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    Justice Dept. Issues 40 Subpoenas in a Week, Expanding Its Jan. 6 Inquiry

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    It also seized the phones of two top Trump advisers, a sign of an escalating investigation two months before the midterm elections.WASHINGTON — Justice Department officials have seized the phones of two top advisers to former President Donald J. Trump and blanketed his aides with about 40 subpoenas in a substantial escalation of the investigation into his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, people familiar with the inquiry said on Monday.The seizure of the phones, coupled with a widening effort to obtain information from those around Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, represent some of the most aggressive steps the department has taken thus far in its criminal investigation into the actions that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.The extent of the investigation has come into focus in recent days, even though it has often been overshadowed by the government’s legal clash with Mr. Trump and his lawyers over a separate inquiry into the handling of presidential records, including highly classified materials, the former president kept at his residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago.Federal agents with court-authorized search warrants took phones last week from at least two people: Boris Epshteyn, an in-house counsel who helps coordinate Mr. Trump’s legal efforts, and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist who was the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign in 2020, people familiar with the investigation said.Mr. Epshteyn and Mr. Roman have been linked to a critical element of Mr. Trump’s bid to hold onto power: the effort to name slates of electors pledged to Mr. Trump from swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 as part of a plan to block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      Navarro Indicted as Justice Dept. Opts Not to Charge Meadows and Scavino

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      The House had recommended contempt charges against all three Trump White House aides over their stonewalling of its Jan. 6 inquiry.A federal grand jury on Friday indicted Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, for failing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Capitol attack, even as the Justice Department declined to charge Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino Jr., two other top officials who have also refused to cooperate.The indictment against Mr. Navarro, handed up in Federal District Court in Washington, marked the first time that an official who served in Mr. Trump’s White House during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, has been charged in connection with the investigation into the attack.Prosecutors charged Mr. Navarro, 72, with what amounted to a misdemeanor process crime for having failed to appear for a deposition or provide documents to congressional investigators in response to a subpoena issued by the House committee on Feb. 9. The indictment includes two counts of criminal contempt of Congress that each carry a maximum sentence of a year in prison, as well as a fine of up to $100,000.The Justice Department has declined to take similar steps against Mr. Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, and Mr. Scavino, the deputy chief of staff, according to people familiar with prosecutors’ decision and a letter reviewed by The New York Times informing the top House counsel of it.“Based on the individual facts and circumstances of their alleged contempt, my office will not be initiating prosecutions for criminal contempt as requested in the referral against Messrs. Meadows and Scavino,” Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote to Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, on Friday. “My office’s review of each of the contempt referrals arising from the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation is complete.”Both Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino — who were deeply involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election — engaged in weeks of negotiations with the committee’s lawyers, and Mr. Meadows turned over more than 9,000 documents to the panel, before the House voted to charge them with contempt.By contrast, Mr. Navarro and his ally Stephen K. Bannon, who has also been charged with contempt, fought the committee’s subpoenas from Day 1 and never entered into negotiations.Asked for comment, Mr. Meadows’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III, said, “The result speaks for itself.”A spokesman for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Scavino declined to comment.In a statement, the leaders of the committee applauded Mr. Navarro’s indictment but urged the Justice Department to provide “greater clarity” on its rationale for not charging Mr. Meadows or Mr. Scavino.“We find the decision to reward Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino for their continued attack on the rule of law puzzling,” said the leaders, Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming. “Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino unquestionably have relevant knowledge about President Trump’s role in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the events of Jan. 6.”For his part, Mr. Navarro appeared in court on Friday afternoon, speaking on his own behalf and telling a federal magistrate judge that the congressional subpoena he was served with was “illegal” and “unenforceable.”At the court hearing, he cast himself as a victim of an unfair system run by Democrats bent on destroying him and Mr. Trump.“There are bigger things at play than whether I go to prison,” Mr. Navarro said. “And that’s why I’m standing here.”He also complained that although he lives close to F.B.I. headquarters, federal agents arrested him at the door of an airplane as he was on his way to Nashville.