The December 13 email, written by a New York lawyer named Kenneth Chesebro, is significant because it’s the only document so far that the House has obtained solely because of a judge’s finding that it could become evidence of a crime. The email came to light as part of a court fight over right-wing attorney John Eastman’s email account.
The email from Chesebro, in its subject line, called the proposal the “‘President of the Senate’ strategy.” The committee obtained the email several weeks ago, and it became public in the court filing recently.
By January 2, 2021, Chesebro said in a follow-up email that the proposal had largely become irrelevant. It marks just one of several communications and legal arguments in which Trump advisers discussed blocking his loss of the presidency.
Still, a federal judge has pointed to the proposal as an early indicator of how Eastman and other lawyers for Trump wanted to throw the January 6 Electoral College certification into chaos.
“This may have been the first time members of President Trump’s team transformed a legal interpretation of the Electoral Count Act into a day-by-day plan of action. The draft memo pushed a strategy that knowingly violated the Electoral Count Act, and Dr. Eastman’s later memos closely track its analysis and proposal,” Judge David O. Carter previously wrote about Chesebro’s email. “The memo is both intimately related to and clearly advanced the plan to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”
