The Justice Department continues to ramp up its war with former President Donald Trump and his associates, issuing over 40 subpoenas to his associates over the last week and seizing the phones of at least two top advisors. Many outlets are reporting this as breaking news, but RedState’s Nick Arama had already reported a lot of it going as back as far as Friday.
A bit late to the party, The New York Times said on Monday:
Justice Department officials have seized the phones of two top advisers to former President Donald J. Trump and blanketed his aides with about 40 subpoenas in a substantial escalation of the investigation into his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, people familiar with the inquiry said on Monday.
The seizure of the phones, coupled with a widening effort to obtain information from those around Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, represent some of the most aggressive steps the department has taken thus far in its criminal investigation into the actions that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
The newest revelation is that Federal agents took phones from Boris Epshteyn, an in-house counsel for Trump, and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist for the Trump campaign in 2020. This intensification of the Department of Justice’s battle to get Trump would appear unrelated to the recent raid of the former president’s residence, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, and the subsequent, ongoing legal battles regarding the materials seized there.
RedState already broke many elements of this story Friday, reporting that former presidential advisor Steven Bannon went on the Charlie Kirk show to claim there had been “35 FBI raids” on senior MAGA/Trump allies. Civil rights attorney Harmeet Dhillon said that she knew about some of the cases, and that some of those served were her clients.
Other people subpoenaed that we already knew about: Stephen Miller, Trump’s top speechwriter and a senior policy adviser, and Brian Jack, former White House political director under Trump, who also advises House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
CNN reports that we can add former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, Sean Dollman, the CFO for Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, and former Trump deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino. Soon we’re going to have to start reporting on the people in Trumpwold who haven’t been subpoenaed.
The New York Times reports about the two who apparently had their phones seized:
Mr. Epshteyn and Mr. Roman have been linked to a critical element of Mr. Trump’s bid to hold onto power: the effort to name slates of electors pledged to Mr. Trump from swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 as part of a plan to block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory.
On his show Monday evening, Tucker Carlson claims he has seen a copy of a subpoena that was served. Arama had already obtained a partial copy of one and printed it here and shared it on Twitter. Carlson is stunned by the overreach and unlawfulness of the demands:
Here’s a partial excerpt of the monologue:
What it [the subpoena] demands is both unlawful and without precedent in American history. The subpoena claims to be investigating “any claim that the Vice President and/or the President of the Senate had the authority to reject or choose not to count presidential electors.” Now keep in mind, that any claim you make as an American citizen about electors–any claim you make about American politics period–is protected explicitly under the First Amendment. That’s our core freedom…
That’s why nobody prosecuted leading Democrats in 2016 when they sought to reject electors for Donald Trump. Right. That’s why none of those people including Kamala Harris is now in jail.
…it is not clear what the investigation is actually about. And that’s the most terrifying part. What is this? On what grounds are you demanding my private communications with people? They never say.
While the DOJ’s continued attacks against the sitting president’s opponent have always been unprecedented, now it’s gotten downright scary. Arama shared images of the subpoena in Friday’s story, but here’s just one page that should chill your core: