The 2016 campaign was massive as the Department of Justice pursued the Inquiry on January 6

As the Justice Department’s investigation into the Capitol attack draws closer to former President Donald J. Trump, it has led to persistent – and wary – reminders of the backlash sparked by investigations into Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland intends to avoid even the slightest lapses that could derail the current investigation, providing Trump’s defenders with reason to insist the investigation is hostile. enemies or undo his efforts to restore the department’s reputation after Trump’s political war years.

Mr. Garland never seriously considered focusing on Mr. Trump in the first place, as investigators have done before with Mr. Trump and with Mrs. Clinton during the investigation of her emails, people close to him. speak.

As a result, his investigators took a more methodical approach, carefully climbing the chain of staff behind. The 2020 Plan Names Fake Trump Electors in the battleground states where Joseph R. Biden Jr. won.

As prosecutors delve deeper into Mr Trump’s orbit, the former president and his allies in Congress will almost certainly accuse the Justice Department and the FBI of a politically motivated witch hunt. .

The template for those attacks, as Garland and FBI director Christopher Wray both know, is “Crossfire Storm,” the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, which Mr. is a partisan hoax.

In part, the mistakes and decisions of that period led to an increase in layers of oversight, including a major policy change at the Department of Justice. If the decision is made to open a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump after he declares his intention to run in the 2024 election, as he thinks may be done, department leaders will have to sign off on any any investigation under an internal rule established by Attorney General William P. Barr and endorsed by Mr. Garland.

“Attorney General Garland and those investigating high-profile efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election are acutely aware of how any lapses, whether by the FBI or prosecutors. , will be amplified and used for political purposes”. Mary B. McCord, a top official in the Obama-era Justice Department. “I hope there will be more layers of review and monitoring of each step of the investigation.”

Mr. Wray appears to be proceeding with a similar level of caution, hoping to arm the office against future attacks by ensuring his agents operate on the books and information. report to the head of the Ministry of Justice.

That means following the FBI’s strict rules and “not just doing the right thing, but doing the right thing,” Wray often said. It also means Mr Wray won’t go it alone, like his predecessor, James B. Comey, already famous.

The generally aggressive agency, using every investigative tool in its arsenal in its Russia investigation, did not even open a case targeting fake voters in the early fall of 2021, months after The details of the plan are widely known to the public, two former federal law enforcement officials said.

In 2015, amid outcry against Clinton’s use of a private email account, senior FBI officials – without consulting the most senior officials, including Mr. Comey – opened a criminal investigation into whether she mishandled classified information.

In May 2017, the FBI launched an investigation of obstruction of Mr. Trump on its own, caught the Justice Department leadership off guard and set off a political firestorm. The decision also raised suspicions among Mr. Trump and his supporters that the so-called deep state wanted to undermine his presidency.

After Mr. Trump’s election victory, Clinton and her supporters blamed Mr. Comey, arguing that his unusual public statements about the state of her email investigation had inadvertently shaped the outcome. of the race. The new president will also soon realize the error with the director.

Current and former officials said Trump’s willingness to attack the Justice Department was evident to officials in the department and office as they tried to respond to the January 6 attack and other efforts to reverse Mr. Trump’s loss.

The attorneys who ran the department at the time, including acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and acting deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, tried to prevent Mr. Trump from usurping their powers to him. may continue to remain in office illegally. . They had no illusions that he was willing to sabotage any investigation.

They also know that one day many of their decisions will be made public. That reinforces their tendency not to make any bold moves before President Biden’s team takes over, in case their actions come under public scrutiny during the surveillance hearings – especially if Republicans regain control of Congress.

The afternoon that rioters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Garland was concluding a speech on the rule of law. He watched on television as Congress turned into a crime scene that he would soon investigate.

All who witnessed the attack “understood, if they didn’t understand before, that the rule of law is more than just a phrase from a lawyer,” Mr Garland said at a ceremony the following day. . “Failure to make it clear in words and actions that our laws are not a tool for partisan ends” will hurt the country, he added.