“This is not the way that America is supposed to function,” he went on, adding, “They’re playing hardball.”A former White House trade adviser who undertook extensive efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office after the 2020 election, Mr. Navarro is the second high-ranking former presidential aide to be charged with contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the committee. Mr. Bannon, a former top aide to Mr. Trump, was indicted in November on similar charges.The indictment against Mr. Navarro came nearly two months after the House voted mostly along party lines to recommend criminal charges against him. The same vote also recommended a contempt indictment against Mr. Scavino.The House voted in January to recommend that Mr. Meadows be charged with contempt.“Upon receiving each referral, my office conducted a thorough investigation and analysis of the individualized facts and circumstances surrounding each contempt allegation to determine whether to initiate a criminal prosecution,” Mr. Graves wrote to Mr. Letter. “Those investigations and analyses were conducted by and supervised by experienced prosecutors. Each referral has been analyzed individually based on the facts and circumstances of the alleged contempt developed through my office’s investigation.”The House subpoena that Mr. Navarro received sought documents and testimony about an effort to overturn the election that he had billed as the “Green Bay Sweep.” The plan called for lawmakers in key swing states to team with Republican members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to reject the results that showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the election and give Mr. Trump the victory.The subpoena also mentioned a call Mr. Navarro participated in with Mr. Trump and his lawyers on Jan. 2, 2021, in which they attempted to persuade hundreds of state lawmakers to join the effort.Mr. Navarro also wrote a 36-page report claiming election fraud as part of what he called an “immaculate deception” that he said he made sure was distributed to Republican members of Congress.There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and the Jan. 6 committee has described the claims in Mr. Navarro’s report as having been “discredited in public reporting, by state officials and courts.”The indictment comes days after Mr. Navarro filed a lawsuit against the House committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in which he questioned the authority and validity of the inquiry.In the lawsuit, Mr. Navarro also revealed that he had recently received another subpoena, this one from a federal grand jury in Washington. That subpoena sought documents from him related to any communications he may have had with Mr. Trump or his lawyers.Mr. Navarro has claimed that because Mr. Trump invoked executive privilege to bar the disclosure of information requested by the Jan. 6 investigators, he is prevented from complying with the subpoena. Prosecutors were most likely interested in how closely Mr. Navarro was in touch with the former president or his lawyers in order to assess that defense against the contempt of Congress charge.“The executive privilege invoked by President Trump is not mine to waive,” Mr. Navarro has repeatedly said.Mr. Bannon has also sought to argue that he does not have to comply with his own subpoena because of Mr. Trump’s claims of executive privilege. A trial in his case is tentatively scheduled for July.Mr. Bannon is arguing that the committee is not a legitimate investigative body but a politically motivated one, citing the fact that two of its members have written books that presuppose who is to blame for the Capitol riot even though the inquiry has not ended.While contempt of Congress charges are rarely brought, the cases filed against Mr. Navarro and Mr. Bannon suggest that the Justice Department is willing to take a tough stance against at least some of Mr. Trump’s former aides who have stonewalled the committee’s efforts.The decision not to charge Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino indicates that there are limits to that approach, particularly when it comes to top White House officials who could more plausibly argue that their communications with the president were privileged.The charges against Mr. Navarro come at a politically sensitive moment: one week before the committee is poised to begin a series of high-profile hearings on its findings.Mr. Navarro has taken an aggressive stance toward the committee, especially with regard to its Democratic members. In his lawsuit, he vowed payback against Democrats should Republicans retake the White House and Congress in 2024.“If I’m not dead or in prison,” he wrote, “I will lead the charge.”At his court hearing, Mr. Navarro expressed similar disdain for the legal proceeding.A federal magistrate judge, Zia M. Faruqui, released him from custody with a standard set of conditions, mostly simple restrictions on Mr. Navarro’s travel privileges, noting that he understood the defendant was frustrated by them.Mr. Navarro rejected the idea that he was frustrated.“I am, let us say, disappointed in our republic,” he declared.Maggie Haberman More

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      House Votes to Find Scavino and Navarro in Contempt in Jan. 6 Inquiry

