Revealed: Secret Trump 2020 campaign memo could offer 'crucial link' in DOJ conspiracy case

A “previously secret” internal campaign memo authored by “a lawyer allied with” Donald Trump could be “ a crucial link” in the Department of Justice case against the former president, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The Dec. 6, 2020, which the Times reports was not uncovered last year by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, but instead was revealed in last week’s indictment of Trump, was written by lawyer Kenneth Chesebro and offered a “bold, controversial strategy” to help Trump overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

According to the Times, while the memo — which prosecutors dubbed the “fraudulent elector memo” — noted the Supreme Court would “likely” reject the plan, “Chesebro argued that it would achieve two goals. It would focus attention on claims of voter fraud and ‘buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.’”

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The Times reporters described the memo as “missing piece in the public record of how Mr. Trump’s allies developed their strategy to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory.”

Per the Times:

… The indictment portrayed the Dec. 6 memo as a “sharp departure” from [the alternate electors] proposal, becoming what prosecutors say was a criminal plot to engineer “a fake controversy that would derail the proper certification of Biden as president-elect.”

“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,” Mr. Chesebro wrote. “But as long as it is one possible option, to preserve it as a possibility it is important that the Trump-Pence electors cast their electoral votes on Dec. 14.”

The House investigation previously uncovered two memos from Chesebro that the lawyer had sent “to allies in the states working on the fake electors plan.”

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“But he did not attach his Dec. 6 memo to those messages, which laid out a more audacious idea: having Mr. Pence take ‘the position that it is his constitutional power and duty, alone, as president of the Senate, to both open and count the votes,’” the Times reports.

Read the full report at the New York Times (subscription required).