New reports suggest a 'significant shift' in DOJ's willingness to go after Trump: former federal prosecutor

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti on Thursday suggested that there are new indications that the United States Department of Justice is going to start focusing its investigations on former President Donald Trump.

In a lengthy Twitter thread, Mariotti pointed to new reports suggesting the DOJ has started probing a "a higher level of rally planning" for the January 6th Stop the Steal event, rather than just investigating the rallygoers who violently stormed the Capitol afterward.

Mariotti then speculated that the reason the DOJ is picking up the pace may have to do with Judge David Carter's conclusion earlier this week that it is "more likely than not" that Trump and attorney John Eastman committed crimes in their efforts to block the certification of the 2020 election.

"Judge Carter's opinion might have given DOJ comfort that the effort to get Pence to overturn the election was obstruction of Congress and a conspiracy to defraud the U.S.," he wrote.

Mariotti then speculated that the DOJ in the future was likely to indict the slate of fake electors that were set up to step in and switch their states' votes to Trump despite the fact that they were certified as being won by President Joe Biden.

"Obviously there's a *lot* we don't know, and what prosecutors end up doing depends a lot on the evidence that they uncover," he concluded. "But this report suggests that there has been a significant shift in DOJ's focus. Whether we see more will tell us how significant this shift is."

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