One of those summoned, according to two people familiar with the matter, was Brad Carver, a lawyer and Republican Georgia official who claimed to be one of Mr. Trump’s voters in the state, which was won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. Another recipient of the summons was Thomas Lane, an official who worked on behalf of Mr. Trump’s campaign in Arizona and New Mexico, people said. A third person, Sean Flynn, an aide to Trump’s campaign in Michigan, also received a summons, according to those familiar with the matter. The issue of new summonses was first reported by the Washington Post. None of the three men could be reached for comment. The fake election plan is at the heart of one of the two well-known aspects of the Justice Department’s extensive investigation into Mr. Trump’s multiple and interconnected attempts to overthrow the election. The other has focused on a wide range of political organizers, White House aides and members of Congress who are linked in various ways to Mr. Trump’s inflammatory speech near the White House that immediately preceded the January 6, 2021 invasion of the Capitol.
The Issues of the Hearings of the Parliamentary Committee of January 6
This latest round of Justice Department investigations came amid high-profile hearings by the House of Representatives committee on Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result. It also comes less than a month after a previous round of court summonses revealed that prosecutors were seeking information about the role played by a group of pro-Trump lawyers in the rigged election campaign. These lawyers were Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, James Troupis and Justin Clark. The summonses, issued by a grand jury in Washington, also sought records and information on other pro-Trump figures, including Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York police commissioner and longtime ally of Giuliani. Many of the lawyers named in the summons also referred Tuesday to the public hearing of the House select committee that was investigating Mr. Trump’s extensive campaign to persuade government officials to help him stay in power. During the hearing, the committee for the first time directly linked Mr. Trump to the plan, presenting a recorded testimony by Rona McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, in which she was told how Mr. Trump called her and put Mr. Eastman . on the phone “to talk about the importance of the RNC in helping the campaign gather these potential voters.” The first calls in the fake voter inquiry were largely sent to individuals in key states who almost got involved in the plan, but ultimately did not do so for various reasons. This new round of summonses appears to be the first time Trump campaign officials have entered the investigation, marking a small but potentially significant step closer to Mr. Trump himself. Mr. Biden’s plan to build pro-Trump voters in states was one of the first and most widespread of many conspiracies by Trump and his allies to overthrow the election. Attorneys, government officials, White House and campaign assistants, and members of Congress attended. The plot developed as Mr. Trump and his allies sought to spread baseless allegations of widespread electoral fraud in key states and to persuade government officials to reverse their credentials on Mr. Biden’s victory. His goal was to put the Trump bill in place by the time Vice President Mike Pence oversaw the formal certification of the ballot during a joint congressional session on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Trump and others close to him made a relentless effort in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6 to persuade Mr. Pence to either vote for Trump and give Trump a victory in the House of Representatives or to declare that the election were uncertain because competing voter lists had been obtained in many states. The idea was to buy Mr. Trump more time to pursue his baseless allegations of fraud or possibly send the election to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation would get one vote. Because more delegations were controlled by Republicans than Democrats, Mr. Trump could have won. Adam Goldman and Glenn Thrush contributed to the report.
