#captiol riot investigation

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Secretaries of State play a key role in ensuring those who engaged in the January 6 insurrection are not permitted to run to represent the government they tried to overthrow.

In a letter sent today, CREW urged each Secretary of State to consider the recent ruling in New Mexico which found Otero County Commissioner and Jan. 6 participant Couy Griffin to be constitutionally disqualified from ever again holding state or federal office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment’s Disqualification Clause. This ruling, and past history, provides helpful guidance for Secretaries of State in determining whether candidates are constitutionally eligible to appear on the ballot.

Making ballot eligibility determinations, especially in light of this court ruling, is consistent with a Secretary of State’s oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. The New Mexico court’s decision sets a high bar for disqualification, but there are current and prospective candidates throughout the country who, under the court’s standard, are likely disqualified from public office and thus should be excluded from the ballot.

Where the evidence supports disqualification, it is the constitutional duty of Secretaries of State to act accordingly.

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Soon...

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The House Select Committee investigating January 6, 2021, offered new details on Tuesday about a meeting at the White House that involved several Republican members of Congress ahead of the meeting of the joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 presidential election.

Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida, a member of the Committee, said the December 21 meeting was part of an effort to "disseminate his false claims and to encourage members of the public to fight the outcome on January 6."

Vice President Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, and Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff at the time, attended the meeting, along with President Donald Trump, Murphy said.

At the meeting, Murphy said the members discussed election theories pushed by Trump's personal lawyer John Eastman, who said he believed that Pence was able to single-handedly reject slates of electors in his role presiding over the joint session.

In reality, Pence's role was simply to count the votes. On Tuesday, the Committee aired footage of Pat Cipollone, Trump's White House counsel. He was asked to address a comment attributed to him by another Trump advisor, Jason Miller, who quoted him as saying that Eastman's theory was "nutty." Cipollone declined to contradict that.

Cipollone said he tried to attend the meeting himself but was apparently turned away.

Here are the 11 House Republicans who were at the meeting, according to the White House visitor logs obtained by the January 6 panel:

• Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama

• Rep. Brian Babin of Texas

• Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona

• Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida

• Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas

• Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona

• Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland

• Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia

• Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio

• Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania

• Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia

The Committee previously shared a number of Republicans who sought pardons from Trump in the final days of his administration. Six of the attendees of the December 21, 2020, meeting — Biggs, Brooks, Gaetz, Gohmert, Greene, and Perry — sought pardons.

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Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich testified Thursday before a federal grand jury investigating January 6, 2021, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Gingrich allegedly communicated with senior advisers to former President Donald Trump about television advertisements that relied on false claims of election fraud, according to documents obtained by the House select committee that investigated January 6. The panel also claimed Gingrich played a role in the effort to submit fake slates of electors in battleground states that Trump lost, according to committee documents.

An attorney for Gingrich did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As the special counsel’s investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents shows signs of wrapping up, the probe into the attack on the US Capitol and efforts to subvert the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 election has carried on.

Prosecutors have interviewed witnesses in recent weeks and, in at least one case with right-wing podcast host Steve Bannon, issued a new subpoena for grand jury testimony, people familiar with the matter said.

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There’s never quite an end to legal maneuvering in Trumpworld, and the latest issue involves the ex-president’s social media company.

Trump, already embattled by damning testimony in hearings before the Jan. 6 Select Committee and criminal and civil investigations in New York and Georgia, might also have to worry about his Twitter knockoff, Truth Social. USA Today reports that Trump and several others close to him, including his son Donald Trump Jr. and a former White House aide, all removed themselves from Truth Social’s board shortly before subpoenas were handed down from the Securities and Exchange Commission and a federal grand jury in New York seeking information about the company’s operations.

Trump started Truth Social last year as an alternative to Twitter, from which he was banned for repeatedly breaking the platform’s policy on spreading false information, specifically about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection. But that’s not why the SEC and potentially federal prosecutors are interested in the company.

