More stories

  • in

    Peter Navarro, Former Trump Aide, Gets Grand Jury Subpoena in Jan. 6 Inquiry

    The subpoena, the latest indication of an expanding inquiry by federal prosecutors, seeks Mr. Navarro’s testimony and any records he has related to the attack on the Capitol last year.Peter Navarro, who as a White House adviser to President Donald J. Trump worked to keep Mr. Trump in office after his defeat in the 2020 election, disclosed on Monday that he has been summoned to testify on Thursday to a federal grand jury and to provide prosecutors with any records he has related to the attack on the Capitol last year, including “any communications” with Mr. Trump.The subpoena to Mr. Navarro — which he said the F.B.I. served at his house last week — seeks his testimony about materials related to the buildup to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and signals that the Justice Department investigation may be progressing to include activities of people in the White House.Mr. Navarro revealed the existence of the subpoena in a draft of a lawsuit he said he is preparing to file against the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.Mr. Navarro, who plans to represent himself in the suit, is hoping to persuade a federal judge to block the subpoena, which he calls the “fruit of the poisonous tree.”The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.The grand jury’s subpoena, Mr. Navarro said, builds on a separate subpoena issued to him in February by the committee. That subpoena sought documents and testimony about an effort to overturn the election nicknamed the “Green Bay Sweep,” and a Jan. 2, 2021, call that Mr. Navarro participated in with Mr. Trump and his lawyers in which they attempted to persuade hundreds of state lawmakers to join the effort.Mr. Navarro has refused to cooperate with the committee. He was found in contempt of Congress, and the House referred the contempt case to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. In his draft lawsuit, he called the committee’s subpoena “illegal and unenforceable.”Mr. Navarro said the grand jury subpoena was directly related to the contempt of Congress referral. Asked if he planned to comply and appear on Thursday to testify, Mr. Navarro responded, “T.B.D.”The subpoena is the latest sign the Justice Department’s investigation into the attack has moved beyond the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol. Federal prosectors have charged more than 800 people in connection with the attack.The subpoena sent last week to Mr. Navarro is the first known to have been issued in connection to the department’s Jan. 6 investigations to someone who worked in the Trump White House. But it follows others issued to people connected to various strands of the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack and its prelude.In April, Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer, revealed that he had been served with his own grand jury subpoena, asking for records about people who organized, spoke at or provided security for pro-Trump rallies in Washington after the election, including Mr. Trump’s incendiary event near the White House on Jan. 6.Mr. Alexander’s subpoena also sought records about members of the executive or legislative branches who may have helped to plan or execute the rallies, or who tried to “obstruct, influence, impede or delay” the certification of the 2020 presidential election.Last week, word emerged that the same grand jury, sitting in Washington, had more recently issued a different set of subpoenas requesting information about the role that a group of lawyers close to Mr. Trump may have had played in a plan create alternate slates of pro-Trump electors in key swing states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.The lawyers named in the subpoena included Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani; Jenna Ellis, who worked with Mr. Giuliani; John Eastman, one of the former president’s chief legal advisers during the postelection period; and Kenneth Chesebro, who wrote a pair of memos laying out the details of the plan.Those subpoenas also requested information about any members of the Trump campaign who may been involved with the alternate elector scheme and about several Republican officials in Georgia who took part in it, including David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.Mr. Navarro’s subpoena, by his own account, was issued by a different grand jury.In the draft of the suit he said he intends to file, he argues that only Mr. Trump can authorize him to testify. He asks a judge to instruct Mr. Graves, the U.S. attorney in Washington, to negotiate his appearance with Mr. Trump. Mr. Navarro cites Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over materials related to the attack on the Capitol.“The executive privilege invoked by President Trump is not mine or Joe Biden’s to waive,” Mr. Navarro writes. “Rather, as with the committee, the U.S. attorney has constitutional and due process obligations to negotiate my appearance.”An effort by Mr. Trump to block release of White House materials related to the Jan. 6 attack on the grounds of executive privilege was rejected by a federal appeals court in January, and the Supreme Court denied Mr. Trump’s request for a stay of the decision.Mr. Navarro, who helped coordinate the Trump administration’s pandemic response through his role overseeing the Defense Production Act, has insisted that the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was not part of the plans he backed, which he said included having Vice President Mike Pence reject electors for Mr. Biden when Congress met in a joint session to formally count them.In a book, Mr. Navarro wrote that the idea for the “Green Bay Sweep” was for Mr. Pence to be the “quarterback” of the plan and “put certification of the election on ice for at least another several weeks while Congress and the various state legislatures involved investigate all of the fraud and election irregularities.”Mr. Navarro also wrote a 36-page report claiming election fraud as part of what he called an “Immaculate Deception.” In an interview with The New York Times, he said he relied on “thousands of affidavits” from Mr. Giuliani, and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner, to help produce the report, which claimed there “may well have been a coordinated strategy to effectively stack the election deck against the Trump-Pence ticket.”There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and the Jan. 6 committee described the claims in Mr. Navarro’s report as having been “discredited in public reporting, by state officials and courts.”Mr. Navarro said that he made sure Republican members of Congress received a copy of his report and that more than 100 members of Congress had signed on to the plans. (Ultimately, 147 Republican members of Congress objected to certifying at least one state for Mr. Biden.)An aide to Mr. Navarro was also in contact with a group of Trump allies who were pushing for the former president to order the seizure of voting machines. More

