According to multiple sources familiar with the subpoenas, which were issued by a grand jury in Washington, D.C., the Justice Department is seeking information about the formation, fundraising and spending of Save America, which has raised more than $100 million dollars in contributions since it was founded in November 2020.
According to a source familiar with the language of the subpoenas, investigators may be looking into whether people associated with the Save America PAC defrauded people out of money by using claims they knew to be false about stealing the 2020 election.
Some of the calls also requested any information the recipients had previously turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and the recipients may have had contact with a broad list of people who worked to overturn the election results. of 2020 — including former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing and Boris Epshteyn, an adviser to Trump’s 2020 campaign, among others. According to two subpoenas described to CNN, they included communications with a list of people from several states.
The Justice Department’s investigation, already the largest in the department’s history, has expanded beyond the hundreds of rioters charged in connection with their actions that day. More recently, researchers have looked into efforts by Trump and allies to sway the results of the 2020 election, including efforts to frame fake voters.
Separately, the House committee dedicated an entire investigative team to looking into fundraising efforts by the Trump campaign after the 2020 election. And during a hearing in June, the committee tried to argue that the Trump campaign raised funds by endorsing falsely that the election was stolen, even though they knew it wasn’t, and that the funds might have been misappropriated.
“During the committee’s investigation, we found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors about where their funds would go and what they would be used for,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat on the committee, said in a statement. during the hearing. “Well, there was not only the big lie, there was the big rip. Donors deserve to know where their money is really going. They deserve better than what President Trump and his team did.”
In an interview with CNN after the hearing, Lofgren said the committee found evidence that Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former member of Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, was paid $60,000 in speaking fees to introduce Donald Trump Jr., her fiance, in Stop the Steal. Rally for the Absence that preceded the U.S. Capitol uprising.
CNN previously reported that Turning Point Action, a conservative pro-Trump group, paid Guilfoyle for the speech. Turning Point Action is a subsidiary of Turning Point USA, the youth organization started by Charlie Kirk, who is a close friend of Donald Trump Jr.
However, Lofgren did not say at the time whether she believed a financial crime had been committed.
“I’m not saying it’s a crime, but I think it’s a shame,” Lofgren said.
The committee’s senior investigative counsel, Amanda Wick, said in a video presentation during the June hearing that the committee found that Trump and his allies raised $250 million from false claims of voter fraud. The commission said most of the money raised during that period went to the Save America PAC and not to election-related litigation.
“Save America PAC has made millions of dollars in contributions to pro-Trump organizations, including $1 million to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ charity, $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, a conservative organization that employs many former officials of the Trump administration. $204,857 to the Trump Hotel Collection and over $5 million to Event Strategies Inc, the company that organized President Trump’s Jan. 6 rally in the ellipse,” Wick said.
The committee declined to comment on the DOJ investigation.
