Newly-unearthed memo lays out ‘controversial’ strategy for Trump to overturn 2020 election: report
A previously unknown internal memo drafted by a lawyer allied with former President Donald Trump outlines a plan to overturn the 2020 election using fake slates of electors, according to a report.
The lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, admitted that he was proposing “a bold, controversial strategy” that the US Supreme Court would “likely” reject, according to a copy of the Dec. 6, 2020, memo obtained by The New York Times.
Still, he argued, it would focus attention on alleged voter fraud and buy the campaign time “to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column,” the paper reported.
Prosecutors say the missive — which was discovered during Trump’s third indictment last week – is a critical link to show how Trump and his allies’ plot morphed into a criminal conspiracy, the Times reported.
It lays out Chesebro’s plan to have false Trump electors cast their electoral votes on Dec. 14.
“I believe that what can be achieved on Jan. 6 is not simply to keep Biden below 270 electoral votes,” Chesebro wrote, according to The Times.
“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,” he continued.
“I recognize that what I suggest is a bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed on Jan. 6.”
The attorney also proposed a “messaging” strategy to explain why the pro-Trump electors were meeting in states where Biden was declared the winner – and show that the 45th president actually won, according to the memo.
Chesebro and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment from The Times. A Trump spokesperson also did not respond to the paper.
Special counsel Jack Smith last week charged Trump, 77, the overwhelming front-runner for the GOP nomination, with four counts in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Prosecutors charged that his incessant claims of election fraud costing him re-election “were false and [Trump] knew they were false.”
Trump also was slapped with 40 felony counts related to his storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and was indicted by a New York grand jury over “hush money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign.
He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
