Artic Frost and Monetary “Crimes”

Thanks to releases by FBI Director Kash Patel and Senate Republicans (here and here and here), we are finally getting sunlight into the FBI’s overarching investigation of not only President Trump but of nearly everyone in his orbit – the investigation assigned the name “Artic Frost.”

The Artic Frost opening document, dated April 13, 2022, provides a number of potential statutory violations that justified its opening. Here is the exact text.

“By conspiring, attempting to submit, and/or submitting allegedly fraudulent elector certificates, subjects, both known and unknown, may have violated one or more of the following federal statutes of which the FBI has enforcement responsibility:

• Attempt or conspiracy to corruptly obstruct, influence, and impede the certification of the Electoral College vote (18 USC § 1512(c)(2) and (k)).

• Obstruction of certain proceedings (18 USC § 1505).

• Falsification of records (18 USC § 1519).

• Conspiracy to defraud the United States (18 USC § 371).

• Mail Fraud (18 USC § 1341).

• Seditious Conspiracy (18 USC § 2384).”

Now, that April 13, 2022 document wasn’t the original Artic Frost opening communication. Rather, from the records that have been published, the original was dated March 22, 2022. And if you look into the alleged statutory violations (which we outlined above), the March 22, 2022 document omits “Mail Fraud.” That’s an important addition for the reasons we’ve outlined below.

By the time Artic Frost commenced, a related grand jury investigation had been opened “with federal law enforcement agencies on January 31, 2022.” Those other agencies were identified as the US Postal Inspection Service and the Investigative Unit of the Office of the Inspector General for the National Archives. The subjects of Artic Frost included: Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. (and those involved in the campaign); attorney John Eastman, who helped lead some of the challenges to the 2020 election; Rudy Giuliani; and Trump advisor (and campaign attorney) Boris Epshteyn. The subjects also included the electors – 60+ persons from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsing who were part of the election challenge efforts.

As we have known for a while, Artic Frost was expansive. Previous filings in Trump’s DC criminal case (which we discussed here) showed that discovery included hundreds of witnesses, 8.5 terabits of data, hundreds (if not thousands) hours of audio and video, and over 11.5 million pages of documents.

Now, thanks to releases from the FBI and Republicans in Congress, we have more details on the specifics of the investigation. It was sweeping, and included:

• Phone records from not only targets of the investigation – Trump, et al., but of Republican members of Congress (which we also covered).

• Search warrants for digital conduct.

• A full grand jury investigation of the alleged criminal activity.

What has been lost is also that the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO), back in October 2020, assessed that “the use of American Made Media Consultants (AMMC) as a clearinghouse for Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. (the Trump campaign) spending is likely vulnerable to campaign finance crimes by campaign-connected sub-vendors.”