From USA Today:

The investigations appear to be related to a proposed merger between Trump’s media company and a blank-check company called Digital World Acquisitions Corp., according to a recent regulatory filing.

Digital World is a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Companies such as these raise money to go public with the intent of finding a company to merge with. SPACs are prohibited from finding a partner before going public, but the SEC is investigating potential talks between the two companies that were possibly premature, according to a filing.

The merger between the two companies could reportedly mean $1.3 billion in capital and a listing on the stock exchange for the new company, according to the New York Times.

Truth Social was promoted by Trump as a Twitter alternative for those who didn’t want their content filtered and moderated—in other words, Twitter with even fewer pesky rules to keep trolls in line. A recent article in Forbes described it in less flattering terms, calling it “a political ad campaign in the guise of an open platform for discussion.” The platform has a reported roughly 2 million users, compared with Twitter’s 300 million active accounts.

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Prosecutors have revealed that convicted Capitol rioter Larry Brock concocted a bloodthirsty plan to seize power on January 6th, 2021 that involved taking hostages, arresting journalists, and cutting off food and water to cities where Democratic voters lived.

As flagged by CBS News' Scott MacFarlane, prosecutors say that Brock wrote down his plan to overthrow the United States government on Christmas Eve, roughly two weeks before he and his fellow Trump supporters would storm the United States Capitol building.

As part of the plan, Brock outlined a series of "key tasks" that included initiatives to "seize all Democratic politicians and Biden key staff and select Republicans (Thune and McConnell)," at which point they would "begin interrogations using measures we used on Al Queda (sic) to gain evidence on the coup."

He then called for his fellow Trump supporters to "seize national media assets and key personnel," and then "eliminate them."

As if this weren't enough, he then issued a directive to "let the Democratic cities burn" and "cut off power and food to all who oppose us."

To cap everything off, he said that former President Donald Trump should then issue a "general pardon for all crimes up to and including murder of those restoring the Constitution and putting down the Democratic Insurrection."

Brock was convicted last year on multiple charges, including a felony obstruction of an official proceeding and five misdemeanor counts related to the riots.

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Lawyers for Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four other defendants plan to subpoena former President Donald Trump, seeking his testimony in the high-profile trial that charges the far-right group's members with conspiring to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's 2020 win on January 6, 2021.

"Donald Trump called on patriots to stop the steal. We're calling on Donald Trump to take the stand," Norm Pattis, an attorney representing Proud Boys member Joseph Biggs, said Thursday, according to Politico and the CBS-affiliate WUSA9.

Forcing Trump to testify as a witness would require approval from Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee presiding over the case in Washington, DC's federal district court. Proud Boys' lawyers are seeking the federal government's help to serve the subpoena, according to Politico.

For more than a month, the Justice Department has argued that the defendants — Tarrio, Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola — plotted to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden on January 6. Prosecutors claimed that under Tarrio's leadership, the group banded together to violently storm the Capitol and obstruct the 2020 electoral certification process — a serious and rare charge known as seditious conspiracy. The defendants have pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors have said that Proud Boys' members responded to Trump's calls to his supporters to "protest" on January 6 when Congress met to certify the results.

In response, defense lawyers at times have blamed Trump for the attack on the Capitol, asserting that the Proud Boys had followed the former President's orders to come to the nation's capital in support of his false claims that the election was stolen because of widespread voter fraud.

The strategy behind Trump testifying would be to try to show jurors that the former President was responsible for the violent riot, rather than the Proud Boys members.

It's a line of argument that several January 6 defendants have presented in court before, though largely unsuccessfully. Judges have repeatedly dismissed the claim, maintaining that Capitol rioters should be held accountable for the violence that erupted that day. One January 6 defendant, Dustin Thompson of Ohio, requested in his trial last year to subpoena Trump as a witness, though the Judge declined his bid. Thompson was later convicted on six charges related to the Capitol riot and sentenced to three years in prison.

Although the Proud Boys' trial is unique from the majority of January 6 cases because of the government's seditious-conspiracy charges, it's currently unclear whether Kelly would allow the subpoena.

