Save America PAC

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares139 Views

    Trump Fund-Raiser Rakes In More Than $50.5 Million, Campaign Says

    by

    For several hours on Saturday evening, drivers on a typically scenic stretch of Palm Beach, Fla., had their views of the coast obscured by a line of luxury vehicles whose owners were mingling inside a mansion across the road.The shoreline-blocking Range Rovers, Aston Martins and Bentleys hinted at the deep-pocketed donors attending a fund-raising dinner for former President Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, which it and the Republican National Committee said had raised more than $50.5 million.The event, hosted by the billionaire John Paulson at his home, followed a concerted push by the Trump campaign to address a longstanding financial disparity with President Biden and Democrats as both parties gear up for the general election.The reported total, which cannot be independently verified ahead of campaign finance filings in the coming months, is nearly double the $26 million that President Biden’s campaign said it raised last month at a celebrity-studded event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, senior advisers to the former president who are effectively his campaign managers, said in a statement that the total made it “clearer than ever that we have the message, the operation and the money to propel President Trump to victory on November 5.”Mr. Trump’s event, just down the road from his home at Mar-a-Lago, was in some ways a less flashy affair than its Democratic antecedent, one that traded Hollywood star power and New York City energy for a warmer clime, an abundance of palm trees and the manicured lawns typical of an island refuge for the moneyed elite.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Prominent Republican Seeks to Shield the Party From Paying Trump’s Legal Bills

      by

      A veteran Republican National Committee member has initiated a long-shot effort to prevent Donald J. Trump from taking over the party committee before he has enough delegates to become the presumptive presidential nominee in an effort to prevent the R.N.C. from paying his legal bills.Henry Barbour, a committee member from Mississippi, has sponsored two resolutions, one that would require the committee to remain neutral in the primary and another that would assure it does not spend committee funds to assist Mr. Trump in his legal battles. The proposals, which would not be binding even if passed, come as Mr. Trump seeks to install new leadership in the organization, including Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, who has said she would be open to the committee paying his legal bills.The resolutions, which were first reported by The Dispatch, have come under fire from the Trump campaign.“The primary is over, and it is the RNC’s sole responsibility to defeat Joe Biden and win back the White House,” said Chris LaCivita, a top Trump adviser who is expected to move into a top role at the R.N.C. “Efforts to delay that assist Joe Biden in the destruction of our nation. Republicans cannot stand on the sidelines and allow this to happen.”The neutrality proposal is directly related to the primary: After the South Carolina primary, only four early states will have held contests. Mr. Trump has a fraction of the delegates he needs, and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, is still running, although she has yet to win a state.The other resolution has been more in the forefront of some R.N.C. members’ minds: It seeks to bar the committee from paying Mr. Trump’s legal fees as he faces four criminal indictments and two enormous civil lawsuits.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      QAnon Supporter Pours Cash Into a Legal-Defense Fund for Trump Allies