  • in

    Trump Lawyers Are Focus of Inquiry Into Alternate Electors Scheme

    In recent subpoenas, federal prosecutors investigating alternate slates of pro-Trump electors sought information about Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman and others.The Justice Department has stepped up its criminal investigation into the creation of alternate slates of pro-Trump electors seeking to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the 2020 election, with a particular focus on a team of lawyers that worked on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.A federal grand jury in Washington has started issuing subpoenas in recent weeks to people linked to the alternate elector plan, requesting information about several lawyers including Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and one of his chief legal advisers, John Eastman, one of the people said.The subpoenas also seek information on other pro-Trump lawyers like Jenna Ellis, who worked with Mr. Giuliani, and Kenneth Chesebro, who wrote memos supporting the elector scheme in the weeks after the election.A top Justice Department official acknowledged in January that prosecutors were trying to determine whether any crimes were committed in the scheme.Under the plan, election officials in seven key swing states put forward formal lists of pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College on the grounds that the states would be shown to have swung in favor of Mr. Trump once their claims of widespread election fraud had been accepted. Those claims were baseless, and all seven states were awarded to Mr. Biden.It is a federal crime to knowingly submit false statements to a federal agency or agent for an undue end. The alternate elector slates were filed with a handful of government bodies, including the National Archives.The focus on the alternate electors is only one of the efforts by the Justice Department to broaden its vast investigation of hundreds of rioters who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.In the past few months, grand jury subpoenas have also been issued seeking information about a wide array of people who organized Mr. Trump’s rally near the White House that day, and about any members of the executive and legislative branches who may have taken part in planning the event or tried to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election.The widening and intensifying Justice Department inquiry also comes as the House select committee investigating the efforts to overturn the election and the Jan. 6 assault prepares for public hearings next month.The subpoenas in the elector investigation are the first public indications that the roles of Mr. Giuliani and other lawyers working on Mr. Trump’s behalf are of interest to federal prosecutors.After Election Day, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Ellis appeared in front of a handful of legislatures in contested swing states, laying out what they claimed was evidence of fraud and telling lawmakers that they had the power to pick their own electors to the Electoral College.Mr. Eastman was an architect of a related plan to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use the alternate electors in a bid to block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.Examining the lawyers who worked with Mr. Trump after the election edges prosecutors close to the former president. But there is no guarantee that an investigation of the lawyers working on the alternate elector plan would lead prosecutors to discover any evidence that Mr. Trump broke the law.The plot to use alternate electors was one of the most expansive and audacious schemes in a dizzying array of efforts by Mr. Trump and his supporters to deny his election loss and keep him in the White House.John Eastman, a lawyer advising Mr. Trump, was an architect of a plan to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use alternate electors in a bid to block Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesIt began even before some states had finished counting ballots, as officials in places like Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin came under pressure to create slates of electors announcing that Mr. Trump had won.The scheme reached a crescendo in the days leading up to Jan. 6, when Mr. Trump and his allies mounted a relentless campaign to persuade Mr. Pence to accept the alternate electors and use them at a joint session of Congress to deny — or at least delay — Mr. Biden’s victory.At various times, the plan involved state lawmakers and White House aides, though prosecutors seem to believe that a group of Mr. Trump’s lawyers played a crucial role in carrying it out. Investigators have cast a wide net for information about the lawyers, but prosecutors believe that not all of them may have supported the plans that Mr. Trump’s allies created to keep him in office, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer said he was unaware of any investigation into his client. Mr. Eastman’s lawyer and Ms. Ellis did not return emails seeking comment. Mr. Chesebro declined to answer questions about the inquiry.The strategy of pushing the investigation forward by examining the lawyers’ roles could prove to be tricky. Prosecutors are likely to run into arguments that some — or even much — of the information they are seeking is protected by attorney-client privilege. And there is no indication that prosecutors have sought to subpoena the lawyers or search their property.“There are heightened requirements for obtaining a search warrant on a lawyer,” said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama. “Even when opening a case where a lawyer could be a subject, prosecutors will flag that to make sure that people consider the rights of uninvolved parties.”As a New York real estate mogul, Mr. Trump had a habit of employing lawyers to insulate himself from queries about his questionable business practices and personal behavior. In the White House — especially in times of stress or scandal — he often demanded loyalty from the lawyers around him, once asking in reference to a mentor and famous lawyer known for his ruthlessness, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”Some of the lawyers who have come under scrutiny in connection with the alternate elector scheme are already facing allegations of professional impropriety or misconduct.In June, for instance, Mr. Giuliani’s law license was suspended after a New York court ruled that he had made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while fighting the election results on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Boris Epshteyn, another lawyer who worked with Mr. Giuliani, has also come under scrutiny in the Justice Department investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.Two months before Mr. Giuliani’s license was suspended, F.B.I. agents conducted extraordinary searches of his home and office in New York as part of an unrelated inquiry centered on his dealings in Ukraine before the 2020 election, when he sought to damage Mr. Biden’s credibility.In March, a federal judge in California ruled in a civil case that Mr. Eastman had most likely conspired with Mr. Trump to obstruct Congress and defraud the United States by helping to devise and promote the alternate elector scheme, and by presenting plans to Mr. Pence suggesting that he could exercise his discretion over which slates of electors to accept or reject at the Jan. 6 congressional certification of votes.There is no guarantee that an investigation of the lawyers working on the alternate elector plan would lead prosecutors to discover evidence that Mr. Trump broke the law.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe scheme, which involved holding meetings and drafting emails and memos, was “a coup in search of a legal theory,” wrote the judge, David O. Carter of the Central District of California.It was revealed this month that Mr. Eastman was involved in a similar — but perhaps even more brazen — effort to overturn to the election results. According to emails released by a public records request, Mr. Eastman pressed a Pennsylvania state lawmaker in December 2020 to carry out a plan to strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by essentially retabulating the vote count in a way that would favor Mr. Trump.A week before the disclosure of Mr. Eastman’s emails, Ms. Ellis was accused of misconduct in an ethics complaint submitted to court officials in Colorado, her home state.The complaint, by the bipartisan legal watchdog group the States United Democracy Center, said that Ms. Ellis had made “numerous public misrepresentations” while traveling the country with Mr. Giuliani after the election in an effort to persuade local lawmakers that the voting had been marred by fraud.It also noted that Ms. Ellis had assisted Mr. Trump in an “unsuccessful and potentially criminal effort” to stave off defeat by writing two memos arguing that Mr. Pence could ignore the electoral votes in key swing states that had pledged their support to Mr. Biden.As for Mr. Chesebro, he was involved in what may have been the earliest known effort to put on paper proposals for preparing alternate electors.A little more than two weeks after Election Day, Mr. Chesebro sent a memo to James Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, laying out a plan to name pro-Trump electors in the state. In a follow-up memo three weeks later, Mr. Chesebro expanded on the plan, setting forth an analysis of how to legally authorize alternate electors in six key swing states, including Wisconsin.The two memos, obtained by The New York Times, were used by Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Eastman, among others, as they developed a strategy intended to pressure Mr. Pence and to exploit ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act, according to a person familiar with the matter. More

