By Glynn Wilson —

ANALYSIS – The pressure on the United States Department of Justice to bring charges against Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection and leading a seditious conspiracy to overturn a democratic election just got turned up by degrees on Sunday on the eve of Independence Day when Liz Cheney went on national television and poured hot grease on the fire to get the squeaky wheel turning.

But is the Justice Department ready for such a move? Should it or could it bring charges before a grand jury in advance of the midterm elections in November? There is an investigation underway inside the DOJ, and a grand jury has been impaneled. But charges? Before the midterms?

Cheney Says Trump Faces ‘Multiple’ Criminal Referrals, and Hints the Justice Department Should Not Wait

It just came to light last week that the lead U.S. attorney now overseeing much of the investigation into the insurrection and Trump’s role in it is new to the job, however, and he just happens to be from Alabama. While Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department are trying to keep his identity on the lowdown to protect him and his family from the public fray and potential threats from Trump and his supporters, Thomas P. Windom is about to become known to the American people whether they like it or not.

Many people may not read The New York Times because of the paywall, but other news reporters do read it. The national newspaper of record put his name out there with help from anonymous sources last week.

The Man Helping Drive the Investigation Into Trump’s Push to Keep Power

Windom is the son of Steve Windom, who switched from being a Democrat to the Republican Party in 1998 and got himself elected Lt. Governor in Alabama in the same election when Don Siegelman was elected governor as a Democrat (see quotes from Siegelman below).

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Tom Windom got out of Alabama and attended Harvard as an undergrad, went on to the University of Virginia’s school of law, clerked with conservative Judge Edith Brown Clement on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, and then moved to Greenbelt, Maryland just north of Washington, D.C. After a stint at the law firm of Williams and Connolly, he took an assistant U.S. attorney job in Maryland’s southern division, with jurisdiction over the state’s two most populous counties where many federal employees live.

Some might call this home to the “Deep State.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, second in command to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is the Congressman from Greenbelt.

Windom earned a reputation for being smart, organized and tough, aggressively arguing for longer sentences for racist, right-wing domestic terrorists, but also for letting some defendants off the hook for insufficient evidence of “criminal intent.”

So on the one hand, Democrats who want to see Trump charged — and the sooner the better — might see this as a positive sign. One commenter on Facebook was delighted to welcome him as a new member of “our team.”

On the other hand, Attorney General Merrick Garland and his staff of U.S. attorneys could see Windom as an unbiased prosecutor in the case of investigating Trump, since he has some conservative credentials and one potential outcome could be to let the former president off and not charge him because there is not enough evidence that he actually intended to commit a crime when he incited the insurrection and even called for security to go in “stand down” mode in Washington, even though he knew his supporters were armed and potentially dangerous, and not just for Antifa, BLM and Democrats. Republican Vice President Mike Pence appeared to be a main target. There were chants to “hang Mike Pence” as a traitor to Trump, even as he stood up for democracy by remaining in the building and going on to certify the actual Electoral College votes for Joe Biden.

As a law clerk, Windom penned a law journal article proposing to weaken the Miranda rights for criminal defendants, certainly not the sign of a “liberal lawyer.”

“Tom was always the go-to guy in the department for the big, important national security cases in and around the Beltway,” said Jamie McCall, a former federal prosecutor who worked in Greenbelt with Windom in 2019 to take down a white supremacist group known as “The Base.”

According to The Times and its sources, it was that “exhaustive” work that got the attention of Garland and his team working on the Trump investigation. He creatively leveraged federal sentencing guidelines to secure uncommonly lengthy prison terms for the group of white supremacists, and a former Coast Guard lieutenant who had plotted to kill Democratic politicians, Christopher Hasson.

Windom also has a reputation for being blunt and uncompromising which has, at times, chafed his courtroom opponents.

During Hasson’s post-trial hearing, Windom persuaded a federal judge to give him a stiff 13-year sentence — beyond what would typically be given to a defendant pleading guilty to drug and weapons charges — as punishment for the violence he had “intended” to inflict. Windom attacked a witness for the defense during the hearing who argued for leniency.

