New details emerged overnight Tuesday about what’s reportedly in the target letter sent to former President Trump regarding the special counsel’s investigation into the 2020 Election.
According to the Wall Street Journal, citing sources, the target letter includes at least three charges: deprivation of rights, conspiracy to commit an offense or defraud the United States, and witness tampering.
Sources told Rolling Stone that Trump is also likely to be charged with obstructing an official proceeding—the certification of the 2020 election by Congress on January 6, 2021.
A target letter is official correspondence from prosecutors alerting someone that they’re under investigation. It often offers the person the option of testifying on their own behalf in front of the grand jury in the case.
It was Trump himself who first reported the existence of the special counsel’s target letter. On Tuesday morning, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, “Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again, it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and Indictment.”
In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed veteran career prosecutor Smith as special counsel to investigate any potential criminal wrongdoing by Trump regarding the 2020 election and the related deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
At least two of Trump’s allies in the effort to overturn the 2020 election—attorneys John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani—have informed reporters that they have not received their own target letters from Smith’s office.
“Our client has received no target letter, and we don’t expect one since raising concerns about illegality in the conduct of an election is not now and has never been sanctionable,” said a spokesperson for Eastman, who is facing disbarment in California for authoring the plot to replace duly elected state electors in swing states where President Biden won in 2020 with fake, Trump-supporting electors.
Giuliani gave a voluntary interview to special counsel investigators several weeks ago, according to CNN’s Paula Reid, who said his lawyer does not expect him to be charged.
On Tuesday, Giuliani was denying any claims that he had “flipped” on Trump, with his political advisor, Ted Goodman, saying in a statement, “Any speculation that Mayor Rudy Giuliani ‘flipped’ against President Donald Trump is as false as previous lies that America’s Mayor was somehow a Russian Agent.”
Meanwhile, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik is reportedly in talks about being inverviewed by special counsel investigators.
Kerik worked with Giuliani after the election to search for evidence of voter fraud and later handed over documents to last year’s House Select January 6 Committee, including emails, about plans for keeping President Trump in power past his term.
Trump has already been criminally indicted twice in the past several months.
On June 13, he pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal counts brought by a Florida grand jury in the special counsel’s investigation into his handling of classified documents post-Presidency. Among those charges are 31 counts for willful retention of national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act.
On April 4 Trump was indicted in New York by Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg. In that case he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and conspiracy over hush money payments he made to at least two women in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
A Trump aide told the Journal on Tuesday that the former President and his lawyers had not yet decided how they plan to respond to the special counsel’s latest target letter.
