Justice Dept. Asking Witnesses About Trump in Its Jan. 6 Investigation

Federal prosecutors have instantly requested witnesses in latest days about former President Donald J. Trump’s involvement in efforts to reverse his election loss, an individual acquainted with the testimony mentioned on Tuesday, suggesting that the Justice Division’s legal investigation has moved right into a extra aggressive and politically fraught part.

Mr. Trump’s private position in components of the push to overturn his loss in 2020 to Joseph R. Biden Jr. has lengthy been established, each by means of his public actions and statements and proof gathered by the Home committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault.

However the Justice Division has been largely silent about how and even whether or not it might weigh pursuing potential prices towards Mr. Trump, and reluctant even to concede that his position was mentioned in senior management conferences on the division.

Asking questions on Mr. Trump in reference to the electors plot or the assault on the Capitol doesn’t imply the Justice Division has opened a legal investigation into him, a choice that may have immense political and authorized ramifications.

The division’s investigation right into a central aspect of the push to maintain Mr. Trump in workplace — the plan to call slates of electors pledged to Mr. Trump in battleground states received by Mr. Biden — now seems to be accelerating as prosecutors with the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Washington ask witnesses about Mr. Trump and members of his interior circle, together with the White Home chief of workers, Mark Meadows, the particular person acquainted with the testimony mentioned.

In April, earlier than the committee convened its sequence of public hearings, Justice Division investigators obtained cellphone data of key officers and aides within the Trump White Home, in accordance with two individuals with data of the scenario.

Two prime aides to Vice President Mike Pence testified to the federal grand jury within the case final week, and prosecutors have issued subpoenas and search warrants to a rising variety of figures tied to Mr. Trump and the marketing campaign to forestall his loss.

A spokesman for Lawyer Common Merrick B. Garland declined to remark, saying the Justice Division didn’t present particulars of grand jury proceedings. The division’s questioning of witnesses about Mr. Trump and its receipt of the cellphone data had been reported earlier by The Washington Publish.

If a choice had been made to open a legal investigation into Mr. Trump after he introduced his intention to run within the 2024 election, as he continues to trace he may do, the division’s management can be required to undertake a proper session course of, then signal a proper approval of the division’s intentions underneath an inner rule created by former Lawyer Common William P. Barr and endorsed by Mr. Garland.

However in latest days, Mr. Garland has repeatedly asserted his proper to analyze or prosecute anyone, together with Mr. Trump, offered that’s the place the proof leads.

“The Justice Division has from the start been transferring urgently to study every thing we will about this era, and to carry to justice everyone who was criminally liable for interfering with the peaceable switch of energy from one administration to a different, which is the elemental aspect of our democracy,” Mr. Garland informed “NBC Nightly Information” in an interview broadcast on Tuesday, when requested to touch upon criticism that his investigation was transferring too slowly.

The questions on Mr. Trump centered on, amongst different subjects, the plan he was pushing to derail congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral Faculty victory on Jan. 6, 2021, the particular person acquainted with the testimony mentioned.

The 2 Pence aides who testified to the grand jury — Marc Brief, who was his chief of workers, and Greg Jacob, who was his counsel — had been current at an Oval Workplace assembly on Jan. 4, 2021, when Mr. Trump sought to strain Mr. Pence into embracing the plan to quote the competing slates of electors as justification to dam or delay the Electoral Faculty certification.

In latest weeks, the Justice Division additionally seized telephones from two key figures, John Eastman, the lawyer who helped develop and promote the plan to upend the Electoral Faculty certification, and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Division official who was on the middle of the associated push to ship the slates of electors pledged to Mr. Trump from states Mr. Biden received.

Prosecutors have additionally issued grand jury subpoenas to figures linked to the so-called faux electors scheme. Those that have obtained the subpoenas have largely been state lawmakers or Republican officers, a lot of whom put their names on paperwork testifying to the truth that they had been electors for Mr. Trump from states that had been received by Mr. Biden.

The subpoenas, a few of which have been obtained by The New York Instances, present that prosecutors are desirous about gathering info on a gaggle of pro-Trump legal professionals who helped to plan and perform the plan, together with Mr. Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was Mr. Trump’s private lawyer.

There are additionally indications that the tense standoff between the Justice Division and congressional investigators over the transcripts of interviews carried out for the Jan. 6 committee hearings is easing. The Home is ready to start handing over a few of the transcripts and intends to extend the tempo within the coming weeks, in accordance with individuals acquainted with the scenario.

Members of the committee, led by Consultant Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, have mentioned they’re nonetheless contemplating making a legal referral to the Justice Division in hopes of accelerating the strain on Mr. Garland to prosecute Mr. Trump.

Mr. Garland shrugged off that suggestion.

“I feel that’s completely as much as the committee,” he mentioned in his NBC interview. “We could have the proof that the committee has introduced, and no matter proof it provides us, I don’t suppose that the character of how they model, the way wherein info is offered, is a selected significance from any authorized standpoint.”