      by

      The fund, meant to help pay the mounting legal bills of people connected to investigations into Donald Trump, has raised more than $1.6 million, a new filing showed.A supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory whom the Trump campaign distanced itself from in 2020. A real-estate developer and Trump megadonor. A funeral home company.Those were among the top contributors to a legal-defense fund established by allies of Donald J. Trump to help pay the mounting legal bills of people connected to the various investigations into the former president. The fund is not intended for Mr. Trump’s own bills.The fund, the Patriot Legal Defense Fund Inc., raised a total of $1,624,360 from July through early December, according to documents the group filed with the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday. The group made another filing on Wednesday that showed zero contributions and expenditures. It was unclear why.The biggest donation in the I.R.S. documents filed Tuesday — $1 million — was from the Caryn L Hildenbrand Living Trust. Ms. Hildenbrand is also known as Caryn Borland. She and her husband, Michael, gave more than $1 million in campaign-related contributions to Mr. Trump’s re-election effort in 2020. Their sharing of memes and social media posts about the QAnon conspiracy theory led Mike Pence, then the vice president, to cancel a fund-raiser with them. Efforts to reach the couple were unsuccessful.The conspiracy theory, embraced by a segment of Mr. Trump’s supporters, involves false claims that top Democrats are Satan-worshiping pedophiles and that the former president was recruited to break up the global pedophile cabal. Mr. Trump has increasingly nodded to the movement and its memes in his social media posts.The filing on Tuesday listed just 21 contributors, with one donation as low as $60. One donation of $34,000 was from the Cleveland Funeral Home Inc. Another was from Robert Zarnegin, a wealthy real-estate developer in California who has been a frequent donor to Mr. Trump.Michael Glassner, a longtime political aide to Mr. Trump who is leading the effort, said the group had been “gratified at the early support” it had received. He said the criminal cases against Mr. Trump from the Justice Department, which he insisted were politically weaponized, had “required many innocent supporters of President Trump to require attorneys, and the Legal Defense Fund is able to assist them with these costs.”Kenny Williams, who co-owns the Cleveland funeral home that made the $34,000 donation, said via text message that his associate had a personal relationship with Mr. Trump, but he declined to answer additional questions about that associate. “We still stand behind him!” he wrote of Mr. Trump. “He is a man of his word.”None of the money has so far been allocated to people with legal bills, according to the filing. The largest expense paid by the defense fund was $18,136 to Mr. Trump’s members-only club and residence, Mar-a-Lago. The Florida club hosted a dinner for the defense fund on Nov. 29 that Mr. Trump attended.Most of the money raised appears to have been in connection with that event.Another Trump-aligned group, a political action committee called Save America, has burned through tens of millions of dollars to help pay legal fees for the former president and a number of people connected to the web of investigations and court cases he is facing. By the middle of this year, the last time the group was required to file with the Federal Election Commission, Save America had spent more than $20 million in legal fees.The amount was so large that Save America, after sending $60 million to a different outside group supporting Mr. Trump’s campaign, requested a refund. Save America has been steadily getting money sent back to it from that other outside group, the super PAC called MAGA Inc., according to two people familiar with the matter.The crush of legal bills, which has grown as Mr. Trump has prepared for four possible trials in four different jurisdictions after being charged with 91 felony counts, has been a source of strain within the former president’s orbit. That’s especially the case because Mr. Trump does not like spending his own money on lawyers. Kitty Bennett More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      How Trump Uses Supporters’ Donations to Pay His Legal Bills