Hasson’s court-appointed attorney at the time — who is now the Justice Department’s senior pardons attorney — said Windom’s behavior was “one of the most alarming things that I have heard in my practice in federal court.”

Mirriam Seddiq, a criminal defense lawyer in Maryland who opposed Windom in two fraud cases, said he was a personable but “inflexible” adversary who sought sentences that were unduly harsh and punitive in her view. But she said Windom may be well suited to the job of investigating Trump.

“If you are going to be a bastard, be a bastard in defense of democracy,” she said.

According to a more detailed story from Bloomberg Law, defense attorneys at the Greenbelt federal courthouse were relieved to hear Windom was headed to Justice Department headquarters in Washington.

“I’ve tried cases versus Windom and he’s a bastard but I really do like him a lot,” Seddiq tweeted after the Times reported he was moved to D.C. to explore whether broader crimes were committed related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, beyond those charged like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers for attacking police and entering and damaging the Capitol.

“I’m glad he’s on this because he’s a bastard,” Seddiq added.

Two sources with direct knowledge confirmed to Bloomberg Law that Windom was detailed several months ago to Main Justice to pursue potential crimes on Jan. 6, 2021. The assignment comes as no surprise to lawyers who have gone up against Windom in the suburban Maryland courthouse where he has served for a decade, winning notable convictions in cases involving public corruption and domestic terrorism.

“There is nobody I can think of who would be better suited to handle a very sensitive case, without being influenced by who the people are, what their political affiliation would be, and what the stakes were,” said Bruce Marcus, a veteran Maryland criminal defense lawyer.

Windom prosecuted a string of local politicians for bribery and wire fraud, as well as two cases involving domestic terrorism in which he successfully advanced a “contentious, sparingly-used legal theory with significant implications for Jan. 6,” Bloomberg reports.

Windom convinced a judge in 2020 to apply a domestic terrorism enhancement in sentencing Hasson, who ultimately pleaded guilty on gun and drug charges. Lacking a domestic terrorism statute, Windom argued that he had serious “intent” to go on a murderous rampage.

Public defender Elizabeth Oyer, who was tapped as top pardon attorney with the Department of Justice recently, argued before the federal judge that “Mr. Windom’s strident and dismissive response to” an expert witness’s “very detailed analysis is one of the most alarming things that I have heard in my practice in federal court.”

Windom employed the same theory again in 2021, securing expanded prison time for members of “The Base.”

Some critics argue that Garland’s team should also use the domestic terrorism enhancement in sentencing those responsible for the insurrection who attempted to halt the peaceful transfer of power by interrupting the vote in Congress, and to overturn the 2020 presidential election, installing Trump as the first American dictator in what would have in effect been a coup, as House Select Committee chair Bennie Thompson has called it on multiple occasions.

When Windom’s face appeared on his screen while watching MSNBC last week, defense lawyer Robert Bonsib initially thought, “Whoa! That’s a surprise,” Bloomberg reported.

Then he said his legal adversary might fit the bill for a job “of this magnitude.”

“He’s the kind of guy you want in that position. He’s not a publicity seeker,” Bonsib said. “He’ll keep his mouth shut and not embarrass anybody.”

Not every Maryland criminal defense attorney holds Windom in the same esteem, according to Bloomberg.

“I’ve had some of my very close friends who said, ‘this guy is standoffish. I can’t talk to him,’” said Marcus. “He is astute enough to know when somebody is trying to ingratiate themselves in order to get information.”

Several defense lawyers and past colleagues described him as “fair-minded” in reaching plea deals for those he felt didn’t deserve harsh consequences, or in opting against charging some defendants after the investigation. In one long-running corruption case, Windom faced public pressure to divulge information on those who were never charged. He refused to talk about the people when he felt he couldn’t prove their guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt,” according to a Bloomberg source “familiar with the matter.”

