Mueller reportedly subpoenaed Trump campaign officials for Russia documents

Robert Mueller.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

In mid-October, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team caught more than a dozen of President Trump's top campaign officials by surprise when he issued a subpoena requesting documents related to Russia, a person with knowledge of the situation told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

The officials had been sharing with the special counsel the same documents they were giving congressional committees investigating Russian meddling into last year's election, the person said. The subpoena, the first official order for information from Trump's campaign, did not compel any of the recipients to testify before Mueller's grand jury, the Journal reports. "Sending a subpoena to an entity that says it has been cooperating with document requests isn't unusual in cases in which prosecutors have some concern that their demands aren't being met promptly or aren't being entirely fulfilled," the Journal explains. "A subpoena can serve as a backup, to make sure the recipient is complying as promised, and as a reminder that failure to provide documents as demanded would count as obstructing a grand-jury investigation."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.