Even if the subpoena is issued, however, the possibility of Trump appearing in court is slim. His lawyers are likely to move to prevent Trump from speaking under oath about January 6. The former President has never taken any responsibility for the attack.

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Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) insisted Monday he never sought a blanket pardon from Donald Trump even though multiple former Trump administration officials testified under oath that he did.

Gaetz clashed with MSNBC’s Ari Melber on “The Beat” as the host repeatedly pressed him on the allegation. Gaetz said he had been involved in pardon negotiations for other people but never sought one for himself.

Melber noted that several witnesses close to the Trump White House had testified last year to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that Gaetz was among several Republican lawmakers who sought pardons over their involvement in then-President Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.

“Here’s some of the under-oath testimony from Trump insiders,” Melber said, bringing up video.

“We’ve got multiple people. The director of White House presidential personnel, [Johnny McEntee], who’s a Trump loyalist. Lawyer Eric Herschmann. Cassidy Hutchinson, famously. They all testified under oath that you specifically requested a pardon.”

After showing the footage, Melber continued: “So the question is, can you really say that all of them are committing perjury, lying on you? A. And B, if a pardon was requested, why not just tell us what were you worried about? What was it that you thought you or others might be indicted for?”

Gaetz responded by disparaging Hutchinson, who was a top aide to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and saying that he recalled things differently than did Herschmann.

“Cassidy Hutchinson is a known liar,” Gaetz said.

“I do not remember it the same way Eric Herschmann does,” he added. “I did have conversations with Eric Herschmann about different groups of people that could potentially receive pardons ― even including some of the people who may have committed a technical violation of federal law, but they weren’t engaged in violence on Jan. 6.”

Asked if he advocated for pardons for other lawmakers, Gaetz was vague.

“No. There were discussions about pardons for President Trump, his family members, his allies, and presumably members of Congress could have fallen in that group,” he said.

The New York Times first reported in April 2021 that Gaetz had, in the final weeks of the Trump administration, privately asked the White House to pardon himself and others for any crimes they may have committed. Last June, the Jan. 6 committee aired testimony from Trump insiders that backed that reporting. According to The Washington Post in September, one Trump aide, McEntee, testified that Gaetz sought a preemptive pardon regarding a sex trafficking investigation in which he was a target.

Prosecutors have since recommended against charging Gaetz in the matter, reportedly in part due to credibility concerns with two central witnesses. His former associate Joel Greenberg has been sentenced to 11 years in prison in the investigation.

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Police on Friday indicted a Colorado youth pastor who participated in the Capitol riot on multiple felony and misdemeanor charges, according to a Justice Department release. 

The FBI was able to identify the pastor, Tyler Ethridge, after a Bible college colleague tipped them off, saying he had bragged about his participation in the riot last year on social media. 

According to the DOJ release, the Bible college attendee, who was not named in supporting court documents released by the Justice Department, told the FBI that Ethridge was "telling everyone" on Facebook about being "on scaffolding outside Nancy Pelosi's office and inside the chamber."

Video captured on the day of the event shows him acknowledging the risk to his job. 

"I'm probably going to lose my job as a pastor after this," he said, according to court documents.

The Capitol riot left five people, including one police officer, dead. Members of the Proud Boys, which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, were present, a Vice reporter tweeted.

Organizers were emboldened by former-President Donald Trump's urges to protest the results of the 2020 election with him, despite Democrat Joe Biden's election victory. While members of Congress were meeting inside the Capitol to certify the results and verify Biden's presidency, Trump supporters organized an attempted coup and stormed the Capitol.

Last year, insurrectionists scrambled to delete photos and social-media posts proving their participation in the Capitol riot. Some broke their cellphones, scrubbed their social media accounts, and tried to wipe hard drives that might contain photos and other proof of their involvement. 

But others, like Ethridge, boasted of their involvement, making it easier for the FBI to catch and charge them.

