The congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol has moved its probe towards another aspect surrounding former President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 elections. The bipartisan panel is now targeting the former president’s fundraising efforts in the attempt to overturn the election.
A report by the Washington Post reveals that the panel is now “following the money” that was raised and spent on the false election fraud claims peddled by Trump and many other Republicans. The “green team” of the committee was able to convince former Trump aides to cooperate with the probe so far, such as former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.
The people involved with the investigation told the newspaper that the House investigators have increased their focus on the fundraising efforts into overturning the 2020 elections. The investigators are looking to find if there is a coordinated effort between the Trump campaign and its Republican allies to raise money based on the false claims.
“A number of individuals from the Trump campaign, the RNC, and digital firms involved with post-election fundraising practices have been cooperating with the team,” said the report, citing that the months that followed Trump’s defeat to Joe Biden, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, Trump’s Make America Great Again Committee, and the Save America PAC brought in over $200 million through a joint fundraising committee.
The report also revealed that the House investigators have asked witnesses if there was any plan to spend the money on election matters or if it was simply a scheme to raise money based on false claims.
Meanwhile, the committee also issued a subpoena last month to Salesforce to turn over the RNC’s fundraising records. The committee’s chair Rep. Bennie Thompson said in the subpoena that the committee wants information on whether and how the Trump campaign used Salesforce’s platform to push inaccurate statements about the 2020 elections in the weeks leading up to the Capitol insurrection.
This week, the panel addressed the information on Twitter. The committee said that between the 2020 election day in November and January 6, the RNC and the Trump campaign solicited donations through pushing the false claims of election fraud, encouraging supporters to pressure Congress to keep Trump in power.