  • in

    Group Chat Linked to Roger Stone Shows Ties Among Jan. 6 Figures

    The roster of participants highlights how Mr. Stone, the pro-Trump political operative, was involved with a strikingly large number of people who sought to overturn the 2020 election.It was known as F.O.S. — or Friends of Stone — and while its members shifted over time, they were a motley cast of characters.There were “Stop the Steal” organizers, right-wing influencers, Florida state legislative aides and more than one failed candidate loyal to former President Donald J. Trump. One participant ran a website that promoted disinformation about the Capitol attack. Another was an officer in the Army Reserve allied with Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser.At least three members of the group chat are now facing charges in connection with the riot at the Capitol in January 2021. They include Owen Shroyer, the right-hand man of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; Enrique Tarrio, the onetime chairman of the Proud Boys; and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia.But the focus of the chat was always the man whose photo topped its home page: Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime political operative and adviser to Mr. Trump.While little is known about what was said on the chat, the membership list of Friends of Stone, provided to The New York Times by one of its participants, offers a kind of road map to Mr. Stone’s associations, showing their scope and nature in the critical period after the 2020 election. During that time, Mr. Stone was involved with a strikingly wide array of people who participated in efforts to challenge the vote count and keep Mr. Trump in the White House.Some of the 47 people on the list are identified only by nicknames or initials, and Mr. Stone had pre-existing political ties with many of them. Still, as prosecutors deepen their inquiry into the storming of Capitol, the list suggests that Mr. Stone had the means to be in private contact with key players in the events of Jan. 6 — political organizers, far-right extremists and influential media figures who subsequently played down the attack.Reached by email, Mr. Stone said that he did not control who was admitted to the group chat and noted that Stop the Steal activities were protected by the First Amendment.“There is no story,” he wrote. “Just harassment.”Enrique Tarrio, the onetime chairman of the Proud Boys, maintained close ties to Mr. Stone.Eva Marie Uzcategui/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhile the origins of the group chat remain somewhat obscure, Friends of Stone has existed since at least 2019, when Mr. Stone was indicted in connection with the Russia investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, said one of its participants, Pete Santilli, a veteran right-wing radio host. According to Mr. Santilli, the group chat — hosted on the encrypted app Signal — was a kind of safe space where pro-Stone figures in politics and media, many of whom were banned from social media, could get together and trade links and stories about their mutual friend.“The primary reason for the chat was to have a place for supporters to share stuff,” Mr. Santilli said. “You drop a link and everyone shares it on their nontraditional channels.”But after Mr. Trump’s defeat, Friends of Stone seemed to assume another purpose as Mr. Stone found himself in the middle of the accelerating Stop the Steal movement devised to challenge the results of the election. The Washington Post, citing footage from a Danish documentary film crew that was following Mr. Stone, said that in early November 2020, he asked his aides to direct those involved in the effort to monitor the chat for developments.In recent weeks, the Justice Department has expanded its investigation of the riot from those who physically attacked the Capitol to those who were not at the building but may have helped to shape or guide the violence. Investigators appear to be interested in finding any links between organizers who planned pro-Trump rallies at the Capitol that day and right-wing militants who took part in the assault.The group chat’s membership list includes several people who fit that description.Named on the list are activists like Marsha Lessard and Christina Skaggs, leaders of a group called the Virginia Freedom Keepers who helped to organize an anti-vaccine rally scheduled for the east side of the Capitol on Jan. 6. Ms. Lessard and Ms. Skaggs worked with another anti-vaccine activist, Ty Bollinger, who was also on the list.Members of the group were among those who took part in a conference call on Dec. 30, 2020, when a social media expert who formerly worked for Mr. Stone urged his listeners to “descend on the Capitol” one week later, promising that Joseph R. Biden Jr. “will never be in that White House.”Ms. Lessard, Ms. Skaggs and Mr. Bollinger did not return phone calls seeking comment.Ali Alexander, one of the most prominent Stop the Steal organizers who planned his own event at the Capitol that day, was on the list as well. His lawyer did not return a phone call seeking comment.In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Mr. Stone was scheduled to speak at both Mr. Alexander’s event and the rally hosted by Ms. Lessard, Ms. Skaggs and others, including Bianca Gracia, the leader of a group called Latinos for Trump, according to permits and event fliers. Mr. Stone never spoke at those events, however, and hurried out of Washington even as the police were still securing the Capitol, according to the film footage cited by The Post.Ali Alexander planned his own event at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesMr. Stone’s connections to Mr. Rhodes and the Oath Keepers were based, at least in part, on the fact that the militia group provided security for him on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. The Oath Keepers also protected Mr. Alexander and his entourage on Jan. 6 and served as security at the events hosted by Ms. Skaggs, Ms. Lessard and Ms. Gracia, court papers say.At least one of Mr. Stone’s Oath Keeper bodyguards, Joshua James, has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges in the Capitol attack and is cooperating with the government’s inquiry. Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer for the Oath Keepers, was part of the Friends of Stone chat as well and is also said to be cooperating with prosecutors in the riot investigation.Mr. Stone, a Florida resident, has long maintained close ties to the Proud Boys, especially to Mr. Tarrio, who lived in Miami before his arrest. Members of the Proud Boys have acted as bodyguards for Mr. Stone and have served as some of his most vocal supporters.In 2019, after Mr. Stone was indicted by Mr. Mueller on charges including obstruction and witness tampering, Mr. Tarrio responded by wearing a T-shirt reading “Roger Stone Did Nothing Wrong” at one of Mr. Trump’s political rallies. At one point, Mr. Tarrio’s personal cellphone had a message recorded by Mr. Stone.Nayib Hassan, Mr. Tarrio’s lawyer, declined to comment on his client’s role in the chat.During his prosecution, Mr. Stone posted an image on social media of the federal judge in his case, Amy Berman Jackson, with cross hairs next to her head. When questioned in court about the image, he acknowledged that he had been sent a series of photos by Mr. Tarrio and two other Florida Proud Boys whose names appear on the Friends of Stone membership list: Jacobs Engels and Tyler Ziolkowski.Mr. Engels was with Mr. Stone in Washington on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. He initially agreed to talk about the group chat but then did not return a phone call seeking comment.Another person who appeared on the Friends of Stone list — under the name “Ivan” — was Ivan Raiklin, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who promoted a plan after the election to pressure Vice President Mike Pence not to certify electors from several disputed swing states. This plan, which Mr. Raiklin called the “Pence Card,” was ultimately taken up by Mr. Trump and some of his legal advisers, like the lawyer John Eastman.Mr. Raiklin, who did not return phone calls seeking comment, was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but showed no sign of entering the building. Closely aligned with Mr. Flynn, he has continued to question the results of the 2020 vote, appearing at so-called election integrity events and arguing that Mr. Trump was set up by members of the “deep state.”While the government has gathered thousands of pages of private messages in its vast investigation of the Capitol attack, it remains unclear if prosecutors have gotten access to the Friends of Stone group chat. Along with the membership list, The Times was given images of a few snippets of conversations to verify the chat’s authenticity.In one of them, Ms. Skaggs told the group that she had just spoken with the pro-Trump lawyer L. Lin Wood, who took part in the effort to overturn the election. Ms. Skaggs’s message, which does not bear a date, said Mr. Wood was claiming that the Insurrection Act — a form of martial law — had been invoked the night before.Responding to her message, Mr. Rhodes, who had repeatedly urged Mr. Trump to use the Insurrection Act to stay in power, answered incredulously.“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he wrote, dismissing the account with an obscenity. More

