts 2 through 41 before reading the RICO charge, which is laid out in 70 pages describing 161 overt acts, many of which took place outside of Georgia.

Those counts fall into the following groups:

Lies to and solicitation of Georgia officials

Count 2 though Count 7: False claims and illegal requests made, many by Rudy Giuliani, before the fake electors scheme. These were lies told to official bodies of Georgia state government, and charging them is an attempt to prevent corruption in state government.

Count 23 through Count 26 charge Rudy, Ray Smith, and Robert Cheeley with false claims and solicitations on December 30 — similar in structure and purpose to Counts 2 through 7.

Count 28 charges both Trump and Mark Meadows for the January 2 call to Brad Raffensperger. Count 29 charges Trump for the lies he told during the call.

Counts 38 and 39 charge Trump with lies and solicitations of Brad Raffensperger on September 17, 2021.

Fake electors

Count 8 through Count 19: These are a series of six paired charges tied to various kinds of fraud involved with the fake electors. In each pair, the first count charges David Shafer, Shawn Still, and Cathleen Latham for doing the fraudulent thing, and the second count charges Trump, Rudy, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro, Ray Smith, Robert Cheeley, and Mike Roman with soliciting the fraudulent thing. They’re a near parallel to the Michigan charges against the fake electors, except that in Georgia only the three most culpable fake electors are charged, and there’s a mirror charge for Trump’s side of the conspiracy.

Attempts to entrap Ruby Freeman

Counts 20 and 21 and : These charge two efforts to defraud Ruby Freeman by offering her help when in fact they were an attempt to entrap her.

Count 30 and Count 31 charge aspects of a plot to get Kanye’s publicist to travel from Illinois to Georgia to entrap Ruby Freeman into making false claims.

Lies about Georgia

Count 22 charges Jeffrey Clark for his attempts to get DOJ to claim the Georgia election was fraudulent.

Count 27 charges Trump and Eastman with lying about Georgia’s results in a lawsuit.

Tampering with Coffee County tabulators

Count 32 through Count 37 charge Sidney Powell, Latham, and two others for tampering with the Coffee County vote tabulators. Again, this has a parallel in the Michigan charges against Matt DePerno and two others.

Lies during the investigation

Count 40 charges David Shafer with false statements told during the investigation.

Count 41 charges Robert Cheeley with perjury for false claims made during the investigation.

As I understand it, these are the charges on which the RICO conspiracy is built. The RICO conspiracy gives prosecutors additional tools and penalties with which to prosecute this (similar to the conspiracy law charged at the federal level). But ultimately it is built on a series of crimes charged to protect the integrity of Georgia’s government. They stand for the principle that you can’t simply come into Georgia and lie and defraud in an attempt to get state officials to violate their oaths of office.

Update: Corrected spelling of Cheeley’s last name.

DOJ Prepares to Pull Multiple January 6 Threads Together

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After Steve Bannon got indicted for defrauding thousands of Trump supporters, he complained to Charlie Kirk that 35 Trump associates had been raided the day before.

Bannon, unsurprisingly, was calling a legal request to provide information and testify truthfully, a raid.

But he appears to be right about the numbers. Over the last five days, multiple outlets have cobbled together the numbers that Bannon had ready at hand. Here are key reports:

  • NYT1, first reporting the focus on Trump’s PAC
  • NYT2, reporting 40 subpoenas and warrants for Boris Epshteyn and Mike Roman’s phones
  • CNN, reporting 30 subpoenas
  • CNN, story on scope of subpoenas
  • CNN, story on Mark Meadows
  • CBS, reporting 30 subpoenas
  • ABC, reporting 40 subpoenas

Between those reports, they describe the following having received legal process:

  • Boris Epshteyn, a key Willard participant (the NYT claims he served as an attorney)
  • Mike Roman, who played a key role in ferrying fake elector materials
  • William B. Harrison, an aide to Mr. Trump in the White House and after his presidency
  • William S. Russell, who served in the West Wing and now works for Mr. Trump’s personal office
  • Julie Radford, Ivanka’s Chief of Staff
  • Nick Luna, Trump’s body man
  • Sean Dollman, who was chief financial officer of Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign
  • Dan Scavino, Trump’s online brain
  • Bernie Kerik, who worked closely with Rudy on coup plans
  • Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager
  • Brian Jack, WH political director
  • Amy Kremer, head of Women for America First
  • Kylie Kremer, in charge of the Ellipse rally
  • Stephen Miller, Trump’s fearmongerer around race
  • Mark Meadows
  • Ben Williamson, Meadows’ aide
  • Poll watchers

In a potentially related development, the government moved to be able to share Brandon Straka’s sentencing papers with him and his lawyers. He avoided jail time by providing leads about some of the people subpoenaed, but likely wasn’t forthcoming about pre-January activities and aimed to limit visibility into his own finances, which (according to CNN) are included in the scope of this latest round of subpoenas.

There are several important takeaways from this news.

