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I've long been in the camp believing there will never, ever be any serious repercussions for Trump or his loyal cronies as a result of their attempted coup.
But a tiny sliver of hope is beginning to creep in. But I still remain deeply cynical.
By Glenn Thrush, Alan Feuer and Michael S. Schmidt
June 28, 2022Updated 2:10 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — As the Justice Department expands its criminal investigation into the efforts to keep President Donald J. Trump in office after his 2020 election loss, the critical job of pulling together some of its disparate strands has been given to an aggressive, if little-known, federal prosecutor named Thomas P. Windom.
Since late last year, when he was detailed to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, Mr. Windom, 44, has emerged as a key leader in one of the most complex, consequential and sensitive inquiries to have been taken on by the Justice Department in recent memory, and one that has kicked into higher gear over the past week with a raft of new subpoenas and other steps.
It is Mr. Windom, working under the close supervision of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s top aides, who is executing the department’s time-tested, if slow-moving, strategy of working from the periphery of the events inward, according to interviews with defense lawyers, department officials and the recipients of subpoenas.
He has been leading investigators who have been methodically seeking information, for example, about the roles played by some of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, with a mandate to go as high up the chain of command as the evidence warrants.
That element of the inquiry is focused in large part on the so-called fake electors scheme, in which allies of Mr. Trump assembled slates of purported electors pledged to Mr. Trump in swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.
In recent weeks, the focus has shifted from collecting emails and texts from would-be electors in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan to the lawyers who sought to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory, and pro-Trump political figures like the head of Arizona’s Republican Party, Kelli Ward.
Mr. Windom has also overseen grand jury appearances like the one on Friday by Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer who testified for nearly three hours. And Mr. Windom, in conjunction with Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has been pushing the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack to turn over transcripts of its interviews with hundreds of witnesses in the case — spurred on by an increasingly impatient Lisa O. Monaco, Mr. Garland’s top deputy, according to people familiar with the matter.
The raid last week on the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who played a key role in Mr. Trump’s effort to pressure the department to pursue and back his baseless claims of widespread election fraud, was initiated separately by the department’s independent inspector general, since Mr. Clark had been an employee at the time of the actions under scrutiny. So was the apparently related seizure last week of a cellphone from Mr. Eastman, who has been linked by the House committee to Mr. Clark’s push to help Mr. Trump remain in office.
But Mr. Windom has been involved in almost all the department’s other key decisions regarding the wide-ranging inquiry into Mr. Trump’s multilayered effort to remain in office, officials said.
For all of this activity, Mr. Windom remains largely unknown even within the Justice Department, outside of two high-profile cases he successfully brought against white supremacists when he worked out of the department’s office in Washington’s Maryland suburbs.
Mr. Windom’s bosses appear to be intent on preserving his obscurity: The department’s top brass and its press team did not announce his shift to the case from a supervisory role in the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland late last year, and they still refuse to discuss his appointment, even in private.
That might not be a bad thing for Mr. Windom, the latest federal official assigned to investigate the former president and his inner circle, a hazardous job that turned many of his predecessors into targets of the right, forcing some to exit public service with deflated reputations and inflated legal bills.
“Don’t underestimate how every single aspect of your life will be picked over, looked at, investigated, examined — you, your family, everything,” said Peter Strzok, who was the lead agent on the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia until it was discovered he had sent text messages disparaging Mr. Trump.
“You think: I’m doing the right thing and that will protect you,” added Mr. Strzok, who is still bombarded with threats and online attacks more than three years after being fired. “I didn’t appreciate that there were going to be people out there whose sole goal is to totally destroy you.”
But a tiny sliver of hope is beginning to creep in. But I still remain deeply cynical.
The Man Helping Drive the Investigation Into Trump’s Push to Keep Power
Thomas Windom, a little-known federal prosecutor, is overseeing key elements of the Justice Department’s intensifying investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
By Glenn Thrush, Alan Feuer and Michael S. Schmidt
June 28, 2022Updated 2:10 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — As the Justice Department expands its criminal investigation into the efforts to keep President Donald J. Trump in office after his 2020 election loss, the critical job of pulling together some of its disparate strands has been given to an aggressive, if little-known, federal prosecutor named Thomas P. Windom.
Since late last year, when he was detailed to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, Mr. Windom, 44, has emerged as a key leader in one of the most complex, consequential and sensitive inquiries to have been taken on by the Justice Department in recent memory, and one that has kicked into higher gear over the past week with a raft of new subpoenas and other steps.
It is Mr. Windom, working under the close supervision of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s top aides, who is executing the department’s time-tested, if slow-moving, strategy of working from the periphery of the events inward, according to interviews with defense lawyers, department officials and the recipients of subpoenas.
He has been leading investigators who have been methodically seeking information, for example, about the roles played by some of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, with a mandate to go as high up the chain of command as the evidence warrants.
That element of the inquiry is focused in large part on the so-called fake electors scheme, in which allies of Mr. Trump assembled slates of purported electors pledged to Mr. Trump in swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.
In recent weeks, the focus has shifted from collecting emails and texts from would-be electors in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan to the lawyers who sought to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory, and pro-Trump political figures like the head of Arizona’s Republican Party, Kelli Ward.
Mr. Windom has also overseen grand jury appearances like the one on Friday by Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer who testified for nearly three hours. And Mr. Windom, in conjunction with Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has been pushing the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack to turn over transcripts of its interviews with hundreds of witnesses in the case — spurred on by an increasingly impatient Lisa O. Monaco, Mr. Garland’s top deputy, according to people familiar with the matter.
The raid last week on the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who played a key role in Mr. Trump’s effort to pressure the department to pursue and back his baseless claims of widespread election fraud, was initiated separately by the department’s independent inspector general, since Mr. Clark had been an employee at the time of the actions under scrutiny. So was the apparently related seizure last week of a cellphone from Mr. Eastman, who has been linked by the House committee to Mr. Clark’s push to help Mr. Trump remain in office.
But Mr. Windom has been involved in almost all the department’s other key decisions regarding the wide-ranging inquiry into Mr. Trump’s multilayered effort to remain in office, officials said.
For all of this activity, Mr. Windom remains largely unknown even within the Justice Department, outside of two high-profile cases he successfully brought against white supremacists when he worked out of the department’s office in Washington’s Maryland suburbs.
Mr. Windom’s bosses appear to be intent on preserving his obscurity: The department’s top brass and its press team did not announce his shift to the case from a supervisory role in the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland late last year, and they still refuse to discuss his appointment, even in private.
That might not be a bad thing for Mr. Windom, the latest federal official assigned to investigate the former president and his inner circle, a hazardous job that turned many of his predecessors into targets of the right, forcing some to exit public service with deflated reputations and inflated legal bills.
“Don’t underestimate how every single aspect of your life will be picked over, looked at, investigated, examined — you, your family, everything,” said Peter Strzok, who was the lead agent on the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia until it was discovered he had sent text messages disparaging Mr. Trump.
“You think: I’m doing the right thing and that will protect you,” added Mr. Strzok, who is still bombarded with threats and online attacks more than three years after being fired. “I didn’t appreciate that there were going to be people out there whose sole goal is to totally destroy you.”
