The lost year: How Merrick Garland’s Justice Department ran out of time prosecuting Trump for January 6

Several months after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, FBI investigators began pursuing a tantalizing tip suggesting that Donald Trump had possibly met with members of the Proud Boys, the far-right group that took part in some of the most brutal violence that day, people briefed on the investigation told CNN.

Several months after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, FBI investigators began pursuing a tantalizing tip suggesting that Donald Trump had possibly met with members of the Proud Boys, the far-right group that took part in some of the most brutal violence that day, people briefed on the investigation told CNN. It was early in the largest investigation in Justice Department history, and Trump was at his lowest point, abandoned by many Republican lawmakers who were still seething over the riot he helped inspire. For months, the FBI and a team of prosecutors looked for potential links between Trump’s inner circle and the Proud Boys, whose leader was ultimately found guilty of seditious conspiracy and is serving 22 years in prison, the longest sentence of any January 6 defendant. Investigators spent much of that summer poring over call records of Proud Boys members and conducting scores of interviews. They homed in on a period in late 2020, when an informant alleged an interaction between Trump or his inner circle and the Proud Boys occurred. Prosecutors inside the Justice Department also dug through reams of opaque financial records, searching for any direct links between Trump and the organizations that brought “Stop the Steal” rallygoers to Washington for his speech ahead of the Capitol attack. From there, they examined the so-called war room setup at the Willard hotel in Washington, where Steve Bannon and other Trump supporters strategized how to thwart the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory. In the end, no direct criminal links to Trump emerged. The suspected Proud Boys meeting, the Willard hotel room and the rally fundraising were all dead ends.