First, DOJ’s scope is broader than the fake electors, broader even then the financing of the coup attempt (which, remember, Merrick Garland said was under investigation as early as January 5). As CBS describes, some of these subpoenas cover events that have long been part of the investigation for rioters: how they networked at state riots and earlier MAGA rallies, and how they responded to Trump’s call for Stop the Steal in December 2020. Only, this time it asks for evidence about those who organized those events.

Virginia-based attorney David A. Warrington, who said he represents approximately a dozen clients who have been issued subpoenas, said the FBI was “very professional” when serving his clients. He added that the subpoenas his clients received are nearly identical, describing them as lengthy documents divided into sections and subsections. They cover issues related to “alternate” electors and election certification deadlines on December 14 and January 6, fundraising by the Save America PAC and the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally — but not the ensuing riot.

The subpoenas require individuals provide documents and any communication between themselves and Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Bernie Kerik, Warrington said. The subpoenas also demand recipients to provide any communication with dozens of individuals who appeared on slates of fake electors.

At least some of the subpoenas compel recipients to appear before a grand jury on September 23 at the Washington, D.C., district courthouse, Warrington said.

Mother and daughter Amy and Kylie Kremer were served subpoenas last week, according to Warrington. They are listed as “host(s)” on the National Park Service permit for the Ellipse rally on January 6, 2021.

As NYT describes, they also focused on speakers and security for the Ellipse rally and members of the legislative branch who were part of the planning.

According to one subpoena obtained by The New York Times, they asked for any records or communications from people who organized, spoke at or provided security for Mr. Trump’s rally at the Ellipse. They also requested information about any members of the executive and legislative branches who may have taken part in planning or executing the rally, or tried to “obstruct, influence, impede or delay” the certification of the presidential election.

As CNN notes, it also covers compensation and communications with DOJ.

Some of the subpoenas, including one reviewed by CNN, were broad in scope, seeking information on a range of issues, including the fake elector scheme, Trump’s primary fundraising and political vehicle, Save America PAC, the organizing of the Trump rally on January 6, and any communications with a broad list of people who worked to overturn the 2020 election results.

The subpoena reviewed by CNN seeks records related to compensation provided to or received from a list of people that included Trump lawyers and campaign staffers through January 20, 2021.

It also asks for communications with anyone in the Justice Department.

Many of these people have communications with members of Congress and as such will prepare DOJ to surpass Speech and Debate protections for relevant figures.

But there are ways that last week’s actions are still broader.

I assume that the probable cause that DOJ showed to seize Epshteyn and Roman’s phones tied to the fake elector plot. Ephsteyn was the focus of DOJ’s activities for some time and Roman played a key role ferrying materials between the players.

But it has become clear that DOJ is what I’ll call sheep-dipping phones: seizing them for one purpose and then getting separate warrants to obtain the same content for other investigations. That fairly clearly is what happened with John Eastman and Scott Perry, where DOJ IG seized their phones but (in Eastman’s case) Thomas Windom quickly got involved. The late date and the sustained focus on Victoria Toensing, whom Congress has never mentioned, suggests I was right when I argued that DOJ could use the seized material from Rudy’s phones for the January 6 investigation.

And in Epshteyn’s case, he has been centrally involved in another of Trump’s schemes for which DOJ has already shown probable cause: He has been centrally involved in Trump’s response to the investigation into stolen classified documents.

As a number of outlets have noted, this subpoena bonanza took place just before the 60-day period when DOJ will have to avoid any big public steps in its investigations. But they’ve just arranged to obtain plenty to keep them busy — and quite possibly, enough to emerge on the other side with the ability to start putting all these parts together: a scheme to attack our democracy and get rich while doing it.

Update: In a second CNN story on the subpoena bonanza, they describe that those who blew off the January 6 Committee are being instructed to turn over what the committee asked for.

The subpoenas also ask for the recipients to identify all methods of communication they’ve used since fall 2020 and to turn over to DOJ anything the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, has demanded – whether they cooperated with the House panel or not.

I’ve been anticipating that (and DOJ will have seized the phone records people sued to keep away from J6C long ago).

Update: Added a third CNN story.

More than Twenty Transcripts: The January 6 Committee’s Investigation into Fake Electors

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Last week, Politico reported that the January 6 Committee is preparing to share twenty transcripts from their investigation. Thus far, no outlet has confirmed which twenty transcripts are in that bunch. But the delay of the Proud Boy leader trial has alleviated the urgency — one that arose out of discovery requirements, not investigative curiosity — behind DOJ’s request for those transcripts. Though unless the Oath Keepers’ bid to move their trial succeeds, there will be some urgency to obtain and turn over transcripts of Stewart Rhodes, Kellye SoRelle, Jason Van Tatenhove, Roger Stone, Alex Jones, and probably Ali Alexander’s depositions.

That suggests the initial twenty transcripts might pertain to the fake electors scheme, which (as CNN also noted), Bennie Thompson had previously said was a priority focus for DOJ.

If that’s the case, though, the number — twenty — is rather curious. That’s because the Committee subpoenaed more than twenty people involved in the scheme and spoke to still more.