  • in

    Prosecutors Add Details to Foreign Lobbying Charges Against Trump Ally

    In an updated indictment, the Justice Department said Thomas Barrack sought money from the United Arab Emirates for an investment fund that would boost the Trump administration’s agenda.Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a businessman and longtime friend who acted as an informal adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, sought money from the United Arab Emirates in early 2017 for an investment fund that would seek both to boost Mr. Trump’s agenda and to benefit from his policies, federal prosecutors said in a court filing on Tuesday.Prosecutors cited the effort in a superseding indictment in a case in which they charged Mr. Barrack last July with acting as an unregistered agent for the United Arab Emirates, conspiring with the Emiratis to influence the Trump campaign and the White House, and lying to investigators.While the proposed fund’s “primary purpose” would be earning profits, it would “accomplish a secondary mandate to garner political credibility for its contributions to the policies” of the Trump administration, a top aide to Mr. Barrack wrote in the weeks after Mr. Trump’s election in November 2016 in a plan for the “U.A.E. Fund” quoted in the prosecutors’ filing. The fund would make money by “sourcing, financing, operationally improving and harvesting assets” in industries that would “benefit the most” from the Trump presidency, the plan said.The new indictment cited the proposed fund as evidence that Mr. Barrack sought to profit from his advocacy for the Emiratis with Mr. Trump and his circle. The indictment quoted emails and text messages from April 2017 stating that while traveling in the Middle East, Mr. Barrack could “pitch” the idea in a meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Emirati ruler, whose title then was the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.There is no evidence that the proposed pro-Trump venture ever materialized or that Mr. Barrack had the meeting with the crown prince. But the indictment noted that in the following months, Emirati sovereign wealth funds invested a total of $374 million in two deals sponsored by the giant real estate company Mr. Barrack led, now known as DigitalBridge Group and formerly known as Colony Capital.Alongside several other major funds, the Emiratis invested about $74 million in a deal to buy a Los Angeles office building and also invested about $300 million in an investment fund targeting digital communications infrastructure. The indictment noted that Mr. Barrack’s company had not raised any new capital from the United Arab Emirates in the seven years before Mr. Trump’s election, and that internal company records attributed the $300 million investment in the digital fund to “Barrack magic.”Through a spokesman, Mr. Barrack declined to comment. Lawyers for Mr. Barrack are expected to argue that the Emiratis invested in those deals on their financial merits and on the same terms as other big investors, not as payments for influence. Although he was a close friend, major fund-raiser and informal adviser to Mr. Trump, Mr. Barrack stayed in private business, where he was not subjected to government ethics rules, and he has relied heavily on Persian Gulf investors throughout his career.The new indictment included new details about what prosecutors portrayed as Mr. Barrack’s efforts under the direction of the Emirati ruler and his lieutenants to try to influence the Trump campaign and administration.In May 2016, during the presidential campaign, Mr. Barrack sent the Emiratis a copy of a speech that he said he had personally drafted for Mr. Trump and that praised Sheikh Mohammed by name.“They loved it so much! This is great,” responded an Emirati intermediary, Rashid al-Malik, who was indicted along with Mr. Barrack but has remained outside the United States.As the speech was revised, Mr. Barrack worked closely with campaign officials to ensure the remarks retained a favorable if less explicit reference to Persian Gulf allies. The Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, an old friend whom Mr. Barrack had recommended for the job, asked him in an email for “an insert that works for our friends” — referring to the Emiratis — and afterward a senior Emirati official gratefully emailed Mr. Barrack that “everybody here are very happy with the results.”During the Republican convention, the updated indictment said, Mr. Barrack again worked with Mr. Manafort to tailor certain passages of the Republican platform according to Emirati input. “Can be much more expansive than what we did in the speech,” Mr. Manafort wrote in an email to Mr. Barrack, “based on what you hear from your friends.”In November 2016, during the transition, Mr. Barrack then worked with several senior Emirati officials to arrange a phone call with President-elect Trump for Sheikh Mohammed, the indictment said. “It’s done, great call,” Mr. Malik wrote in thanks to Mr. Barrack’s aide.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 8Numerous inquiries. More