Less than a year before moving over to Main Justice, Windom was promoted as the Greenbelt office’s chief, they report. He continued to investigate and try his own cases while supervising a team of 20 prosecutors, according to Stuart Berman, a defense lawyer who works opposite Windom.

That’s “an indication of what a highly skilled and highly productive attorney he is,” said Berman, who was Windom’s original supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Greenbelt.

Elevated again late last year to the Jan. 6 investigation, Bloomberg concludes, “Windom will now be tested on the national stage.”

“Even when we’ve had pretty contentious cases where the other side was fighting for every inch that they could, as they should, Thomas relies on what the rules are, what the case law says,” said Ray McKenzie, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland. “And if you don’t know the rules, it’s to your detriment. Because Thomas does.”

Not much seems to be known about Windom in political circles in Alabama, although former Governor Don Siegelman remembers not finding his father, Steve Windom, very “trustworthy.” He helped shoot down passage of legislation for Siegelman’s education lottery, even though he said he would support it.

He is remembered for pissing in a jug while presiding over the state Senate chamber during a round-the-clock session, fearful that Democrats would replace him as presiding officer if he took a bathroom break. He retired from politics after losing to Bob Riley in the Republican primary for governor in 2002.

As for the Trump investigation, Siegelman told me via text:

“If Trump was the leader of a conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election, it’s a felony,” he said. “During the insurrection, people were killed. Can he be charged with felony murder?”

“If anyone doesn’t believe that the Department of Justice can be manipulated for political purposes I would call Karl Rove as my first witness,” he said. “Rove turned the Department of Justice into a political weapon even FIRING Republican U.S. Attorneys who wouldn’t go along with this plan to go after Democrats.

“Donald Trump fired James Comey, fired Andrew McCabe, fired Sally Yates, hired and fired Jeff Sessions, and then recruited Bill Barr who finally quit when he saw the Trump ship was sinking,” he added. “Trump then tried to get (acting AG) Jeff Clark to do his bidding.”

Even though Siegelman is out of politics due to his conviction and prison time at the hand of the Bush Justice Department, he had some advice for the Republicans and the Garland-Biden Justice Department.

“If Trump had been found guilty by the Republicans in the United States Senate of bribery or extortion when he tried to get the president of Ukraine to investigate the Biden’s in exchange for a congressional appropriation of military aid to Ukraine, we would’ve never gone through January 6th,” he said. “Lesson: Hold Trump accountable now or we’ll face more insurrections.”

Roger Newman, the author of former U.S. Senator from Alabama and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black’s biography, now working on a book about the Federalist Society and the conservatives on the court, said he would not expect charges from the Department of Justice before the midterms.

“He will be charged,” Newman said. “But not until sometime in 2023.”

More Analysis

Talking to sources inside the DOJ, The Times says Windom is leading investigators methodically seeking information about the roles played by some of Trump’s top advisers, including Rudi Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman. The mandate from the top? Go as high up the chain of command as the evidence warrants.

That element of the inquiry is focused on the so-called fake electors scheme, in which Trump allies assembled slates of fake electors in swing states won by Biden.

In recent weeks, they report, the focus has shifted from collecting emails and texts from would-be electors in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan to the lawyers who sought to overturn Biden’s win, and pro-Trump political figures like the head of Arizona’s Republican Party, Kelli Ward.

Windom has also overseen grand jury appearances like the one on Friday by Ali Alexander, a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer who testified for nearly three hours. In conjunction with District of Columbia U.S. attorney Matthew Graves, Windom has been pushing the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack to turn over transcripts of its interviews with hundreds of witnesses in the case. He was joined here by Lisa O. Monaco, Garland’s top deputy, according to people familiar with the matter, who has grown increasingly impatient with the committee.

DOJ prosecutors were not given access to video or transcripts of the committee’s taped interviews with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson before she delivered her searing account of Trump’s behavior on the day a mob attacked the Capitol, according to several officials.

