Carol Leonnig

Where is the Department of Justice on this investigation?

That happened in January of 2022, a year after Waleska McClellan had been turned down.

Yeah, that's right.

There is an incredible, I apologize for my language here, sphincter tightening in the FBI, just such anxiety about launching on this probe.

You know, when Thomas Windham goes to the Washington field office and meets with Steve D'Antuono, the head of that office, he says, look, this is the investigation now.

I'd like you to potentially join me in.

And D'Antuono knows that

hey, this is actually a crime I could investigate, which is fascinating since nobody saw that when Maleska McClellan proposed it.

But he's thinking, okay, this is basic potential wire fraud, mail fraud, people sent in things, they actually signed them from various states and claim to be

the electors for their states when they were not, clearly.

So he's seeing like, okay, there's a potential crime.

But at headquarters at FBI, Chris Wray, the director, his general counsel, their deputies are all pouring over the documents of how are we going to

Later, justify in writing that we are investigating Donald Trump.

And here's the killer on that one.

What we learned, and nobody had reported at the time, was that the anxiety was so high, they ultimately concluded they wouldn't name Donald Trump as a subject, but they would name Donald Trump's campaign as a subject, along with Rudy Giuliani and some other advisors that they knew were involved in this coordination.

The clients, so to speak, meaning the lawmakers, the House members who were on the committee, did not want to share.

And they made that very clear to their chief counsel, Tim Heafey.

They felt like, look, we're about to have televised hearings where we're going to report our findings after interviewing hundreds of people, being way ahead of the Justice Department.

And we don't want to give up our scoop, so to speak, to the Department of Justice, which has been lagging.

You know, the investigators on this team, Aaron and I found it so fascinating when we really pulled back the curtain on this team.