Damning Trump memo lays out Jan. 6 fake electors strategy: report

A damning Trump legal memo revealed Wednesday lays out the former president’s strategy of creating slates of fake electors to help overturn the 2020 election.

The “confidential” document, which shows attorney Kenneth Chesebro as its author, admits that courts would likely reject the idea that bogus slates of pro-Trump electors could replace those certified by state election officials.

And Chesebro, who has been identified as co-conspirator no. 5 in Trump’s indictment, even brazenly conceded in the memo first published by The New York Times that a primary goal was to delay or obstruct the certification of President Biden’s win by Congress on Jan. 6.

“Letting matters play out this way would guarantee that public attention would be riveted on the evidence of electoral abuses by the Democrats,” Chesebro wrote in the Dec. 6, 2020 memo, according to the memo.

“(It) would also buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column,” he added.

The bombshell revelation comes as U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled a Friday morning hearing to hammer out an order that will restrict what Trump can publicly say about evidence and witnesses in the historic case.

Chutkan — who is now reportedly receiving security protection — plans to set a trial date for Trump at a separate Aug. 28 hearing.

Special counsel Jack Smith already had the memo and cites some excerpts of it as evidence in the 45-page indictment charging Trump with four counts including conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, to defraud the U.S. and to deprive people of their rights.

The indictment of Trump mentions six unindicted co-conspirators, which include one identified as Chesebro. They could eventually be charged either separately or as part of Trump’s case.

Trump pleaded not guilty last week at an arraignment in Washington, D.C. He could face prison time if convicted.

The timing of the memo in December 2021 came as officials in all the states prepared to certify the winner of the presidential election, a decision that in turn led to the appointment of real electors for each state.

The memo purports to claim that the results were “contested” in six battleground states even though judges rejected challenges to Biden’s wins in all of them.

It suggested that creating fake pro-Trump slates of electors would allow the Trump campaign to fight a public relations campaign until Jan. 6 while working to sow more confusion and cling to power.

“There should be messaging that presents this as a routine measure,” Chesebro wrote, acknowledging that the plot was a “bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed.”

Some slates of electors acted on the Trump campaign’s advice and submitted signed official documents presenting themselves as the actual winners of the presidential election in their states.

Far from being a theoretical strategy as Chesebro suggests, those documents are being scrutinized as false official documents which would be a crime if knowingly signed.

Prosecutors in Michigan have already charged fake electors in that state. A grand jury in Georgia’s Fulton County is expected to convene as soon as early next week to decide whether to charge Trump or anyone else in the scheme.

Some of the fake electors have said that they were duped into signing the bogus documents by Trump campaign officials who said they would only be used if Trump’s legal challenges to the elections in the states succeeded.

Trump filed scores of lawsuits from coast to coast but judges rejected all of them, decisions that cleared the way for states to award their electors to Biden. Those decisions should have led Biden’s certification at the ceremonial event on Jan. 6 and the peaceful transfer of power.

Trump instead hit on the fake electors scheme as part of what Smith charges was a multi-pronged effort to cling to power.

He unsuccessfully sought to bully Vice President Mike Pence into delaying or refusing to certify the results. When that failed, Trump unleashed a violent mob of his supporters on the Capitol to physically prevent Congress from acting in line with the Constitution on Jan. 6, the indictment charges.