      by

      Facing a wide array of criminal charges, the former president is using money from small donors to defend himself legally — a practice that raises ethical questions.Former President Donald J. Trump faces a mountain of legal bills as he defends himself against a wide array of federal and state charges, with the latest coming this week in Georgia.To pay lawyers, he has often turned to money from supporters: Over the past two years, he has drawn tens of millions of dollars from a political action committee he controls called Save America PAC. Originally set up in 2020 as he galvanized supporters around his baseless claims of election fraud, the group — technically known as a leadership PAC — has been sustained in large part by contributions from small donors.Experts say the practice is most likely legal but that it raises ethical questions about how Mr. Trump treats his donors.Why is he doing this?Because Mr. Trump, who is famously tightfisted with his personal fortune, has mounting legal bills, a ready source of cash to cover them and not much standing in his way.Even before he entered the 2024 race, Save America was paying his legal bills as he faced federal and state investigations into his business practices, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.As charges have arrived, the legal bills have ballooned. Mr. Trump will have to pay lawyers in Florida, Georgia, New York, and Washington, D.C., as well as costs for things like databases for managing discovery.According to its public filings, Save America has also paid lawyers who are representing witnesses in the Trump investigations, including the congressional inquiry into the Capitol riot, raising questions about possible efforts to influence testimony.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, has said that the PAC is paying legal bills for witnesses to protect them from “financial ruin.” Mr. Cheung did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.In 2021 and 2022, Save America spent $16 million on legal bills, The New York Times has reported. In the first six months of this year, almost a third of the money raised by his committees and the super PAC backing him has gone toward legal costs — more than $27 million, according to a Times analysis of federal records.The legal payments could have tax implications, some experts said, if the underlying legal matter were deemed by the Internal Revenue Service to be related to Mr. Trump personally, rather than to his official role. The payments could, in theory, count as taxable income for Mr. Trump.But other experts said that the broad discretion of campaign finance laws would most likely shield him from any tax liability.Is it legal?Most likely, yes, although the rules governing what PACs and campaign committees can pay for are byzantine and not firmly settled.A campaign committee cannot pay for things that benefit a candidate personally, including legal bills that are unrelated to government matters.There is no such restriction on leadership PACs. While these organizations, which are controlled by the candidate, cannot spend money directly on the campaign, they can pay for legal fees.“Under prevailing F.E.C. interpretation, this whole discussion is moot,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former lawyer at the Federal Election Commission who is now the director of federal campaign finance reform for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit group. “He can pay all the lawyers, for all the matters, and according to the F.E.C., these rules don’t even matter.”The more important question, Mr. Ghosh said, is: “Is that an abuse of donors?” Mr. Trump is raising money for one stated reason — his run for office — and apparently using some of it for another, his legal troubles, Mr. Ghosh said. “I think it sets a very bad precedent.”Save America’s fund-raising efforts have been a focus of one of the investigations by the special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought indictments against Mr. Trump in Washington and Florida. Mr. Smith’s team has asked why Save America is paying some witnesses’ lawyers.Mr. Trump’s team is also setting up a legal-defense fund to help cover some of his allies’ legal fees, The Times reported last month. The fund is not expected to cover Mr. Trump’s own bills, but it could alleviate pressure on Save America.Do Trump’s donors and supporters care?Neither the indictments nor the reports about how he is paying for his legal expenses have dented his popularity in polls. Mr. Trump’s die-hard followers seem to have embraced his legal cause as their own, and he has used each indictment as an opportunity to solicit financial contributions.