  • in

    New Details Underscore House G.O.P. Role in Jan. 6 Planning

    A court filing and newly disclosed text messages provide additional evidence of how closely some fervent pro-Trump lawmakers worked with the White House on efforts to overturn the election.WASHINGTON — It was less than two weeks before President Donald J. Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress would have what they saw as their last chance to overturn the 2020 election, and Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, was growing anxious.“Time continues to count down,” he wrote in a text message to Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, adding: “11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!”It has been clear for more than a year that ultraconservative members of Congress were deeply involved in attempts to keep Mr. Trump in power: They joined baseless lawsuits, spread the lie of widespread election fraud and were among the 147 Republicans who voted on Jan. 6, 2021, against certifying President Biden’s victory in at least one state.But in a court filing and in text messages obtained by CNN, new pieces of evidence have emerged in recent days fleshing out the degree of their involvement with the Trump White House in strategy sessions, at least one of which included discussions about encouraging Mr. Trump’s supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, despite warnings of potential violence. Some continued to push to try to keep Mr. Trump in office even after a mob of his supporters attacked the complex.“In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, wrote to Mr. Meadows on Jan. 17, 2021, misspelling the word “martial.” The revelations underscore how integrated Mr. Trump’s most fervent allies in Congress were into the effort to overturn the election on several fronts, including a scheme to appoint pro-Trump electors from states won by Mr. Biden — even after they were told such a plan was unlawful — and how they strategized to pressure their fellow lawmakers to go along.The fake electors scheme, the question of how demonstrators at Mr. Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 were directed toward the Capitol and the plotting in the White House and on Capitol Hill about the potential for Vice President Mike Pence to block or delay certification of the results are at the heart not just of the inquiry by the House select committee on Jan. 6 but also of an expanding criminal inquiry by the Justice Department.“If there was a level of coordination that was designed not just to exercise First Amendment rights, but to interfere with Congress, as it certified the electoral count, then we’re in a whole different universe,” said Joyce Vance, a law professor at the University of Alabama and a former U.S. attorney. “There’s a difference between assembling and protesting, and trying to interfere with the smooth transfer of power.”Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mr. Meadows, told the House committee that she recalled at least 11 members of Congress who were involved in discussions with White House officials about overturning the election, including plans to pressure Mr. Pence to throw out electoral votes from states won by Mr. Biden.She said members of Congress involved in the discussions at various points included Mr. Perry; Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio; Representatives Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar and Debbie Lesko of Arizona; Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama; Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida; Representative Jody Hice and Ms. Greene of Georgia; Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas; and Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado.“They felt that he had the authority to — pardon me if my phrasing isn’t correct on this, but — send votes back to the states or the electors back to the states,” Ms. Hutchinson testified, adding that they had appeared to embrace a plan promoted by the conservative lawyer John Eastman that members of both parties have likened to a blueprint for a coup.Ms. Hutchinson said that Mr. Perry, Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Gohmert were present when White House lawyers told the group that the plan to use so-called alternative electors was not “legally sound,” but that Mr. Meadows allowed it to move forward nonetheless.Cassidy Hutchinson, left, a former aide to Mark Meadows, has testified to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersText messages show that Mr. Biggs embraced the plan early on, writing to Mr. Meadows on Nov. 6 that while it was “highly controversial, it can’t be much more controversial than the lunacy that were sitting out there now.”Mr. Jordan continued to push the strategy to the end, sending a message to Mr. Meadows on Jan. 5: “Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”Mr. Jordan has criticized the Jan. 6 committee for publishing only a partial version of this text that did not make clear he was forwarding the legal advice of a conservative lawyer.Ms. Hutchinson also testified that in one discussion, Mr. Perry, who now leads the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, endorsed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol, and that no one on the call objected to the proposal. She made clear that the members of Congress were “inclined to go with White House guidance” about directing a crowd to the Capitol.Ms. Hutchinson testified that in one discussion, Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, endorsed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol.Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesSome Republican members of Congress agreed to speak at rallies outside the building meant to further encourage the disruption of the peaceful transition of power.Mr. Brooks and Mr. Biggs — both members of the Freedom Caucus — were scheduled to speak on Jan. 6 at a rally planned for the east side of the Capitol by the prominent Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, according to a permit application. The application, dated Dec. 21, 2020, noted that “the MOC” — or members of Congress — “have been confirmed.”Less than 10 days later, according to an addendum to the permit application, Mr. Alexander filed an expanded list of speakers that included more far-right members of Congress, among them Mr. Gosar, Ms. Boebert and Ms. Greene, who formally took office on Jan. 3, 2021. None of these speakers actually appeared at the event, which was never held because of the violence that erupted at the Capitol.Mr. Brooks, however, did appear at a public event on Jan. 6, speaking at Mr. Trump’s event at the Ellipse near the White House with body armor underneath his black and yellow jacket.“Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” Mr. Brooks told a huge crowd of Mr. Trump’s supporters, adding, “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?”Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, appeared at President Donald J. Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressConservative members of Congress also amplified Mr. Trump’s efforts to fight the election results, echoing his aggressive posture on social media and in television interviews.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3McCarthy’s outrage. More

