This exposes the 'fake elector scheme'. Trump and lawyers knew it was wrong, but did it anyway.
Previously Secret Memo Laid Out Strategy for Trump to Overturn Biden's WinA lawyer allied with President Donald J. Trump first laid out a plot to use false slates of electors to subvert the 2020 election in a previously unknown internal campaign memo that prosecutors are portraying as a
crucial link in how the Trump team's efforts evolved into a criminal conspiracy.The existence of the Dec. 6, 2020, memo came to light in
last week's indictment of Mr. Trump, though its details remained unclear. But a copy obtained by The New York Times shows for the first time that the lawyer,
Kenneth Chesebro, acknowledged from the start that he was proposing "a bold, controversial strategy" that the Supreme Court "likely" would reject in the end.But even if the plan did not ultimately pass legal muster at the highest level, Mr. Chesebro argued that it would achieve two goals. It would focus attention on claims of voter fraud and "buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump's column."
The memo had been a missing piece in the public record of how Mr. Trump's allies developed their strategy to overturn Mr. Biden's victory. In mid-December,
the false Trump electors could go through the motions of voting as if they had the authority to do so. Then, on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally count those slates of votes, rather than the official and certified ones for Joseph R. Biden Jr.Three days later, Mr
. Chesebro drew up specific instructions to create fraudulent electors in multiple states in another memo whose existence, along with the one in November, was
first reported by The Times last year. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot also cited them in its December report, but it apparently did not learn of the Dec. 6 memo.
"I believe that what can be achieved on Jan. 6 is not simply to keep Biden below 270 electoral votes," Mr. Chesebro wrote in the newly disclosed memo. "It seems feasible that the vote count can be conducted so that at no point will Trump be behind in the electoral vote count unless and until Biden can obtain a favorable decision from the Supreme Court upholding the Electoral Count Act as constitutional, or otherwise recognizing the power of Congress (and not the president of the Senate) to count the votes."
The false electors scheme was perhaps the most sprawling of Mr. Trump's various efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It involved lawyers working on his campaign's behalf across seven states, dozens of electors willing to claim that Mr. Trump not Mr. Biden had won their states, and open resistance from some of those potential electors that
the plan could be illegal or
even "appear treasonous." In the end, it became the cornerstone of the indictment against Mr. Trump.
Prosecutors are still hearing evidence related to the investigation, even after charges were leveled against Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. The House committee last year
released emails its investigators
obtained showing that Mr. Chesebro had sent copies of the two previously reported memos, one from Nov. 18 and another from Dec. 9, to allies in the states working on the fake electors plan.
But he did not attach his Dec. 6 memo to those messages, which laid out a more audacious idea: having Mr. Pence take "the position that it is his constitutional power and duty, alone, as president of the Senate, to both open and count the votes." That is, he could resolve the dispute over which slate was valid by counting the alternate electors for Mr. Trump even if Mr. Biden remained the certified winner of their states.According to the indictment, Mr. Giuliani, who is referred to as Co-Conspirator 1, spoke with someone identified only as Co-Conspirator 6 about
finding lawyers to help with the effort in seven states. An email reviewed by The Times
suggests that particular conspirator could be Boris Epshteyn, a campaign strategic adviser for the Trump campaign who was paid for political consulting. That day, Mr. Epshteyn sent Mr. Giuliani an email recommending lawyers in those seven states.
The Dec. 6 memo dovetails with that approach. Mr. Chesebro wrote that Mr. Pence could count purported Trump electors from a state as long as there was a lawsuit pending challenging Mr. Biden's declared victory there. But he also proposed telling the public that the Trump electors were meeting on Dec. 14 merely as a precaution in case "the courts (or state legislatures) were to later conclude that Trump actually won the state."https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/us/politics/trump-indictment-fake-electors-memo.html?unlocked_article_code=q863CXIGBmZKgknue26dwd_Etf2T1pV14p3LCmRWgxG2dL3sBOyDnoRErLLb8a5QNfYIkQ26R1aUi0a_x00jNH1zZ2NTKp5w7uy2fg9S23-YdsBAxIgvBoKvCdWiicGRNxvuGwg9JiygRvLa--4X2ftpqh9otmr425gNxP6b-47NmX2GN-N7o6UNRvgai_ZG4FENxkKTVt8hq-nMfkK5sM9BhnNH9gHa9ot_Us0CP9gy1_HwIWANKxHiOmr2s4NWVhKcNTkBnLgUFkGyjI9EjWxk_urvda-NWlWNONo-ScJzgx3WgCKOQrxs_P4QwsrHr2-K7IFUX3kRIR9MyI_kJc0ZMyibcTaYCVwFXh7UT-jBtw&smid=url-share 