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      The vote was mostly along party lines to recommend that the Justice Department charge Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr. with criminal contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas.The House of Representatives voted to recommend that the Justice Department charge Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr. with criminal contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas issued by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday voted to recommend criminal contempt of Congress charges against Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr., two close allies of former President Donald J. Trump, after the pair defied subpoenas from the special committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The mostly party-line vote of 220 to 203 referred contempt charges to the Justice Department, calling for prosecutions of Mr. Navarro, a former top White House adviser, and Mr. Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff. It came as congressional investigators have grown increasingly frustrated with some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters who have refused to meet with the panel or turn over a single page of evidence to the committee as it digs into the worst assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812.“We have two people who are flagrantly, brazenly defying the authority of the House of Representatives of the United States,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee. He said the men had “nothing but excuses for their noncompliance — excuses you would not accept from a teenage child.”Only two Republicans, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, both members of the investigative committee, voted for the charges. The rest of their party refused to support the move.Dozens of Republicans lined up on the floor of the House on Wednesday to demand a change of topic, trying to force a vote on immigration legislation in line with their efforts to use problems at the border as a political weapon against Democrats ahead of midterm congressional elections.After that failed, Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, attacked the investigation in a floor speech as a “political show trial” and accused the panel of bullying the men and trampling on their civil rights.“Let me be clear: The riot on Jan. 6 was wrong. But make no mistake: the Democrats’ response is also wrong,” Mr. McCarthy said, adding, “Democrats are using the power of the federal government to jail their political opponents.”Mr. Raskin shot back that Republicans were using “circus antics” to try to slow down the vote with a “conga line” of lawmakers queued up on the floor while they skipped out on their committee assignments.Dan Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff to Mr. Trump, addressed the Republican National Convention in 2020.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesHe accused the Republicans of “slavishly” following Mr. Trump like “sycophants,” instead of joining efforts to investigate the deadly attack on the Capitol that left more than 150 police officers injured.A contempt of Congress charge carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a maximum fine of $100,000. The House vote steered the matter to the Justice Department, which now must decide whether to charge the two men.Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, said the stakes of potential jail time were too high, and noted the vote would mean that four Trump White House aides would face criminal referrals from the committee.“Mr. Scavino has two boys. He’s a good dad,” Mr. Banks said.Ms. Cheney called the vote “sad” and “tragic,” but said the committee was left with no other choice after some in her own party had abandoned the truth for fealty to Mr. Trump.“So many in my own party are refusing to address the constitutional crisis and the challenge we face,” she said.The Jan. 6 committee laid out its arguments against Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino in a 34-page report that detailed how closely they were involved in efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power even after he lost decisively at the polls.Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino are among a handful of Mr. Trump’s closest allies who have refused to sit for interviews or turn over documents, even as more than 800 witnesses — including other top White House officials — have complied with the committee’s requests.In the past week, the panel has interviewed both Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, and her husband Jared Kushner, both of whom were high-ranking White House advisers to Mr. Trump. Each sat for lengthy interviews with the committee. Neither asserted executive privilege to avoid answering the committee’s questions.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, contrasted their approach to the hard-line stance adopted by Mr. Scavino and Mr. Navarro.“The president’s own daughter complied with the wishes of the committee,” Mr. Thompson said. “If his daughter complied with the wishes of the committee, everyone else should.”The committee said Mr. Navarro had worked with Stephen K. Bannon, another Trump ally, to carry out a plan to delay Congress’s certification of the election on Jan. 6, 2021, and ultimately to try to change the election’s outcome. Mr. Navarro has previously described this plan as the “Green Bay Sweep” and has said more than 100 members of Congress had signed on to it.Mr. Navarro also wrote a report alleging a stolen election, which was widely shared with others working to overturn the election. Mr. Navarro claimed that Mr. Trump “himself had distributed Volume 1 of the report to every member of the House and Senate” before Jan. 6.The Jan. 6 committee laid out its arguments against Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino in a 34-page report.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe committee issued a subpoena in February to Mr. Navarro, but he said he would not comply, citing Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over White House materials from his time in office.In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Navarro insisted that the committee should have negotiated the matter with Mr. Trump, saying that “it is not my privilege to waive.”“Instead, the committee has colluded with the Biden White House in a futile effort to strip Donald Trump of executive privilege so it can coerce me into cooperating with their witch hunt,” he said. “This dog of a witch hunt won’t hunt at the Supreme Court, and I look forward to arguing the case there.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Contempt charges. 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      Call Logs Underscore Trump’s Efforts to Sway Lawmakers on Jan. 6