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a onetime Trump ally turned fierce critic who is now running for the Republican presidential nomination, has called attention to Mr. Trump’s use of donor money to cover his legal bills.Speaking this month on CNBC, Mr. Christie said: “And the fact is, when you look at just his campaign filings yesterday, almost most of the money that middle-class Americans have given to him, he spent on his own legal fees.”Mr. Christie continued, “I mean, this guy’s a billionaire.” How, exactly, does it work?Since Mr. Trump set up Save America after the 2020 election, it has been a war chest to sustain his political operation. It has brought in more than $100 million, but has also spent quickly, including on legal bills.In February 2022, the PAC said it had $122 million in cash on hand. By the beginning of this year, that number was down to $18 million, filings show. More than $16 million of the money spent went to legal bills — some for witnesses in the investigations, but mostly to firms representing Mr. Trump.A further $60 million was transferred in late 2022 to MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump.This year, Save America asked the super PAC for the money back, a sign of the committee’s growing need for cash.Most of the money that has gone to legal fees came from cash that Save America stockpiled between 2020 and 2022. But Save America is also receiving 10 percent of every dollar currently being donated to Mr. Trump.Here’s how it works: Mr. Trump now raises money primarily through the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, a type of group that allows candidates to divide contributions between their campaign and another committee.In November, when Mr. Trump began his campaign, 99 cents of every dollar raised into the committee went to his campaign committee, and 1 cent went to Save America. But as The Times reported in June, sometime this year the split changed: 90 percent of the money went to the campaign, while 10 percent went to Save America — 10 cents on every dollar raised went to the PAC that Mr. Trump has used to pay his legal bills. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump’s Political Orbit, Amid Spiraling Legal Bills, Faces a Cash Crunch

      by

      The former president’s political orbit, including the super PAC that backs him, is already spending more than it is taking in — an unusual trajectory this far out from an election.Donald J. Trump’s legal problems aren’t just piling up — his legal bills are, too.New financial reports show that the former president’s various political committees and the super PAC backing him have used roughly 30 cents of every dollar spent so far this year on legal-related costs. The total amounts to more than $27 million in legal fees and other investigation-related bills in the first six months of 2023, according to a New York Times analysis of federal records. That $27 million in legal costs includes Mr. Trump paying at least eight law firms more than $1 million each in the first half of 2023, part of a sizable set of legal billings expected to spiral upward in the coming months as his overlapping criminal cases wind their way toward courtrooms in New York, Florida and Washington, D.C.The new disclosures revealed the remarkable degree to which Mr. Trump’s political and legal cash are intermingled, much like his own political and legal fate.Mr. Trump’s complex political orbit is already spending more than it is taking in, and tapping into money it raised years ago — an unusual trajectory this far out from an election. And the burn rate raises questions about whether such an approach is untenable, or whether Mr. Trump will eventually need to dip into his own fortune to pay for his lawyers, his 2024 campaign or both.It is a step that the famously tightfisted Mr. Trump has resisted taking, even as his advisers have begun planning behind the scenes for a potential political cash crunch months before the primaries begin.Mr. Trump is not known for long-term planning, so it remains unclear how much he has focused on the intricate challenges of financing his campaign in the coming months. Some close to him say they are reassured by the fact that if he becomes the presidential nominee again, he can rely on the Republican Party to provide financial support. “President Trump continues to be the campaign fund-raising leader due to the support from voters who recognize this as an illegal witch-hunt,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, in a statement. “As President Trump has said, he will spend whatever it takes to defeat the Deep State and Crooked Joe Biden.”All told, the political committees that Mr. Trump directly controls, along with the independently operated super PAC devoted exclusively to helping him, are spending more than they raised so far in 2023 — largely because of his legal expenditures, the filings show.Those entities brought in $67.2 million in new donations in the first half of the year and spent about $90 million in the same period. Most of the money that went to legal fees did not come from new donations, the records show. Save America, the PAC doing the bulk of the legal spending, raised much of its funds in the aftermath of the 2020 election and plunged $16 million into legal expenses in 2022. It’s nearly been bled dry.“This is going to be an incredibly expensive proposition,” said Ben Brafman, a prominent criminal defense lawyer who is not involved in Mr. Trump’s cases. Of Mr. Trump’s three indictments, he added, “Not only is he now dealing with three separate jurisdictions, and nobody really knows which case is going to come first, but they all need to be investigated, researched and prepared at the same time by his attorneys.”Trump Entities Have Plunged Millions Into Legal ExpensesData is for Jan. 1 through June 30. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Steers Campaign Donations Into PAC That Covers His Legal Fees