After the riot, Ethridge urged his social media friends to not "be afraid of what they sentence you with," according to court documents.

"I'm not. I'm ready for whatever I'll be charged with," he continued. "America is still primed and ready."

So far, more than 870 people have been charged in connection with the insurrection, according to Insider's database. 

Ethridge is being charged with six counts, including civil disorder and obstructing an official proceeding.

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Justice Department investigators have obtained a Trump campaign-commissioned report that debunked voter fraud claims days before then-President Donald Trump used those claims to pressure officials to help him overturn the 2020 election.

Trump is currently in the crosshairs of several potentially damaging legal cases: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump over hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, as well as the Special Counsel Jack Smith-led Justice Department probes into Trump’s mishandling of classified information under the Espionage Act and his conduct surrounding the January 6 insurrection, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ grand jury investigation of Donald Trump’s effort to overturn election results in Georgia.

While the Daniels case seems poised to result in the first indictment of Trump, the other cases continue to chug along and produce major developments like the blockbuster report that the DOJ has obtained a study that the Trump campaign commissioned that could be damaging to Trump.

In his infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) Trump said, “So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.”

But as Washington Post‘s Josh Dawsey reports, the Justice Department now has the report that contradicts that claim directly:

"But a report commissioned by his own campaign dated one day prior told a different story: Researchers paid by Trump’s team had “high confidence” of only nine dead voters in Fulton County, defined as ballots that may have been cast by someone else in the name of a deceased person. They believed there was a “potential statewide exposure” of 23 such votes across the Peach State — or 4,977 fewer than the “minimum” Trump claimed.

…

The “Project 2020” report conducted by the Berkeley Research Group has now been obtained by prosecutors investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. A copy was reviewed by The Washington Post, and it shows that Trump’s own campaign paid more than $600,000 for research that undercut many of his most explosive claims. The research was never made public."

The report is yet another strong piece of evidence that Trump’s claims of voter fraud, which incited the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, were not just false but knowingly and deliberately false.

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Republican Rep. Liz Cheney said Saturday that she would be willing to campaign for Democrats as she criticized her party's acceptance of candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election.

“Yes,” Cheney, of Wyoming, said simply when asked whether she’d be willing to stump for Democrats — the first time she has said so explicitly.

Cheney made the remark in a discussion at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin while talking about Arizona gubernatorial candidate and election denier Kari Lake.

Cheney, who has been a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump, said “partisanship has to have a limit” and mentioned Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has said he will campaign for Lake.

"He’s demonstrated that he’s somebody who has not bought into the toxin of Donald Trump — but he campaigned recently for Kari Lake, who’s an election denier, who is dangerous,” Cheney said.

"That’s the kind of thing we cannot see in our party. We cannot see an accommodation like that, and I think it’s very important that we be clear about that,” Cheney said.

Asked specifically whether she would campaign for Katie Hobbs — Lake’s Democratic opponent — Cheney said, “I am going to do everything I can to make sure that Kari Lake is not elected.”

Cheney is on her way out of Congress after she lost the Republican primary to a Trump-backed challenger in August.

Youngkin defended campaigning for Lake at the Texas Tribune Festival on Friday. “I am comfortable supporting Republican candidates,” he said. “And we don’t agree on everything. I have said that I firmly believe that Joe Biden was elected President.”

Cheney declined Saturday to offer many details about her own plans, including whether she will run for President.

She also did not disclose much about plans of the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, of which she is one of two Republican members.

The House Committee is set to return Wednesday for its latest hearing.

Cheney did say that she does not think the Committee's hearings will conclude this week.

Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said last week that unless something else develops it will be the last, “but it’s not in stone, because things happen.”

“We don’t anticipate that it will be the last hearing,” Cheney said.

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To date, the January 6 Committee has provided a clinical, step by step breakdown of who knew what when in the days leading up to the insurrection at the US Capitol.

The Committee's hearing on Tuesday was something quite different — as Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, provided stirring and intimate details of what happened that day and, specifically, how Donald Trump acted.

