Left: Lawyer Kenneth Chesebro is sworn in during a plea deal hearing, Oct. 20, 2023, at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta (Alyssa Pointer/Pool Photo via AP, File). Center: Donald Trump booking photo (via Fulton County Sheriff’s Office). Right: Trump campaign attorney James Troupis speaks to Congress about election integrity in Dec. 2020 (Greg Nash/Pool via AP).
A plethora of newly released text messages and emails flowing between a lawyer who pleaded guilty to conspiring to file fake elector slates for Donald Trump in Georgia and a campaign lawyer for the former president offers a startling look into a fast-moving world where Trump’s allies steadily discussed ways to create a “cloud of confusion” in the 2020 election aftermath.
The texts and emails are contained in a more than 1,400-page document. That document surfaced publicly this week after a lawsuit filed by Wisconsin voters and electors against Kenneth Chesebro — the conservative attorney turned Trump co-conspirator in the fake electors case in Georgia — and campaign lawyer Jim Troupis, along with other alleged fake electors in the state, was finally settled.
Chesebro pleaded guilty last November to charges in the pending Georgia election racketeering case. He is not alone; Trump campaign lawyer and co-conspirator Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty a month earlier after Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor charges after cutting a deal with federal prosecutors. Co-conspirator Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman charged with breaching election system equipment, also pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges, including conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.
Chesbro was responsible for drafting a legal memo that proposed to have then-Vice President Mike Pence replace legitimate electors with so-called “alternate” electors on Jan. 6 if other attempts to reverse Trump’s electoral defeat to now-President Joe Biden failed.
The text messages offer a peek into how Chesebro peddled conspiracy theories about rampant fraud in the 2020 election and, as both Politico and the New York Times reported, they expose how the lawyers believed Trump could effectively have “two bites at the apple” after his loss.
In one email, the Times noted, Chesebro told Trump’s campaign lawyer Troupis that Trump could litigate, “hoping to ultimately win by January 6” but he could also use “delay in litigation to try to win in the state legislature on Dec. 8.”
Emails showed a flurry of admonitions to keep schemes secret. And as CNN noted, the document dump also exposed new details about Chesebro’s actions on and after the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, including a selfie he took outside of the Capitol with Alex Jones in the background. In other messages, he bragged about being near tear gas that was used to repel rioters.
Still focused on ways to usher Trump into the White House despite his defeat, in one message mere days after Jan. 6, Chesebro wrote: “The events of the last two days open up legal options in the states for winning rulings favorable to Trump.”
The documents indicate that Chesebro was on a crash course to see Trump elected despite being shown the door by court after court when his claims of a fraudulent election failed.
And notably, as Just Security legal analyst and former Defense Department special counsel Ryan Goodman recently noted, the messages may also pose a “perjury problem” for Chesebro.
To wit, Chesebro testified to a Nevada grand that the fake electors scheme was contingent upon winning litigation before Congress met to certify the election on Jan. 6, 2021.
But in an email on Dec. 8, 2020, Chesebro said otherwise.
“Court challenges pending on Jan. 6 really not necessary,” Chesebro wrote to Troupis on Dec. 8 at 12:15 a.m.
Goodman also noted that Chesebro had told prosecutors in Michigan exploring fake electors there the same thing but privately, took the opposite tack.
Chesebro’s attorney did not immediately return request for comment to Law&Crime. Troupis told the Times on Monday that he entered into the settlement with Wisconsin voters to “avoid endless litigation” and that nothing in the settlement “constitutes and admission of fault, nor should it.”
Page through the entire trove of documents here.