      by

      A previously unnoticed change in Donald Trump’s online fund-raising appeals allows him to divert a sizable chunk of his 2024 contributions to a group that has spent millions to cover his legal fees.Facing multiple intensifying investigations, former President Donald J. Trump has quietly begun diverting more of the money he is raising away from his 2024 presidential campaign and into a political action committee that he has used to pay his personal legal fees.The change, which went unannounced except in the fine print of his online disclosures, raises fresh questions about how Mr. Trump is paying for his mounting legal bills — which could run into millions of dollars — as he prepares for at least two criminal trials, and whether his PAC, Save America, is facing a financial crunch.When Mr. Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign in November, for every dollar raised online, 99 cents went to his campaign, and a penny went to Save America.But internet archival records show that sometime in February or March, he adjusted that split. Now his campaign’s share has been reduced to 90 percent of donations, and 10 percent goes to Save America.The effect of that change is potentially substantial: Based on fund-raising figures announced by his campaign, the fine-print maneuver may already have diverted at least $1.5 million to Save America.And the existence of the group has allowed Mr. Trump to have his small donors pay for his legal expenses, rather than paying for them himself.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, did not answer detailed questions about why the Trump operation has changed how the funds he is raising are being split. Save America technically owns the list of email addresses and phone numbers of his supporters — one of the former president’s most valuable assets — and the campaign is effectively paying the PAC for access to that list, he explained.“Because the campaign wants to ensure every dollar donated to President Trump is spent in the most cost-effective manner, a fair-market analysis was conducted to determine email list rentals would be more efficient by amending the fund-raising split between the two entities,” Mr. Cheung said in a written statement.Mr. Trump gave the keynote speech at the state Republican convention in Georgia this month. Onstage, he mentioned the indictments against him, which have become intertwined with his fund-raising efforts.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesThe different rules governing what political action committees and candidate campaign committees can pay for are both dizzying and somewhat in dispute. But generally, a PAC cannot spend money directly on the candidate’s campaign, and a campaign committee cannot directly pay for things that benefit the candidate personally.For more than a year, before Mr. Trump was a 2024 candidate, Save America has been paying for bills related to various investigations into the former president and his allies. In February 2022, the PAC announced that it had $122 million in its coffers.By the beginning of 2023, the PAC’s cash on hand was down to $18 million, filings show. The rest had been spent on staff salaries, on the costs of Mr. Trump’s political activities last year — including some spending on other candidates and groups — and in other ways. That included the $60 million that was transferred to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that is supporting Mr. Trump. And more than $16 million went to pay legal bills.Mr. Trump’s rivals are not similarly splitting their online proceeds with an affiliated PAC. The websites of former Vice President Mike Pence, former Ambassador Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina direct all the proceeds to their campaign committees. The same goes for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Vivek Ramaswamy.Mr. Trump at a campaign event in Manchester, N.H., in April. On his campaign website, supporters can buy an “I Stand With Trump” T-shirt and other merchandise alluding to his costly legal troubles.Sophie Park for The New York Times“I think in this particular situation, specifically because of the use of the leadership PAC to pay legal expenses and potentially other expenses that would be illegal personal use of campaign money, there’s an unusual incentive for the leadership PAC to take in more than it normally would,” said Adav Noti, senior vice president and legal director of Campaign Legal Center.In the run-up to Mr. Trump’s latest campaign, his legal bills exploded in size. Save America spent $1.9 million in what it identified as legal expenses in the first half of 2022. That figure ballooned to nearly $14.6 million in the second half of last year, federal records show.In late 2022, a Trump adviser said that about $20 million had been set aside by Save America PAC to cover legal expenses.Since then, Mr. Trump has been indicted twice, once by a Manhattan grand jury on charges stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star, and once by a federal grand jury in Florida on charges including violations of the Espionage Act arising from Mr. Trump’s possession of classified material and government records long after he left office.A prominent attorney, Todd Blanche, left his white-collar law firm in April to join the former president’s legal team and is now representing him in both cases, and Mr. Trump recently met with about a half-dozen lawyers in Florida.Mr. Trump’s legal troubles are deeply intertwined with his political campaign and fund-raising efforts. His campaign store is selling an “I Stand With Trump” T-shirt showing the date of his indictment in Manhattan (“03.30.2023”) for $36; it recently added a second shirt with his Florida indictment date (“06.08.2023”) for $38. Half the featured items on the store’s landing page show a fake mug shot and the words “not guilty.”And Mr. Trump’s usual legal strategy — delay, delay, delay — could prove costly as overlapping teams of white-collar lawyers defend him in the federal case and the Manhattan criminal case, as well as in the investigation in Georgia, where Mr. Trump could face yet another indictment this summer for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. He is also facing an intensifying investigation by the special counsel Jack Smith into his efforts to cling to power after losing the election.It remains unclear whether Mr. Trump will try to use his campaign funds to pay for lawyers, should he run into difficulties with the political action committee — and whether such a move would run afoul of spending rules.“He can use the campaign to pay for legal bills that arise out of candidate or officeholder activity — and of course, some of the current legal matters fall into that category, and some do not, and some are in a gray area,” Mr. Noti said. “It really depends on what matter we’re talking about.”Jason Torchinsky, a Republican election lawyer, said he believed Mr. Trump was barred from using Save America donations to pay his personal legal expenses now that he’s a candidate, arguing that doing so would be “an excessive contribution” under Federal Election Commission precedent. And he said Mr. Trump could not use campaign money at all, because it would qualify as personal use.There have been signs that Mr. Trump’s campaign has been carefully monitoring its expenses.He has mainly attended events organized by other groups, as opposed to staging his own large-scale political rallies, which were the lifeblood of his two past runs for president and are one of his favorite parts of campaigning. Those rallies are expensive, costing at least $150,000 and usually more than $400,000.Mr. Trump has held only one full-scale rally in the seven months he has been running, with a second scheduled on July 1 in South Carolina, his first in an early-nominating state. (A rally in Iowa on May 13 was canceled after a tornado warning, though the weather cleared and Mr. DeSantis pointedly held an impromptu event nearby.)People familiar with the Trump campaign’s plans have said that the dearth of rallies was as much about husbanding resources as it was about getting Mr. Trump to engage with voters in a more traditional way. The people also suggested that more large-scale events might come in the fall, as the primary race heats up.But the fund-raising surges that Mr. Trump experienced after his first indictment at the end of March and again in June are expected to obscure a broader fund-raising slowdown. His campaign announced that he had raised $12 million in the first week after his first indictment and $7 million in the week after his second one. He will next disclose the state of his PAC and campaign’s finances in federal filings in July.Mr. Trump is unusually dependent on online fund-raising. He has held only one major campaign fund-raiser that was billed as such by his team: the event at Bedminster on the evening of his indictment. It raised $2 million. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Witness Testimony Helps Prosecutors Advance Trump Election Case

