Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed former Trump administration aides who have knowledge of former president Donald Trump’s possible culpability for the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol that left five people, according to the New York Times.
Smith’s team of prosecutors interviewed former DHS Cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs, whose life was threatened after he said the 2020 presidential election had been free of fraud or improprieties. Trump also fired Krebs for his comments.
The investigators appear focused on Mr. Trump’s state of mind around the firing of Mr. Krebs, as well as on establishing a timeline of events leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. The latest subpoenas, issued roughly two weeks ago, went to officials in the personnel office, according to the two people familiar with the matter.
Investigators working for the special counsel are also interested in determining if Trump and his allies attempted to evaluate the loyalty of federal officials who were working for the disgraced ex-president at the time of the 2020 election and its aftermath. John McEntee, a former Trump personal aide, who allegedly questioned the loyalty of Krebs and developed a “loyalty test” for administration officials, was “seen going into the grand jury in recent months.”
Sources also told the Times that Smith’s team of prosecutors are looking into how top Trump administration officials approached the Justice Department hoping to the DOJ to declare the results of the 2020 election invalid so that millions of ballots could be destroyed and a new election held in key battleground states that the failed one-term former president lost to Joe Biden.