Continued - Chesebro is an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal election interference indictment against Trump.
------ Trump campaign lawyer ‘freaked out’ about missing elector ballots, Chesebro says Michigan investigators ask pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro about the role of the Trump campaign in the fake electors plot. Chesebro tells them that top Trump campaign lawyers were alarmed that the sham certificates might not make it to the nation’s capital before the January 6, 2021, certification proceeding in Congress. Audio Source: Obtained by CNN ------
CNN has obtained audio of Chesebro’s recent interview with Michigan investigators, and exclusively reported earlier this month that he also told them about a December 2020 Oval Office meeting where he briefed Trump about the fake electors plan and how it ties into January 6.
An attorney for Chesebro declined to comment. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office did not reply to a request for comment for this story.
‘A high-level decision’
Emails obtained by CNN corroborate what Chesebro told Michigan prosecutors: He communicated with the top Trump campaign lawyer, Matt Morgan, and another campaign official, Mike Roman, to ferry the documents to Washington on January 5.
From there, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and a Pennsylvania congressman assisted in the effort to get the documents into Pence’s hands.
“This is a high-level decision to get the Michigan and Wisconsin votes there,” Chesebro told Michigan prosecutors. “And they had to enlist, you know, a US senator to try to expedite it, to get it to Pence in time.”
------ Trump campaign considered chartering jet to fly ballots to DC, Chesebro says Pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of the fake electors plan, tells Michigan prosecutors that top Trump campaign lawyers considered chartering a private jet to bring the fake elector ballots to the nation’s capital in time for the January 6, 2021, certification proceeding in Congress. Audio Source: Obtained by CNN ------
Chesebro also discussed the episode with Wisconsin investigators last week when he sat for an interview with the attorney general’s office as part of a separate state probe into the fake electors plot, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
Wisconsin prosecutors asked about the episode “extensively,” the source said, noting Chesebro discussed how a Wisconsin GOP staffer flew the certificate from Milwaukee to Washington and then handed it off to Chesebro.
The firsthand account from Chesebro’s perspective helps fill in the narrative behind the effort to hand-deliver elector slates to Pence, which is vaguely referenced in Smith’s federal indictment.
Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include conspiring with Chesebro and others to obstruct the January 6 certification proceeding. Before Chesebro’s guilty plea in Georgia, his attorneys reached out to Smith’s team. As of this week, he has not heard back from federal prosecutors, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
Federal investigators have spoken with several individuals involved in the scramble with the phony elector certificates, according to a source familiar with the matter. This includes interviews with Trump staffers who were tapped to fly the papers to DC, and some fake electors who knew of the planning.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not reply to a request for comment.
Asked about the episode, a spokesperson for Johnson pointed to his previous comments, where he said, “my involvement in that attempt to deliver spanned the course of a couple seconds,” and that, “in the end, those electors were not delivered.”
‘Day-by-day’ coordination
According to the recordings of Chesebro’s sit-down with Michigan prosecutors, he explained how a legal memo he wrote for Wisconsin transformed into a nationwide operation, where Trump lawyers were “day-by-day coordinating the efforts of more than a dozen people with the GOP and with the Trump campaign.”
On January 4, 2021, Morgan sent an email to Chesebro and Roman asking for confirmation that all of the Trump elector slates had been received by Congress, according to the documents obtained by CNN.
Matt Morgan participates in a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC, in November 2020. Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Roman responded that the Michigan certificate had been mailed on December 15 but was still “in transit” at a US Postal Service facility in DC. Wisconsin’s certificate also had apparently not arrived.
The ‘fake electors’ and their role in the 2020 election, explained
"Exclusive: Recordings, emails show how Trump team flew fake elector ballots to DC in final push to overturn 2020 election"
By Amber Phillips Updated August 1, 2023 at 7:22 p.m. EDT|Published July 20, 2023 at 9:43 a.m. EDT
A sign on a shuttered building proclaims that Trump won the 2020 election in Bancroft, W.Va., on Oct. 23, 2021. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Donald Trump has been charged for conspiracy to defraud the United States, among other crimes, in the federal investigation into his campaign’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
When you vote for a candidate for president, you’re really casting a vote for a political party’s electors in your state. Those electors will cast votes in the electoral college. Almost all states have laws saying that if a candidate wins the popular vote, that candidate wins the state’s electors. States have different numbers of electors, numbers determined by the states’ totals of representatives in Congress. In the 2020 election, Vermont had three electors and California had 55. To become president, a candidate needs a majority of electoral votes in the electoral college — at least 270.
Electors usually gather in their states about a month after the presidential election to cast their votes for president. Those votes then are sent to Congress for the final certification. (Electors are usually party loyalists, and it is rare for an elector to cast a rogue vote for someone other than the candidate who won the popular vote in their state. In some states, “faithless” electors can be fined or prosecuted for rogue votes or for abstaining.)
After the 2020 election, Republicans in seven states that Trump had lost created their own slates of pro-Trump electors to compete with the official state slates of pro-Biden electors.
They falsely declared that Trump had won and that they were the true electors. Some of them signed official-looking documents purporting to be the real electors. Many of them tried to show up to their state capitols on Dec. 14, 2020, the day the legitimate electors met to cast their votes.
[There dtuy, fucked up, of course was seen to be duty to Trump. Not duty to democracy. Not even duty to the voters in the seven states. How many dwarfs in the fairy tale, Yeah, seven.]
And many of the pro-Trump electors came ready with a defense: They were simply creating a backup slate in case a court later ruled that Trump had in fact won the state instead of Biden, as happened in Hawaii in 1960.
The Trump electors who met in Pennsylvania and New Mexico, for example, signed a document stating that their votes were to count only if state officials changed the election results.
But by the time this was all happening, almost all of Trump’s court cases challenging the results had been thrown out by judges. And state officials (including Republicans) had certified Biden’s victory in their states.
Why the government argues these pro-Trump electors are illegal
The indictment allegesTrump turned to the fake elector scheme only after his attempts to pressure state officials to overturn the results failed, and that he developed a “corrupt plan to subvert the federal government function by stopping Biden electors’ votes from being counted and certified."
The plan was to urge illegitimate electors to meet in the swing states Trump lost and “mimic as best as possible the actions of the legitimate Biden electors.” The ultimate goal was to make this fraudulent scheme look professional enough for Vice President Pence to overturn the results on Jan. 6.
In other words, it was all part of an attempt to defraud the United States, which is one of the charges Trump now faces.
The indictment also says that some of these participants were tricked into doing Trump’s bidding. Pro-Trump electors included state party chairs and prominent party leaders. Emails suggest that some of them were told to work in secret and that Trump-allied lawyers sometimes questioned the legality of it all but pursued the undertaking anyway. The indictment shares a conversation with a lawyer in Arizona, who says Trump lawyers acknowledged that the Trump electors’ votes “aren’t legal under federal law” and that the plan is “kind of wild/creative.”
After these illegitimate electors met, the indictment traces an attempt to get the fake elector certificates to Vice President Pence’s hands, including by an unnamed “agent” of Trump enlisting the help of a U.S. senator’s staff to do it. (Pence’s staffer rejected them.)
Prosecutors say it was an attempt to switch the election results in Michigan, where Biden won by more than 150,000 votes. The wannabe electors were charged with forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery and election law forgery. Some of the counts carry sentences of up to 14 years in prison. Prosecutors say these pro-Trump electors submitted falsified paperwork to the Senate, the National Archives and Records Administration, and other entities. Prosecutors noted that the pro-Trump electors claimed to have signed the document at the Michigan Capitol when the signing actually occurred at the state GOP headquarters.
“Submitting false records and false statements to official bodies is pretty bread-and-butter crime,” said Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor now at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan advocacy group that focuses on authoritarian threats and building more resilient democratic institutions.
But many involved with the effort and some legal experts say the Trump electors were engaging in normal political behavior that is protected by the First Amendment.
In the end, the plan did fail in all seven states. Republican state legislatures did not step in to overturn the popular vote, despite pressure from Trump and his allies. And despite enormous pressure directed at Pence, he refused to reject the legitimate electors. But as Pence and lawmakers prepared on Jan. 6 to certify the election results, Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, threatening Pence’s life.
What happened in Hawaii that Republicans keep using as their defense
In the 1960 presidential election, the results in Hawaii were too close to call. Richard M. Nixon was leading John F. Kennedy in the state by just 140 votes, and there was a recount of the whole state. The recount was ongoing as Republican electors met in the state to cast their votes for Nixon, and Democratic electors met and cast their votes for Kennedy, in case he was declared the winner. (He eventually was.)
