Newly released messages detail roots of the ‘fake electors’ scheme

WASHINGTON — Just five days after Election Day in 2020, a conservative lawyer named Kenneth Chesebro emailed a former judge who was working for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, James R. Troupis, pitching an idea for how to overturn the results.

Through litigation, Chesebro said, the Trump campaign could allege “various systemic abuses” and, with court proceedings pending, encourage legislatures to appoint “alternative” pro-Donald Trump electors that could be certified instead of the Joe Biden electors chosen by the voters.

“At minimum, with such a cloud of confusion, no votes from WI (and perhaps also MI and PA) should be counted, perhaps enough to throw the election to the House,” Chesebro wrote to Troupis, referring to the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Troupis quickly brought Chesebro into the Trump legal team, directed him to lay out the plans in a series of memos now central to the indictment of Trump and a month later — with the help of Reince Priebus, the former White House chief of staff — secured a meeting with Trump at the White House.

The email is the earliest known evidence of Chesebro’s involvement in what would become known as the false elector plot. It was released Monday along with a trove of more than 1,400 pages of text messages and emails belonging to Troupis and Chesebro as they settled a lawsuit against them filed in Wisconsin.

Taken together, the documents show in new detail how the Trump campaign’s litigation strategy was not designed to win in court as much as it was designed to give cover for their political efforts. And they underscore the central role that Troupis — previously a little-known figure in the effort to overturn the election — played in furthering the plans.

The messages also detail how Chesebro worked to get the false-electors documents into the hands of members of Congress and how Chesebro — who has since pleaded guilty in Georgia to a felony conspiracy charge related to the scheme — celebrated the crowd that was gathering in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, before a violent mob stormed the Capitol.

“Enjoy the history you have made possible today,” Troupis wrote in a text message to Chesebro at 11:04 a.m. that day.

The new details come from the settlement of a lawsuit filed by progressive law firm Law Forward and Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection against Chesebro, Troupis and the so-called fake electors in Wisconsin.

The suit was filed on behalf of legitimate Wisconsin presidential electors and voters.

The purported electors have already settled their portion of the suit, admitting that Biden won the 2020 election.

Troupis and Chesebro agreed not to engage in similar work in the future, including not participating in a scheme to advance slates of false electors.

The settlement also included a payment to the plaintiffs of an undisclosed amount.

“As these documents show, the fraudulent electors plot originated in Wisconsin, with Trump campaign attorney James Troupis and legal adviser Ken Chesebro concocting the scheme that ultimately provided the false narrative used by the rioters to justify the attack on the Capitol,” said Mary McCord, director of Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

In a statement, Troupis said he entered into the settlement to “avoid endless litigation, and nothing in today’s settlement constitutes an admission of fault, nor should it.”

“It is the duty of lawyers to vigorously represent their clients, regardless of their popularity, within the bounds of the law,” he said. “Our representation was vigorous and ethically appropriate.”

Chesebro’s memos were central to the federal indictment of Trump on charges of seeking to overturn the 2020 election. They are featured as evidence of how the Trump campaign’s plans shifted from legal challenges to what prosecutors describe as a criminal plot to engineer “a fake controversy that would derail the proper certification of Biden as president-elect.”

The memos also became the basis for a strategy put forward by conservative lawyer John Eastman and Trump that a federal judge referred to as a “coup in search of a legal theory.”

In a Nov. 19, 2020, email to Troupis, Chesebro wrote that the Trump lawyers should “pursue a shot at having two bites at the apple — ligate, hoping to ultimately win by January 6, but also use delay in litigation to try to win in the state legislature on December 8.”

Several of the documents refer to a Dec. 15, 2020, meeting of Troupis and Chesebro with Trump in the Oval Office.

“Pretty clear national people realize this wouldn’t be happening if you and reince and others hadn’t pushed it!” Chesebro wrote to Troupis two days before the White House visit.

“We had until Jan. 6 to win,” Chesebro recalled of what he told Trump in the meeting, according to audio obtained by CNN, adding: “That got me in real trouble afterwards.”

Chesebro did not respond to a request for comment.

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