It was, in a word, ugly.

Three moments stand out:

1) Hutchinson said she was told that when Trump got back into the presidential limousine, known as the Beast, and was told that he could not join protesters at the Capitol, he lost it. The then-President tried to grab the steering wheel and, when one of his security detail reached to stop him, he grabbed at that man's throat.

2) Trump, in expletive-laden language, urged that people with weapons -- guns, knives and the like -- be let through the magnetometers before his speech to the "Stop the Steal" rally. His goal? Ensure that the photographs and video of the event showed a packed crowd all listening to him. "They're not here to hurt me," Trump reportedly told people.

3) Meadows, when pressed by White House counsel Pat Cipollone, to say something more amid "Hang Mike Pence" chants at the US Capitol responded, according to Hutchinson: "[Trump] thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn't think they are doing anything wrong."

Consider that. The President of the United States tried to commandeer his limousine, was stopped from doing so, and struck out at one of the people tasked with protecting him. The President, knowing there are armed people gathering, urged that they be let into a confined space so that the crowd looked robust. Amidst chants that his Vice President be hung, Trump said that he deserved it.

It sounds more like the plot of a bad made-for-TV movie than real life. And all of it was happening on the same day that thousands of people stormed the Capitol, leaving 5 people dead and more than 100 police officers wounded.

In each of these instances, Trump bridled at having his power -- or that of the mob -- curtailed in any way. The image of Trump created in Hutchinson's testimony is of someone driven wild by anger, spinning out of control even as he was fomenting a lie that the 2020 election was stolen and urging his followers to come to Washington on January 6 to protest the results.

Mick Mulvaney, a former-Trump Chief of Staff, acknowledged the damage done to the former-President in Tuesday's hearing. "(I)f the President knew the protesters had weapons, and still encouraged them to go to the Capitol, that is a serious problem," Mulvaney tweeted.

And, again, this behavior was not a one-off on January 6. Trump's behavior was erratic for months following the election.

Hutchinson recounted that shortly after Attorney General Bill Barr told the Associated Press that he had "not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election" in early December, she walked into the presidential dining room to find a valet cleaning up -- and with ketchup dripping off the wall. "The President was extremely angry at the AG's AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall," said Hutchinson.

Asked whether that was the only time that Trump had behaved that way, Hutchinson said it was not. "There were several times that I was aware of him throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth so that all the contents of the table went on the floor."

Trump comes across as a man desperately clinging to power, resistant to any attempts to curtail what he believed to be his absolute power to do whatever he wanted -- up to and including remaining in office by any means necessary.

It's an ugly portrait. And, unfortunately, an accurate one.

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House Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson (Miss.) on Monday blasted Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for handing over tens of thousands of hours of riot footage from Jan. 6, 2021, to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly,” Thompson said in a statement.

McCarthy’s office granted about 41,000 hours of footage of the Capitol riots to Carlson, Axios first reported. A Fox News spokesperson confirmed the development to The Hill on Monday.

“If Speaker McCarthy has indeed granted Tucker Carlson — a Fox host who routinely spreads misinformation and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s poisonous propaganda — and his producers access to this sensitive footage, he owes the American people an explanation of why he has done so and what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake,” Thompson said.

The Mississippi Democrat headed the select House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attacks for nearly a year and a half before releasing its final report in December. The committee had interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, read through documents and reviewed troves of video footage of the riots during its investigation.

Carlson has accused the select committee of “lying” about what happened on Jan. 6, and has boasted that Fox News did not cover the proceedings, or what he called “propaganda,” on live television.

In 2021 he produced “Patriot Purge,” a documentary series that purports to tell an alternative story of the Jan. 6 insurrection and features at least one subject who suggests the event may have been a “false flag” operation. Fox News staffers were reportedly angered by the series, and at least two contributors to the network resigned in protest.

U.S. Capitol Police previously said that it had “cooperated extensively” with the select committee, noting that it provided 14,000 hours of footage to the panel.

