A subpoena issued by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed to oversee all of the Trump investigations for the Department of Justice, suggests that DOJ is opening a new front that could well lead to criminal charges against failed former president Donald Trump.
NBC News correspondent Ken Dilianian explained on MSNBC that Smith’s demand for documents from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger concerning Trump’s request that officials in the Peach State “find” the votes necessary to make him the winner is a significant escalation of the case against the ex-president.
“This is a very important moment in this investigation. Until now, it hadn’t been clear that the Justice Department was aggressively pursuing the conduct in Georgia, given the fact that there’s a state investigation down there. That was always a mystery, though. If it was illegal in other states, or potentially illegal, Georgia was the best example, actually with the best evidence. They had the president of the United States on tape pressuring, trying to pressure Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes, and if you remember from the famous conversation, Trump also tried to suggest that they knew the election was corrupt, and it was very risky not to act on that.”
Dilianian continued:
“Andrew Weissmann, our NBC News legal analyst who is known as a very aggressive prosecutor, said early on that Jack Smith is a golden retriever puppy compared to Andrew Weissmann, and you’re really seeing evidence of that, not only with this set of subpoenas to now a total of six states, but also with this secret battle going on in the grand jury where the DOJ is trying to hold in contempt the Trump team over Mar-a-Lago.”
Smith is moving at a rapid pace, which suggests charges against Trump are coming soon, Dilianian concluded:
“He’s moving forward quickly and aggressively, in terms of the subpoenas to the state, if you look at the subpoena, there’s a list of people. Almost everyone we know of who was involved in the effort to overturn the election, Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn — the DOJ wants communications between those people and state and local election officials and they’re vacuuming them up.”
