It appears that the Justice Department continues to ramp up its fight against ex-President Donald Trump and his associates and has issued more than 40 subpoenas during the last week, and seized the phones of at least two of his top advisors. Numerous news outlets are saying this is the latest news, however, RedState's Nick Arama had already published a number of reports before Friday.
A little late to the celebration, The New York Times reported on the morning of Monday:
Justice Department officials have seized the phones of two senior advisors to former president Donald J. Trump and have swathed his aides in 40 subpoenas as a significant increase in the investigation into his plans to undermine the 2020 presidential election, people familiar with the probe reported on Monday.
The confiscation of phones, in conjunction with an attempt to collect information from people who are close to Trump after the 2020 election, are among the most aggressive actions that the Department has made so far in its criminal probe into the events that resulted in the January. 6 attack in the Capitol by a mob that was pro-Trump.
The latest news has been that Federal agents seized telephones of Boris Epshteyn, an in-house counsel for Trump and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist for the Trump campaign in 2020. The escalating nature in the department's fight to bring down Trump is not related with the recent investigation of the former presidential residence, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, and the subsequent ongoing legal fights concerning the items taken from there.
RedState had revealed a number of details about this story on Friday, revealing that former Presidential Advisor Steven Bannon went on the Charlie Kirk show to claim that there had been “35 FBI raids” on the top Trump and MAGA allies. Civil rights lawyer Harmeet Dhillon said that she was aware of some cases, and said that some of the defendants were clients of hers.
Others were people we had knowledge of: Stephen Miller, Trump's top speechwriter, as well as a senior policy advisor, and Brian Jack, former White House political director under Trump who also advised House Minority Chairman Kevin McCarthy.
CNN states that it has added former Trump campaign director Bill Stepien, Sean Dollman CFO of Trump's Presidential campaign in 2020, as well as the former Trump assistant Chief of Staff Dan Scavino. In the near future, we'll have to begin reporting about the people from Trump World that don't have their names subpoenaed.
The New York Times describes the two people who allegedly had their phones seized:
He. Epshteyn and Mr. Roman have been linked to an important aspect that is a key part of Trump's campaign to keep his power: the attempt to create slates of voters who have pledged support to President Trump from swing states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 as part of a strategy to delay or block the congressional approval for the election of Mr. Biden's Electoral College victory.
On his Monday evening show, Tucker Carlson claims he has seen a copy of an order served to a subpoena. Arama already had an unofficial copy and printed the document on this page and posted the document on Twitter. Carlson is astonished by the scope and insanity of the requests.
Here's a short excerpt from the monologue:
The information it seeks is both illegal and untested and has no precedent in American history. The subpoena says it's an investigation into “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.” Remember, however, that any claim that you can make in your capacity as an American citizen concerning electors–or any assertion you make regarding American politics, in general, is protected by the First Amendment. This is our fundamental liberty…
This is the reason why there was no prosecution of leading Democrats in 2016, when they were trying to discredit voters who favored Donald Trump. Right. That's the reason why none of these individuals, including Kamala Harris is currently in jail.
…it isn't clear what the actual investigation is about. That's the scariest aspect. What's the matter? What are the grounds for asking me to share my private information with other people? They don't ever say.
The DOJ's ongoing attack on the President's rival has been unheard of, it's now become a bit terrifying. Arama published photos of the subpoena as part of the news on Friday.