During a press conference last month, McCarthy said he supported the idea of more footage from Jan. 6 being made public.

“I think the public should see what has happened on that,” he said.

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The congressional Committee investigating January 6 on Thursday revealed new evidence that Donald Trump had a preexisting plan to falsely declare victory on election night in 2020—part of a plot to use made-up voting fraud claims in an attempt to retain power.

For the second time, the Committee played leaked audio first reported by Mother Jones in which Trump adviser Steve Bannon, during an October 31, 2020, meeting, said that Trump had a “strategy” to prematurely assert he had won on Election Day. Explaining the so-called “red mirage,” in which Trump would show early leads in key states before mail-in ballots favoring Joe Biden were counted, Bannon said: “Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”

“He’s gonna declare victory,” Bannon said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”

On November 1, 2020, before Election Day, Axios first reported Trump’s plan. But Trump denied it at the time. And he and his supporters have since claimed that he was not lying when he announced—just hours after the polls had closed—that he had won. He legitimately believed election fraud cost him victory, they claim.

The Committee, however, presented new evidence Thursday that Trump actually knew he had lost—he admitted it to aides—and that his victory declaration was part of plan to rally his supporters to help him stay in office anyway.

“This Big Lie—President Trump’s effort to convince Americans that he had won the 2020 election—began before the election results even came in,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said during Thursday’s hearing. “It was intentional. It was premeditated. It was not based on election results, or any evidence of actual fraud affecting the results, or any actual problems with voting machines. It was a plan concocted in advance, to convince his supporters that he won. And the people who seemingly knew about that plan in advance would ultimately play a significant role in the events of January 6.”

The Committee on Thursday played video, shot by a Danish documentarian, in which longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone told Trump supporters on November 1, 2020, that the election would likely remain too close to call on election night. “The key thing to do is to claim victory,” Stone added. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

The Committee also revealed a pre-election memo that Tom Fitton, an occasional Trump adviser who runs of the right-wing nonprofit Judicial Watch, emailed to White House aides on October 31, 2020. In it, Fitton proposed victory remarks for Trump. “We had an election today—and I won,” Fitton’s suggested remarks said. Fitton resent the memo on Nov. 3, 2020—Election Day—and said that he had discussed it with Trump.

Thursday’s hearing also included newly aired testimony from Greg Jacob, who was Vice President Mike Pence’s counsel. Jacob said that he learned days before Election Day from Pence’s Chief of Staff, Marc Short, that Trump planned to prematurely announce that he had won. Short and Jacob reacted by working to distance Pence from Trump’s declaration.

“It is essential that the Vice President not be perceived by the public as having decided questions concerning disputed electoral votes prior to the full development of all relevant facts,” Jacob wrote in a November 3, 2020, memo to Short, which Lofgren said the panel had obtained from the National Archives.

Bannon, Stone, Short, Fitton, and others were all talking around this time about Trump’s plan to falsely declare victory because, it seems clear, Trump had recently informed aides that he was firmly committed to that course of action.

CBS News reporter Robert Costa tweeted Thursday he had seen “texts from that night from some aides” indicating that they realized “declaring victory was Trump’s plan” and that White House lawyers were alarmed.

This is important because it shows that Trump was not simply deluded about the election results. He executed a strategy to lie to Americans about the outcome, to motivate his supporters to help him subvert democracy. The January 6 attack was the culmination of that effort.

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Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday appointed a special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations into the retention of national defense information at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and parts of the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

Both investigations implicate the conduct of Trump, who on Tuesday declared his candidacy in the 2024 presidential race, making him a potential rival of President Joe Biden.

“Based on recent developments, including the former president’s announcement that he is a candidate for president in the next election, and the sitting president’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” Garland said at the Justice Department on Friday.

Jack Smith, the former chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, where he investigated war crimes in Kosovo, will oversee the investigations.

Smith “has built the reputation as an impartial and determined prosecutor,” Garland said.

Trump has sought to paint the investigations as politically motivated, including at his Tuesday presidential announcement, where he said he was the victim of a “weaponization” of the justice system.

