Justice Department officials have seized the phones of two top advisers to former President Trump and issued about 40 subpoenas to his aides, in what the New York Times calls a substantial escalation of the investigation into his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. The phone seizure, along with a widening effort to obtain information from those around Trump after the election, are some of the most aggressive steps the department has taken in its criminal investigation into the actions that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
The Jan. 6 investigation has been overshadowed by the government’s legal clash with Trump and his lawyers over a separate inquiry into the handling of presidential records, including highly classified materials, the former president kept at 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 Trump’s legal efforts, and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist who was the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign in 2020. The two have been linked to the effort to name slates of electors pledged to Trump from swing states won by Joseph Biden in 2020 as part of a plan to block or delay congressional certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory.
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