WASHINGTON – Over the past year and a half, the Justice Department has addressed former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election with an evidence-tracking strategy that for critics seemed to border on paralysis, and that limited discussions about his role, even within the department.
Then came Cassidy Hutchinson.
The electrifying public testimony delivered last month to the House panel on January 6 by Ms. Hutchinson, a former White House aide who witnessed many key moments, prompted senior Justice Department officials to discuss Mr. Trump, sometimes. in the presence of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco.
In talks in the department the day after Ms. Hutchinson’s appearance, some of which included Ms. Monaco, officials spoke of the pressure the witness created to scrutinize Mr. Trump’s possible criminal guilt and whether he intended to. to break the law.
Ms. Hutchinson’s revelations seemed to have paved the way for addressing the most sensitive issue of all: Mr. Trump’s actions before the attack.
Department officials have said Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony did not alter her investigative strategy to open methodical method from lower-level actors to higher rungs of power. “The only pressure I feel, and the only pressure our line prosecutors feel, is to do the right thing,” Garland said this spring.
But some of his explosive claims: that Mr. Trump knew that some of his supporters at a rally on January 6, 2021 were armed, that he desperately wanted to join them as they marched toward the Capitol, and that the top lawyer for the White House feared. Mr. Trump’s conduct could lead to criminal charges: they were largely new to them and caught their attention.
The open discussion about Mr. Trump and his behavior had been rare, except as a reason for other people’s actions, a subtle but significant change that was underway even before Mrs. Hutchinson’s testimony.
The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, may have paved the way for the Justice Department to address Mr. Trump before the January 6 attack. Credit … Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times
A small team of prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington has stepped up its investigation into a plan to install fake state voters, led by lawyers who were in frequent contact with Trump. And the Justice Department’s control is investigating the efforts made by Jeffrey Clark, a former department official who discussed the plan with Mr. Trump, to undo the election results.
A flurry of recent citations related to voter investigation and raids related to the inspector general’s investigation into Mr. Clark, who was made with the knowledge of the department’s senior leaders, suggests that these investigations are accelerating. At the very least, these moves indicate that prosecutors are slowly approaching the former president.
The Department of Justice does not publicly discuss details about the continuation of investigations or where they may lead, so as not to harm criminal proceedings or imply that people are guilty before they are charged with any crime.
Politics, long-standing but recently applied more forcefully, has infuriated critics, including President Biden, who accuse Mr Garland of being too slow and cautious. The congressional committee investigating the attack, which is resuming its public hearings this week, has used the testimony, especially that of Ms. Hutchinson, to urge the department to act more aggressively.
Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and vice chair of the committee, has pressured her colleagues to make a criminal referral to the department in hopes of forcing Mr. Garland’s hand.
On Monday, Andrew Weissmann, chief prosecutor of the special lawyer’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, harshly criticized Mr. Garland’s “bottom-up” investigative approach in a guest essay in The New York Times, saying the department should work from Mr. Speech. Trump to the supporters of the Ellipse outward.
But Mr. Garland’s message has always been clear: the Justice Department is investigating crimes, not people.
Earlier this year, in a speech commemorating the first anniversary of the riot, Garland acknowledged and rejected criticism. “We understand that there are questions about how long the investigation will last and about what exactly we are doing,” he said.
His response: “Whenever necessary and what is necessary for justice to be done, in accordance with the facts and the law.”
Mr. Garland’s stoicism belies the fact that Mr. Trump, still a dominant force in Republican politics, casts a long shadow over the department’s investigation a year and a half after his supporters razed the Capitol.
Investigators initially focused on the rioters who had attacked police officers, stormed the building and threatened the media. But as evidence mounted that members of far-right extremist groups had participated in a seditious conspiracy, a tense internal debate erupted over how to expand the sphere of possible defendants.
Some prosecutors wanted to compile lists of their colleagues and see what they could know, according to two people familiar with the plan. Top FBI and Justice Department officials shot him down. It is unconstitutional to investigate a person solely for his or her association with a group, and to do so violates the department’s policy, which says a person’s actions can only be examined if the evidence relates them to a crime, they argued.
On the day he took office, March 11, 2021, Mr. Garland attended a detailed briefing on the status of the investigation presented by Michael R. Sherwin, the head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. US in Washington overseeing the investigation. Mr. Sherwin introduced Mr. Garland a strategy that included four teams of prosecutors, labeled A to D: “Team B,” already made up of 15 lawyers, had begun investigating “influential and public officials” linked to the attack, he said. to say. a copy of a note shared with The New York Times.
Mr. Garland listened intently and thanked Mr. Sherwin his hard work in difficult circumstances, according to people familiar with the exchange.
Sherwin, who had been appointed by Mr. Trump, later appeared in “60 Minutes” and suggested that the investigation should be directed at the highest levels of government: naming names. “Perhaps the president is to blame for these actions,” he said, outraging the department’s new leadership.
In six weeks, he had returned home to Miami, and Mr. Garland took over.
The nominees of Mr. Garland have struggled with many of the same thorny questions about the scope of research as his predecessors. They were unsure of being able to show that nonviolent activity to thwart the peaceful transfer of power violated criminal law, according to people familiar with the investigation.
These concerns appear to have faded, with prosecutors following the investigation into the alternative voter plan and Mr. Clark.
Although there has never been a ban, formal or not, from talking about Mr. Trump, the department’s top officials then and now made it clear that prosecutors should focus on the test path they face, not on a roadmap leading to Mr. Trump. .
Until recently, this involved a close discussion of the details of specific cases that were unfolding — Trumps, middle-class leaders, or Trump associates involved in the state voter plan, according to current and former officials — not the speculative.
If career prosecutors discover evidence linking Mr. Trump to the crimes they are investigating, the new procedural hurdles make it more difficult for them to study their actions. In 2016, FBI base agents did not need approval to investigate the actions of Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump. But Attorney General William P. Barr issued a memorandum requiring the Attorney General, through the Deputy Attorney General, to approve this measure, which could put additional pressure on Mrs. Monaco.
Even without this authorization, Ms. Monaco directs the day-to-day operations of the department and oversees all processing, including the Jan. 6 investigation. The team that depends on her has repeatedly pressured the House committee to get transcripts of hundreds of interviews it has conducted, arguing that the panel’s reluctance to do so before the hearings concluded hampered the department’s work.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco has been consulted on major staff movements in the department’s January 6 investigation. Credit … Tom Brenner for The New York Times
Mrs. Monaco, whose job as a prosecutor in the government’s Enron case in the early 2000s earned her her rising star status, drinks coffee from a cup that says “Boring Is My Brand.” . He has often expressed admiration for his first head of government, Janet Reno, Bill Clinton’s attorney general, who resisted pressure from the White House and members of his own party by assigning a special lawyer to investigate the Whitewater scandal.
It closely monitors research, especially through its assistants, who communicate with researchers. Major developments, such as Hutchinson’s revelations, are discussed at top-level meetings, according to people with knowledge of the process.
Ms. Monaco does not micromanage staff decisions, but is consulted on major moves, including hiring a little-known Maryland federal prosecutor, Thomas P. Windom, last fall to bring together some of the disparate aspects of the election scheme.
If Ms. Monaco has been adamant in not discussing even the seemingly basic details of the investigation, such as the hiring of Mr. Windom, she has been more sincere about the challenges of conducting an investigation that is “among the most. ..