Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell has been subpoenaed as part of a special investigation by the Justice Department, investigating the circumstances that lead to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
As part of the investigation, led by new special counsel Jack Smith, local election officials in Arizona, Michigan, and right here in Wisconsin are being subpoenaed for their communications with Trump and his campaign, reports the Washington Post.
In Wisconsin, Milwaukee Clerk George Christenson was served. And here in Dane County, Clerk Scott McDonell has been served, asking for all communications between the clerk’s office and 19 key members to Donald Trump’s campaign.
The subpoena, issued on November 22 but not served to McDonell until last Thursday, asks for all documented communications between the clerk’s office and the Trump Campaign between June 1, 2020 and January 20, 2021. That includes everything from emails sent between the two parties, text messages, instant messaging, and any other documented form of communication.
The subpoena was issued by Special Council Jack Smith, who was appointed last month to oversee the federal January 6 Insurrection case, as well as the criminal probe into Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents.
While the requested records don’t seem to specifically pertain to either January 6 or the classified documents case, they do pertain to two Wisconsin recounts in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. In Dane County, that days-long recount was overseen by Scott McDonell and involved attorneys for both campaigns.
McDonell says that he thinks he was served the subpoena because the Special Council is trying to cover all of their bases.
“I think they were serving them to election officials in those swing states, the ones that the former President was trying to change the outcomes of, and they are making sure that anything that might be relevant hasn’t been missed,” McDonell says. “You don’t know what kind of phone calls were made, or what pressure was put on, so I think they’re checking that. There may also be information in emails that, at the time, didn’t seem that important, but that may had been before January 6, so you don’t really realize how that may have fit into some plan.”
The subpoena is expansive – it seeks documentation for anyone who spoke with the clerk’s office while representing the Trump campaign in the latter half of 2020 and in January of 2021, including Trump himself. But The subpoena explicitly lists 19 specific Trump campaign attorneys who played a significant role in the campaign and recount.
That includes people like Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, two Wisconsin attorneys who represented the Trump campaign during the Dane County recount, and Trump campaign officials like Justin Clark, Lin Wood, and Sidney Powell.
McDonell says that they have already found all the documents asked for in the subpoena.
“We did a search for those names and, really, (there is) not a lot in there,” McDonell says. “The only person I had any contact with was Jim Troupis, who represented the Trump campaign during the recount, so there are transcripts of all of our transcript (during) the recount, so there’s some information there, but nothing new.”
While the January 6 Committee has been active for over a year, this is the first time that Scott McDonell has been directly involved in the federal investigation. He says that, while he’s surprised he was included, he hopes that the 2020 presidential election soon becomes a distant memory.
“I never could have imagined that, well, that there would be an insurrection. It still seems crazy that that even happened,” McDonell says. “ I am grateful that this last, things (ran) smoothly and things returned to some sense of normalcy for a little bit, but this 2020 election just seems to never go away.”
The Dane County Clerk’s Office has until this Friday to turn over all known communications to the Special Council.
Photo of Scott McDonell taken during Dane County recount in 2020, in the ballroom of the Monona Terrace. Chali Pittman/WORT News.