      by

      The Justice Department’s success in compelling top aides to former President Donald Trump to testify to a grand jury moves the special counsel closer to a decision on seeking indictments.Without fanfare, the Justice Department’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election is approaching an important milestone.After nearly nine months of behind-the-scenes clashes, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have largely lost their battle to limit testimony from some of his closest aides to a federal grand jury. The decisions, in a string of related cases, represent an almost total failure by Mr. Trump to constrain the reach of the inquiry and have strengthened the position of Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the investigation, as he builds an accounting of the former president’s efforts to retain power after his defeat at the polls.Having lost their challenges to grand jury subpoenas and largely failed to limit the scope of their testimony with assertions of executive and attorney-client privilege, a last group of aides is now being forced to answer questions.On Tuesday, it was Stephen Miller, an adviser and top speechwriter for Mr. Trump, who showed up in Federal District Court in Washington and spent several hours in front of the grand jury. On Thursday, it was John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence. The process could culminate near the end of this month with an appearance by former Vice President Mike Pence.While questions linger over pending appeals and potential efforts by some of the witnesses to delay things further by invoking the Fifth Amendment, the developments suggest that Mr. Smith is close to finishing the fact-finding phase of his work and is moving closer to a decision about seeking charges against Mr. Trump and others.There are no clear indications about when Mr. Smith might decide about charges in the case, but he faces pressure on several fronts to keep the process moving.The political season could be a consideration: The 2024 presidential race is heating up, with Mr. Trump still regarded as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, and the first debate of the G.O.P. primary season has been scheduled for August.On the legal front, the looming decision by a district attorney in Georgia, Fani T. Willis, on whether to seek indictment of Mr. Trump on charges related to his efforts to overturn his election loss has placed added pressure on Mr. Smith, who must decide whether allowing another prosecutor to go first with similar charges could complicate any prosecution he pursues.Former Vice President Mike Pence may testify before a grand jury by the end of this month.Winnie Au for The New York Times“The speed of the Georgia state investigation increases the pressure on Jack Smith to move with alacrity and to get his witnesses before the federal grand jury now,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., an Obama appointee who served as the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “Once the state indictment comes down, it can really bog down the D.O.J. investigation.”Among those who have worked with him, Mr. Smith is seen as a diligent manager bent on collecting the information needed to make a decision while remaining cognizant of the time pressures and the highly partisan atmosphere in which he is operating.In his first and only public comments — a statement emailed to reporters shortly after his appointment in November — he vowed that the pace of his Trump investigations would “not pause or flag,” noting that he would “move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.”Mr. Smith is also overseeing the parallel investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified information after leaving office and whether the former president obstructed government efforts to reclaim the materials..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who will ultimately make the decision on whether to indict Mr. Trump, has told associates that he will not overrule Mr. Smith’s judgment, whatever it turns out to be, unless he believes the special counsel has deviated from departmental standards and procedures.Mr. Garland, and his top deputy Lisa O. Monaco, have publicly projected an air of detachment from the case, but they have been following developments in the privilege fights that have been playing out in the federal courthouse that sits just a few blocks from their office. They have been receiving regular briefings from aides who are getting updates from members of Mr. Smith’s team, according to two people familiar with the situation.The legal battles over privilege began well before Mr. Smith was appointed to the special counsel post and have pitted two powerful forces against each other.Jack Smith has been leading the inquiry since his appointment in November.Pool photo by Peter DejongIn the course of the investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, federal prosecutors have subpoenaed an army of Mr. Trump’s former aides in an effort to have the grand jury hear as many firsthand accounts as possible of his behavior in the White House in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Trump’s lawyers have countered by asserting that any adviser close to the former president should not have to answer certain questions in front of the grand jury because of attorney-client privilege, which protects communications between lawyers and those they represent, and executive privilege, which shields some communications between the president and members of his administration.Among the first people to engage in this debate were Marc Short and Greg Jacob, two of Mr. Pence’s top aides, who went into the grand jury in July and asserted privilege in response to certain questions, prompting prosecutors to file motions compelling their full testimony. Setting a pattern for the months that followed, Mr. Trump’s lawyers fought those motions but ultimately lost their case in front of Beryl A. Howell, then the chief federal judge in Washington, and subsequently in front of a federal appeals court.With the privilege waived, Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob testified for a second time in October. They were followed two months later by Pat A. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin, the two top lawyers in Mr. Trump’s White House, who went through the same process.The fight dragged on into this year as another round of aides — including Mr. Miller; Dan Scavino, a onetime deputy chief of staff; and Mr. Scavino’s boss, Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff — all tried, and failed, to assert forms of privileges. The last skirmish took place just a couple of weeks ago when a new chief judge, James E. Boasberg, turned down efforts to limit Mr. Pence’s testimony.While getting these witnesses in front of the grand jury has been challenging and time consuming, the accounts they have given — or will eventually give — are only a fraction of the total body of evidence that Mr. Smith and his predecessors have gathered.Well before Mr. Smith arrived, another prosecutor, Thomas P. Windom, obtained grand jury testimony from pro-Trump figures like Ali Alexander, who organized several prominent “Stop the Steal” events, and from a wide array of state officials involved in a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in swing states that were actually won by President Biden.Mr. Windom, who now works with Mr. Smith, also oversaw the seizure of phones from lawyers close to Mr. Trump, including John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Boris Epshteyn. Mike Roman, a campaign strategist who was the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign in 2020, also had his phone seized under Mr. Windom’s watch.Other prosecutors who now work with the special counsel began an inquiry before Mr. Smith arrived into Save America PAC, a fund-raising operation that Mr. Trump created after his loss in the election. As part of that investigation, dozens of subpoenas have been issued to companies that have received money from the PAC, including some law firms.Danny Hakim More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Giuliani Receives Grand Jury Subpoena for Records Related to Trump

