Special counsel 'moving aggressively' with 'sprawling' probe of Trump: report

Special counsel Jack Smith is reportedly stepping up the pace of his investigation into former President Donald Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified information.

According to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer, Smith was "moving aggressively" after being named to head the investigation three months ago.

The Times interviewed officials and lawyers who might have insight into the special counsel's actions.

While Smith's investigation is sprawling, he views the threads "as being of a single piece," the report said. The investigation includes questions about Save America PAC, where the former president directed his supporters to contribute millions of dollars based on the false claim of a stolen election.

Investigators are said to be looking into how much vendors were paid and if those payments were for legitimate services.

"His team is sifting through mountains of testimony provided by the House Jan. 6 committee, including focusing on the so-called fake electors scheme in which some of Mr. Trump’s advisers and some campaign officials assembled alternate slates of Trump electors from contested states that he had lost," the report said.

The investigation has also examined research commissioned by the Trump campaign in a failed attempt to find election fraud.

At least four former and current attorneys for Trump have been an interest to investigators. The Justice Department has interviewed Trump attorneys M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb.

Bobb served as the custodian of the records for at least some of the classified documents found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. In a June attestation, Bobb told a grand jury that a "diligent search" had been performed. FBI agents would later use a warrant to recover additional documents.

Attorneys Alina Habba and Alex Cannon could also be questioned, according to the sources.

Smith's team was said to be learning about Trump's history of handling documents. "In some cases, Mr. Trump tore up documents and threw them in toilets in the White House," the Times pointed out.

The intensity of the investigation indicated that Smith intends to finish his investigation before the 2024 election campaign heats up over the summer. But that goal may not be possible because of the size of the investigation.

"The impulse to thoroughly investigate Trump's possibly illegal actions and the impulse to complete the investigation as soon as possible, because of presidential election season, are at war with one another," former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith told the paper. "One impulse will likely have to yield to the other."