By Adam Reiss and Rebecca Shabad - NBC News
The letter former President Donald Trump received from special counsel Jack Smith informing him that he is the subject of a federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election mentions three federal statutes related to disenfranchisement, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and witness tampering.
Those three federal statutes were included in the letter Trump said he received Sunday night, according to two lawyers with direct knowledge of the document. The context in which the statutes are cited in the letter is unclear, and their inclusion does not necessarily mean that Trump will be indicted on related charges or that an indictment was limited to those three statutes.
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Details of the letter were reported by The Wall Street Journal. Trump revealed Tuesday that he had received the letter Sunday night and had four days to decide whether to testify before the grand jury investigating the case. Two sources with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed that Trump had received a letter from Smith, but it's unclear what the charges would be or if anyone else received a letter. People who have been informed that they are the subject of criminal investigations often, though not always, end up being charged.
Trump said he believes the letter means he will be impeached a third time, saying it is part of an effort by President Joe Biden and his administration to attack him because he is "Joe Biden's NUMBER ONE POLITICAL OPPONENT, far ahead of him in the race for president."
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The Justice Department defines a "target" as "a person about whom the prosecutor or grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the prosecutor's judgment, is a putative defendant." The purpose of notifying a target about the status is to "provide them with an opportunity to testify before the grand jury," according to the Justice Department.
Trump lashed out at Smith on Tuesday, both on his Truth Social account and at a meeting in Iowa hosted by Fox News host Sean Hannity. The former president also reached out to his Republican allies on Capitol Hill on Tuesday after announcing he had received the letter.
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Trump called House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and House Republican Conference Speaker Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and urged them to harangue their constituencies to support him, according to two people familiar with the calls. Stefanik, who backed Trump in his re-election campaign, and McCarthy, who did not, defended the former president at a news conference Tuesday, saying the investigation is politically motivated.
"Well, I guess under the Biden Administration, Biden America, one would expect this," McCarthy told reporters, "if you noticed, recently Trump went up in the polls and was actually beating Biden for re-election. And what do they do now? They arm the government, they persecute their No. 1 opponent. It's over and over again, I think the American public is tired of this, they want to see equal justice and the idea that they use this to persecute those who don't agree politically with them is wrong."
Stefanik added: "Once again we have an example of Joe Biden's Justice Department used as a weapon aimed at his main political opponent, Donald Trump.