Legal experts say there is a major difference between what happened then and in 2020: The results in Hawaii were legitimately in question, while Trump’s legal challenges had already been dismissed or soon would be.
This has been updated with the latest news.
Amber Phillips explains and analyzes politics and authors The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a quick analysis of the day's biggest political news. Twitter
It’s true: Joe Biden is not a young man. Ideally, candidates for high political office should be in the prime of their lives. But, there is an unbalanced quality to the debate about Biden’s age.
For starters, it’s odd that there is more media coverage of Biden’s fitness for office than that of his predecessor Donald Trump, who has now been indicted four times, including for the subversion of American democracy.
We should judge Biden on his performance. He has been an effective leader, especially on foreign policy and particularly when viewed through the prism of Australia’s interests.
The first argument for Joe Biden is Donald Trump. In 2020, Biden burst the big fat orange Trump balloon – the only time Trump has been defeated in a national election.
Unlike Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Ron DeSantis and all the other supposed Trump-slayers, Biden took care of business.
In so doing, Biden did a great service to us all. Trump was bad for the United States, undermining its institutions and turning Americans against each other. But he was also bad for the rest of the global West.
The interests of the world’s democracies are served when the US is well-governed, cohesive, appealing and strong. During the Trump presidency, America was poorly governed, divided, ugly and weak.
In office, Biden has been a foreign-policy president of the first rank. The biggest international shock since the end of the Cold War has been Russia’s brutal, immoral and illegal invasion of Ukraine. The Biden administration responded with a masterclass in statecraft and alliance management, using intelligence to knock Vladimir Putin off balance and dispatching vast flows of military equipment, training and aid to Kyiv.
Along with Britain, the European Union, Australia, and other nations, the US has supplied democracy’s arsenal. Of course, it is Ukrainians, with their immense moral and physical courage, who are serving as democracy’s bodyguard.
Biden’s policies have helped to weaken Putin’s regime and strengthen NATO. Eighteen months ago, Putin was seen as a geopolitical chess grandmaster. Now the frailties of authoritarian governments are more obvious, as are the qualities of democracies.
In the Indo-Pacific, Biden has created a situation of strength. In less than three years, the president and his skilful foreign policy team have consolidated Washington’s Asian alliances, brought Japan and South Korea closer together, quickened America’s connections with India and Vietnam, stood up AUKUS and convened the Quad – even as they have stabilised the US-China relationship.
Take America’s Asian alliances, which constitute Washington’s key comparative advantage over China. Trump threatened repeatedly to withdraw US forces from the Korean peninsula; this year Biden reached an agreement with the South Korean president to counter the nuclear threat from Pyongyang and prevent Seoul from pursuing its own nuclear weapon.
In August, Biden brought together the leaders of South Korea and Japan at Camp David. He is helping to unpick the historical enmities between Seoul and Tokyo that have impeded co-operation between these two key Asian allies.
Trump’s grisly bromance with former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte didn’t stop Duterte from courting China. In May this year, by contrast, Biden hosted Duterte’s successor Ferdinand Marcos Jr in Washington – the first such visit in a decade – and renewed US military ties with Manila.
Biden has brought together the leaders of the Quad countries, including treaty allies Japan and Australia as well as India.
He has signed up to AUKUS, by which the US and the UK are assisting Australia to develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
Many experts argue that given the size and location of the Australian continent, nuclear-powered boats make sense for us. They will provide immense capability in terms of lethality, speed, range, and stealth. These submarines will give Australia significant deterrent power. They will help us to deter rash actions by adversaries and contribute to the strategic equilibrium in our region – if we carry through with the plan successfully. It will be a big lift for us.
The Biden administration has also worked hard to maintain a stable relationship with China, despite Beijing’s bluster.
In the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, critics claimed that America had lost interest in its allies, and its allies had lost confidence in America. NATO’s solidarity on the issue of Ukraine, and the establishment of AUKUS, are conclusive defences against both charges.
Biden is a fine president whose policies have favoured Australia’s interests. There is no compelling alternative Democratic candidate to Biden. Trump is the likely GOP nominee for president next year. His return to the White House would be a nightmare for Australia and the West.
Let’s keep these facts in mind when we make judgments on fitness for office.
Michael Fullilove Areas of expertise: Australian foreign policy; US politics and foreign policy; Asia and the Pacific; Global institutions
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