Newly revealed memo details fake elector plot to overturn Trump's 2020 election loss

A antecedently unreported memo written by a Wisconsin lawyer successful precocious 2020 offered the archetypal elaborate statement of a program to usage fake slates of pro-Trump electors to reverse then-President Donald Trump's nonaccomplishment to President Joe Biden.

The six-page memo published by The New York Times connected Tuesday evening was referred to arsenic the "Fraudulent Elector Memo" successful a peculiar counsel indictment past week successful Washington, which charged Trump with conspiring to illegally overturn the 2020 predetermination results. Trump pleaded not guilty.

The Dec. 6, 2020, memo was authored by Kenneth Chesebro, a pro-Trump lawyer identified by quality outlets arsenic 1 of six unnamed co-conspirators successful Trump's latest indictment. The memo, marked "privileged and confidential," was addressed to James Troupis, who was moving arsenic a Trump run lawyer successful precocious 2020 and challenging Wisconsin ballot counts.

CNBC has not independently confirmed the memo, but it resembles a similar memo Chesebro sent to Troupis a period earlier, which argued that Trump could overturn Biden's triumph close up until Jan. 6, 2021.

The Dec. 6 memo projected that groups of "electors" successful six cardinal states that Biden won should conscionable and formed fake votes for Trump. Those votes would past beryllium packaged up to lucifer existent electoral votes and sent to Washington. According to Chesebro's plan, then-Vice President Mike Pence could past number the Trump votes alternatively of the existent electoral votes during a associated league of Congress connected Jan. 6.

"I'm not needfully advising this people of action," Chesebro wrote. He besides acknowledged that the U.S. Supreme Court "would apt extremity up ruling" that it was up to Congress, not Pence, to certify the predetermination results.

Still, helium said, "letting matters play retired this mode would warrant that nationalist attraction would beryllium riveted connected the grounds of electoral abuses by the Democrats, and would besides bargain the Trump run much clip to triumph litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or adhd to Trump's column."

The strategy to get Pence to usage his ceremonial relation overseeing Congress' certification of the predetermination successful bid to derail the proceedings is cardinal to peculiar counsel Jack Smith's indictment.

Pence yet refused to cull morganatic electoral votes for Biden, resisting unit from Trump and his allies. The Jan. 6 proceedings devolved into a riot aft a convulsive pro-Trump mob, spurred by the then-president's mendacious claims of wide predetermination fraud, stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Chesebro did not instantly respond to CNBC's petition for remark connected the Times' report.

Read the afloat study from The New York Times.