  • in

    Merrick Garland Finds His Footing as Attorney General

    During a recent swing through the South, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland chatted up participants in a police program in Georgia aimed at redirecting youth who had sold bottled water on interstate highways into less dangerous work. He announced funding to address policing problems like the use of excessive force. He talked about mental health support, an issue he has thought about since he saw firsthand how officers who responded to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing struggled to process the horror.For all of the attention on the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, the trip was focused on the everyday work of being the attorney general, fighting crime and serving as a steward of law enforcement. Over two days in Georgia and Louisiana, Mr. Garland, in interviews with The New York Times on his plane and later in Baton Rouge, would say only that the assault on the Capitol “completely wiped out” any doubts he had about taking the post.“I felt that this was exactly why I had agreed to be attorney general in the first place,” he said. “Jan. 6 is a date that showed what happens if the rule of law breaks down.”By most accounts, becoming attorney general was a tough adjustment for a former appeals judge who had last worked at the Justice Department in the late 1990s. But more than a year into his tenure, colleagues say that a cautious leader has found some footing, more a prosecutor now than a deliberator.In interviews, a dozen administration officials and federal prosecutors, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, said Mr. Garland, 69, initially ran his office like a judge’s chambers, peppering even Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta with the kind of granular questions that clerks might expect while writing his opinions.But the slow pace that characterized Mr. Garland’s early months has somewhat quickened. Decisions that took weeks at the outset can now take a day. And with more top officials confirmed, he can be less directly involved in the department’s day-to-day work.Mr. Garland has said that the department must remain independent from improper influence if it is to deliver on its top priorities: to uphold the rule of law, keep the nation safe and protect civil rights.Mr. Garland and his chief of staff, Matt Klapper, in Atlanta. Career employees at the Justice Department say they no longer feel the political pressure they did during the Trump administration.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesHe has notched victories. Many career employees say they no longer feel pressure to satisfy blatantly political demands, as they did under the previous administration. The department created a unit dedicated to fighting domestic terrorism and charged important cybercrime cases. Prosecutors won high-profile convictions in the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger, and George Floyd, a Black motorist.But in a significant setback, prosecutors failed to win convictions against four men accused of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. The Bureau of Prisons remains plagued by violence, sexual abuse and corruption. And Democrats still castigate Mr. Garland for not moving more aggressively to indict former President Donald J. Trump for trying to undo his election loss. Republican critics accuse him of using the department to improperly wade into culture wars, including fights over school curriculums and the pandemic response.A Challenging First YearSeated on a sofa in the U.S. attorney’s office in Baton Rouge, Mr. Garland detailed the chaos he encountered when he took the reins in March 2021. Colleagues said that if the typical transition between parties is like relay racers passing a baton, this was a runner searching for a stick dropped on the track.Trump administration officials who expected to spend their final weeks preparing briefing binders for the incoming administration instead parried false cries of voter fraud and absorbed the horror of the Capitol attack. Mr. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat shortened the transition process. The Biden team would not be up to speed on every issue that awaited them.The first order of business was the nine-week-old Jan. 6 investigation, which entailed a nationwide manhunt and hundreds of criminal cases.Mr. Garland and his top officials, Ms. Monaco and Ms. Gupta, issued policy memos, filed lawsuits and secured indictments related to federal executions, hate crimes, domestic extremism and voter suppression, among other concerns.Vanita Gupta, the associate attorney general, speaking with Mr. Garland in Baton Rouge. Mr. Garland initially ran the Justice Department in a deliberative style, but the pace has quickened.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMs. Gupta scrutinized corporate mergers and initiated reviews of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky. Ms. Monaco’s office, which oversees the Jan. 6 inquiry, eased tensions between prosecutors and officials on the case. She closed the federal prison in Manhattan to address subpar conditions, and is pushing for more Bureau of Prisons reforms.Soft-spoken and slight, Mr. Garland has an understated manner that makes him easy to underestimate, associates said. But they insisted that his questions were always probing, and that he seemed to remember every answer.Some aides said he was slow to shift the department away from postures that had hardened during the Trump era. He took four months to reaffirm a longstanding policy that strictly limits the president’s contact with the department and to curb the seizure of reporters’ records. The department sued Georgia three months after the state passed a restrictive voting law, frustrating the White House.Prosecutors were told over a year ago to expect a new memo allowing them to forgo harsh mandatory minimum sentences, such as those for nonviolent drug dealers who had sold crack rather than cocaine. They are still waiting.In a move that some aides believe reflected the unusually high level of detail he needed to feel prepared, Mr. Garland often dispatched Ms. Monaco to attend White House meetings in his place. This year, he has attended nearly all of them.Ms. Monaco’s office overcame hiccups, too. It did not play its traditional management role under its predecessor, and she had to ease information bottlenecks. Exceedingly wary about cybercrime, she used a pseudonymous email address. That precaution, normally taken by attorneys general, gave those outside her staff the impression that she was difficult to reach.“I’m delegating more,” Mr. Garland said in the interview. “It’s easier to deal with crises every day, and new decisions, if you’re not still working on the old ones.” With Covid risks easing, he has held more meetings of the kind he attended in Georgia and Louisiana, and has met in person more frequently with his leadership team.Mr. Garland meeting with local law enforcement officers at the Justice Department’s office in Atlanta. Mr. Garland has held more in-person meetings as Covid risks have eased.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesHe will not say when he intends to step down, but administration officials believe that he would willingly serve beyond the midterm election.Protecting the Rule of LawFor most of a 90-minute flight to Atlanta on a 12-seat government plane, Mr. Garland sat near the front, editing speeches, conferring with his chief of staff and juggling updates from Washington. In a quiet moment in the interview, he spoke with seeming relish about his prior life as a prosecutor. He recalled uncovering a State Department record that proved a witness had lied, and shining a flashlight behind a document to show a judge and jury that a defendant had doctored it with correction fluid.As a special assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti in 1979, Mr. Garland helped codify reforms that stemmed from President Nixon’s abuses of power. After a stint in private practice, he became a top department official under Attorney General Janet Reno. He supervised the investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing, that era’s most serious domestic terrorism attack, before joining the federal appeals court in Washington.Mr. Garland, then an associate deputy attorney general, speaking to the news media in 1995 about the trial of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.Rick Bowmer/Associated PressMr. Biden asked Mr. Garland to lead the department the day before Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed Congress. At home on Jan. 6 writing his acceptance speech, Mr. Garland watched the attack unfold on television.“Failure to make clear by words and deed that our law is not the instrument of partisan purpose” would imperil the country, Mr. Garland said the next day, when his nomination was announced.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

