Special Counsel Jack Smith, who’s running two investigations at the U.S. Justice Department that directly involve former President Donald Trump, was provided a “trove” of records from local officials in Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, and Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, responding to investigative subpoenas, according to a new CNN report.
The documents newly provided for Smith’s investigation include communications with Trump’s legal staff, however official, also according to CNN. The previously reported subpoenas from Smith’s investigation named a list of officials in key states targeted by Trump and those helping with his push to stay in power after the 2020 presidential election, and Smith sought a list of communications including with Trump, his campaign, employees or agents of the same, and figures like Rudy Giuliani. CNN said it was the first to report on Milwaukee County officials giving Smith materials. The time period covered by the subpoena to that county extended up to the final day of Trump’s presidency in 2021.
“Milwaukee County focused on the County employees who most frequently communicated with attorneys and surrogates for the Trump campaign leading up to the election and after, including during the pendency of the recount,” the county told the special counsel. Separate reporting from the Associated Press on what Clark County gave Smith’s team includes troubling details, like that local officials faced a push for personally identifying info about some of those involved as local election workers. (That reportedly included those serving on a county counting board.) Imagine if Trump and his associates pushed the kind of conspiracy theories and fearmongering that could’ve led to even more situations like those faced by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia women who helped with the 2020 elections in the Atlanta area and still face conspiracy theories about their supposed involvement in imaginary fraud from the former president himself.
The AP reporting described the push for Nevada election workers’ info as “a request the county registrar sought to delay out of fear for the workers’ safety.” The AP report doesn’t identify by name who was asking for Clark County election workers’ details, although it specifies Trump lawyers.
Also according to the Associated Press, lawyers tied to Trump pushed conspiracy theories about supposed problems in the election. Trump campaign lawyers specifically alleged to Clark County officials within just days of Election Day in 2020 that thousands of voters who moved out of Nevada before the general election improperly cast ballots there anyway. The office of the Nevada Secretary of State eventually specifically pushed back on this assertion, explaining many of the circumstances as relating to military families. The Nevada Secretary of State’s office also received a subpoena from Smith but had much less to provide, reportedly giving just a single record of a Zoom invite including some of those who signed on among the purported Trump electors in Nevada despite Donald’s loss.
