Trump Spoke to FBI Agents After Fulton County Raid
Exactly what Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was doing at the scene of the FBI raid on the Fulton County Election Administration Center last week remains, for now, unclear. Congressional Democrats as well as Trump’s deputy attorney general and his close aide, Todd Blanche, acknowledged the move was anomalous.
“I don’t know why the director was there,” Blanche said on CNN on Sunday. “She is not part of the grand jury investigation, but she certainly plays a key role in our efforts to ensure election integrity and ensure free and fair elections. She is an expert in this area and that is a lot of what she and her team review every day.”
But, according to a new report from the New York Times on Monday, it appears Gabbard was there at Trump’s request. Trump ordered Gabbard to go to Georgia for the search. She then held a meeting with some of the FBI agents involved in the search as well as leaders from the FBI’s Atlanta field office, the Times reported. During this meeting, Gabbard served as a conduit for President Trump to speak to the assembled members of the FBI.
The director of national intelligence allegedly used her cellphone to call Trump. Trump called back and reportedly spoke to the agents directly on speakerphone, asking them questions about the search and thanking them for their work. According to the Times:
The supervisor of the team, which investigates allegations of public corruption and civil rights violations and gathered evidence for the search, primarily responded to Mr. Trump’s requests, the sources said. A U.S. official said the call was quite short, perhaps just a minute, and likened the conversation to a pep rally or a coach giving a pep talk at halftime to his players. This person said the president gave no concrete directives to investigators.
The raid – in which FBI agents had a warrant to seize all 2020 general election ballots in Fulton County, all tabulation tapes from voting machines used in the 2020 election, as well as all voter rolls from the 2020 election, among other things – took place just days after President Trump dusted off his incessant lies about the election being stolen from 2020. During a recent speech in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did,” referencing his various conspiracy theories about the results.
While Trump has already broken every norm associated with the firewall that typically exists between the White House and the Justice Department, his direct communication with those investigating the 2020 election in Fulton County could raise future issues for possible future lawsuits, as the Times notes:
By speaking directly to investigators, the president could have provided important ammunition for any future defense if the investigation resulted in criminal charges.
His conversation with the agents would likely be part of an effort to have the case thrown out on the grounds of vindictive prosecution. Alternatively, if such a case were to go to trial, defense attorneys would likely attempt to obtain testimony from FBI agents who spoke to the president early in the investigation, or possibly from Mr. Trump himself.
—Nicole LaFond
Ed Martin absent
After failing to secure the votes for his confirmation as U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., Ed Martin served in various Trumpian retaliation-tinged roles at the DOJ, both as head of the so-called weapons task force and as a pardon attorney.
CNN reports today that Martin is set to leave the Justice Department and is expected to leave in the coming weeks, in part because of actions taken by Deputy AG Blanche. By CNN:
Sources familiar with the matter say that once Martin was installed in his office at Justice Department headquarters in Washington, Blanche – one of Trump’s former personal lawyers – took steps to significantly limit Martin’s ability to wield power.
Although he was named to head the department’s weapons task force, a source told CNN that Martin was “superimposed” by the deputy attorney general and was not really in charge of that effort.
It’s possible that Martin’s role in the Trump administration is just going through another shift. CNN notes that Martin “spent most of last week at the White House.”
—Nicole LaFond
Judge rejects Trump’s attempts to add proof of citizenship requirements to voting
A federal judge ruled this weekend to reject some provisions of President Trump’s executive order purporting to impose new voting requirements.
They included a mandate for agency heads to assess the citizenship status of “enrollees in public assistance programs” before giving them a federal form with which to vote, and for proof of citizenship to be added to a form for military and overseas voters.
“Simply put, our Constitution does not permit the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures,” Justice Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
-Kate Riga
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Find our live coverage of the partial government shutdown here: House Democrats still opposed to helping fund DHS
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