  • in

    Filing Provides New Details on Trump White House Planning for Jan. 6

    Testimony disclosed by the House committee investigating the attack showed that Mark Meadows and Freedom Caucus members discussed directing marchers to the Capitol as Congress certified the election results.WASHINGTON — Before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump White House officials and members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus strategized about a plan to direct thousands of angry marchers to the building, according to newly released testimony obtained by the House committee investigating the riot and former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.On a planning call that included Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer; Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio; and other Freedom Caucus members, the group discussed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol, according to one witness’s account.The idea was endorsed by Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who now leads the Freedom Caucus, according to testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mr. Meadows, and no one on the call spoke out against the idea.“I don’t think there’s a participant on the call that had necessarily discouraged the idea,” Ms. Hutchinson told the committee’s investigators.The nearly two-mile march from the president’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse to the Capitol, where parts of the crowd became a violent mob, has become a focus of both the House committee and the Justice Department as they investigate who was responsible for the violence.Mr. Meadows and members of the Freedom Caucus, who were deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election, have condemned the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and defended their role in spreading the lie of a stolen election.Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony and other materials disclosed by the committee in a 248-page court filing on Friday added new details and texture to what is publicly known about the discussions in Mr. Trump’s inner circle and among his allies in the weeks preceding the Jan. 6 assault.Read the Jan. 6 Committee’s Filing in Its Lawsuit With Mark MeadowsThe committee alleged that Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, was told that an effort to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that Jan. 6 could turn violent, but he pushed forward with plans to hold a rally in Washington anyway.Read Document 248 pagesThe filing is part of the committee’s effort to seek the dismissal of a lawsuit brought against it by Mr. Meadows. It disclosed testimony that Mr. Meadows was told that plans to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that the events of Jan. 6 could turn violent. Even so, he pushed forward with the rally that led to the march on the Capitol, according to the filing.The filing also disclosed new details of Mr. Meadows’s involvement in attempts to pressure Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, over Mr. Trump’s loss there.At rallies in Washington in November and December of 2020, Mr. Trump’s supporters did not march to the Capitol and mostly refrained from violence. But on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump encouraged a crowd of thousands to march to the building, telling them: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength.” He did so after the White House’s chief of operations had told Mr. Meadows of “intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th,” according to the filing.Two rally organizers, Dustin Stockton and his fiancée, Jennifer L. Lawrence, have also provided the committee with evidence that they were concerned that a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 would mean “possible danger” and that Mr. Stockton’s “urgent concerns” were escalated to Mr. Meadows, according to the committee.In his book, “The Chief’s Chief,” Mr. Meadows said Mr. Trump “ad-libbed a line that no one had seen before” when he told the crowd to march, adding that the president “knew as well as anyone that we wouldn’t organize a trip like that on such short notice.”Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony contradicts those statements.She said Mr. Meadows had said “in casual conversation”: “Oh, we’re going to have this big rally. People are talking about it on social media. They’re going to go up to the Capitol.”Police officers resisted protesters outside the Capitol on Jan. 6.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesA mob of protesters breaching the building.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAnd, speaking about the planning call involving Mr. Meadows and Freedom Caucus members, a committee investigator asked her whether Mr. Perry supported “the idea of sending people to the Capitol on January the 6th.”“He did,” Ms. Hutchinson replied.A spokesman for Mr. Perry, who has refused to speak to the committee, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Justice Department and the committee both have been investigating the question of how the crowd moved from the Ellipse to the Capitol.Committee investigators have, for instance, obtained draft copies of Mr. Trump’s speech. This month, they pressed its author, Stephen Miller, a former top White House adviser, on whether Mr. Trump’s repeated use of the word “we” had been an effort to direct his supporters to join him in moving on the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying his defeat.Rally planners, such as the prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, also had a hand in getting people to move from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Mr. Alexander, at the request of aides to Mr. Trump, left the speech before it was over and marched near the head of a crowd that was moving toward the building.Joining Mr. Alexander that day was Alex Jones, the founder of the conspiracy-driven media outlet Infowars, who encouraged the crowd by shouting about 1776.On Wednesday, Mr. Jones revealed that he had recently asked the Justice Department for a deal under which he would grant a formal interview to the government about his role in the events of Jan. 6 in exchange for not being prosecuted.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More