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      New details from White House documents provided to the House panel investigating the Capitol assault show a 7-hour gap in records of calls made by the former president on the day of the riot.WASHINGTON — As part of his frenzied attempt to cling to power, President Donald J. Trump reached out repeatedly to members of Congress on Jan. 6 both before and during the siege of the Capitol, according to White House call logs and evidence gathered by the House committee investigating the attack.The logs, reported earlier by The Washington Post and CBS and authenticated by The New York Times, indicated that Mr. Trump had called Republican members of Congress, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, as he sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes from several states.But the logs also have a large gap with no record of calls by Mr. Trump from critical hours when investigators know that he was making them. The call logs were among documents turned over by the National Archives to the House committee examining the Jan. 6 attack last year on the Capitol.The New York Times reported last month that the committee had discovered gaps in official White House telephone logs from the day of the riot. The Washington Post and CBS reported Tuesday that a gap in the phone logs amounted to seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being assaulted.Investigators have not uncovered evidence that any of the call logs were tampered with or deleted. It is well known that Mr. Trump routinely used his personal cellphone, and those of his aides, to talk with other aides, congressional allies and outside confidants, bypassing the normal channels of presidential communication and possibly explaining why the calls were not logged.The logs appear to have captured calls that were routed through the White House switchboard. Three former officials who worked under Mr. Trump said that he mostly used the switchboard operator for outgoing calls when he was in the residence. He would occasionally use it from the Oval Office, the former officials said, but more often he would make calls through the assistants sitting outside the office, as well as from his cellphone or an aide’s cellphone. The assistants were supposed to keep records of the calls, but officials said the record-keeping was not thorough.People trying to reach Mr. Trump sometimes called the cellphone of Dan Scavino Jr., the former deputy chief of staff and omnipresent aide, one of the former officials said. (The House committee investigating the attack recommended Monday evening that Mr. Scavino be charged with criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a subpoena from the panel.)But the call logs nevertheless show how personally involved Mr. Trump was in his last-ditch attempt to stay in office.One of the calls made by Mr. Trump on Jan. 6, 2021 — at 9:16 a.m. — was to Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate’s top Republican, who refused to go along with Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign. Mr. Trump checked with the White House switchboard operator at 10:40 a.m. to make sure a message had been left for Mr. McConnell.Mr. McConnell declined to return the president’s calls, he told reporters on Tuesday.“The last time I spoke to the president was the day after the Electoral College declared President Biden the winner,” Mr. McConnell said. “I publicly congratulated President Biden on his victory and received a phone call after that from President Trump and that’s the last time we’ve spoke.”The logs also show Mr. Trump reached out on the morning of Jan. 6 to Mr. Jordan, who had been among those members of Congress organizing objections to Mr. Biden’s election on the House floor.The logs show Mr. Trump and Mr. Jordan spoke from 9:24 a.m. to 9:34 a.m. Mr. Jordan has acknowledged speaking with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6, though he has said he cannot remember how many times they spoke that day or when the calls occurred.Mr. Trump called Mr. Hawley at 9:39 a.m., and Mr. Hawley returned his phone call. A spokesman for Mr. Hawley said Tuesday that the two men did not connect and did not speak until March. Mr. Hawley had been the first senator to announce he would object to President Biden’s victory, and continued his objections even after rioters stormed the building and other senators backed off the plan.The logs also show that Mr. Trump spoke from 11:04 a.m. to 11:06 a.m. with former Senator David Perdue, Republican of Georgia, who had recently lost his re-election campaign to Senator Jon Ossoff.A spokesman for Senator Bill Hagerty, Republican of Tennessee, confirmed he had called Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 but said they did not connect. Mr. Hagerty declined to comment.Despite the lack of call records from the White House, the committee has learned that Mr. Trump spoke on the phone with other Republican lawmakers on the morning of Jan. 6.For instance, Mr. Trump mistakenly called the phone of Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, thinking it was the number of Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama. Mr. Lee then passed the phone to Mr. Tuberville, who said he had spoken to Mr. Trump for less than 10 minutes as rioters were breaking into the building.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4Trump’s tweet. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Warns of Contempt Charges Against Two More Trump Allies

