WASHINGTON. Investigators from both the Justice Department and the House Jan. 6 committee appear to be moving closer to former President Donald Trump and his immediate family over their role in the events leading up to that day’s violent attack on the Capitol.
Attorney Bilal Essaily said Tuesday in federal court that prosecutors asked his client, January 6 defendant Brandon Strack, about his personal ties to Trump.
“The government has been focused on establishing an orchestrated conspiracy between defendant President Donald J. Trump and allies of the former president to disrupt the January 6th joint session of Congress,” Essaily wrote.
Straka, who spoke at a “Stop theft” rally in Washington the day before the Capitol attack, is awaiting sentencing for his part in the January 2021 uprising in an effort to reverse Trump’s 2020 election defeat. He was initially charged with a felony for inciting rioters to take a policeman’s shield and enter the building itself, but was allowed to plead a petty disorderly charge in exchange for his cooperation.
Meanwhile, the committee on Tuesday sent subpoenas to three of Trump’s lawyers who were involved in spreading his lies that he actually won the election, and proposed extra-constitutional — and possibly illegal — ways to stay in power. Among them is personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
In addition, the committee sought court records of phone calls and text messages from Eric Trump’s middle son, who spoke at a rally before the uprising near the White House and told the audience that Democrat Joe Biden did not actually win the presidential election.
Eric Trump, through a spokesman for the family business, said on Wednesday he had nothing to hide. “The witch hunt continues. This partisan committee can see my phone records,” Eric Trump said in a statement. “I have absolutely nothing to hide.
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In fact, the House committee is bipartisan, with two Republican members, although Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would not allow two other Republicans who helped spread Trump’s campaign lies to sit on the committee.
CNN and ABC reported that the committee also subpoenaed the phone records of Kimberley Guilfoyle, a girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr.’s eldest son. He, Gilfoyle, and Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump, also spoke at the January 6 rally, as did Giuliani.
The former president ended the event with a 72-minute speech in which he repeated his false claims that the election was full of fraud and that he had indeed won, and then called for tens of thousands of those present to march to the Capitol to put pressure on lawmakers and his vice president. -president to nominate Trump for a second term. “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight with all your might, you won’t have a country anymore,” he told them.
While federal prosecutors have indicted approximately 700 Trump supporters for the January 6, 2021 attack, Straka’s attorney’s statement is the first clear sign that investigators are looking for a personal connection to Trump and appears to confirm the Attorney General’s promise. Merrick Garland to continue the investigation wherever it goes.
“The Justice Department remains committed to bringing all those responsible on January 6, at any level, to justice under the law, whether they were present that day or otherwise criminally responsible for the attack on our democracy,” Garland said on the eve of the first uprising. Anniversary. “We will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
And House Committee Chairman Benny Thompson on Jan. 6, in a statement accompanying Trump’s lawyers’ subpoenas, said the commission was trying to understand the “pressure campaign” to cancel the election. “The four people we called to court today made unsubstantiated theories about electoral fraud, pushed for attempts to reverse the election results, or were in direct contact with the former president about attempts to stop the electoral vote count,” said Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi. .
A year ago, Trump became the first president to refuse to peacefully hand over power to his successor. He spent weeks criticizing the legality of the November 2020 contest, which he lost. Hours after the polls closed and it looked like Biden would emerge victorious, Trump claimed he had indeed won by a “landslide” and that his victory had been “stolen” from him. This lie has continued with a series of failed lawsuits challenging the results in several states.
After the Electoral College voted on Dec. 14, making Biden’s victory official, Trump instead resorted to a last-ditch scheme to force his vice president to hand over the election to Trump during the formal congressional confirmation of the Jan. 6 election results.
Trump asked his followers to come to Washington that day and told the thousands who came that they should march to the Capitol to intimidate Mike Pence into doing what Trump wants. “When you catch someone cheating, you are allowed to operate under very different rules,” Trump said.
The Mafia’s presence in the Capitol was key to two possible scenarios that Trump and his allies were promoting: first, pressure on Congress and Pence to declare Trump the winner despite the actual election results, or second, delaying the attestation vote for long enough for GOP legislators. in states won by Biden, send in your own Trump voter list.
A crowd of supporters stormed the building and chanted “Hang Mike Pence” when the vice president failed to follow Trump’s order. Five people died in the riot, including a Capitol police officer, and four more officers committed suicide in the weeks and months that followed.
Although the House of Representatives impeached Trump for inciting the attack, all but seven Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, chose not to convict him, thus allowing Trump to continue his political career despite being the subject of several investigations.
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