William Pelham Barr is an American attorney who served as United States attorney general in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1991 to 1993 and again in the administration of President Donald Trump from 2019 to 2020.
John Henry Durham is an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut from 2018 to 2021. By April 2019,the Trump administration assigned him to investigate the origins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections,and in October 2020 he was appointed special counsel for the Department of Justice on that matter.
Emmet Gael Sullivan is an American attorney and jurist serving as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Andrew George McCabe is an American attorney who served as the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from February 2016 to March 2018 and as the acting Director of the FBI from May 9,2017,to August 2,2017. He also serves as a professor at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government. McCabe joined the FBI as a special agent in 1996 and served with the bureau's SWAT team. He became a supervisory special agent in 2003 and held management positions of increasing responsibility until he was appointed deputy director of the FBI in February 2016. McCabe became the acting Director of the FBI following James Comey's dismissal by then President Donald Trump,and served in that position until Trump's appointment of Christopher A. Wray. McCabe later departed from the FBI on poor terms with Trump. After leaving the Trump administration,McCabe has been a contributor at CNN since 2019.
Jeffrey Adam Rosen is an American lawyer who served as acting United States attorney general from December 2020 to January 2021 and as United States deputy attorney general from 2019 to 2020. Before joining the Department of Justice,he was a senior partner at the law firm Kirkland &Ellis and was the United States deputy secretary of transportation.
The Robert Mueller special counsel investigation was an investigation into 45th U.S. president Donald Trump regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019. It was also called the Russia investigation,Mueller probe,and Mueller investigation. The investigation focused on three points:
- Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
- Trump associates and their connection to Russian officials and espionage
- Possible obstruction of justice by Trump and his associates
Jeffrey Bossert Clark is an American lawyer who was Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division from 2018 to 2021. In September 2020,he was also appointed acting head of the Civil Division. In 2020 and 2021,Clark allegedly helped then-president Donald Trump attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Clark's actions in that endeavor were reviewed by the District of Columbia Bar –the entity authorized by law to pursue attorney discipline and disbarment in the District of Columbia –which recommended discipline to the DC Court of Appeals in July 2022,and in August 2024 its Board on Professional Responsibility recommended a two year suspension of his law license. He was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal prosecution of Donald Trump over attempts to overturn the 2020 election. On August 14,2023,he was indicted along with 18 other people in the prosecution related to the 2020 election in Georgia.
Geoffrey Steven Berman is an American attorney who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2018 to 2020. He is the Global Chair of the litigation department at the law firm Fried,Frank,Harris,Shriver &Jacobson.
The Barr letter is a four-page letter sent on March 24,2019,from Attorney General William Barr to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees purportedly detailing the "principal conclusions" of the Mueller report of the Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 United States presidential election,allegations of conspiracy or coordination between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia,and allegations of obstruction of justice.
Timothy Shea is an American attorney and prosecutor who served as acting Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration from 2020 to 2021. Previously,he was interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia,the country's largest U.S. attorney's office;a senior counselor to U.S. Attorney General William Barr at the Department of Justice;a lobbyist;and private corporate lawyer.
This is a timeline of events from 2020 to 2022 related to investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections,both before and after July 2016,until November 8,2016,election day,the transition,the first and second halves of 2017,the first and second halves of 2018,and the first and second halves of 2019.
United States v. Flynn was a criminal case in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia which was dismissed without any convictions in December 2020 following a presidential pardon. Michael Flynn,a retired lieutenant general in the United States Armed Forces,had accepted President-elect Donald Trump's offer for the position of National Security Advisor in 2016 and then briefly served as National Security Advisor. He pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Flynn's alleged false statements involve conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when Flynn was incoming National Security Advisor to President-elect Trump,and Flynn agreed to cooperate with the Special Counsel investigation as part of a plea deal.
Richard Donoghue is an American attorney and prosecutor who served as the acting United States deputy attorney general from December 2020 to January 2021. Previously,he served as the principal associate deputy attorney general in 2020 and as United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 2018 to 2020. Donoghue was appointed interim U.S. Attorney by Jeff Sessions in January 2018.
On January 6,2021,supporters of Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol building,disrupting the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes to formalize Biden's victory in the 2020 United States presidential election.
The United States Department of Justice under the Trump administration acquired by a February 2018 subpoena the Apple iCloud metadata of two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee,several others associated with the committee,and some of their family members. The subpoena covered 73 phone numbers and 36 email addresses since the inception of the accounts. Seizing communications information of members of Congress is extraordinarily rare. The department also subpoenaed and obtained 2017 and 2018 phone log and email metadata from news reporters for CNN,The Washington Post and The New York Times. Apple also received and complied with February 2018 subpoenas for the iCloud accounts of White House counsel Don McGahn and his wife. Microsoft received a subpoena relating to a personal email account of a congressional staff member in 2017.
Corruptly obstructing,influencing,or impeding an official proceeding is a felony under U.S. federal law. It was enacted as part of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 in reaction to the Enron scandal,and closed a legal loophole on who could be charged with evidence tampering by defining the new crime very broadly.
The United States Justice Department investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election began in early 2021 with investigations and prosecutions of hundreds of individuals who participated in the January 6,2021 attack on the United States Capitol. By early 2022,the investigation had expanded to examine Donald Trump's inner circle,with the Justice Department impaneling several federal grand juries to investigate the attempts to overturn the election. Later in 2022,a special counsel was appointed. On August 1,2023,Trump was indicted. The indictment also describes six alleged co-conspirators.
Plasmic Echo was the codename for a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump's handling of classified and national defense-related government documents beginning in 2022,looking for possible violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice.
John Luman Smith is an American attorney who has served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney,acting U.S. attorney,and head of the department's Public Integrity Section. He was also the chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers,an international tribunal at The Hague tasked with investigating and prosecuting war crimes in the Kosovo War.
An ongoing special counsel investigation was opened by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18,2022,to continue two investigations initiated by the Justice Department (DOJ) regarding former U.S. President Donald Trump. Garland appointed Jack Smith,a longtime federal prosecutor,to lead the independent investigations. Smith was tasked with investigating Trump's role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack and Trump's mishandling of government records,including classified documents.
