Trump aide appears before grand jury as part of 2020 election probe

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An aide to Donald Trump testified Thursday before a federal grand jury investigating efforts by former presidents to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, as the Justice Department moves toward deciding whether to criminally charge Trump in the matter.

William Russell was a White House special assistant and the deputy director of presidential advance operations and continued to work as Trump’s personal aide after Trump left office. He has made prior grand jury appearances, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because of grand jury confidentiality rules.

But his session Thursday took an unexpected turn when a federal judge in the same DC courthouse pressed Russell’s attorney to reveal aspects of those secret proceedings as necessary to explain why the attorney was late for an open court hearing on an unrelated case.

A team led by special counsel Jack Smith is investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, including the events that led to the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol. Trump posted on his social media platform Tuesday morning that he had received a letter from the Justice Department saying he was the target of an investigation.

Investigators have examined Trump’s knowledge of efforts by lawyers and advisers to substitute Trump allies for certified electors in some states that Biden won; what Trump told aides about trying to use those voters to overturn the election; and his campaign to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to help him in the effort. Prosecutors also sought evidence about ads and email messages related to efforts to raise money from false claims of election fraud, as well as the decision by supposed Republican electors in some states won by Biden to send signed statements certifying that Trump had won those states.

If prosecutors decide to seek indictments in the case, they will present a summary of the evidence and a statement of the charges to the grand jury, and jurors will be asked to deliberate and vote for the indictment.

Smith also led a separate investigation into Trump’s possession of classified documents after leaving office and his alleged attempts to thwart government efforts to obtain them. Trump and his longtime valet, Waltine Walt Nauta, were indicted in a 38-count indictment in that case last month and pleaded not guilty.

People familiar with Russell’s appearance Thursday would not tell The Washington Post which investigation he was asked to discuss. But the answer to that question, and more, appeared to emerge during a rare courtroom spat involving Russell’s attorney Stan Woodward, US District Judge Trevor N. McFadden and Thomas Windom, a prosecutor on the Smiths team helping lead the election probe.

Woodward was about 20 minutes late to appear in McFaddens’ courtroom Thursday afternoon, when the judge was scheduled to read his verdict at the trial for another of Woodward’s clients in an unrelated case of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That client, also, used to work for Trump: Federico Klein, a State Department appointee and Trump campaign worker in 2016. (Woodward also represented Nauta, Trump’s co-defendant in case documents.)

Former president Donald Trump is facing at least two indictments. The Post’s Aaron Blake explains how this could affect Trump’s political future. (Video: HyoJung Kim/The Washington Post, Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

McFadden, who served in Trumps Justice Department before being appointed to the bench by Trump in 2017, demanded to know why Woodward was caught. The attorney was reluctant to explain, but the judge took the unusual step of saying he would excuse the attorney for any violations of the grand jury’s confidentiality requirements. McFadden also summoned Windom from the grand jury area to his courtroom to explain why the government ignored the judge’s request that Woodward appear immediately for his hearing.

Without identifying Russell by name, a reluctant Woodward told the court, I felt I could not leave my client in the grand jury, while he was being asked questions that might involve executive privilege. Woodward was referring to the separation-of-powers principle that normally protects the confidentiality of a president’s communications with top aides while in office, disputes about which they themselves normally remain secret.

Windom entered the courtroom, and sat waiting as McFadden read his verdict to the court that found Klein and his co-defendant guilty. Afterwards, the judge, Windom, and Kleins the prosecutor had an intense five-minute-plus conversation in the judges’ courtroom, out of the hearing of the rest of the courtroom.

A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment. A spokesman for McFadden and the US District Court for DC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Almost 3 years after the election, January 6 investigations close to the charging decisions

A data expert who worked with Trump’s 2020 election campaign is also scheduled to appear before a grand jury at the courthouse on Thursday, two people familiar with the matter said.

In addition, Smith’s team recently contacted Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner who worked with Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani in an effort to overturn the election results, and is in the process of scheduling a grand jury to look into him, according to two people familiar with those conversations. Kerik, who along with Giuliani tried to uncover evidence of election fraud, voluntarily appeared in an interview before the House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. However, he refused to share some materials sought by the committee, declaring them privileged.

Special counsel Jack Smith is the prosecutor who indicted former president Donald Trump on 37 felony counts. Here’s how he got here. (Video: HyoJung Kim/The Washington Post)

Federal prosecutors recently issued a subpoena to the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) for security footage of an Atlanta polling place that is the subject of election fraud claims by Trump and his allies. The subpoena requests Raffenspergers office for any and all security video or security footage, or any other video of any kind, depicting or taken at or near the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, on or about November 3, 2020, and any related data.

The subpoena, first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and later obtained by The Post through an open records request, was issued May 31, weeks before Raffensperger was interviewed by members of the Smiths’ team in Atlanta. It was accompanied by a letter signed by Smith and a representative who asked Raffenspergers office not to disclose the existence of this subpoena or the fact of your compliance although it also added, You don’t have to do this.

The fact that the Smiths’ team is still scheduling witness interviews doesn’t mean prosecutors are planning new charges beyond those focused on in the letter to Trump; Special counsel investigations are also authorized to make public reports based on the evidence they compile. But an initial indictment of Trump or anyone else would not preclude changing charges filed later, potentially bringing in more counts or additional defendants.

None other than Trump has so far confirmed receiving a letter targeting the election interference probe, though that doesn’t mean others haven’t received such notices or will in the coming days.

The Smiths’ team sent a letter to the Trumps’ lawyers in May informing them that the former president was the target of a classified-documents investigation. Three weeks later, Trump and Nauta were indicted.

A federal judge in South Florida is weighing when to schedule the trial; that decision was complicated by the fact that Trump also faces state charges of falsifying business records in New York and is running for president again.

The district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is also close to deciding on charges in his investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

Trump is the first former president to be charged with crimes at the state or federal level. The case in New York is scheduled for trial in March, when the 2024 nominating contest will be held. Trump also faces civil trials in New York this fall and winter over his company’s business practices and allegations that he defamed writer E. Jean Carroll.

Trump advisers said Thursday that the former president has hired Florida-based attorney John Lauro to bolster his legal team.

Holly Bailey in Atlanta and Perry Stein in Washington contributed to this report.

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