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      The House committee said it would start contempt proceedings against Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, and pressed its case that fund-raising emails falsely asserting election fraud helped stoke the Capitol riot.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Thursday that it would consider contempt of Congress charges against two more allies of former President Donald J. Trump for refusing to comply with its subpoenas.The potential charges against Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser, and Dan Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff, could result in jail time and a hefty fine, and must be approved by a vote of the House. The committee said it would hold a public vote on whether to recommend the charges on Monday.The committee’s actions show how increasingly frustrated top investigators have become with some of Mr. Trump’s closest allies, some of whom have refused to sit for interviews or turn over documents even as hundreds of other witnesses — including top officials in the Trump White House — have voluntarily complied.The committee issued a subpoena in February to Mr. Navarro, who has spoken openly of his involvement in what he calls an “operation” to keep Mr. Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election. He has said he would not comply with the committee’s subpoena, citing Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over White House materials while he was in office.On Thursday, he called the committee’s announcement an “unprecedented partisan assault on executive privilege.”“If President Trump waives the privilege, I would be happy to testify. It is premature for the committee to pursue criminal charges against an individual of the highest rank within the White House for whom executive privilege undeniably applies,” Mr. Navarro said. “Until this matter has been settled at the Supreme Court, where it is inevitably headed, the committee should cease its tactics of harassment and intimidation.”The committee has sought Mr. Scavino’s testimony since September, when it issued him a subpoena. Mr. Scavino was in contact with Mr. Trump and others who planned the rallies that preceded the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, and he met with Mr. Trump on Jan. 5 to discuss how to persuade members of Congress not to certify the election for President Biden.He also promoted the Jan. 6 “March for Trump” on Twitter, encouraging people to “be a part of history,” and posted messages to Twitter from the White House that day, according to the panel.In January this year, Mr. Scavino sued Verizon seeking to stop the company from turning over his phone records to the committee. Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Mr. Scavino, declined to comment.A contempt of Congress charge carries a penalty of up to a year in jail. A recommendation from the panel would send the matter to the full House, which would then have to vote to refer the charge to the Justice Department.The only target of the House investigation to have been criminally charged with contempt of Congress so far is Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime top adviser. That case, which is tentatively set to go to trial in July, has been bogged down recently in arguments over whether Mr. Bannon can defend himself by claiming he was merely following the advice of his lawyers when he declined to respond to the committee’s subpoena.In December, the House also recommended that Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, face criminal contempt of Congress charges for his own refusal to cooperate with the committee’s investigation. The Justice Department has not yet decided whether to pursue criminal charges against Mr. Meadows, who turned over thousands of documents to the committee but ultimately refused to sit for an interview.The potential contempt charges come as the committee is fending off a litany of lawsuits from witnesses seeking to block its subpoenas. In response to one such suit, the committee on Thursday laid out more of the case it is building, directly linking the storming of the Capitol to the lucrative fund-raising effort by the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign that was built on false claims that Democrats had stolen the election from Mr. Trump.In a filing in federal court in Washington, the committee gave its most detailed statement yet of why it believes the joint fund-raising effort was not just a plan to dupe donors into sending the Trump campaign and the R.N.C. millions, but also a leading cause of the mob attack on Congress.In a 57-page document, the committee outlined how, in the weeks after Mr. Trump lost the election, his campaign and the R.N.C. raked in hundreds of millions of dollars sending out fund-raising appeals that called Mr. Biden’s victory “illegitimate” and encouraged supporters to “fight,” including multiple messages sent the same day the Capitol was attacked.“There is evidence that numerous defendants charged with violations related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and others present on the Capitol grounds that day were motivated by false claims about the election,” Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, wrote in the filing. “In fact, many defendants in pending criminal cases identified President Trump’s allegation about the ‘stolen election’ as a motivation for their activities at the Capitol.”Peter Navarro has said he would not comply with the committee’s subpoena, citing Mr. Trump’s invocation of executive privilege over White House materials while he was in office.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesFor months, the committee’s investigators have examined whether a range of crimes were committed, including two in particular: whether there was wire fraud by Republicans who raised millions of dollars off assertions that the election was stolen, despite knowing the claims were not true, and whether Mr. Trump and his allies obstructed Congress by trying to stop the certification of electoral votes. In recent civil court filings, the committee has begun laying out some of what investigators contend is evidence of criminality.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Requests to “rescind” the election. More