Withdrawn subpoena could mean Smith is scaling back inquiry into fundraising related to false claims of election fraud
Special counsel Jack Smith has withdrawn a subpoena seeking records about fundraising by the political action committee Save America — a group that is controlled by former president Donald Trump and whose activities related to efforts to block the results of the 2020 presidential election have come under investigation, people familiar with the matter said.
The withdrawal of the subpoena earlier this month indicates Smith is scaling back at least part of his inquiry into the political fundraising work that fed and benefited from unfounded claims that the election was stolen, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.
Save America was still working to gather all of the records sought in the subpoena when it was notified by Smith’s office that the demand for information had been withdrawn, two of the people familiar with the matter said. The federal indictment of Trump filed in August, which charged him with four counts related to alleged obstruction of the 2020 election, does not refer specifically to Save America.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment on the withdrawal of the Save America subpoena. Smith’s office issued a flurry of similar subpoenas to other groups and individuals earlier this year, probing Trump campaign officials, Republican operatives and others about fundraising related to efforts to overturn the presidential election in the months before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
A representative for Save America declined to comment.
“It is not unusual for prosecutors to cast a broad net in seeking documents at the outset of an investigation,” said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. While it’s difficult to say where this part of Smith’s probe is ultimately headed, Mintz said, the withdrawn subpoena “may simply reflect a pragmatic decision to narrow the scope of the investigation.”
Broadly, the subpoenas and related interviews by Smith’s investigators sought information about the post-election, pro-Trump fundraising, and what people inside Save America and other groups knew about the veracity of the claims they were making to raise money, the people familiar with the matter said.
The Save America PAC was founded in the wake of the 2020 election. The group raised more than $100 million, largely on fundraising appeals that made baseless claims that Democrats had conducted widespread voter fraud and stolen the election from Trump, when in fact Joe Biden had defeated the incumbent president.
Save America has been a key source of funding not just for political activities, but also for the legal costs associated with the various state and federal investigations that have resulted in four separate indictments of Trump — the election-obstruction case in D.C., a state-level election-obstruction case in Georgia, a classified-documents case in Florida and a state-level case in New York involving a hush money payment in the 2016 election. In two cases, Trump’s aides or advisers also were charged.
The PAC has spent tens of millions of dollars on legal bills for Trump, who has denied wrongdoing, and those around him.
While interviewing potential witnesses associated with Trump, Smith’s prosecutors have asked pointed questions about who is paying for their lawyers and why, people familiar with the questions have said. Trump advisers have said the Save America PAC, which raises most of its money through small-dollar contributions by Trump supporters across the country, is footing the legal bills for almost anyone drawn into the Trump investigations who requests help from the former president and his advisers.
While false fundraising claims by nonprofit or commercial groups can be and sometimes are prosecuted federally or locally as crimes, historically the Justice Department and state authorities have given wide latitude to political organizations, even ones that make outlandish claims not supported by evidence, partly out of a reluctance to try to police political activity.
A subpoena withdrawal doesn’t mean that a case is closed or that investigators’ interest in the subject has ended, but it does indicate that prosecutors no longer think the information they once demanded is necessary for their work. Nothing prevents Smith’s team from reviving a particular demand for records if they change their minds later.
Four people with knowledge of the investigation said prosecutors had not asked questions about fundraising in recent months, after several subpoenas and witness interviews on that topic earlier in 2023.
One unanswered question in the D.C. election-obstruction investigation is whether Smith plans to seek indictments of six alleged co-conspirators described in the indictment as having plotted with the former president to try to block Biden’s victory.
The indictment filed this summer does not explicitly identify the six individuals, but it offers certain information about their alleged conduct. That information clearly matches with what is known about five lawyers involved in Trump’s efforts: Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, and Kenneth Chesebro. All five have denied wrongdoing. The Washington Post has not confirmed the identity of the sixth alleged co-conspirator.
Trump is tentatively scheduled to go to trial in the D.C. case in March. While the indictment charges a multipart, multi-person conspiracy by him and others, prosecutors have given no indication that they plan to indict anyone else to join him at the defense table in that trial.
