As if Donald Trump and his allies didn’t have enough to worry about, new reporting suggests the former president could have additional criminal concerns — namely, wire fraud. Because we have to specify which investigation into the 2024 Republican presidential candidate we’re talking about, this one comes in Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 probe.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing eight anonymous sources, that federal prosecutors have recently “sought a wide range of documents related to fundraising after the 2020 election, looking to determine if former President Donald Trump or his advisers scammed donors by using false claims about voter fraud to raise money.” Smith’s team is “interested in whether anyone associated with the fundraising operation violated wire fraud laws, which make it illegal to make false representations over email to swindle people out of money,” the Post reported. (Neither NBC News nor MSNBC has independently verified the report.)
This follows the House Jan. 6 committee’s finding noted in December that “Trump and his Campaign ripped off supporters by raising more than $250 million by claiming they wanted to fight fraud they knew did not exist and to challenge an election they knew he lost.” The committee called it the Big Rip-Off, stemming from Trump’s Big Lie.
"We had eight different sources confirm to us that the new focus… is now on the grift, following the money…if [the money] was raised on fraudulent claims… and whether the people associated with that fundraising operation violated wire fraud" @JaxAlemany w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/zYqwbQGtnN