The raid last week on the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who played a key role in Trump’s effort to pressure the department to pursue and back his baseless claims of widespread election fraud, was initiated separately by the department’s independent inspector general, since Clark had been an employee at the time of the actions under scrutiny. So was the apparently related seizure last week of a cellphone from Eastman, who has been linked by the House committee to Clark’s push to help Trump remain in office.

Windom has been involved in almost all the department’s other key decisions regarding the wide-ranging inquiry into Trump’s multilayered effort to remain in office, officials said.

Windom remains largely unknown even within the Justice Department, outside of two high-profile cases he successfully brought against white supremacists when he worked out of the department’s office in Washington’s Maryland suburbs.

“Mr. Windom’s bosses appear to be intent on preserving his obscurity,” the Times reports. “The department’s top brass and its press team did not announce his shift to the case from a supervisory role in the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland late last year, and they still refuse to discuss his appointment, even in private.”

That might not be a bad thing for Windom, the latest federal official assigned to investigate the former president and his inner circle, a hazardous job that turned many of his predecessors into targets of the right, forcing some to exit public service with deflated reputations and inflated legal bills.

“Don’t underestimate how every single aspect of your life will be picked over, looked at, investigated, examined — you, your family, everything,” said Peter Strzok, who was the lead agent on the F.B.I.’s investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia until it was discovered he had sent text messages disparaging Trump.

“You think: I’m doing the right thing and that will protect you,” added Strzok, who is still bombarded with threats and online attacks more than three years after being fired. “I didn’t appreciate that there were going to be people out there whose sole goal is to totally destroy you.”

Any investigator scrutinizing Trump, former prosecutors said, is liable to be marked as an enemy, regardless of the nonpartisan nature of the inquiry.

“They were out to destroy Trump, and they were members of our, you know, Central Intelligence or our F.B.I.,” Doug Jensen, 42, a QAnon follower from Iowa who stormed the Capitol, said in an interview with federal authorities, reflecting the views of many right-wing conspiracy theorists about Strzok and other investigators.

Windom is overseeing at least two key parts of the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack, according to grand jury subpoenas obtained by The Times and interviews with current and former prosecutors and defense attorneys.

One prong of the inquiry is focused on a wide array of speakers, organizers, security guards and so-called VIPs who took part in Trump’s rally at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6., directly before the mob stormed the Capitol. According to subpoenas, this part of the investigation is also seeking information on any members of the executive or legislative branch who helped to plan or execute the rally, or who tried to obstruct the certification of the election that was taking place inside the Capitol that day — “a broad net that could include top Trump aides and the former president’s allies in Congress.”

Windom’s second objective — mirroring one focus of the Jan. 6 committee — is a widening investigation into the group of lawyers close to Trump who helped to devise and promote the plan to create alternate slates of electors. Subpoenas related to this part of the inquiry have sought information about Giuliani and Eastman as well as state officials connected to the fake-elector scheme.

One of the witnesses he subpoenaed is Patrick Gartland, a small business coach active in Georgia Republican politics, who turned aside efforts by Trump supporters to recruit him as a Trump elector in late 2020.

On May 5, Gartland, who was grieving the recent death of his wife, answered his front door to find two FBI agents, who handed him an eight-page subpoena, signed by Mr. Windom. The subpoena, which he shared with The Times, asked him to provide emails, other correspondence or “any document purporting to to be a certificate certifying elector votes in favor of Donald J. Trump and Michael R. Pence.”

Windom’s subpoena sought information about all of Gartland’s interactions and appended a list of 29 names, which represents a road map, of sorts, to his wider investigation in Georgia and beyond.

It included Giuliani; Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner; Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump White House aide; other staff members and outside legal advisers to Trump, including Eastman, Ms. Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro; and a handful of Georgia Republicans whose names were listed on potential elector slates.

At least three of the people listed on the subpoena to Gartland — including David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and Brad Carver, another party official — were served similar documents by Windom’s team last week, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

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