Mr. Garland has pondered the Justice Department’s role in democracy since the 1970s, when he worked for Attorney General Benjamin R. Civiletti to help codify changes to address abuses. Presidential powers of the Watergate era.

In late March, when Mr. Garland took over the division, he adopted bottom-up tactics used by Trump-appointed US attorneys in Washington: rounding up and arresting the attackers, and then perhaps their contacts and interviews will bear fruit. information will lead them to more powerful goals.

That approach – summed up by the investigative mantra “criminals not people” – has sometimes led to tension between top officials and federal prosecutors in Washington, who run daily survey.

From the start, Mr. Garland and his top deputy, Lisa O. Monaco – a former senior FBI official and a former federal prosecutor specializing in details – set the bar high. But they don’t restrict prosecutors from pursuing the avenues they believe to have evidence: Ms Monaco urged prosecutors to devote more resources to investigating rioters’ funding and connections potential with foreign governments, according to a former ministry official.

The department does not appear to have immediately grasped the public revelations made in the fall of 2021 that a top Trump attorney, John Eastman, promoted the fake voter scheme.

Gradually, however, virtually hidden from public view, they began to pursue that lead, and others eventually led them to question Trump’s involvement more directly.

At that time, Christopher R. Kavanaughwho gained extensive domestic counterterrorism experience as a prosecutor in Charlottesville, Va., following deadly far-right protests there in 2017, was assigned to manage the Jan. 6 investigation. The investigation has involved most of the state in the country and includes hundreds of suspects.

When Mr. Kavanaugh left office after hundreds of arrests in early October to become US attorney in Charlottesville, he was replaced by Thomas P. Windom, an energetic if little-known federal prosecutor from the United States. Maryland, who also handled domestic terrorism. cases.

Mr. Windom has expanded the voter investigation, according to people with knowledge of the situation. He also keeps a close eye on one separate investigation by the department’s inspector general Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who was at the center of Mr. Trump’s failed effort in late 2020 to support the nation’s top prosecutors in favor of his election fraud allegations.

Both of those investigations have been gathering breath as the House committee considers January 6 to speed up a more public inquiry – an investigation meant to pressure Mr Garland to quickly follow suit. chase Mr. Trump.

By April, prosecutors had obtained emails from senior officials in Trump’s White House.

In June, the inspector general received orders for Mr. Clark’s electronics, Mr. Eastman and Ken Klukowski, another former Justice Department official. An attorney for Mr Klukowski said his client is fully cooperating with the Justice Department and will continue to do so.

And on Wednesday, after it was reported that two top aides to former Vice President Mike Pence appeared before a grand jury, Mr. filed a notice with the United States District Court in New Mexico.

It was revealed that a federal agent received a second search warrant earlier this month for Mr. Eastman’s phone – the first time Mr. regarding Trump.

Following those search warrants, the Justice Department set up a group called filters to process any potentially privileged information gleaned from those warrants, according to the filing.

Before that, it was only known that the department’s inspector general had received a search warrant for Mr. Eastman because of a narrower investigation into the internal department that began after the January 6 riots.

In his public statements, Mr. Garland has expressed an awareness of the unusual risks his department and the country as a whole face when investigators approach the presidential candidate once and have perhaps future, whose fame is tied to his claims that he is being persecuted by the Washington establishment.

Last week, Mr. Garland sat in his conference room at the Department of Justice flanked by oil-painted portraits of two predecessors he admired – Robert F. Kennedy and Edward H. Levi – to declare that no one, including Mr. Trump, is “above the law.”

That statement, which he made public, was widely circulated on social media.

But just before that, Mr. Garland said something that, in a way, better reflected his cautious approach to the investigation that he considers the largest and most important in its 152-year history. of Ministry.

“We have to hold people criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election, and we have to do that in a way that is full of integrity and professionalism, in a way that is both fair and just,” he said. which the Justice Department conducts investigations.

“Both of these are necessary to achieve justice and protect our democracy.”

Michael S. Schmidt and Alan Feuer contribution report.