The U.S. Department of Justice special counsel’s investigation into former President Donald Trump and his supporters’ attempts to annul the results of the 2020 election resulted in the serving of a subpoena to Nevada’s retiring secretary of state last month.
The subpoena demanded that Barbara Cegavske either show up in person on December 9 at the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C. or deliver a long list of documents outlining her conversations with authorities. The special counsel’s subpoenas in other crucial swing states were echoed in those materials.
Only a single document was shared by Cegavske’s office with officials who weren’t on the DOJ’s request list. Cegavske’s office stated in a statement late Thursday night that the document was sent “out of an excess of caution.”
A separate investigation into the violent storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and Trump’s attempts to hold onto power is being led by special counsel Jack Smith, who is also in charge of key aspects of the Justice Department investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate.
It’s a part of Smith’s first round of subpoenas, who was appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland last month. Subpoenas were also sent to officials in Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Arizona. A subpoena was also sent to Clark County, the most populous county in Nevada and home to Las Vegas.
The Associated Press was able to get Cegavske’s subpoena on Thursday night after submitting an open records request this week. It was dated November 22, almost two weeks after Nevada’s high-profile midterm elections were some of the last in the country to be called.
The DOJ sent subpoenas to several crucial swing states and counties, requesting the same documents.
These included “any conversations in any format” between June 1, 2020, and January 20, 2021, “to, from, or involving” Trump, his campaign, attorneys, and advisers, including former campaign executives and lawyers including, Sidney Powell and former New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani.
Even though Cegavske’s office did not have any documents demonstrating communication with any of the Trump campaign employees identified on the subpoena, it still sent one document.
They submitted a request for a Zoom meeting in October 2020 between the office and the chair of the Nevada GOP, Michael McDonald, who was one of many people to have signed documents claiming fraudulently that Trump had won Nevada in 2020. Other people who have signed fictitious documents or attempted to rig or invalidate Nevada elections were also named.
The sole record discovered within the relevant period, according to spokesperson Jennifer Russell, was in correspondence with the NVGOP and RNC. “Out of an abundance of caution, we included interactions with the NVGOP and the RNC in our search,” she wrote in an email to the AP on Thursday.
The states that the DOJ subpoenaed are all crucial theaters in the election-recall struggle that Trump and his allies targeted.
One of the most outspoken Republican statewide elected officials now opposing claims of voter fraud is Cegavske, who served two terms before being ineligible for re-election. Since 2014, she has presided over the state’s elections. Despite criticism from Trump and other Republicans, she has consistently defended the outcomes as trustworthy and accurate, earning the condemnation of Nevada’s Republican Party. Her inquiry failed to turn up any solid proof of widespread voter fraud in the state.
Last month, Trump attempted to cast doubt on the Clark County midterm election results via his social media app. In response, the county said that Trump was “misinformed about the law and our election protocols that safeguard the integrity of elections in Clark County.”