The FBI this week sought to interview a 31-year-old former Trump aide as part of its investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to The New York Times.
FBI agents in Florida attempted to interview William Russell, who served as a special assistant and the deputy director of presidential advance operations in the White House under former President Trump and continued working with Trump after he left office.
Russell has not yet been interviewed, the Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. But it signals that federal investigators are inching closer to Trump’s personal orbit of advisers and confidantes.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is probing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in his favor. It has also formed a grand jury for the case.
Last month, the DOJ subpoenaed former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who testified before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack that he had concerns about how Trump responded on the day of the riot at the U.S. Capitol.
House lawmakers on the committee argued in a series of hearings over the summer that Trump pushed forward a variety of schemes to stay in power, including pressuring state officials to swing the election in his favor and pushing former Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the election results.
When Pence declined, Trump encouraged rioters to storm the Capitol, the House committee argued, and sat idly by for hours as his supporters clashed with police.
The House committee in July announced it had turned over 20 depositions to the DOJ.
The DOJ grand jury, which has considerably more legal power than the House committee, appears to still be in a fact-gathering and investigatory stage, and it’s unclear what charges, if any, will be brought against the former president as a result of the probe.
DOJ investigators executed search warrants on both former Trump attorney John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department assistant attorney general.
The DOJ has also brought two former Pence aides before the grand jury.