      by

      The subpoena to Rudolph W. Giuliani in November came as prosecutors have been examining the workings of former President Donald J. Trump’s fund-raising vehicle.WASHINGTON — Rudolph W. Giuliani, the lawyer who oversaw former President Donald J. Trump’s legal challenges to the 2020 election, has received a grand jury subpoena for records related to his representation of Mr. Trump, including those that detailed any payments he received, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday.The subpoena, which was sent in November, bore the name of a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. It predated the appointment of Jack Smith, the special counsel chosen to take over the Justice Department’s investigation of the roles that Mr. Trump and several of his aides and lawyers played in seeking to overturn the results of the election. It remained unclear, however, if Mr. Smith and his team have assumed control of the part of the inquiry related to Mr. Giuliani.As part of its investigation, the special counsel’s office has been examining, among other things, the inner workings of Mr. Trump’s fund-raising vehicle, Save America PAC. The records subpoenaed from Mr. Giuliani could include some related to payments made by the PAC, according to the person familiar with the matter.Several subpoenas issued in the past several months have asked for records concerning Save America PAC. The House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol also looked into Mr. Trump’s fund-raising operation during its own separate inquiry, and raised questions about whether it had duped donors through misleading appeals about election fraud.A longtime ally of Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani effectively ran the former president’s attempts to overturn his defeat in the presidential race and has for months been a chief focus of the Justice Department’s broad investigation into the postelection period. His name has appeared on several subpoenas sent to former aides to Mr. Trump and to a host of Republican state officials involved in a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.In one of its final acts, the Jan. 6 committee referred Mr. Giuliani and others, including Mr. Trump, for prosecution by the Justice Department. Still, the emergence of the subpoena, which was reported earlier by CNN, was the first time evidence had surfaced suggesting that Mr. Giuliani had become directly embroiled in the inquiry into the part that Mr. Trump played in the events leading up to Jan. 6.Mr. Giuliani’s subpoena was issued about two months after prosecutors blanketed more than 40 other figures from Mr. Trump’s White House with subpoenas. In 2021, the Justice Department seized Mr. Giuliani’s cellphones and computers as part of a separate investigation into his efforts to dig up dirt on Mr. Biden in Ukraine.While acting as Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Mr. Giuliani undertook an array of efforts on his behalf.He promoted a baseless conspiracy theory that a cabal of international actors had hacked into voting machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems and used them to rig the election for Mr. Biden — despite the fact that an internal memo from the Trump campaign had determined earlier that many of the outlandish claims about Dominion were untrue.Mr. Giuliani also made persistent claims that the voting had been marred by widespread cheating and irregularities at a series of informal legislative hearings in key swing states around the country. But when he personally appeared in court in Philadelphia to defend a lawsuit challenging the election, he acknowledged to the judge in the case that the suit had not alleged that fraud had actually occurred.Before his subpoena was issued, Mr. Giuliani had confronted an array of setbacks related to his work for Mr. Trump.He is facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion, alleging that he carried out “a viral disinformation campaign” about the company made up of “demonstrably false” allegations, in part to enrich himself through legal fees and his podcast.In June 2021, his law license was suspended after a New York court ruled he had made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while fighting the results of the 2020 election.He is also facing similar disciplinary charges by local bar officials in Washington. More