In a statement to CNN on Friday, a Trump spokesman said, “This is a totally expected political stunt by a feckless, politicized, weaponized Biden Department of Justice.”

The Mar-a-Lago probe burst into public view when the FBI executed a search warrant on Trump’s Florida resort in August. Trump went to court to secure an order requiring that a third attorney review the materials seized in the search. Documents marked as classified were excluded from that review by an appellate court, allowing for their use in the criminal probe. Investigators have also brought witnesses before a federal grand jury that has been empaneled in DC in the probe.

The prosecutions of those who physically breached the US Capitol have been the most public aspect of the Justice Department’s January 6 probe, and those will remain under the purview of the US Attorney’s office in Washington, DC. But behind the scenes, prosecutors have subpoenaed scores of witnesses close to the former president for documents and testimony in the probe.

“I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice,” Smith said in a statement Friday. “The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.”

INVESTIGATIONS HEADING UP

According to multiple sources, both the Mar-a-Lago investigation and the January 6 investigation around Trump are aiming to gather more information and bring witnesses into a federal grand jury in the coming weeks. Prosecutors sent out several new subpoenas related to both investigations in recent days, with quick return dates as early as next week.

Some of the witnesses being pursued in this round had not spoken to the investigators in these cases before, according to some of the sources.

Many in Trump’s orbit had believed and hoped that the investigation had slowed or even halted, as they hadn’t heard from the Justice Department for weeks after meeting their subpoena document deadlines, multiple sources said.

Some of the subpoenas issued in the probe have indicated a wide-ranging investigation that touches on nearly all aspects of the efforts to overturn Biden’s electoral victory. They signaled that investigators are interested in the plot to put forward fraudulent electors in states Biden won, the work Trump allies did to push baseless election fraud claims and how money flowed to support those various efforts.

Trump’s team had been discussing in recent days the likelihood that the Justice Department would appoint a special counsel, multiple sources familiar with the talks told CNN.

Trump’s lawyers had been dreading the prospect, concerned it could drag out the investigation they have fought continuously in court. And Trump himself has complained about the matter, likening the prospect to former special counsel Robert Mueller, who oversaw the Russia investigation.

Justice Department officials had been debating for weeks whether to appoint a special counsel, CNN previously reported.

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Former President Donald Trump targeted Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing criminal investigations into him, and his wife in a series of personal attacks this week.

"Jack Smith(?), is a Trump Hating THUG whose wife is a serial and open Trump Hater, whose friends & other family members are even worse," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November to oversee federal criminal investigations involving Donald Trump, including the probe into his handling of classified documents and the investigation into his role in the January 6 Capitol attack.

Smith's wife, Katy Chevigny, worked as a producer on Michelle Obama's "Becoming" documentary and donated $1,000 to Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign, per Mailonline.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Smith and called for him to be fired, suggesting that he and his family are unfairly biased against him.

"Smith is known as ‘an unfair Savage,’ & is best friends with the craziest Trump haters, including Lisa Monaco who runs 'Injustice,'" Trump said in another Truth Social post on Thursday, referencing the deputy attorney general of the United States.

He also reacted negatively to news that Garland had appointed special counsel Robert Hur to probe Biden's mishandling of classified documents, complaining that Hur was nicer than Smith.

"How come the Biden 'Prosecutor' is a nice guy, very friendly with Democrats and RINOS alike, close to Christopher Wray, & pretty much liked & known by everybody, while my 'Prosecutor' is a Radical Left Trump HATING Lunatic," he wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.

Trump claimed that Smith's "wife & family get a perfect '10' for spewing Trump HATE."

While appearing on The Mark Levin Show on Thursday, Trump called for Smith to resign because he's got a "conflict," and accused him of being a "terrorist" and "Trump hater."

Trump's personal tirades against the Smiths' came a day after The Washington Post reported a new wide-ranging subpoena and been sent to Trump campaign officials as part of the Justice Department's investigation into the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.