  • in

    Alex Jones Reaches Out to Justice Dept. About Jan. 6 Interview

    The effort by the Trump ally to get an immunity deal is the latest sign of progress in the investigation, which recently brought on a well-regarded prosecutor.The federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election appears to be gaining traction, with the Justice Department having brought in a well-regarded new prosecutor to help run the inquiry and a high-profile witness seeking a deal to provide information.Alex Jones, the host of the conspiracy-driven media outlet Infowars and a key player in the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement, is in discussions with the Justice Department about an agreement to detail his role in the rally near the White House last Jan. 6 that preceded the attack on the Capitol.Through his lawyer, Mr. Jones said he has given the government a formal letter conveying “his desire to speak to federal prosecutors about Jan. 6.”The lawyer, Norm Pattis, maintained that Mr. Jones had not engaged in any “criminal wrongdoing” that day when — chanting slogans about 1776 — he helped lead a crowd of Trump supporters in a march to the Capitol as violence was erupting.As a condition of being interviewed by federal investigators, Mr. Jones, who is known for his rants about the “Deep State” and its supposed control over national affairs, has requested immunity from prosecution.“He distrusts the government,” Mr. Pattis said.While convincing federal prosecutors to grant him immunity could be an uphill climb for Mr. Jones, his discussions with the Justice Department suggest that the investigation into the postelection period could be gathering momentum.Two weeks ago, another prominent Stop the Steal organizer, Ali Alexander, a close associate of Mr. Jones, revealed that he had received a subpoena from a federal grand jury that is seeking information on a broad swath of people — rally planners, members of Congress and others close to former President Donald J. Trump — connected to political events that took place in the run-up to Jan. 6. Mr. Alexander, who marched with Mr. Jones to the Capitol that day, has said that he intends to comply with the subpoena.Supporters of Mr. Trump outside the Capitol during the mob attack.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesSeveral months ago, the department quietly took another significant step, adding Thomas Windom, a career federal prosecutor from Maryland, to help in the expanded Jan. 6 investigation, according to three people familiar with the matter.Mr. Windom has been working with officials from the national security and criminal divisions at the Justice Department to determine whether and how to investigate potential criminal activity related to the Jan. 6 attack, other than what took place during the assault.His work complements two teams led by prosecutors in the Washington U.S. attorney’s office: one focused on charging people for participating in the riot and one focused on more complicated conspiracy cases stemming from it, such as the seditious conspiracy case that was brought against Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers.Mr. Windom is looking into the more politically fraught question of whether a case can be made related to other efforts to overturn the election, a task that could move the investigation closer to Mr. Trump and his inner circle. Mr. Alexander’s lawyers have been dealing with Mr. Windom, for example, in responding to the broad subpoena seeking information about the pro-Trump rallies and other efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office.Those efforts could extend to issues such as the plan by Trump allies to have seven swing states falsely certify that Mr. Trump won, and then mail those false documents to the National Archives and Congress. However, Mr. Windom does not yet have a robust team of prosecutors, leaving unclear how extensive the investigation might become.Mr. Windom was described by former colleagues as a diligent, aggressive lawyer capable of handling complex investigations. In his former job, Mr. Windom prosecuted some high-profile cases in Maryland — among them those involving domestic and international terrorism, public corruption and national security.Mr. Windom, for example, helped to secure convictions against a trio of violent members of a white supremacist group called “The Base,” which had hoped to trigger a race war in the United States. Two of the defendants received lengthy prison sentences.In another case, Mr. Windom prosecuted Christopher Hasson, a white nationalist and lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard, who had plotted to kill journalists, Democratic politicians, professors, Supreme Court justices and those he described as “leftists in general.”Mr. Windom also charged Tawanna P. Gaines, a Maryland lawmaker, with stealing about $22,000 in campaign funds. She pleaded guilty in 2019 and was later sentenced to six months in prison.“Thomas is a thorough and creative investigator and an experienced trial attorney,” said Robert K. Hur, a former U.S. attorney in Maryland. “He’s calm under pressure and accustomed to building and trying complex, high-stakes cases. Having tried two cases with him, I know his considerable skill before judges and juries.”Thomas Windom, a highly regarded federal prosecutor who won high-profile cases in Maryland, was brought on to bolster the politically fraught investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Julio Cortez/Associated PressIf prosecutors ultimately speak with Mr. Jones, they will encounter a polarizing figure with a broad range of ties to people in pro-Trump circles, including some of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers. Mr. Jones was closely involved in pro-Trump rallies in Washington on Nov. 14 and Dec. 12 in 2020, working with rally organizers, prominent speakers and far-right militant groups like the Oath Keepers, whose members provided security at the gatherings.One of Mr. Jones’s top lieutenants at Infowars, Owen Shroyer, also was at the forefront of the mob that stormed the Capitol. Mr. Shroyer was arrested in August and is facing federal misdemeanor charges in connection with the riot.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More