Special Counsel Jack Smith has issued a flurry of subpoenas as he ramps up his harassment campaign against Trump and his inner circle.
The special counsel investigation was supposed to focus on whether Trump broke the law when he took White House records to Mar-a-Lago and the other part of the probe is related to January 6.
However, Jack Smith has now expanded his investigation and is looking into Trump’s efforts to fight the massive 2020 election fraud operation in key swing states.
Jack Smith recently subpoenaed Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
“The subpoena for the couple is specifically related to the special counsel’s probe of Jan. 6 and the activities leading up to that day by the former president and his allies regarding efforts to overturn the 2020 election” – sources told ABC News.
The Special Counsel also issued a subpoena to Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
Trump asserted executive privilege with Mark Meadows in response to the subpoena.
Jack Smith also filed a motion to compel former Vice President Mike Pence to testify.
Pence resisted the grand jury subpoena for his testimony about Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election.
According to Politico, rather than assert executive privilege, Pence will argue that as president of the Senate, he was acting as a member of the legislative branch on January 6 and is therefore protected by the DOJ’s demands.
The Special Counsel investigation into whether Trump committed crimes has entered advanced stages, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
The special counsel investigating former President Donald Trump appears to have reached the advanced stages of his sweeping inquiry after a flurry of aggressive steps in recent weeks, some of which have set the stage for court fights that could take months to resolve.
In recent days, special counsel Jack Smith’s office asked a federal judge to override Mr. Trump’s assertion of executive privilege to shield former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying before a grand jury about the former president’s efforts to stay in office after his 2020 election loss, people familiar with the effort said. Mr. Pence has vowed to mount his own challenge to the subpoena and take it as far as the Supreme Court.
Mr. Pence’s subpoena followed a similar demand for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to produce documents and testify before a grand jury as part of the investigation into efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power. Just as he did with Mr. Pence, Mr. Trump has asserted executive privilege with Mr. Meadows in connection with his subpoena.
“In a typical case, these top-level, inner-circle people are some of the last people you’d expect to be subpoenaed,” said Randall Eliason, a former public-corruption prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at George Washington University.
“You don’t talk to them at the beginning of the investigation, because you don’t know enough yet. Just looking at that, when I see subpoenas to the highest-level inner-circle people, that makes me think they’re close to wrapping up,” he added.