First, there are the fourteen people who were subpoenaed back on January 28, the chair and secretary of the fake elector slate for each of seven states.

Of these fourteen people, DOJ is reported to have obtained warrants targeting McDonald and DeGraffenreid and included Cottle, Pellegrino, and Shafer in subpoenas, and probably also the Michigan electors.

In addition, there were six people subpoenaed in February. Here’s how the Committee described them:

Michael A. Roman and Gary Michael Brown served, respectively, as the Director and Deputy Director of Election Day Operations for former President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. They reportedly participated in efforts to promote allegations of fraud in the November 2020 election and encourage state legislators to appoint false “alternate” slates of electors.

Douglas V. Mastriano was part of a plan to arrange for an “alternate” slate of electors from Pennsylvania for former President Trump and reportedly spoke with President Trump about post-election activities.

Laura Cox reportedly witnessed Rudy Giuliani pressure state lawmakers to disregard election results in Michigan and say that certifying the election results would be a “criminal act.”

Mark W. Finchem advanced unsubstantiated claims about the election and helped organize an event in Phoenix, Arizona on November 30th, 2020 at which former President Trump’s legal team and others spoke and advanced unproven claims of election and voter fraud. He was in Washington on January 6th, 2021 and stated that he had evidence to deliver to Vice President Pence in an effort to postpone the awarding of electors.

Kelli Ward reportedly spoke to the former President and members of his staff about election certification issues in Arizona and acted to transmit documents claiming to be an  “alternate” Electoral College elector from Arizona.

Roman shows up in DOJ’s general fake elector subpoena (more on him here), and Finchem and Ward show up on at least some of the AZ-targeted ones.

Then there are others the Committee is known to have interviewed who show up on subpoenas from Thomas Windom’s DOJ investigation:

The Committee also sent the following people, also included in the Windom legal process, subpoenas and presumably interviewed them:

Finally, there are those with knowledge of the scheme whose depositions have shown up in Committee hearings, including, but not limited to the fourth hearing, which focused on The Big Lie (again, I’ve linked to those who received a formal subpoena).

  • Cleta Mitchell
  • Rusty Bowers, AZ House Speaker
  • Bill Stepien, Trump campaign manager
  • Matt Morgan, Trump campaign lawyer
  • Jocelyn Benson, MI Secretary of State
  • Mike Shirkey, MI Senate Majority Leader who visited the White House
  • Angela McCallum, Trump campaign staffer
  • Robert Sinners, Trump campaign staffer
  • Brian Cutler, PA House Speaker
  • Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified that discussions about fake electors started in November
  • Ronna McDaniel, GOP Chair

Mark Meadows, of course, was also key to the fake elector plot, but blew off a subpoena.

So the Committee subpoenaed at least thirty people who played roles in the fake elector schemes, with only Meadows known to have entirely blown off the subpoena, and also interviewed people like Justin Clark (Trump’s election lawyer, not the former DOJ official) who are also included on DOJ subpoenas.

I raise all this for several reasons.

I’m beginning an attempt to lay out the overlap (or not) between the various investigations, including Fani Willis’ Fulton County investigation, which has expanded to include the fake electors as well. The three investigations seem to be adopting fairly incompatible approaches, and that may create a conflict in the weeks ahead. This is a first pass at laying out the overlapping scope of the known Committee and DOJ investigations, which I hope leads others to correct and add to this effort.

But I started the effort when I realized that depositions of almost none of the fake electors themselves have appeared in the Committee hearings yet.

Just one, Andrew Hitt, was quoted in the January 6 Committee hearing focused on the Big Lie. Hitt claimed that the Wisconsin fake electors would only be used if a court ruled in favor of the state-based challenges to the election.

ANDREW HITT:

I was told that these would only count if a court ruled in our favor. So that would have been using our electors — well, it would have been using our electors in ways that we weren’t told about and we wouldn’t have supported.

Mind you, the Committee’s public focus was on those who rejected Trump’s attempts at fraud, even those who, like Laura Cox, had supported other schemes, like unnecessary audits. So it may well be that the transcripts of greatest interest to DOJ are those from depositions that were not shown publicly.

Or, it’s possible DOJ’s priorities have entirely changed, and they focused on other investigative prongs.

January 6 Committee Hearing Resources

June 9 Hearing (Peaceful Transfer of Power): Rayne’s open thread; live-tweet; post; transcript

June 13 Hearing (The Big Lie): Rayne’s open thread; live-tweet; post; transcript

June 16 Hearing (Pressuring Pence): Rayne’s open thread, live-tweet; post; transcript

June 21 Hearing (Election workers): Rayne’s open thread; live-tweet; post; transcript

June 23 Hearing (DOJ officials): Rayne’s open thread; live-tweet; post; transcript

June 28 Hearing (Cassidy Hutchinson): Rayne’s open thread; live-tweet; post; transcript

July 12 Hearing (Stephen Ayers): Rayne’s open thread; live-tweet post; transcript

July 21 Hearing (Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger): Rayne’s open thread; live-tweet; post; transcript